The Old Familiar Stories: Part Two

I can't prove my theory about The Hunger Games, and everyone loves the series anyway. But there are some stories that make no secret of the fact that they are nothing but name-changers.

Activity time again: spot the difference!

These two covers have more similarities than yesterday's posters. Primarily, they both focus on a single object, rather than people, abstract designs, or artwork. They also have white text on a dark background, and they're both #1 New York Times Bestsellers. But that last isn't surprising because THEY'RE THE EXACT SAME BOOK.

Really! As a disclaimer, I must admit that I haven't read Fifty Shades, so I'm only going off of what Pinterest and internet reviewers have told me.

Anyway, the plot summary: a shy girl meets this rich, mysterious, handsome guy, and she falls in love with him despite an insurmountable obstacle. Flash forward a year and they SPOILER ALERT have a baby.

The only difference is the nature of that "insurmountable obstacle." Stephenie Meyer chose vampires and E L James chose BDSM.

You skeptics out there are probably thinking, Well yeah, that's the plot of like half the Harlequin Romance novels out there. And you'd usually be right; star-crossed lovers have been around long before Shakespeare coined the phrase. In fact, Meyer loosely based her novels on Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, and Wuthering Heights.

Not a joke, this is an actual cover.

Sadly, my skeptic friends, you are wrong. Why? Because E L James' sadomasochistic trilogy originated in Twilight fan fiction. Every news outlet from MTV to NPR has interviewed her about this subject. Apparently, even some of the famous lines from Meyer's saga found their way into the Fifty Shades trilogy.

Fan fiction, if you didn't know, is fans re-writing their favorite stories (Star Trek, Harry Potter, etc.): putting the characters in different situation, or changing the outcome of a book or movie. They're especially famous for "shipping." That is, rearranging the love stories so that you get something like Snape/Hermione.

I know, Liz. I'm horrified too.

So, how do you feel about this? How do we feel about the fact that stories get an overhaul every few years, and everyone gobbles them up like they're a one-year-old having their first piece of birthday cake?

WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

Well, food imagery might be an apt comparison to this phenomenon. It's a fantastic feeling when you find a story with a unique concept, great characters, and that excitement that means you can't put it down. I've experienced that several times in my childhood, most memorably with Harry Potter and the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. So those books that make you wish your eyes could read more quickly are like that baby's first taste of cake, when he wishes his hands could shovel faster. We realize we've discovered something great in the silky sugar of the icing, and the moist texture of the cake.

Or, for those who don't like cake, remember when your friends urged you to try sushi and you discovered that cold, slippery fish in rice balls were incredible.

Now, think about the reason why Thanksgiving dinner is so anticipated. You're probably not lying awake the night before, afraid that all your mom will cook is a vegetarian casserole from a recipe that she's never tried before. No, she's going to make all the old favorites. Turkey, green beans, corn, sweet potatoes, rolls, and a tower of cranberry sauce are all going to be crowded onto that table. You can imagine their taste right now: the crunchy onions in the green beans, the mixture of soft cheeses in the corn, and the sweet melting marshmallows on the potatoes, are all dancing in your head.

I believe this is the reason why so many of us love a story that's been done before. We already love the familiar characters, and we're comforted by the ageless, unchanging vitality of the story. It's so good, we want it again!

Plus, there's the idea that there's only one story.

That would make it easy, wouldn't it.

What do I mean? Well it's a theory that people interested in literature have thrown around since forever. Fancy people like T. S. Eliot call it intertextuality. Thomas C. Foster has a lot of interesting stuff to say about it too. Joseph Campbell wrote a book dealing with one aspect of it called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. That's where George Lucas got Star Wars from.

One of my favorite authors from my teenage years, Robin McKinley, wrote two completely different novels about Beauty and the Beast, each dealing with a different aspect of the fairy tale. She quoted a French writer who said, "each writer has only one story to tell; it's whether or not they find interesting ways to retell it that is important." A tale as old as time, indeed.

Advocates of this theory claim that every author encounters and interacts with that "one story," whether consciously or unconsciously. Shakespeare did it. Julius Caesar is an obvious example, but most of the ideas for his stories, like Romeo and Juliet, or Othello, are taken from older European sources. Modern writers did it on purpose, and pretty explicitly. Half of T. S. Eliot's poems are quotations from, or paraphrases of, or references to, other pieces of literature. James Joyce "copied" the Odyssey when he wrote Ulysses, episode by episode. Each of these writers has told an already established story their own way, demonstrating that the previous writer was on to some ideas that were timeless and universal.

So on the whole, I approve of writers using old, familiar stories to create something new. If C. S. Lewis wasn't a copycat of the Bible, we wouldn't have the Narnia books; and if...well, you get the picture.

[As an aside, let me say I draw the line at Eragon. When you're using the orcs and elves from LOTR, Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, and lines quoted from Treasure of the Sierra Madre...you've gone too far.]

Also, there's a bonus to knowing where storylines come from: you're culturally literate! Meaning, you know the vocab everyone should know to comprehend our shared history and myth, like "A-bomb" and "Beowulf."

Even pop culture uses this. When you're watching Downton Abbey, for instance, you really have to be awake to catch all the little references. I've heard them reference everything from Treasure Island to they myth of Perseus, and if you've read Tess of the D'Urbervilles, you'll know what one character means when they say that another is like their "Angel Clare."

I think it's really funny when Internet memes get in on this. Most likely you've seen clips on Youtube from Der Untergang. It's that movie where Hitler gets really angry and yells at all his generals. It means Downfall, and it's actually a really good movie about Hitler's last days in 1945. We all know that Hitler was a crazy, evil murderer, but it makes it so funny when he rants about innocuous things like Pokemon and football.

Here's one about the (former, thankfully) OSU fight song:

I can't predict the future of books and stories, but I'd warn writers and movie makers that the old familiar formula can go wrong. For instance, I'd be worried if someone tried to "copycat" Harry Potter. Nevertheless, I DO hope that someday there is a book to rival Harry Potter. No, I'm not disloyal to JK Rowling, I just want the human race to strive for better things. I don't want to freeze all of children's literature in the 2000s. We didn't stop drama with Shakespeare, we didn't stop fantasy with Tolkein--someone, somewhere, has their own ideas about those stories. And I'd encourage them to give us a chance to see them.

Thanks for reading! Leave a comment or message me how you feel about "copycats" and what they've done for us.