Journal #6

One example of bare repetition, simply replicating something the exact same way, is the Christmas Pageant that my church put on every year when I was a child. We used the same script, and it was the exact same thing every single year. Therefore, nothing really changed fundamentally about the pageant. As I understand it, an example of an ethnic assemblage would be if someone who was not African took an African dance and song and made these things his or her own. Then, said person would be using ethnic pieces to make an assemblage that does not really relate to the original ethnic meaning. This is not okay, and that is what a lot of the article is about, at least as I seem to understand it. I feel like the article went in circles sometimes. Neither of these assemblages in my opinion are necessarily good things to try to create because neither really provides the audience with a meaningful purpose. Bare repetition has no meaning (if this were a theatrical context, it would be “dead theatre;” This is the literary/ rhetorical version of that) because it is not a new work and can therefore not have a strong impact on an audience who may already be familiar with the original work. Ethnic assemblage is also not beneficial to anyone because it is inappropriate, and the audience, again, receives nothing from viewing the work because it is not a true representation of what it is trying to convey. Fair use may possibly allow for slightly more creativity when it comes to a bare repetition, and therefore, the assemblage may have more of a purpose, but also, it would not be a bare repetition if it were to vary from the original a lot. Every time that an assemblage is circulated, it reaches more people, and that means that more ideas can come from it. Therefore, when it comes to ethics (and again, this is if I read the article correctly), the ethical status of the assemblage lessons because it grows farther away from the original. The original authors are pushed to the side after circulation, the transformed authors have more of a pay-off, and the audience receives nothing special because what they are receiving is not original.