The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) vs Ghost in the Shell (1995)
The FJP (I pronounce that like like ‘The Wu’) posted Rob G. Wilson and Kirby Ferguson’s “Everything is a Remix: The Matrix” earlier today which shows how much of the iconic imagery of The Matrix was created by aping scenes from the classic 1995 anime Ghost in the Shell.
Also, I just posted a photoset about how the classic Fritz Lang film ‘Metropolis’ actually owed it’s signature look to an earlier Russian film, Aelita.
Similarly, the visually striking title sequence to David Fincher’s ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ seems to also owe much to the opening credits of Ghost in the Shell when placed alongside each other in the photoset above.
All of this serves to remake Kirby Ferguson’s point with his ‘Everything is a Remix’ series: while established content IP holders like to treat remix as near piracy, mimicry has always existed (good thing) but without attribution (bad thing), especially among Hollywood’s own practitioners.
So let’s move the ball forward. What if instead of considering any of these examples ‘ripoffs’, we treated this imagery (the framing of a shot, the pace of movement) the same way that hip hop treats samples and beats?
If the imagery is effective in conveying a particular thought or emotion, why not allow that as a building block of ‘content’?
