Has It Really All Been Done Before?

When someone says, “Everything's been done before,” I puke in my mouth. What a sad statement. What a nihilistic philosophy of art. I'd even go so far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like I'd say that it's a cowardly approach to art. I feel bad for people who feel this way. What value do they place on creativity? What room does that leave in life for innovation? I most often see this empty platitude used to excuse plagiarism or flat-out mediocrity. It's a dismissive way of saying, “Please don't criticize what I like.” To me, it reads more like it's dismissing the accomplishments men and women have made. I would argue that it's a harmful statement. If it's all been done before, why do anything at all  

Sure, in a manner of speaking, “those people” are right. Virtually everything has been said and done before, in some manner. I don't prescribe to Christopher Booker's theory about there being seven essential stories we tell and retell, but I also haven't read his doorstopper on the subject, let alone having written my own. There are two types of people. Those who love Tarantino's mixtape approach to filmmaking and those who despise it; I'm both. Yes, I will concede that every work of art is a collage of influences. I don't think that is the same as excusing a pale imitation of one singular other work. I think the more diverse the inspiration, the richer the story. Look at George Lucas' muses: Flash Gordon, Kurosawa movies, Shakespeare plays, Joseph Campbell, World War II iconography. He brought all that together and made something unmistakably his (for further evidence of that, watch the attempts other filmmaker have made to recapture his spark, even under the Star Wars official banner). David Bowie was a chameleon of influences but you can hear his voice on every record (well, literally, yes, in that way, too). Can you name a film like Eraserhead before Eraserhead? There might be parallels but nothing quite like it. 

What I want you to take from this article is that even if your story reflects those told before, it doesn't mean that you should shy away from telling it in your own voice. It's hard to be a trailblazer. Some artists make it look so easy to create something successful that there can be temptation to imitate rather than innovate. Just because someone before you has fallen in love doesn't make your love any less worthwhile. Your DNA is yours alone; stamp your art with it. The redundancy of so many tales should give you drive to create something even more radically you. The world doesn't need your best Anne Rice impersonation. It needs the best you, and you owe it to yourself to be as much yourself as you can. Exploring uncharted territory can be frightening. The possibility of opening up so wide only to be rejected is one of the greatest pressures of writing, or any act of creation. The best way to prove those thoughts wrong is by accepting yourself and allowing yourself be unabashedly you.