Extended Analysis Response--Plagiarism

For this week’s blog, I listened to a podcast on plagiarism by Colleen, Jill, Mary, and Rachel.  In their podcast, they highlight several points:  unintentional plagiarism, plagiarism vs. inspiration, plagiarism vs. fanfiction, and plagiarism vs. parody.

I found their discussion on unintentional plagiarism spot-on. Mary discussed the fact that many high-schoolers have no idea that they are plagiarizing, particularly with paraphrases. Many students do not understand that they need to cite paraphrases, nor do they truly understand how to put an author’s thoughts into their own words (as we saw in our grading of the paraphrasing assignments). Personally, when grading I saw many students who simply took to the thesaurus and attempted to translate every one of the author’s words.  I saw this as an even lazier form of Engfish. More importantly, I left notes on each of these papers explaining that they will need to learn to paraphrase properly for future research, or even for future jobs. Being able to paraphrase properly shows that you actually understand what you just read or what was just told to you.  Jill pointed out that many students do not have a grasp of their own voice yet and do not feel that they have a right to some words. I agree, and would go further in saying that some students do not feel like they have the knowledge to restate an author’s ideas accurately. I think that this is why so many of them turned to a thesaurus before even trying to restate an idea in words that they know.

Colleen then moved into discussion of having an “original” thought and questioned, how do you make something truly original? How can an author’s work be inspired by another work and still maintain its originality? Mary pointed out that scholarship builds from other scholarship and that, in today’s world, authors cannot be responsible for the originality of every single thought. I agree, and (as I am not in creative writing) I have always marveled at authors who are able to come up with never-before-seen or –heard-of storylines. I often think of this question of originality when looking at newly released movies. It seems so rare that a movie is released that is not (a) a remake or reboot of an older movie or (b) an adaptation of a book. I am not saying that reboots and adaptations cannot be well done or even quite original; I am saying that, in today’s world, one would be hard-pressed to find a story that was not inspired by another, or a story that does not reflect another in some way.

Jill then transitioned to the discussion of fanfiction vs. plagiarism. Colleen explained the finer points of fanfiction:  the work (a) must be in your own words and (b) cannot follow the author’s original plot. Apparently (I did not know this) some fanfiction authors are professional and they get paid for their fanfics. They have to be knowledgeable about whether or not the author allows for fanfiction of their work, as some authors (Colleen mentioned Anne Rice) dislike fanfiction. Colleen also mentioned that some authors enjoy building up their fan bases, as “fandoms” are a large movement now. Encouraging fanfiction of your own work can serve as free publicity, and many authors choose to take advantage of it. I honestly do not know much about fanfiction, and I had never before thought of its connection to plagiarism. This section of the podcast was enlightening to me. I thought Mary’s addition at the end was fascinating:  the idea that fanfiction almost mirrors oral folklore, in that new storytellers add to, embellish, or even change plot points of well-known stories.

Lastly, they discussed parody vs. plagiarism. Jill elaborated on the difference in parody and satire. Parody, she pointed out, is protected under copyright law, as it says true to the original source material (ex: Young Frankenstein). Satire, in contrast, is if the source material is changed to comment on larger social issues, and is not protected under copyright law. To get around this, satire authors often tack on the words, “Unauthorized Parody” to their work. I had always wondered about the logistics of parodies and I never looked into it. Honestly, I had never thought of how much legalese has to be accounted for in the career of creative writing.  This discussion brought to light for me that my cohorts in creative writing must be constantly thinking about plagiarism and how to get around it. It is an absolute feat for authors to build a good storyline (whether original or inspired by another work) and have it successfully published.