Anyone Else Tired of The Tyranny of Novelty?

[Carlsen Chris]

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if big movie studios and such would great broken up, and most IP get punted into public domain, hopefully forcing them to hire people who want to tell stories that haven't been told much in movies or tv shows.

However, outside of that, it seems impossible to ever discuss any art/content without it turning into a discussion of how new/original/novel the work is or isn't.

Like...I am fairly well versed in how we came to this. A lot of it is IP law, and another big chunk is simply the ever-growing ability for a story to survive in a specific form by a specific person for vastly longer than has ever been the case before, and be vastly more broadly distributed in that specific form than ever before, in an ever increasing buildup of stuff we can just rewatch, reread, listen to again, etc.

And so, because we are used to all art reaching toward the greatest possible state of novelty while still saying something familiar enough to resonate, it is nearly impossible to make something that is a straightforward retelling of a classic tale without receiving pretty harsh criticism, often of a type that seems to imply that the artist is a bad person for making "derivative" art. As if the works we are comparing a work to weren't literally just as derivative, just of stuff we have less direct knowledge of as the audience.

I'm not sure if there is any real purpose here, I just get frustrated by the attitude that greater novelty is inherently better and retelling classic stories is some sort of moral failure.

no

 

[Gammadoodler]

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if big movie studios and such would great broken up, and most IP get punted into public domain, hopefully forcing them to hire people who want to tell stories that haven't been told much in movies or tv shows.

However, outside of that, it seems impossible to ever discuss any art/content without it turning into a discussion of how new/original/novel the work is or isn't.

Like...I am fairly well versed in how we came to this. A lot of it is IP law, and another big chunk is simply the ever-growing ability for a story to survive in a specific form by a specific person for vastly longer than has ever been the case before, and be vastly more broadly distributed in that specific form than ever before, in an ever increasing buildup of stuff we can just rewatch, reread, listen to again, etc.

And so, because we are used to all art reaching toward the greatest possible state of novelty while still saying something familiar enough to resonate, it is nearly impossible to make something that is a straightforward retelling of a classic tale without receiving pretty harsh criticism, often of a type that seems to imply that the artist is a bad person for making "derivative" art. As if the works we are comparing a work to weren't literally just as derivative, just of stuff we have less direct knowledge of as the audience.

I'm not sure if there is any real purpose here, I just get frustrated by the attitude that greater novelty is inherently better and retelling classic stories is some sort of moral failure.

I think a lot of it is that making art should be an act of exploration. The point is to bring something new into the world.

Consumption is a little different in that there's a component that is just related to personal enjoyment of a thing.

Like there are recipes that maybe don't ever need to change for me to continue to enjoy the dish, but the art is in the creation of the recipe in the first place more than future execution of it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think a lot of it is that making art should be an act of exploration. The point is to bring something new into the world.

Consumption is a little different in that there's a component that is just related to personal enjoyment of a thing.

Like there are recipes that maybe don't ever need to change for me to continue to enjoy the dish, but the art is in the creation of the recipe in the first place more than future execution of it.

I knew a painter who said that the point of art is to create emotion, to change a person in some small way from their innermost self outward, and that novelty was a distant second to that.

edit: Her brother who was a sculpter and muralist argued that the point of art is for people with a knack for making engaging creative works to make a living, followed by “to make oneself or others happy by making enjoyable works”, followed by any other concern.

Artists are pretty varied and tend toward very strong opinions on art, I guess is the point.

 

[dragoner]

Novelty or originality is fine, except that the authenticity is in the execution, or to summarize: "great artists steal".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I already have well-executed and enjoyable versions. Why do I need another?

Because it will also be well executed and enjoyable.

Because this one is... different? Novel, perhaps?

Novel? Probably not, unless we are going to define novelty so broadly that it is a useless term, in which case feel free to substitute it for unique or original.

