Journal 6 - Haven Talley

Arola and Arola’s An Ethics of Assemblage: "Creative repetition and the ‘Electric Pow Wow’"

If I read Arola and Arola’s piece correctly, bare repetition is mimicking something without any changes and an ethical assemblage is an assemblage that is a tweaked and unique form of a previous work or tradition. A bare repetition is traditional and holds true to its original characteristics. Therefore, it passes on to its audience an exact copy of whatever that original assemblage looked like.

An example of bare repetition are all the English words-- all of which represent particular meanings. Although people take different words and assemble them to form coherent sentences, they are still using the correct English words to represent a particular meaning. If the English language is spoken properly and free from mispronunciations, it can be considered bare repetition.

An example of an ethical assemblage is Wix.com. Every person who wants to create a website on Wix can pick a template, (which is an example of the original assemblage), and then they can edit that template to make their own unique assemblage. Any person's website that is created by Wix is considered as an ethical assemblage because it is a personalized version of the original template. An ethical assemblage is a re-creation and edit of an original assemblage that uses the same medium (generally). Therefore, it contributes new ideas and perspectives to its audience, based on the changes that have been made to the original assemblage.

Although editing a Wix template may be considered an assemblage, whether it is ethical or not varies from person to person. Some people may make an offensive website without realizing it, while others will create one on purpose. For the most part, people use Wix for blogs, ePortfolios and class projects, so I think the majority of the websites would fall under the category of being an ethical assemblage. A way to respond to hurtful assemblages is to refrain from circulating them.

The Fair Use rule was based on the value of building knowledge and using creativity to re-create an original assemblage. The Fair Use rule is used in cases of an assemblage of a previous work that furthers our knowledge and was not created for profit. Therefore, if an assemblage does not further our knowledge and was created for profit, it is considered plagiarism.

Circulation can definitely affect an assemblage’s ethical status because it gives people the ability to manipulate it while keeping the familiar and recognizable aspects of the assemblage, and make it offensive (in some cases). A good example of this is the Pepe the frog meme that was originally found in an innocent comic series by Matt Furie called “Boy’s Club." After much circulation of this image of Pepe the frog whose speech bubble read, “Feels good man”, people took the original assemblage and changed the context of where Pepe was, what he said, and even dressed him in offensive clothing and manipulated and exaggerated his facial features to mock certain races. This is exactly why circulation can change an assemblage’s ethical status.