Journal 6: Rachael Dirr

            One example of bare repetition would be a Catholic Mass done in Latin, the way original masses were done dating back centuries. This repetition contributes a sense of tradition and stability for those who don’t like or approve of changes within the faith. Many people feel that Latin Mass is a way for an individual to feel closer to the origins of the faith and thus closer to what they believe. An example of an ethical assemblage would be the movie The Lion King. This movie takes themes from the Shakespeare play, Hamlet, and adds cartoon animals, music, and an African location. This assemblage is targeted for a family or small children and makes the messages of Hamlet much easier to understand while also adding a sense of a traditional African culture. We should respond to potentially harmful assemblages by adding a new element to the assemblage that either clarifies what could be misinterpreted or modifies the intention so that the assemblage is no longer harmful. However, if this is an impossibility, the easiest way to respond to a harmful assemblage and limit its damage is to stop circulating it. This helps to limit the damage and the intended purpose can be made in a new assemblage that isn’t harmful. Fair Use helps ensure assemblages are more than just bare repetition. Faire Use ensures that there is some kind of transformation or purpose to the use of a text. Bare repetition in its purest form violates Fair Use by merely repeating the previous work with no transformation or purpose. Circulation does affect an assemblage’s ethical status. Circulation is what can account for misinterpretations of an assemblage and cause an assemblage to become harmful. For example, within a certain group an assemblage may have a meaning that is understood to hold some kind of respected representation for them, but when circulated outside of this group this representation becomes harmful and comes to embody inaccurate stereotypes. Often times an assemblage may become harmful because of the way the audience received the assemblage. The distribution and circulation of assemblages may paint the author of both the original and transformed texts as perpetuating harmful ideals merely because of how a certain audience received the work in a harmful way. Authors may experience unintended effects from their work, and audiences may take a meaning that was not intended from the texts presented to them.