So Shia took to his Twitter to explain his not-so-epigrammatic stint with plagiarism, claiming it was all in the name of meta-performance art or some such schmuckery. Whatever. The boy’s plagiarizing activity long predates the last couple of months. Phoenixing, we should call it. Where an actor or public figure attempts to revitalize their career, rising from the ashes with some bizarre tomfoolery posed at art. (Seems to be in the Kool Aid as of late.) Except instead of rising, Shia’s whole shtick just laid there, molten and stinky and done before.
He could take a page, though we hope not literally, from Seattle-based illustrator Drew Christie, whose animated short, Allergy to Originality, is drawing praise at Sundance Film Festival currently underway in Park City, Utah.
Christie’s film, created for The New York Times‘ Op-Doc series, is a healthy blend of wit and satire, where two men discuss whether anything is original anymore. The short is also a critique of Hollywood’s love of the sequel and the prequel, our over reliance on Wikipedia as fact, and most certainly (to plagiarize Shia, obfuscating Picasso) that art is a lie that makes us realize that truth.
“You’re right on all your plagiarized points,” says one of the men.
Such is art in the modern age.
