How many times have you heard a child exclaim that they made up a game that you and your friends were playing 30 years ago or longer? And when you were playing that game you can guarantee that one of your posse would have taken credit for having ‘invented’ the game. This is something I often think about in the improv world. How important is originality in a world where we have seen and heard so many things that influence us in ways that we are not even aware of?
I am a lover of a good pun or one-liner and, when I say one, I take great pride in the fact that my brain just created that. The more I improvise with like-minded people however, the more I am starting to question just how original my own thoughts are. I have watched many a comedian entertain me with pun after pun and have read many a joke book. I always say to myself that I do not want to repeat the jokes of others and that I want my jokes to be organic and off the cuff.
Dig deep to think of puns
I am starting to learn however that my thoughts are not as original as I used to think they were. In pun-based improv games I have been beaten to the punch many a time with puns that come to mind straight away, and have had to dig deep to think of puns that others will not have thought of. In normal life (away from my improv friends) I make witty remarks, puns and one-liners all day long and most of them are met with a groan, an eye roll or both. I have believed for many years that when I am saying these off the cuff remarks that I am just speaking out loud what everybody is thinking. That in itself is enough for me to question the originality of my wordy creation. If everybody is thinking it but I’m the one saying it, can I really take credit for it, if everybody else was also thinking it?
We are all influenced by everything that comes before us and this is perhaps most notable in another passion of mine, music. I am a songwriter and have been writing songs for as long as I can remember. I write them far less frequently these days but there was a time when I’d be penning a new song pretty much every day, and twice on a Sunday. I love that creative process of hearing the song play out in my head and then bringing it to life for others to hear. There are only so many chords though, and you soon begin to realise that, without realising, you can hear a similar chord progression in another song (perhaps another one of your own songs or more likely a famous song you have heard many times). There are in fact several YouTube videos that highlight the fact that hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of songs are actually fundamentally the same song.
In some far-flung corner of the world
Our brain learns from what it sees, hears and feels. It decides what it likes and how the world should make sense, so, as much as the idea of originality is nice in principle, is there truly any originality left in the world? You may be the first person to say something funny in your circle of friends, but have your words been said by another before in some far-flung corner of the world? Or have those words at least been thought of by somebody else somewhere in the world?
I think it is safe to say that if you have a style of anything, then the chances are you will have been influenced by the same people that others who share the same interest are interested in. Much like in music, plagiarism in comedy can be a big problem. How many social media posts have you seen that have made you laugh and you believed the person who wrote them created the joke? Probably more than you realise. In this case it is perhaps a problem. Somebody has seen or heard a joke and then they are passing the joke on to others and passing it off as their own, as they have not given credit to the person they first heard it from. The person they heard it from however may not have been the creator either, so we end up in some very muddy waters.
In other creative arts it is a big ‘no no’ to copy the work of others without gaining permission, but people spout out the jokes of others on a regular basis without giving credit to the source or gaining permission. This is partly because it is nigh on impossible to copyright a joke as your own original idea, because as previously stated, like-minded people who share similar interests will have been inspired by many of the same people, books, films, shows etc.
I think that as long as a person is not knowingly copying the work of others then it is actually not really a problem at all. If little Jimmy truly believes he made up the game ‘British Bulldogs’ then let him bask in the legendary status that he has earned with his playmates. If you hear something in an improv scene that creates an idea for a pun in your head, you don’t pause for a moment to reflect on whether you are plagiarising the work of others, you just react in the moment and speak out your words of funny in the hopes of hearing others laugh. At the end of the day a good pun or one-liner is really just word play, and there are only so many different trails of thought a particular word or object can conjure up.
The art of a good pun
The art of a good pun should be celebrated for its speed more than anything else. Whether the idea is completely original or not, it is the speed of the process that people are really applauding (or groaning about). Given a decent amount of time I am sure everybody would say that they think a banana is really a’peel’ing, or that they will endeavour to try a new type of fruit this spring, kumquat may. I know I have made the same joke about a particular object numerous times because that is just how my brain works. It is often the same thing but a different audience, and that is very much the art of making people laugh. It is using tried and tested jokes that you know have worked before, so your brain is far more likely to draw something from its list of hits rather than misses.
It is hard to know whether originality truly exists anymore in a world where everything is over-exposed. The important thing for me is that, as long as people are not actively copying the work of others, it is perfectly plausible to think that a pun idea may well be original to person A, but that person B would probably come up with the same idea (or very similar) in the same circumstances. After all, the ‘pun muscle’ is something that you can train simply by immersing yourself in the work of others. I have played many a pun-based improv game with people who claim to be not very good at puns, but after time and practice they are now excellent punners. As long as people are true to their own ideas and not actively copying the work of others, then I think it is safe to say originality perhaps does exist because no one person thinks exactly the same as the next person. We are all unique, special individuals. We just happen to all share influences that shape us to be similar in some ways. Perhaps originality itself is in a state of evolution, perhaps somebody else has written this blog before, or at least thought about writing something similar. You deciding to read it is not exactly an original idea either because you are not the only person who decided to read it (I hope).
I guess what I am trying to say is just be true to yourself, let your creativity flow, let yourself be influenced by others, but let your creations be as original as possible. Unless of course your creation is a tribute act. Nobody wants to pay money to see you look and sound like ABBA, but play your own original songs.
The Oickers 