50 Shades of Composition

It's embarrassing to admit, but I was a Twilight fan in my early tweens. I enjoyed the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle, and I thought the Cullen's were a dynamic family unit. As I've gotten older, my tastes have changed and I'm not a "Twihard" anymore. However, when E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey came out in 2011, I was appalled to find out that someone had made a profit by writing fan-fiction. James' characters were based completely on Stephanie Meyers' Bella and Edward, and the only significant difference was the name change (Edward became Christian, and Bella became Anastasia). How was this not plagiarism? Why wasn't Meyers angry and suing James? But the best question yet- how could we, the reading public, buy and consume a work that was so problematic in its plagiarism?

After reading "Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage" and "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key,"I think I have a better understanding of how the digital-age mindset towards remix works may have created a reading public that saw James' work as original. Musicians sample other artists (think Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby") and visual artists make pieces that reference other visual art, such as Marcel DuChamp's "Salvador Dali as Mona Lisa," seen here:

We consider these original artworks, so why would books be any different? I think if we understand that mindset of the reading public, it will be easier to dissect the readings this week and their implications for academic writing.

In "Made Not Only in Words," Kathleen Blake Yancey laments, "Don't you wish that the energy and motivation that students bring to some of these other genres they would bring to our assignments?" (298). But, how can educators expect students to approach an 8 to 10 page paper on the Jungian aspects of Shakespeare's tragedies with the same enthusiasm that they bring to a project that engages their creativity, their intelligent, and multiple senses? As I said in my post, "In Defense of the Essay," I still hold the essay as a valuable educational assignment, but I will be the first to admit that not every students finds those kind of assignments exhilarating or engaging.

Johnson-Eilola and Selber ask a question that raises a key question in this pedagogical discussion: "What happens, however, if we tell students that their goal is not to create new, unique texts but to filter and remix other texts in ways that solve concrete problems or enact real social action?" (380). Indeed, what would happen if we asked students to interact with texts, like Shakespeare, in ways that have connections to the world they're living in? I think it is wholly unfair to ask students to disconnect from the world around them in order to focus in on an eight to ten page assignment that ignores the global setting around them. Technology has created a global arena that doesn't allow for students or academics to put on their blinders, sit in the library, and write papers without concern for the real world. To do so, or even suggest that this model is still valid, is completely outdated.

Obviously, the broad incorporation of others' ideas into our own texts is something that is cross-discipline and cross-genre. It is something that's taking hold in academic writing, as well as fiction. I still think that James' Fifty Shades of Grey crosses the line into blatant plagiarism, but there are millions of readers across the globe who could disagree with me.

The question is not whether or not the intertextual/remix relationship in composition is going to happen, because it's already here. Instead, the question for academics and writers across disciplines, is are we going to utilize the new reading public, their mindset, and global arena afforded to us through the digital age; or, are we going to bury our heads in the proverbial sand?

Works Cited:

Johnson-Eilola, J. and S.A. Selber. "Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage." Computers and Composition 24. 2007. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Yancey, Kathleen B. "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." CCC 56:2. December 2004. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.