Where is the Creativity?

With the questions raised about the crisis of originality and the plagiarism epidemic, it's easy for my mind to go to the lack of originality in other areas of media as well. Our culture isn't just lazy in our creative speech and writing, but in music, products, movies, and other media as well.

Music

Similar to the "copy and paste" idea of plagiarism, some artists in the past decade have resorted to recycling the instrumental tracks from old songs and putting new lyrics over it and calling it a new song. Take, for example, Flo Rida's song "Right Round," and the clear lack of originality from the Pete Burns original, "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)," or Eminem's chorus of "Berzerk" which is a clear copy of  the hit, "The Stroke" by Billy Squire. Music has become less of an art and more of a machine that cranks out the same old tunes and labels them as "new".There are plenty more examples, but the real question is whether or not we will keep having to reuse and recycle songs because of the lack of originality, or whether we can get creative with what music can do.

Products

Working in an office this summer has revealed to me just how many products overlap between companies. Simply changing a brand name on a product suddenly makes it a completely different item. I personally designed 3 owners manuals for one product, and the only differences between them was the name of the company and the name of the product. Everything else remained exactly the same, even down to the warranties. I see this cookie cutter production show up a lot in clothing as well, when off-branded products are made to be the same as the name-brand, but are sold for much less.

Movies

Don't get me wrong, I love movies...but seriously, how many times are we going to remake Spiderman and Transformers in the next 10 years? The originality of story lines and characters in Hollywood production is lacking. Instead of creating and writing stories that are new and different, producers settle for reboots, remakes, and sequels. Not all movie makers fall short of this creativity, though. It's just a shame that great, original movies like "Inception" and "Avatar" don't come around more often.

 In a capitalistic society like the US, profit weighs over most things. This is helpful in understanding why people refuse to risk creativity and original ideas for the sake of sticking with products that have already profited and will most likely continue to profit. However, a lack of originality results in a dull society, whereas creativity breeds wonder and interest. Humans, made in the image of a creative God, were given a gift to create new and marvelous things, so why don't we take advantage of that?