I've been having an ongoing dialog/freakout with myself regarding
authorship and creating content.
My degree is in folding metaphorical envelopes and I'm tired of licking them. I want to be a letter writer, but I have nothing to say.
But maybe that's the point. For the sake of argument, there have only been a dozen or so original (archetypal) films ever made. Following those have been scores—six hundred or so a year—of genre films. Many of which are formulaic, the smarter of which do that reflexive meta
Charlie Kaufman thing, where they acknowledge the formula. Fifty or so years of French films have used the modes of production over plot as vehicles for morality.
Maybe this is ok. Our brains are relational. We make connections and use them to process new things based on our previous experience. In the animal kingdom this probably helps animals decide what to do when they encounter an unfamiliar predator. In graphic design, museum art, music, film, and literature this is called vernacular. With culture ever reproducing, remixing, co-opting, we need these similes and metaphors.
When reviewing a movie for a friend I say, "it was sort of like Alien, but with that drug-stupor Spike Lee steadycam thing." Or a band, "they're kind of like Black Dice, but fun like Black Eyes, with the train wreck theatrics of Black Lips."
At some point the snake might finish swallowing itself and we'll be released from this cycle. For the time being I'm just going to have to keep making better envelopes with totally rad security patterns.
