5 Pop Culture Classics Created Out of Laziness
Inspiration can come from a variety of places: drugs, God, nature, beauty, love or even drugs. Wait, what were we talking about again?
Oh, right. Inspiration. The thing is, some timeless classics weren't made based on any of those. No, these beloved works came about for crass, petty, tasteless, spiteful, greedy or just plain lazy reasons. Like...
#5.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons are like having a shitty house guest who also happens to be Mahatma Gandhi. Sure, they can't take the hint that it's time to leave, but you can't exactly kick them out. They've made some very important to contributions society- hey! Would it kill you to use a coaster, Mahatma? This is oak, man. Jesus.
But let's just be clear: this show has given us some of the funniest moments in television history. Bart was named one the 100 most important people in the 20th century. The Sunday Times once declared Homer Simpson "the greatest comic creation of our time."
But it Only Exists Because...
When producer James L. Brooks asked Matt Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, The Simpsons wasn't his first choice. He hadn't even thought of it yet; he originally intended to adapt his Life in Hell comic strip:
Somehow "Jeff is the greatest comic creation of all time" just doesn't have the same ring.
However, while sitting in the lobby of Brooks's office, it suddenly occurred to Groening that for the shorts to be made, he would have to give up the copyright to his most beloved creation. Panicking, he picked up a yellow notepad and quickly "made up these other characters [he] didn't really care about." The result:
At first they were a family of inbred circus freaks.
Groening couldn't even be assed to come up with character names, so he just named them after his father Homer, mom Margaret and sister Lisa. Realizing he needed to get creative on the boys name lest Brooks know something was up, he changed two letters to transform "Matt" into "Bart," which was also an anagram for brat. The fact that he thought this might throw Brooks off the scent of what he'd done either implies that Brooks is criminally retarded, or Groening has all the subtlety and subterfuge of an exploding dump truck.
So in summation: The only reason The Simpsons exists is because the creator thought that some amorphous blobs he'd created years before were much more valuable than they were; he only had maybe 15 minutes in a waiting room to come up with something new; and he's not very good under pressure. And that's how you make a classic, folks!
#4.
Donkey Kong and Super Mario
Donkey Kong came out in 1981, when "Nintendo" had yet to become known outside Japan. The game's success not only turned the company into a major player, it also launched the illustrious career of one of the most iconic figures of modern pop culture: Mario, the castrato plumber who is either tragically misinformed about his job duties, or has the shittiest union contract in history.
"I took a two-week night class on how to fix toilets."
The original Donkey Kong arcade also popularized platform games and paved the way for Nintendo's dominance of the videogame market, which revived the industry at a time when it was seen as nothing more than a passing fad. Without Donkey Kong, video games might have passed on to the novelty grave yard to rest forever with the hula hoop and yo-yo. And then what would you do instead of becoming a productive member of society? Read? What a bleak world that would be...
But it Only Exists Because...
Originally, Nintendo was a playing card company. Among the licenses they held was Popeye the Sailor, which was owned by King Features.
In 1981, Nintendo made one of those cheap pocket games starring Popeye, and planned to release a more elaborate one for the arcades. A first-time designer named Shigeru Miyamoto was assigned to the project and began sketching game concepts involving the classic Popeye/Olive Oyl/Bluto threesome.
Not that kind of threesome (though let's be honest; it's practically inevitable) .
After one of those concepts was approved, Miyamoto found out that King Features had denied Nintendo the rights to bring Popeye to the arcades. The characters were suddenly off limits to Nintendo, but Miyamoto went ahead with the game anyway - keeping the threesome, but arbitrarily replacing Popeye with a plumber, Olive with a princess and Bluto with an ape.
Yeah, we don't like the implication either.
Donkey Kong did incredibly well, and the plumber's profession inspired Miyamoto to create the first Mario Bros. game and the rest is history.
Yes, "the profession" itself inspired him to make Mario Bros. Of course, this makes a lot more sense when you realize the Japanese word for "plumber" shares most of its syllabic structure with the word for "man who solves abductions with leaping and ravages tiny animals beneath his boot-heel."
#3.
Watchmen
Watchmen is the only comic to be included in Time Magazine's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to present, even topping it at one time. It's widely considered to be the greatest comic ever by millions of sweaty comic fans, about half of which have actually read it. It's also said that the complex and mature nature of the story changed comics forever, and many commend DC Comics for having the balls to publish it in the first place.
The Simpsons have done an episode about every entry on this list, by the way
But it Only Exists Because...
