Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,442
edits
Plagiarism in Fiction: Difference between revisions
m
added link markup
m (revise quote template spacing) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (added link markup) |
||
| (12 intermediate revisions by 7 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
{{quote|''"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."''
|{{color|white|Einstein}}}}
{{quote|''"Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it."''
|'''[[Stephen Hawking]]''', ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', "They Saved Lisa's Brain"}}
[[Plagiarism]] is essentially taking the work of others and attempting to pass it off as one's own. There is a lot more to it than that. If you care about that, look it up on [[wikipedia:Plagiarism|Wikipedia]], WestLaw, or [[Plagiarism|this page]]. Around here, we're more concerned with plagiarism showing up as the topic of a story. The more complicated plots may involve [[Time Travel]], with somebody discovering that [[Shakespeare]] has been earning acclaim for years [[Stable Time Loop|for the play he accidentally left in the past]]. A more common plot involves a [[Ridiculous Procrastinator]] trying to pass off a straight-A older sibling's report or assignment as their own, eventually getting busted because the teacher recognizes it.
{{examples}}
Line 22 ⟶ 24:
== Literature ==
* The ''[[Nero Wolfe]]'' novella ''Plot It Yourself'' revolves around plagiarism accusations.
* In [[Kurt Vonnegut]]'s short story
* [[Stephen Fry]]'s ''[[The Liar Novel]]'' contains the oft-quoted line, "An original idea? That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them."
* ''[[Animal Farm]]''. Snowball
* The protagonist of [[Robert Silverberg]]'s ''Dying Inside'' makes his (not very good) living by selling plagiarized papers to college students.
* In ''[[Anne of Green Gables|Anne of Avonlea]]'', Anne has her fourth class write and send letters to her. One of which turns out to be plagiarized.
Line 40 ⟶ 43:
* Similarly, when Erica Strange had to hurry to write a poem for an English composition class in ''[[Being Erica]]'', she plagiarizes "Hit me baby one more time" by [[Britney Spears]]. It was a big hit and as she was time travelling (long story) at the time, no one caught it.
* ''[[Lou Grant]]'': One of the episodes, season 3's "Lou," dealt with a young reporter plagiarizing from a college newspaper; predictably, Lou finds out and it isn't long before the reporter is searching for another job.
* Unsurprisingly, the ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch ''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDxN4c_CmpI Plagiarism]'' is about plagiarism.
* Winifred "Fred" Burkle from ''[[Angel]]'' was first encountered as the most recent victim of an unscrupulous academic who would steal the work of students far more gifted than he after exiling them in a hell dimension.
== [[Music]] ==
* [[Tom Lehrer]]'s
{{quote|''I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.''
''In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:''
''Plagiarize!
* The title track of Cledus T Judd's album ''I Stoled This Record'' is "Stoled: The Copyright Infringement Incident", a parody of a John Michael Montgomery song that talks about plagiarizing a song and being taken to jail for it.
* "This Song" by [[George Harrison]] may or may not count, given that it's a semi-autobiographical song about a real-life incident of plagiarism that also went before a judge: ''Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music'', the "My Sweet Lord" case.
* "My Iron Lung" by Radiohead. "This/this is our new song/[[Self-Plagiarism|just like the last one]]". It isn't literally a retread of any Radiohead song before or since.
* In 1984, John Fogerty had the unique honor of [https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/john-fogerty-self-plagiarism-lawsuit-creedence-clearwater-revival-752805/ being sued for plagiarizing ''himself''], when the rights holders of the [[Creedence Clearwater Revival]] song “Run Through the Jungle” claimed that his solo effort “The Old Man Down the Road” sounded too much like it. (In 1988, a jury decided in his favor, officially permitting song writers to keep writing in their distinctive styles regardless of who actually owned their songs.)
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* A sample character in the ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' book ''Asylum'' is "The Fraud", a member of the mental hospital's facility who made his career by stealing a colleague's work. Now he's screwed, because in order to keep his reputation, he has to keep stealing from the other researchers. Sometimes he wonders whether to kill himself or commit [[Suicide by Cop]] when they finally catch
Line 69 ⟶ 76:
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''
** "The Day the Violence Died":
{{quote|Animation is built on plagiarism! If it weren't for someone plagiarizing ''[[The Honeymooners]]'', we wouldn't have ''[[The Flintstones]]''. If someone hadn't ripped off ''[[The Phil Silvers Show|Sergeant Bilko]]'', there'd be no ''[[Top Cat]]''.
Huckleberry Hound, [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|Chief Wiggum]], [[Yogi Bear]]?
Hah! Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney. }}
** And ironically, the elder Meyers was also a victim of plagiarism, it seems, the U.S. Post Office having stolen his "Maniac Mailman" idea for the Mr. Zip design.
** "Fraudcast News": Millhouse, who has joined the staff of Lisa's newspaper, ''The Red Dress Press'', admits he fabricated and copied content from other newspapers.
** Krusty is a repeat offender:
*** In "Krusty Gets Kancelled" Gabbo steals Krusty's crank-call routine, which Lisa points out Krusty had stolen from Steve Allen.
*** "Who Shot Mr. Burns (Part 2)" Krusty is upset that Smithers stole his joke, although Mel tells him that ''he'' had stolen it from an episode of a show called ''Pardon My Zinger''. This is actually a clue that clears Smithers of the crime; the episode aired around the same time that Burns was shot, so if Smithers was at home watching the show, he couldn't have been the shooter.
*** And in "Homie the Clown":
{{quote|'''Woman:''' ''[over intercom]'' [[George Carlin]] on three.
'''Krusty:''' ''[answers phone]'' Yeah?... Lawsuit? Oh, come on. My "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" bit was ''entirely'' different from your "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" bit. ...So I'm a thief, am I? Well, excuuuse me! ''[to his accountant]'' Give him ten grand.
'''Woman:''' [[Steve Martin]] on four.
'''Krusty:''' Ten grand.}}
* In ''[[King of the Hill]]'', after Bobby was given full credit from an essay that Peggy wrote and considered a good writer, he took her Musings papers and hand it to his classmates to give them good essay grades.
* In an episode of ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'', Phoebe steals a poem from a book and passes it off as her own until the guilt drives her insane.
* In the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Weight Gain 4000", Cartman wins the essay contest. Wendy reveals that the paper is ''Walden'' with [[Henry David Thoreau]]'s name replaced with his. The townspeople don't care and she expresses her anger.
{{quote|'''Wendy''': I bet if ''Walden'' was a sitcom you'd all know what it was! }}
Line 81 ⟶ 97:
** In another episode, police officer Reese arrives at the scene of an accident, where the two barely-alive victims mention that one's peanut butter got in another's chocolate, and vice versa. After Reese tastes the chocolate/PB mixture, he promptly shoots them both so he can steal the recipe.
* In ''[[Gargoyles|Cloud Fathers]]'', Xanatos captures Coyote the Native American [[Trickster Archetype]] with [[One Steve Limit|Coyote]], a robot minion that [[Once an Episode|gets destroyed every episode he appears in]]. Coyote says that he should sue Xanatos "for trademark infringement." Subverted in that Xanatos himself considers the robot a tribute.
* In ''[[DuckTales (1987)|DuckTales]]'', Scrooge's rival Flintheart Glomgold admits - in his seminar for new employees, no less - that his success hinges on taking existing ideas and passing them off as his own.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:This Index Is Copypasted]]
[[Category:Truth and Lies]]
| |||