Vivienne Kim - Week 1 Analysis

When reading the Difference and Repetition Introduction, it reminded me how many different authors, artists, and filmmakers make usage of this technique of repeating different stories or pictures in unique ways that make it their own.  Though the topic may stay the same and the characters or people or world they create stay the same as the original or contemporary, they twist it to their likes and form a new perspective.  On top of page 6, it says, "Only contemplation or the mind which contemplates from without ‘extracts’.  It is rather a matter of acting, of making repetition as such a novelty; that is, a freedom and a task of freedom."  In other words, it isn't the matter of really using little tidbits of information and blowing it up to make something completely new, but to use what they had before and shift it in a different direction, repeating an old story in a new way.

But there's a problem with this, as pointed out in the Introduction.  To quote on quote, "Opposite repetition not only to the generalities of habit but also to the particularities of memory. For it is perhaps habit which manages to ‘draw’ something new from a repetition contemplated from without."  We have a habit of thinking we made something original, but is actually derived from something that's already been discovered.  And against all moral obligation not to do something of such nature, we even sometimes do it on purpose, though maybe not as malevolently as the text proclaims.

When thinking on this topic, it almost makes everything, from pop culture to music to everything become related to each other.  But whether this is a good thing is also debatable.  Because having so much repetition and 'echoes' drown each other out, it makes things dull and nothing new comes out of it.  For example, temp music.  The definition of temp music, is using an existing piece of music or soundtrack and using it as a guideline to create new music.  Problem is, people tend to copy down music they like, whether it matches the movie's needs or not, and just tweek it a bit enough to let it sly by the radar under copyright laws.

As in my response shown, you could see that the Mad Max music sounds very similar to Captain America Winter Soldier in some parts, deriving it from it.  The music for Winter Soldier goes at a slower pace and is heavy and uplifting, while Mad Max heightened the pace and made it frantic to match the mood of the scene where Mad Max and Furiosa are furiously battling for their lives to escape.  It's not an original piece of music, though it derived to be so.  When I first heard this in theater, I was immediately reminded of Captain America, not Mad Max.  And this isn't the first time this has happened either.  Marvel actually has a tendency to have types of music that aren't memorable, but rather safe and temp-like in nature.  It's not to say it's a bad thing, but for such a huge franchise, this is a staggering and rather disappointing realization.

Repetition can be dangerous, in that we can never create anything new or profound when always playing by the general terms that we're used to observing or digesting.  It's our job to be explorers and go beyond repetition and generalities given to us.