DC Comics didn't have the balls to publish it... not with the original characters anyway. In the 80s, DC bought the rights to an entire set of superhero characters from Charlton Comics. DC was looking for something to do with their new properties, so rising star Alan Moore put together a proposal based on those characters and submitted it to his bosses. To their credit, DC approved the idea. However, they also realized the characters would be rendered useless by the end of the comic (by virtue of being dead, intergalactic nudists or chubby, lovable losers too busy bangin' chicks way out of their league to fight crime). Not willing to lose the guys they had just bought after a single story-arc, they asked Moore to change all the names and tweak the appearances. Bringing his typical respect for authority to the task, Moore put as little effort as possible into disguising the source material. So for example, the guy with the blue suit, the goggles and the ship...
Became the guy with the brown suit, the goggles and the ship:
And the guy with the fedora and no face...
Became the guy with the... fedora and no face:
One can forgive Moore for phoning it in a little; the man was nurturing a decade-spanning hobo beard and a cutting hatred for capitalism; he had other shit on his mind.
I have some Life in Hell comics on my bookshelf. They're usually pretty good, especially the how-to guides on being a sensitive poet, or a feisty rock critic.
ReplyAs for the Donkey Kong/Mario vs Popeye statements. King Features may have denied Nintendo rights to the characters, but they went right ahead, made the Popeye game and distributed it in U.S. arcades. We had a sit-down version in the arcade of the hotel where I worked and all of us night-porters (cleaners) became quite good at it. The game consisted of three stages and then revamped them on "hard-mode" the second time around (if you made it that far). The rest may be true, but the game was distributed (and later on again as a cartridge game on the NES).
ReplyKing Features realized someone else wanted their s**t and did it themselves. It's natural.
Some of these seem more like desenrascanco (a lovely word cracked taught me). Not so much "laziness" as much as someone managing to pull a MacGuyver and create something awesome they just slapped together after suddenly finding themselves in a bind.
Reply(And honestly, who the hell says something like "Watchmen was phoned in"? Moore came up with some ideas he loved and when DC refused to let him use the characters he'd originally planned on using, he made up new ones that were very close to the originals. That's not "phoning it in" that's just not letting legal bullshit get in the way of great story ideas you had)
^ Why did you post the same essential point twice?
wow, Donkey Kong totally makes sense now.
ReplySuper Mario was originally called jump man and was a carptender
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesThat's true actually, but there is no such thing as a "carptender".
Carpenter. Say it with me, Car-pen-ter. Not a misspelled Contender.
And sugar is sweet, grass is green (usually) and you're pointing out the obvious.
Carptender would be an awesome job.
Actually, someone who cares for carp at a fish farm would technically be a "carp tender."
he'd be a terrible carptender though, the turtles would always be kidnapping the fish and putting them at the end of platform mazes.
maybe he wanted to tend carp?
Watch Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress then watch Star Wars. Straight jack move by Lucas. Took the movie, added color, muppets, and put it in space
Replybut at least he admited to it
It baffles me that nobody has remarked that George Lucas' "Star Wars" is almost a carbon-copy off of "Dune" by Frank Herbert, hell from what i've read/heard/conjured the spirit of the dead author to confirm, the first time Lucas submitted his script it was denied for it's striking resemblance to "Dune" and he had to hire an author to change the script so he would not get his ever loving ass sued off and mounted over the fireplace as a Herbert heirloom for years to come.
Reply Hide All See All 6 Repliesyeah but dune was based off kurosawa's the hidden fourtress so if dune tried to sue lucas kurosawa would sure both their asses, and lucas took nothing from dune because in actuality he took it from hidden fortress. also he did not "submit a script to anyone no one would accept his ideas because studios in that time thought it would either be too expensive or cheesy. so he started lucas art.
have you ever read the herbert novel called "The Jesus Incedent". james cameron sure has. avatar is 80% a ripoff of it. the planet pandora, the planet wide quasi conscienceness, the deadly creatures and landscape,the embattles human colonies. i love dune and all frank herberts books. mind warping to say the least. dune should have been bigger than starwars i think
So in conclusion... everything is a rip off of everything else. And pretty much all fantasy and some sci-fi is ripped off from whatever mythology they thought was cool at the time. So I guess it's best to just appreciate movies for what they are. In the end, Lucas and the others must have some talent to be able to sell everyone a product that already existed and make it 10 times more famous.
When George Lucas pitched the first Star Wars it was something like a 13 page OUTLINE. He had to hire a "screenwriter" not an author to write the story because he hadn't intended on taking on all the directorial responsibilities and everything else he ended up doing himself because he's a stubborn bastard.
to quote the great rapper Nas, "Nothing is original. There's nothing new under the sun. Its not the way you do it but how its done." But of course he ripped that off of King Solomon from the Bible lol
To go beyond the "nothing is original" anymore schtick, you can look for influences and other evidence to see who used what. In that regard, Lucas and Cameron are a little more obvious in what they used.
