Lethem Plagiarism

The academic integrity policy at Rutgers defines plagiarism in a way that differs greatly from that of Johnathan Lethem. While Rutger’s connotes the word with peril and crime, Lethem sheds light on the term as one of admiration. As Lethem describes, “If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show; without the Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas specials, there would be no South Park; and without The Flintstones — more or less The Honeymooners in cartoon loincloths — The Simpsons would cease to exist. If those don’t strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series of “plagiarisms” that links Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe” with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, or Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch’s life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism” (214). Essentially the plagiarism he speaks of is driven by inspiration rather than direct, exact usage of some information. He acknowledges that plagiarism in this form is inevitable as everything in the ether is technically a form of inspiration for everything else. However, this type of “plagiarism” is not to be punished; rather, it is to be encouraged. This piggybacking of ideas is what makes the world of art thrive as brightly as it does. Each artist contributes to the existing collective of creativity and ideas, allowing the next artists to tap into this in their own pieces. The type of plagiarism mentioned in Rutger’s academic policy is more concerned about citations for direct quotes or paraphrasing in essays. Although both cases technically involve “the use of another person’s words, ideas, or results,” Lethem’s includes a use that uses only the basis of the idea and transforms the details of it. When it comes to essays, citations are clearly needed to prove the derivation of all supporting information – without them this is in fact plagiarism. But the “plagiarism” Lethem describes, the one founded upon inspiration and molding of new ideas upon older ones, is perfectly acceptable and necessary in order to have progression. Overall, no idea is truly original, but the extent of directness or how verbatim it is to another determines the type of plagiarism it falls under.