In 1903, Mark Twain defended his friend and fellow author Helen Keller against charges of plagiarism, writing in a letter: ‘The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism.’ Of course, even Twain’s screed against the concept of originality was hardly original. As the ancient Roman playwright Terence notes in his comedy The Eunuch: ‘Nothing has yet been said that’s not been said before.’ In this short firm, the US filmmaker Drew Christie turns a moviegoer’s complaint to a box-office attendant about a lack of originality in Hollywood into a madcap exploration of appropriation, adaptation and plagiarism in art and, more generally, human thought. Deploying hand-drawn animation and a stream of Wikipedia articles to droll comedic effect, the film approaches its topic in a manner you might just call ‘original’ – if you still cling to such silly notions.
Video by Drew Christie
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History of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes
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Nature and landscape
After independence, Mexico was in search of identity. These paintings offered a blueprint
15 minutes
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Mathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes
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Art
A young Rockefeller collects art on a fateful journey to New Guinea
7 minutes
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Art
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Space and time expand, contract and combust in this propulsive animation
5 minutes
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Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes