Open Sourcing Creativity: Appropriation and Mixtaping in Educational Spaces
Madeline Cooper:
In his report Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2006), Henry Jenkins defines appropriation as: “the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content,” or to take one piece of content by another creator and produce new material, either by utilizing pieces of the original content, or the entire piece as a whole and adding on. One of my favorite examples of this is in the Summer 2018 song “Potato Salad,” a collaboration by the rappers Tyler the Creator and A$AP Rocky. One of the sickest beats in recent hip-hop, Genius’s YouTube series “Explained” reports, the duo rap over Monica’s 2003 song “Knock Knock,” which Kanye remixed in his album “Kon the Louis Vuitton Don” featuring the same singer in 2004. In doing so, Tyler the Creator and A$AP Rocky pay respect to the hip hop generation that inspired them to join the scene, and breathe new life into two early 2000s classics with rhymes that speak to today’s hip-hop culture and larger black community, lamenting the so-called “mumble rappers” of this past year’s XXL Freshman Class, and police brutality.
Of course, some may see this as a ripping of intellectual property, especially because “Potato Salad” is independently produced by Tyler the Creator in collaboration with A$AP Rocky and not some big music conglomerate like Sony. In his chapter “Mixtape: Black Theology’s Mixtape Movement at Forty,” Adam Banks discusses the “mixtape” through the lens of Black Theology, which he argues “blend[s] Malcolm [X] and Martin [Luther King Jr], radical democratic and nationalist impulses, a focus on domestic and black diasporic concerns.” Banks uses this history to shed light on how educators can foster creativity in the writing classroom through digital means, to blend and synthesize materials to create new content, while also bridging the generational gap of activists in the black community. He opens the chapter reminiscing about the days of his youth, creating mixtapes of songs from popular radio shows with his friends, writing, “this simple move of straight bootlegging [...] quickly morphed into an art of creation through selection, arrangement, and compilation;” it wasn’t just ripping songs off radio broadcasts for personal use, it became an artistry of musical knowledge in his community, much like “Potato Salad,” a form a cultural literacy, and a nod of respect to the artists who inspired them (Banks 114). In regard to the classroom and educational spaces, Banks argues that copyright laws protect corporate interests over students and individuals. He even challenges educators to subvert these constraints, asserting, “we’re being hypocritical if we don’t at least seriously consider pushing toward more open access to texts, images, sounds, and sites for the purposes of recontextualization and academic critique” (Banks 138). Access to such materials, and promoting synthesis through appropriation can be a great way to foster creativity in the writing classroom.
Susanne Murphy is definitely in agreement with Banks’ mixtape philosophy, and states in "Plagiarism is Dead; Long Live the Retweet: Unpacking an Identity Crisis in Digital Content," that, "the traditional protocols of attribution, vetting, and credentialing have helped to preserve, protect, and maintain a closed and gated academic community” (Murphy). Her anxieties about these “protocols” would be alleviated if we had more freedom in academic spaces to mixtape, appropriate, and create. Her main argument is that we are bogged down in citation mires; that we have lost any sort of standard for judging the worth of contributions because of an echo chamber of credits to every source that could possibly relate to a given topic.
I agree with these sentiments and find myself asking the same questions Murphy asks when discussing academic fraud in student papers: “Is plagiarism then merely a difference in intent? Wrong when a student finds the answer to my question online, but fine as a wink and nod indicator of club membership or respectful apprenticeship?” (Murphy). She complains about the inefficacy of plagiarism detection programs and I see a similar issue occurring on our favorite video sharing website: YouTube.
I stumbled across this video while searching for discussions on fair use and even though it’s from 2016, the issues mentioned are still very much a problem for content creators on the platform.
Essentially, the YouTube automated system for dealing with copyright claims is extremely slow moving and can cost content creators actual revenue because it will take down the video or remove monetization from videos, even if the claim is made out of spite from another user and not because of any actual copyright infringement.
Applied to the classroom, when we have software that detects plagiarism and that software fails us, we are also slowing down the flow of information. We need to foster an environment that encourages students to research. When we place so many obstacles in their way, it can become discouraging. Appropriation helps students internalize the information and recreate it in a new way.
Now, we can’t abandon citations entirely, I’m very aware of this. Should we follow Murphy’s line of questioning, where she posits: “if we are to marry intellectual honesty with evaluation, might it not make more sense to require that citations be limited to those the writer can identify as meaningful contributors to the work, both positively and negatively, rather than pretending that it is possible to include a mention of everything, however briefly consulted?” (Murphy) Or do we see other possibilities? What standards do you go by in your own classrooms? What do we make of Banks’ mixtape argument in educational spaces? How do you handle plagiarism in the classroom or is it really as dead as Murphy speculates?
