Secret Stealers

One of my Sunday routines is to check out this website that I find both disturbing and fascinating. I may have even mentioned it before but it is called Postsecret. People write and create postcards with a secret and mail it to an address. The secrets range from the absurd to the devastating. I have always thought this was an original project.

On the other end of the creative spectrum, there is this band All-American Rejects. Normally, I do not find myself watching MTV, yet this morning, I was in the middle of one of those trances with the television where it doesn't really matter what is on the screen, just that I am staring at it with my morning tea in hand. Suddenly, I snapped out of it and recognized something in the video that was playing. The All-American Rejects stole the idea from Postsecret to use secrets on post cards during their video "Dirty Little Secret". You can check out the website of both All-American Rejects and Postsecret and compare.

I don't think I would be so annoyed but this is such a pattern for the entertainment industry. There are times I want to boycott the whole kit and caboodle. This is not the first time that art has stolen from art. I remember a few years ago when Madonna got into some heat for using images in her video "Hollywood" from a French photographer.

Bewitched. Dukes of Hazard. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Why can't Hollywood and the entertainment industry come up with something original. Granted, there are gems of originality out there, but I think we, as consumers, have to decide if we value originality and creativity, rather than being spoonfed something that they believe a non-thinking audience will eat.