“Nothing good is original, and nothing original is good.”
This is a phrase I heard recently, and I’ve mulled on it since.
Is it true? It seems the kind of broad statement designed specifically to sound cool or look provocative when superimposed onto a royalty-free background image. But it can’t be denied that the same kind of stories tend to reappear over and over across different forms of media. (This is part of the basis for the Monomyth argument, which could be a whole other article in and of itself.)
The Hero’s Journey, The Rags to Riches, The Tragedy. One of the very first things any hopeful author comes across is the Three Act Structure. The Sequence Structure, Save the Cat. All repeating patterns. Even those that break from such structures tend to end up defined in opposition to them.
So. Is it true?
Original
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it is. That all stories from all peoples across all time are the same, broadly, if perhaps told from different angles. What does that mean? Originality is a neutral word, meaning fresh or novel. It is imbued with moral weight by the speaker.
Usually, it is seen as a good thing.
If nothing good is original and nothing original is good, that seems a grim take indeed on the nature of human entertainment and enrichment. We don’t want anything fresh or new. If originality is a good thing and we don’t want it, well. That isn’t good, is it?
But originality isn’t necessarily better than the familiar. And humans are pattern-seeking creatures. Is it bad if we seek out the same stories time and again?
Later in this same conversation came a comment regarding everything being the same since the Romans. And I have to wonder about that.
Why the Romans?
(it’s because people think the only real history is written history.)
Let’s assume it’s true. Is it possible that certain aspects of Roman stories repeat themselves because they conquered a large swathe of land, and we lost the stories of those they subsumed? Are they repeated because those are the narrative tropes that western Europeans are most likely to come across? Are most likely to respond to, because they are familiar?
The Roman Empire was only one part and one place (with some variance) in a much larger world. Do the same stories appear in other times and other cultures?
So much of the human experience is shared. But so much is unique. And so much has been lost or is inaccessible because it wasn’t written down, and oral tradition is often ignored. More’s the pity. And this, like the geological record (that could be another article in itself) can lead to some extreme (and hopefully unintentional) bias in what the average person considers to be history.
Is originality all its cracked up to be? I’m not so sure.
Next time, join me as I Pop Off over ‘good’ art and subjective experience.
And in the meantime, don’t try to be original I guess? Unless that makes you happy. Perhaps, more accurately, don’t worry too hard about originality.
Yours,
Elmswood. <3