Nicely done, Maddie and Jaime. Love that you brought together a number of websites and videos in a "mixtape" fashion. For me, there is an interesting tension between Banks and Murphy. Both agree that we should be moving toward an open "mixtape" approach to creative and intellectual reuse, but Murphy's move away from traditional citation might threaten the kinds of credit that could be given to more "original creators." That's a problem for Banks, who critiques "cool" rhet/comp scholarship that does not acknowledge the African-American roots for remix culture. It's an interesting problem. How do we both recognize and respect creators, while at the same time free up their material for appropriation and "fair use"?
ReplyDeleteI don't think Murphy considered the sort of culture erasure that Banks was worried about, although that is probably due to the sort of privilege she has as a white woman. As for your last question, that is the issue isn't it? Respect is key to maneuvering within fair use and every writer/creator expects a different level of respect or paying of homage. I think if we are to change the way we cite, it would have to be done through some sort of committee that could call together writers and creators to decide the best way to do this while also giving others freedom to use their work. I don't know if this is a Supreme Court issue, or a new sort of governing body that would deal with the ramifications of a new age of fair use.
DeleteI don't think plagiarism is dead, per say, however I would say that the issue of plagiarism is much more complicated than it was thirty years ago. The question then is what constitutes plagiarism? As we all know, the internet can be used as a medium of expression by just about anyone these days (assuming they can use the basic functions of a computer,) and a lot of which material is shared freely. I do not necessarily think it's plagiarism if students use ideas that were shared on the internet. This includes using Wikipedia or similar sites to get information. For example, if someone was to take something from one of my numerous blog posts written over the past years, I wouldn't mind if they didn't give me credit for it; in fact, I wouldn't expect them to. However, I believe if someone uses ideas from a published/academic source without giving credit to the author(s) it should be considered plagiarism. Therefore, I think plagiarism depends on the intent of the original creator of the content.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about plagiarism/unfair use of material a good bit recently while I’ve considered the use of allusions in certain works. Most of the time, allusions connect the alluding piece to previous works in a way that puts the two works in conversation. This can be seen in the poem I've used for my hyper-text: Yeats's allusion to Keats in "Sailing to Byzantium" puts their works and their symbolic dying/undying birds into a conversation. Other allusions, like a lot we seen in cartoon sitcoms, are used for comedic effect: half of the gags seen on South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons are pretty conspicuous references to other shows or movies. These are funny because of the flipped context. But I've been wondering: What if the audience does not notice a work's allusion and takes the allusive feature as the creation of the alluder (this is not a word, but I will use it). This happened with me recently: I wanted to connect a poem I was writing to a famous Seamus Heaney poem ("St. Kevin and the Blackbird"; https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/st-kevin-and-blackbird), so I took part of one of its lines ("Is there distance in his head?") and inserted it in italics in my own poem. The poem would not work as well if it had explicitly noted the line's origin or if it discussed Heaney's poem differently. But I didn’t want to make the allusion elusive. Therefore, I picked a line that stood out, was recognizable, and italicized it to further highlight its referential nature. Of course, one of the poems first readers asked why I had a randomly italicized phrase. While I was bummed that the line might not work in my poem, I was more uncomfortable with the idea that I might've been using Heaney's work unfairly (inappropriately appropriating?).
ReplyDeleteAllusions are not new to writing or other forms of media and they don’t all seem to sample in the same way. Additionally, I do not think most allusions reference outside works in a way that unfairly benefits the alluder. That being said, I don't know many alluders that cite their alluded to works, and that might be a problem if we can’t catch the reference. But are they not recognizing/respecting other creators? I’d hope not, and I don’t really think so. But they do operate on an assumption of shared cultural familiarity in a way that makes me a little unsure.
I appreciate this connection to poetry, Kieran! I agree that allusions shouldn't be credited so "loudly," if you will, in a poem, but you still want the allusion to be picked up on. I think in certain poems, foot notes, or notes at the end of a collection can easily fix this issue, but poetry is so much about presentation, so a footnote can ruin the flow of reading it.
DeleteI want to tackle your idea of using the "mixtape" structure in the classroom. Now I have never had students do a remix sort of assignment at this point in my teaching career but I have always liked the idea of these sorts of assignments - particularly for writing on literature. In a way, you would think that this would be a much more common practice in school. For example: is a unit that uses selections from all different literary and nonfiction sources to unite them under a common theme not it's own mixtape? I used the Collections curriculum when teaching (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHtTI90svQ - it is this. It makes me extremely sad inside still) which specialized in taking bits and pieces of things (never whole pieces unless it was Shakespeare which you were encouraged to only teach pieces of anyway - sorry I have a lot of feelings here.) to create it's units. It seems natural then that this sort of assignment would flow from that sort of structure though you would have to break the mold to do that in this case.
ReplyDeleteI find the standard "write an analytical/argumentative" essay sort of assignment to be boring if it is all you do. I think as I go further in my teaching career I would want to involve more of this remix type of assignments into my unit plans - assuming I have the curriculum planning freedom to do so. I think that when we talk about appropriation and learning to cite sources we tend to still keep this air of "if we aren't specifically citing our sources it is bad and we are doing a bad thing and stealing ideas" but the idea of reinventing a story and twisting it in some way to extend the world further, I believe, challenges students to have an even stronger understanding of a text than the ability to use it in an argument would. I know for sure I have seen students completely not comprehend a text but be able to pull one single relevant quote for an argument. However, I think it would be way more obvious that a student did not understand a text if they had to rewrite a scene from another characters perspective and the character's reactions were all wrong.
I also think that moving from genre to genre like we are encouraged to do in our own remixes has its own kind of challenge to it that is important for student growth. I just so happened to see a tweet today while doing my assigned tweets that made me think of this ( https://twitter.com/PokeKellz/status/1062131569693876227 ) - hopefully that link works and I'm speaking specifically about the first two tweets in the thread. Now this is actually in reference to a new pokemon movie. But I think the idea still stands. If we can encourage students to capture the spirit of a piece in their assignment rather than just creating a note for note imitation then I think that is a more rigorous assignment than commonly held teaching beliefs seem to reflect. And to come all the way back to the ideas of citation and appropriation you talk about in your post, these are all ways where as our assignments become more rigorous and modernized, the citation rules we follow do seem as outdated as Murphy would suggest because certainly in any of these isn't MLA lacking a solution?
Hey guys! I love this post! Also, I like the questions that you guys bring up in this post regarding plagirism softwares and its role in the classroom. Personally, I agree with Jaime when she says that these softwares can slow things down. Also, plagirisnm as a subject can get very tricky, especially on youtube, as mentioned by Jaime.
ReplyDeleteThere is a complex caveat to plagirism that makes teh entire subject complex: the amount of content that is copied. Take the youtube rules on copyright for example. Creators who use other content sparingly and with no intention to steal content get treated the same way as creators who steal the whole video from other creators and have made money off of it. Is that really fair?On top of that, rules of plagerism treat a missed citation as badly as a copy-pasting incident. It goes back to my question of "how fair is it".
In addition, plagirism sotwares track plagirism to the word. Every single letter or punctuation or syllable is counted as an intebnt to plsgerize: how does creativity flow with ruleslike that? How in information shared through these strict barriers? Also, does anyone think these complex caveats should be taken into account?
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ReplyDeleteWell said, Maddie and Jaime! The way you both summed up the main points of these texts was wonderful, and it also makes me think about how little I have understood about any of these topics.
ReplyDeleteIf there seems to be anything I've learned since taking this class, it's that "fair use" doesn't truly exist. Not really. If it did then these issues of re-purposing, appropriation, and remixing wouldn't always be defined as an act of plagiarism. I think it's because the actual meaning of plagiarism has become skewed, and no one actually knows what it defines anymore. I was thinking about this while reading Kress' article, "Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning" that meaning-making has become a representation of something that no one really understands, because meaning is determined by "economic, political, social, cultural, and technological changes" (6). If the meaning of plagiarism is that it is incorrect citations, then that's something that can be worked on without these plagiarism detecting systems which, in my opinion, don't work whatsoever. All they do is work to limit the creativity and research of a student because of the fear imposed onto them. Same with copyright and fair use. There needs to be made an awareness of what is acceptable and what is not, and then it needs to be implemented universally.
Thanks for this post, Maddie and Jamie! I appreciate the connections / examples that each of you provided for us, as they're helpful to my thinking about the creative use (or reuse) of other works and the potential dangers in trying to safeguard those original works. I was struck by Murphy's point about citations and plagiarism. I think she offers a really compelling thought when asking "Is plagiarism then merely a difference in intent?" It is true that we, in some cases, forbid students from reproducing an argument that someone else has made but reward them for reproducing the argument that we present them with. While I fear the prospect of "moving on" from citations, I wonder if one way that we can "move on" is to change the ways that we ask students to interact with texts in the classroom. Sheridan Blau in The Literature Workshop argues that teachers tend to do the analytical work needed to understand literature for students. We essentially teach them our own reading of texts instead of asking them to craft a reading of their own. If we move towards this form of teaching, student papers will be less likely to simply recreate our lectures. At the same time, I wonder how students might incorporate other thinkers in these kinds of work. Might they be more critical of others' thoughts if they have taken the time to really craft their own opinions of a text? If this were the case, I would think that students would be more likely to really parse the research and use only what is important to their own claims rather than to produce, as Murphy says, "clots of citations crafted to prove that the writer is familiar" with research (or, perhaps more likely, to prove to their instructor that they have looked at many sources).
