In modern discourse, there’s a constant desire to trace things back to the beginning. Maybe it’s the scientific nature of our culture to categorize everything, maybe it’s a backward-looking reaction to forward-moving modernity, maybe it’s just nostalgic curiosity.
Whatever the motivation, it’s hard to ignore popular media’s obsession with “source material.” Does a movie or show “respect” the source material? How far did it deviate from the source material? Is the “content” a reimagining of the source material? And so forth.
Ugh, the language. “Source material” both credits and strips narrative authority simultaneously. “Content” reduces the human production and reception of art into a widget. It’s all so gross. But I digress.
Ironically, what the critiques are always discussing, beneath their layers of corporatized Late Capitalism lingo, is effectively plagiarism. Does this movie plagiarize a previous movie with the same name? Does this movie plagiarize a comic book I liked as a ten-year-old? And so forth.
This brings up a whole slew of problematic issues, but for our purposes, let’s discuss the idea of finding and celebrating a “root” narrative.
In folklore, this manifests in a curious form of searching for ancient texts . A few years ago, researchers made headlines by proclaiming they could trace stories back thousands of years.
Fairy Tales Could Be Older Than You Ever Imagined
Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales
Effectively, they used evolutionary biology and language trees to suppose that stories traveled with human migration patterns. A fine idea. However, it’s one that kinda basically entirely misses the point of why stories matter... For folklorists — and folklorists are the experts on this topic — the idea of a story having an “origin” is not only unknowable, but useless. It’s interesting to see that this specific plot has been part of humanity for a few thousand years, I get that, but it’s way more interesting to see how that specific plot has changed over time and space. The change is what gives stories power. “Dynamic tradition,” as we say in the biz.
Or as Dr. Jeana Jorgensen succinctly writes:
Understanding where something comes from can help us understand how it’s become the way it is today (assuming that it’s still practiced/told/transmitted), and that in its own right can be a fascinating example of the twin laws of folklore, tradition and variation, at work. But tracking down the origins of something won’t help us understand why it’s relevant today, or the functions it serves in today’s society. It might give us some hints, but it won’t yield the full picture, not the same way researching its contemporary uses will.
(Go read the rest of her blog when you’re done here.)
That brings us back to popular entertainment and the Age of Reboots, Remakes, and Reimaginings. And it brings us back to the word “content.” After all, when you categorize art/narratives as widgets whose sole purpose is to make money for a corporation, you can twist your brain into writing things like: Top 10 Woke Movies That Ruined Their Franchises or Why Woke Gender Swap Remakes Are a Bad Bet. Just google “woke reboot” and you’ll find countless more examples.
What are these complaints actually about? These people are mad that some corporation made a widget that wasn’t the widget they wanted. Here’s the kicker: in a consumer-driven society, reacting against that is a reasonable thing to do! Corporations want money, consumers want to spend their money. Corporations should listen to the consumers, right? Add in copyright laws and trademarks and all the other legal nonsense, and I get why people freak out over widgets.
But narratives are not widgets.
Not only do narratives change constantly, if narratives didn’t change they would no longer exist! The change is what gives stories power. So when Hollywood takes a movie and changes it as a reflection of contemporary social dynamics and concerns, it’s a recognition of the narrative’s weight and power. And the audience’s reaction is part of that narrative.
It doesn’t matter where a story comes from, it doesn’t matter where a story has been, all that matters is how a story reflects the time and place in which it was crafted. In that respect, the people who love reboots and the people who hate reboots are both right. And they’re both informing how the narrative will change for the next reboot. Give it about 17.1 years to find out.
YESSSSSSSS - This idea has been nagging at me for years and you (of course) figured it out and wrote it up in a clear and concise way. Who cares what the Ur story was? What matters is what it means to people now. I despise this "Mythbusters" approach to breaking any old thing down to some overly simplistic roots and then dismissing it. It's here and now because it matters. It matters because it is here and now.
Can't wait till you do a follow up that takes into account James Bau Graves' ideas about how the things a community argues about reveals the things that are most important to that community... he said it better, but somehow my notes from "Cultural Democracy" didn't make the move to the new lap top :(
What else was lost??? I don't even want to know...
Anyway, great as always.