Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you had brought up the copyright issue. I was just saying that in the absence of actual copyright violation, the notion of “plagiarism” is highly problematic in fiction.
Of course the author of the dialog is writing the words spoken by the actors - the thing is, the audience doesn’t expect that the ideas being expressed necessarily originated with the writer of that dialog. We understand that characters may be expressing ideas that came from someone other than the writer and making quotations and allusions to the work of others. (Although there weren’t exactly even direct quotations, here - just some shared ideas and a bit of vocabulary, a couple short phrases at most.) Again, if the characters were supposed to be physicists talking about quantum physics - even without mentioning any scientists’ names - we wouldn’t be talking about plagiarism because we’d have no expectation that the ideas nor the terminology nor equations, etc. were the writer’s own work. Given the number of clear allusions in the story to particular works and authors (e.g. Robert W. Chambers), it’s strange to assert that the writer was somehow claiming these things as his own. The bone of contention seems to be that he wasn’t quick enough to mention Ligotti in interviews. The problem is that a) he wasn’t obliged to do so, and b) in an interview, one’s train of thought may be going in a particular direction and omissions are going to happen. Should he have been talking more about Ligotti? Perhaps so, but that’s not plagiarism.
Yeah, actually he was “obliged to do so”. You can try to give him that as an “out”, but as I’ve noted to you already - people directly questioned, and he directly chose to speak about the topic of what’s considered “Cohle’s philosophy” and about the Moore quote. They gave him on topic questions, and an opportunity to discuss his source for material on several occasions, and he failed to do so - even though he discussed how that material fit in his work. That’s not kosher.
Go check out the interview I linked directly to earlier - the same one that Slate linked to. In it he talks at length about the “the light’s winning” quote and the psychology of Cohle’s character, but gives no credit where it’s due. From the article’s first question (answer shortened, but this how it begins):
This is a story that began with its ending in mind, that Cohle would be articulating, without sentimentality or illusion, an actual kind of optimism. That line, you ask me, the light’s winning, that was one of the key pieces of dialogue that existed at the very beginning of the series’ conception. For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand.
The second question is all about Cohle’s philosophy, which he continues to discuss in the third question answer. Go give it read. This isn’t a question of legality, but of propriety as an artist. Anytime you blatantly adopt another artist’s work without altering it, you need to give them credit - even if it’s just “inspired by”.
So is Ligetti then obligated to acknowledge his debt to Schopenhauer?
If directly asked, he should mention the people who are his inspirations — and he does.
Pulled up one interview, and immediately found this quote for you (close of a much longer paragraph):
At the same time, I’m in awe of writers who are adept at telling stories, just as I’m in awe of people who speak foreign languages or play a musical instrument really well. But that doesn’t mean that I want to read their stories or listen to them talk or make music. As Morrissey says in the Smiths’ song “Panic”: “Because the music that they constantly play says nothing to me about my life.” The work of writers such as Malamud, William Styron, Saul Bellow, et al. not only says nothing to me about my life, but it says nothing to me about what I’ve experienced or thought of life broadly speaking. By contrast, writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, H. P. Lovecraft, and Thomas Bernhard say plenty of things about both my life in particular and life in general as I have experienced and thought of it. I can take an interest in the writing of these authors because they seem to have felt and thought as I have. William Burroughs once said that the job of the writer is to reveal to readers what they know but don’t know that they know. But you have to be pretty close to knowing it or you won’t know it when you see it.
'Nuff said.
I already said earlier that a pastiche is only pastiche if people get the joke. So, you can’t use ultra-obscure references without some cue to what they may be. People will assume the work is your own concept. It’s one thing to riff on Shakespeare’s Othello or Midsummer Night’s Dream - everyone knows the quotes. It’s quite another thing to pick a deliberately obscure reference, and then fail to disclose it, even when presented with the opportunity.
In that particular interview in the one question about Cohle and philosophy, he absolutely acknowledges that these were not his views and mentions Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and yes, he fails to mention Ligotti. But maybe that’s because he had previously talked about Ligotti’s influence in some depth and his homage to the author: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective/
In episode one [of “True Detective”] there are two lines in particular (and it would have been nothing to re-word them) that were specifically phrased in such a way as to signal Ligotti admirers. Which, of course, you got.
If that’s not sufficient acknowledgement of pastiche, I’m not sure what is…
I didn’t mention Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. I mentioned Moore, who he directly quoted, from a comic that’s less-well-known than Watchmen. From the answer to the first question:
This is a story that began with its ending in mind, that Cohle would be articulating, without sentimentality or illusion, an actual kind of optimism. That line, you ask me, the light’s winning, that was one of the key pieces of dialogue that existed at the very beginning of the series’ conception.
“The light’s winning” was the Moore quote. He continues to leave it without attribution.
Also: The Speakeasy interview is the one where he was basically pounded into a corner until he gave some credit to Ligotti. The interviewer is well-aware of the source and trying to get Pizzolatto to just admit it. Up to that point he refused to acknowledge him. The first question asks generally about multiple weird fiction and horror authors. The second question asks HIM about Ligotti specifically. The third question asks if Ligotti’s “influential” - and THAT is when he finally says that Ligotti is a source. There’s only one more question after that - in the entire interview.
He definitely knows his sources, but he really has made every effort to not talk about them if he’s using too much of their work.
“pounded into a corner”? That’s a claim that makes a lot of assumptions. We don’t know what got edited out of that interview, though, or what was said that wasn’t part of the interview, or how it was contextualized, or even whether the questions were all posed at the same time. (It is an email interview, and the questions read like they were sent as a group.) Previous to that interview, the interviewer had already published an article entirely about the Ligotti references, so presumably that was the context for the interview, or at least he was expecting to be asked specifically about that. The fact remains, he mentions Ligotti, he goes into detail about how he crafted dialog to specifically evoke Ligotti and he was glad that some people got the references, etc. He’s also mentioned Moore as an influence on the work as well (and it’s not actually a direct quotation). He’s acknowledged his influences, he’s clearly making deliberate references to their works, what more is wanted from him? A detailed bibliography? An interview where, unprompted, he goes through his dialog, line by line mentioning exactly what each bit is a reference to? Are we going to start demanding that of every other author and scriptwriter who uses pastiche, homage, and other forms of reference? Because it’s hard to argue that’s not what he’s doing. I mean, he deliberately wrote dialog specifically meant to evoke at least one particular author in the hopes that people would recognize the reference. That’s not exactly hiding his influences.
At this point, we’re going to agree to disagree, because you have (for a second time) completely sidestepped the fact that Pizzolatto has failed to give Moore credit at all for a direct quote. He also only gave Ligotti credit when directly asked in successive questions about the source material. He’d been asked in past interviews about that subject, and sidestepped the issue himself.
You clearly, just want him to not be doing anything wrong. Great, you like the guy and his work. That doesn’t mean he didn’t do something that wasn’t OK. I wasn’t illegal, but it definitely lacked class.
I won’t be responding to any more of your comments.
Actually, I’ve never seen the show or, as far as I know, anything else the writer has worked on. It’s just that calling it “plagiarism” was several steps too far for me. “Lacking class,” however? Yeah, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that.
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