King Features were the king of screw ups. First they passed on Donkey Kong and then Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Funny part is, there hadn't been a quality Popeye cartoon since ancient the black and whites.
ReplyMore like "King Failures"
The damsel in distress in Donkey Kong was Pauline, not a princess.
ReplyMario was a construction worker/carpenter in that one, too, not a plumber. Plumber came when he got his own game.
Mario is also a construction worker/carpenter in that game. He's changed to a plumber when he gets his own game.
f**k your new site i would rather use alcohol poisoning to kill a f**king rhino than spend time trying to navigate your new site
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI think someone' a little cranky :p It's finneee, stop b***hing.
How is that going to help anything?
You have a dead rhino, AND the site stays the same.
not only that but imagine all the piles of rhino puke
and NO BOOZE.
getting a rhino drunk sounds fun. I'm gonna go rob a truck from the brewery down the street now.
You forgot, in the Donkey Kong entry, that Mario was named after one of the workers' landlords, Mario Gonzalez.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI read once that "Donkey Kong" was originally "Monkey Kong," but they put the D in on accident and left it that way. What a franchise saver.
And it was Monkey Kong because King Kong was copyrighted, yet Monkey Kong bipassed it because of Japan's pretty damn weak copyright law.
It's Segali, not Gonzalez.
It's funny, but copying used to be the order of the day when it came to creating stories and artwork and even learning how to do those things. Benjamin Franklin learned how to write by copying writers he admired, for instance, and artists learned to paint by copying famous paintings. Speaking from experience, the modern method of learning a creative art by trying to create from scratch can be really hobbling. It's not like original ideas show up on demand, and meanwhile you aren't picking up any technical skill if you aren't allowed to copy other people's work. Which is probably why artistic quality has so severely declined as copyright laws have become more stringent. Even if fair use laws would allow students to do that kind of copying, schoolteachers have a way of being overzealous about rules.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesThat punchline was f**king awful. I didn't find it funny at all.
I totally agree. People whine so much about the lack of originality, which in itself isn't an original comment. Thing is, tell two students to write a story about a bunny in a fight with a zebra over a family feud, and I'm sure both stories would come out different. I'm not going to say Willow isn't a variation of Lord of the Rings, but dangit I do like it and wouldn't call them the same movie either. People are so caught up noticing similarities, they don't bother to feel what's different. Yeah, I'm sick of remakes, but then again, I'm not entirely opposed to taking an old idea and approaching it in a new way.
also, some people can do it better than the original. why should those people be denied? we can challenge in boxing, but not in music, movies, or art? Challenging is what makes us better. Just look at sports, technology, medicine... now look at movies today. Because of strict copyright laws we are not able to challenge and make things better. I don't think you should blatantly steal ideas, but I think ideas are meant to be shared.
^Because they simply do not own the original idea.
Inspiration is different from plagiarism, remember that.
I really don't see how any of these were because of laziness. Maybe the name's of the Simpsons but not any of the "Pop Culture Classics" themselves.
ReplyThe plot of "A New Hope" as well as much of the cinematographic style is basically the same as Akira Kurosawa's samurai film, "The Hidden Fortress."
ReplyThe whole "video games might have passed on to the novelty grave yard" isn't exactly true. The video game crash was really just for home consoles, there were still arcades and computer games going pretty strong. Donkey Kong didn't even directly affect the crash anyways, it just paved the way for Nintendo to make more games and eventually release the Famicom/NES (which was Nintendo's real contribution to getting console gaming back on it's feet in the US).
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesThat was probably the author's point, but not explained clearly
And it was hyperbole anyway. Video games would have come back eventually. The tech was there and clearly there's a market. Someone would have figured it out either way.
wasn't pacman pretty popular at that time, or did he come later?
Video games would have come back anyway...herp? Not if there was no money to be had.
The name "Donkey" Kong was also the result of a lazy translator who mistakenly wrote that instead of the more appropriate "monkey." Would the character be so popular today without the nonsensical name, though?
Reply Hide All See All 8 RepliesThat is just a rumor, there has never been an official explanation for how Donkey Kong came to be named such.
See, I've read that it came about from the translator's mistaken assumption that "Donkey" meant "stubborn."
I personally believe that the people making the game just thought "f**k it, call it Donkey Kong, or Monkey Dick, or whatever, so long as it sells."
i heard it was supposed to be Monkey Dong, 'Dong' referring to the dong dynasty, oh i wish i had the interest to continue this...there's the basics, anyone got a joke in there?