So... Branagh's Hamlet, as far as I am concerned, suffers exactly from the issue of making a slavish version of the classic. Most versions (film or stage) have the good sense to edit it down quite a bit, but his Hamlet is unabridged. As a result his has a runtime of four tedious hours.

Our individual reviews of a given Hamlet aren’t really the point. Branagh is my favorite Hamlet, others hate it above all other popular Hamlets, still others put Gibson at the top or vehement bottom of their list. Doesn’t matter, it’s all Hamlet. None of it is novel, until you get into subversive takes on the story, or at least very divergent stories inspired by Hamlet.

Even then, those stories are certainly more derivative, less novel, than Hamlet was when it was first written.

The Sword of Shannara is blatantly an American authors response to Lord of The Rings. It is not, overall, especially novel.

Meanwhile, A Wizard of Earthsea is much less derivative.

Novelty vs variation on a theme is not what separates the two works in quality. Shannara wouldn’t be improved by the author going out of his way to make sure the tale doesn’t resemble lord of the rings.

I know this, because, back before we married, I took my wife to see it on a date. We were both big Shakespeare fans, and Branagh usually knew what he was doing. He had done reasonable editing on other productions...

When your significant other falls asleep... it is not a good date. I don't recommend it.

I haven't seen Tennant's version of the thing yet - largely because that experience put my wife off Hamlet, and I don't take many opportunities to watch things on my own. But I am willing to guess that is differs substantially from Branagh's (as, I see they lopped an entire hour off).



Let me put it another way - I have a copy of Le Morte d'Arthur. I do not, in fact, need two copies on my bookshelf. If you are going to produce a book of Arthurian fiction, that simply follows Le Morte d'Arthur... why do I need yours? I already have it!

Two things can be different without either being novel.

I have other books of Arthurian bent. They are all different takes on the legends. One's a scholarly work that breaks down the legends to fit into know historical events, with the idea to show that Arthur was not really a single individual, but an amalgam of various legends. Another casts the Arthurian characters as immortals (Arthur was known as Gilgamesh and Baldur before he hooked up with Merlin and became Arthur), and mixes them with other immortal beings to see how it plays out. Another has the characters reborn in the modern era on the road to simply repeat the same tragedy again, while desperately trying to avoid that fate. And there are others...

Same stories, with novelty. Far more engaging than just rephrasing Le Morte d'Arthur four and more times over.

To you.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It seems to imply that everything being made nowadays is new and different.

It does no such thing.

 

[Lanefan]

If I want familiar, I already have it!

...

So... to see what is different! Thank you for demonstrating my point for me.

Yet it's still 90+% familiar - Robin and Little John are still going to fight at the river crossing, Robin's still going to sneak into town and win the archery contest, King Richard is still going to show up at the end, etc. - and thus it's no more than a re-telling of a familiar story with maybe a few new wrinkles. Yes I already have it. Yes I want it again.

That's a big difference from something being entirely new, which is what the OP seems to be suggesting is an overwrought ideal.

 

[Umbran]

I liked the Branagh Hamlet.

And that's perfectly fine. The fact that some people can like it, and others find it tedious, shows that doing it different ways matters.

 

[Fenris-77]

And that's perfectly fine. The fact that some people can like it, and others find it tedious, shows that doing it different ways matters.

That was precisely my point.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I knew a painter who said that the point of art is to create emotion, to change a person in some small way from their innermost self outward, and that novelty was a distant second to that.

edit: Her brother who was a sculpter and muralist argued that the point of art is for people with a knack for making engaging creative works to make a living, followed by “to make oneself or others happy by making enjoyable works”, followed by any other concern.

Artists are pretty varied and tend toward very strong opinions on art, I guess is the point.

No matter why the artist is doing it, what the artist is doing is making something which did not exist before.

In order to get there, they have to explore. That exploration can be about technique, content, concepts, emotion, etc. And then to realize it, the work needs to be executed effectively

I think there's some amount of give and take between exploration and execution, in that deficits on one side can be offset by strengths in the other.. but there should be at least some of both.