ReplyDeleteNice post you two! I would agree that removing the obstacle of fear of plagiarism would definitely open up more creative avenues to students to explore different, possibly more creative, paths of academic expression and exploration. I understand Murphy's point that the complexity of citation in a remix culture can created a major bottleneck, yet I feel like the exploration of the layers of reference would be incredibly fruitful for a student to pursue. To know that this source is a remix or response to another source may allow a student to gain a greater understanding of the source that is being used in their own work. I know that relationships between texts is an important part of teaching English, but this kind of research would take another step: the exploration of texts within a text. Unpacking a remixed/appropriated text could lead to other sources and new perspectives. I guess I'm saying that we can appropriate the constraints of citation to allow for deeper research and thought for students as they work through layered references in their own work.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of plagiarism, I think of the most basic definition, which is "to take someone else's work and pass it off as your own." The difference with remixes is that you aren't taking something as your own, you are taking something and creating something else. The thing that gets tricky is properly citing the original work. There are many examples that I can think of where people take something that went "viral" and put their own spin on it. This happens in memes and countless YouTube videos. But do these creators source their information? Do they credit the very first person who did it? In the vast world of the internet, it can be hard to do. In regards to the classroom, I believe that it is important to allow students to take ideas from others and turn it into something new. It allows them to be creative and to think outside of the box. However, I would of course want them to figure out where they got this information.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, guys. Very cool stuff. In answer to some of your questions, Jaime, this is a tough one. Plagiarism does need to be taken very seriously in the classroom. However, I do also question the pedagogical usefulness of the cult of citation, as we could call it. I am sure we have all been in a position (both as students and as educators) where we come up with an idea independently, think it is the greatest thing of all time and then five minutes into research realize it has basically all been said before. Nothing is more disheartening. Now, in a situation like this, we of course figure out what meaningful contribution we can make and cite the original thinker in whatever context we will be using them. I think it is good, right, and necessary that we do this. As educators and scholars we know that this is going to be the case with many of our ideas. But, I feel like the the fixation on this cult of citation sends a very disheartening message to our students. We want them to be creative, to explore, ideas, probe the boundaries of their thinking, and engage with classroom content and the world at large. By insisting that EVERYTHING must be cited it seems to send a message that their work is not original, even if they arrived at their conclusions independently. To me, that is original thought. I think this is where the remix comes in. We can still require them to cite the work they are referencing but encourage them to change it, mix it up as it were, provide their own insights to work already done in fun and creative ways, similar to our remix assignment or this course.
ReplyDeleteIn short, I think having conversations about independent thinking and the value and originality of their thought EVEN if it has already been thought and written before is critical. Hyper focusing on citation seems to often send a message that their work is not and cannot be original and that is simply not the case.
Love this post!
ReplyDeleteMaddie, you mentioned that "In regard to the classroom and educational spaces, Banks argues that copyright laws protect corporate interests over students and individuals." Banks and Vaidhyanathan have some similar views around the limited protections of copyright and fair use laws - V wrote, "The confidence that fair use affords creators correlates strongly with one’s position in the socioeconomic scale and one’s expertise in matters of copyright. Google can hire a whole lot of lawyers." Vaidhyanathan brought up this point to argue that Google's digitization of (potentially millions of books) would not necessarily be a good thing, but Banks brings up the inequality as evidence that we should push for more open access. The authors have different purposes for writing, but I think this is a fascinating paradox. If Google were to scan and make available even more books, that would mean more access and availability for everyone with an internet connection. On the other hand, Google is a private company, concerned with its stockholders and partners, and perhaps they are not the "right agent for the job", as V would say. I wonder what Banks would have to say about Google in particular.
"We need to foster an environment that encourages students to research. When we place so many obstacles in their way, it can become discouraging. Appropriation helps students internalize the information and recreate it in a new way."
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, Jaime! I found myself referring back to the digital ecology chapter in Because Digital Writing Matters in conjunction with these readings -- is it about banning all appropriation, or teaching a digital etiquette around it? When I'm teaching Shakespeare, I proudly announce to my students that Shakespeare "stole everything" but I would be expected to condemn my students for doing the same thing. So maybe, like many control issues especially with young people, it's more about education and guidance than anything else.