"See, I've read that it came about from the translator's mistaken assumption that "Donkey" meant "stubborn.""
aye, same here.
When I was in the library doing research for a paper "The Battle of Alesia", I somehow came across a book about the gaming industry. Someone from Nintendo stated that they couldn't call him "King Kong" and he was more appropriately described by english-speaking members of the company as a jackass and not a king. When "Donkey Kong" was finally brought up, it was immediately brilliant. How would a translator get donkey from monkey anyways and how would Nintendo not catch it? Translating j*panese to English has never been a problem for them, unlike other gaming developers who are more known for those translations than the name of their games. I remember "All your base are belong to us!" but I don't remember the game or the developer.
The morale of this story is; learn to navigate a f**king library
Monkey Dung.
I worked as a translator before. Donkey Kong is pretty hard not to get right in either Japanese or English.
Dracula borrowed rather heavily from a Penny Dreadful called Varney The Vampyre anyway. But of course Dracula was written by a "proper" author and Varney appeared in cheap publications for working class people. Incedentally "Vampyre" appears in Nosferatu, I wonder if the estate of Bram Stoker realised the irony as they called their lawyers?
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesStoker didn't invent the word "vampire." They had legends about that stuff well before his time.
actually 'vampyre' stems back to rather old times back when the 'sightings' started, about the bubonic plague time. they called them vamp which is linked to the word 'blood' i cant recall precisely how and 'pyre' as to how they disposed of them. a burning fire. vampyres are as old as hell. (that was not intended). and dracula took more from a person called "vlad tepes' or vlad the impaler, than anything else. he collected blood from impaled victims and drank it. there are beliefs he suffered a medical condition known as Clinical Vampyrism. a defiency of an unknown part of the blood required him to drink blood to gain the component, and stay healthy. That's how the story goes anyways. I study this stuff and it varies from source to source.
Except good ol' Vlad never really drank blood. (But boy did he impale criminals. He loved that shit.) That was just a myth spread as propaganda by some of his enemies. Also, the term "vampire" isn't at all original to English and is a loan word from any number of old Slavic languages with very different etymology from what you've described. Furthermore, instances of the term "vampire" (or rather, instances of the term's origins) pre-date the bubonic plague. As does folklore describing such "sightings." Finally, "clinical vampirism" has nothing to do with a physiological deficiency and is a purely psychological disorder. A disorder that Vlad most certainly did not have.
Good times.
@jetblack - I "study"...or studied, this stuff too and there are definitive sources for vampiric lore, and quite a few primary sources.
...when the hell is laziness even in here?
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesUm...by making a few tweaks to someone elses work and writing it off as your own, original idea? It's everywhere.
What, like the guy who invented the first car? Because he totally had never seen a horse and cart before and invented wheels and everything.
But it wasn't really a tweak to "someone elses" work. Take the Donkey Kong example. He still designed the game and did everything that made it popular. The only thing he tweaked was getting rid of someone else's characters and including his own. This is an entertaining article, but poorly named.
^A tweak to get around an already-existing copyright is still a tweak.
I say that Star Wars is the SECOND most significant Sci Fi impact on the world.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesI think number one is 2001: A Space Odyssey. I mean, it got us ON THE MOON. It INSPIRED STAR WARS.
Also, every other Sci fi, every other surreal/abstract film, and many scientific and philosophical ideas.
2001's influence is undeniable! Admit it.
I highly doubt Space Odyssey got us on the moon.
How did it inspire Starwars? In the article it says starwars is a blatant rip-off of Flash Gordon
Now this is coming from someone with the Rebel Alliance logo tattooed on his wrist but while the cultural impact of Star Wars cannot be denied in terms of actually being influential on the real world, it has nothing on H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or even Gene Roddenberry. Star Wars is a really just a clever rip-off of Akira Kurasawa's The Fortress with a little Taoist mysticism and robots thrown in. Point being anything you can point to as being influenced by Star Wars was really influenced by whatever source Lucas was borrowing from.
"...anything you can point to as being influenced by Star Wars was really influenced by whatever source Lucas was borrowing from."
Bunk.
Technically, Star Wars isn't SciFi. If you're going to be an uber-nerd, at least be an accurate one.
^Not scifi...right...we'll just credit that to some BS argument you heard some batshit libarts film production professor make to give it some tangibility.
I do not think the word "Laziness" means what you think it means.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI'm going to agree with this assessment. "Laziness" and "improvising" do not mean the same thing.
I made this coment into a Princess Bride reference in my head.
Me too.
I think most of us did.
Relative to how much credit said creators of these IPs receive? Yeah...it's pretty much the definition of laziness...lol