Not Everything Needs to Be A Musical: Defending Originality In The Arts

The last “big” musical I saw in a theatre was a raging disappointment. I’m not going to name it, because it was clear the cast and crew really pulled out all the stops. The vocals were wonderful, the musical accompaniment was skillful, the staging was interesting, and there were loads of innovative special effects. It was performed well, all around. There was no lack of hustle from the people on and behind the stage. It just shouldn’t have existed as a musical in the first place.

It was (again, no names) a rehashing of a popular movie from days of yore. When it was first released, the movie was groundbreaking, and immediately developed a following. Decades later, fans still fawn over it. But it didn’t need to be reconfigured into anything more than that. There wasn’t anything about it that screamed “Please create toe-tapping show tunes to go with me, and speckle me with dance numbers!” It could have stayed just a movie, even one without sequels, and it would have been wonderful.

And that’s what was disappointing about seeing it on stage. It was another spun-off, rebooted, reimagined genre jump. I sat there for the better part of three hours wondering why I had paid to see this, but more importantly, what else I wasn’t watching that might not be so tired and clichéd. I thought of all the new and original work that I could have experienced, that might have also been bad, but would have represented someone trying to be innovative.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of aspiring writers and composers out there. I know from experience, from being in the arts myself, that there’s no end to new voices, new ideas, creative practitioners who challenge existing forms and popular subject matter. Any up-and-comer would be thrilled to see their work get out there, let alone become popular.

I’m also an entrepreneur, so I’m not naïve about risk management for stakeholders. Art, especially performance art, can be exceptionally expensive to produce and display. Those putting up the cash don’t want to take a chance on something pricey unless there’s a definite ROI, unless they know that people will at least show up to see how bad it is. Why bother blazing new trails if you can bank on the branding of something that’s already established? New, original stuff is risky. New, original creators are risky.

But, then again, art is risky. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? We could dig even deeper and ask if something is art at all if it’s just a rehashing of something else, or a rehashing of a previous rehash? What does it do to a society to be fed the same stuff over and over, without a little something novel thrown into the mix? How far can we immerse ourselves in art if we only know it as a series of copies and repeats?

There are, admittedly, hugely successful (and interesting) remakes out there. Sometimes sticking to what we already know does work, and it can be genuinely good. But even in successful cases, we can’t seem to leave well enough alone. Bolstered by the success of their reboot, someone will ride the wave and make five more just like it, most of them awful or bland. I guess it’s okay to do it once in a while, when it’s apparent that something will transfer without a lot of friction. It shouldn’t, however, be our cultural default to go back to the same source material every time we feel like putting something out there.

So, how do we remedy this? Maybe we can’t fight city hall on this one entirely, but we can put our time and attention (and money) where we’d like to see growth. We can let the air out of the bloated system of remakes by not watching, not participating, not paying for something that really didn’t need to be “reimagined”. We can let stuff lie and leave well enough alone.

We can counterbalance unnecessary artistic recycling by supporting independent artists, going to see smaller theatre productions, artsy movies, small exhibitions, and local book launches. We can make copious noise about them, as much noise as we’d make for something cranked out of a corporate sausage press. We can do this even if we feel we must watch the fiftieth remake of something. When our favourite actors/singers/musicians/artists are brave enough to take a risk and go off book, to step away from the blockbuster rehashing and do something because it’s cool and interesting, we can support them in that too. Even superstars need encouragement in this respect.

We, as an audience (and let’s be honest, as consumers) deserve new stuff, stuff previously unimagined and unattempted. We deserve the novelty and the intellectual and emotional thrill of something unknown. We deserve to be challenged by the art we partake of and participate in.

Artists deserve space to take risks, to try new things, to speak truth. They deserve accolades, respect, and support beyond their capacity to make someone rich (although giving them a living wage for their work would be helpful).

The arts themselves deserve to be used for more than uninspired repetition. This is how we keep them going, keep them growing. Even fiscally successful pieces of art sometimes deserve to be left alone, and not smushed into a format that doesn’t suit them.

Good things happen all around, in all areas of life, when innovation is encouraged and we don’t get too comfortable with the familiar. What happens in the arts can be both inspiration and reflection of what goes on in science, culture, our inner worlds. It spills over into everything from where we choose to eat, to how we program our libraries, to what we wear, to how we run our cities. Whether it’s with our attention, our thoughts, or our wallets, we can start steering things away from repetition and reboots.