Scene Stealers

When Bollywood borrows ideas from Hollywood, they call it “inspiration”. When Hollywood steals ideas from itself, it’s called “homage”. However, when we steal ideas from Hollywood, and get caught doing it, we call it “plagiarism,” and “news”. Maggie Tiojakin reports.

News is the invasion of a foreign country; it’s a volcano erupting red hot, flaming lava that sweeps entire villages or towns; but the story of an indie film with a mediocre reputation taking home the local film industry’s Citra award … well, that’s just bad publicity.

Last year, when some of the most distinguished personalities in the Indonesian film industry were battling over the eligibility of Ekskul to hold the awards for Best Feature and Best Director from the 2006 Indonesian Film Festival, most of the general public could only sigh.

Was it disappointing that a film which had been accused of plagiarizing the music scores of Gladiator, Munich and Tae Gu Ki won the supposedly prestigious awards? Yes.

Was it shocking? No.

The issue of lifting or borrowing ideas, or simply “taking creative license” with them, is nothing new to the Indonesian public. Thanks to cable service, TV viewers are now able to watch original foreign programs, many from South Korea and Taiwan, that have been adapted by local production houses into miniseries.

“Plenty of people assume we recklessly plagiarize foreign programs,” Leila S. Chudori, an editor of Tempo newsmagazine and film critic, says. “But most of the time, what happens is our local production houses actually buy the rights of certain programs so they can create the adaptations here.”

Of course, it’s perfectly OK to use someone else’s idea as long as it is acknowledged. Yet local adaptations seem to have a particular preference for existing in the shadows of the copied shows. Giving the industry the benefit of the doubt by assuming the programs we’re constantly bombarded with are, in fact, legally adapted, there is still something rather unsettling about the idea that more than a quarter of our local entertainment programs are second-hand versions of someone else’s masterpieces.

On the film scene, local filmmakers in January 2007 founded an independent organization whose main task is to improve the standards and quality of motion pictures in the country. Calling themselves the Indonesian Film Society (MFI), the organization’s members include top film people such as Mira Lesmana, Joko Anwar, Hanung Bramantyo and Rudy Soedjarwo.

The organization drew up a litany of demands. First, for the National Film Advisory Board to annul Ekskul’s win. Second, for the government to recognize the fallibility of the age-old film festival.

Five months after the organization made its demands, actor-director Deddy Mizwar, acting as chairman of the National Film Advisory Board, released a statement whereupon Ekskul’s awards for Best Feature and Best Director at FFI 2006 were officially revoked.

Indika Entertainment, the producer of Ekskul, did not return phone calls requesting  comment. The film’s executives have been quoted as saying in the past that scores from the other films served as “inspiration”, but was not plagiarized.

By the time the awards were revoked, the Indonesian Film Society was already moving on to other things.

The organization said the Ekskul scandal was merely a small part of what they think is wrong with FFI. For this year’s event, members of the organization refused to put their films up for selection.

“We’re not going to boycott FFI,” Mira Lesmana was quoted as saying at a press conference at the Jakarta Arts Council last September. “As the highest symbol of achievement in our industry, the FFI should always exist. And we fully support its existence.”

But she also said that with the FFI in a transition phase, the Indonesian Film Society would “observe” the running of this year’s event before deciding whether to participate in the future.

Even so, for some people, the brouhaha ignited by the Ekskul plagiarism issue seems to be a minor issue. Despite the overwhelming attention given to the scandal, copyright infringement is quite common in every field of artistic endeavor. If the film industry worldwide has had more legal battles over it than others, it’s because the flow of ideas in this particular trade is less traceable.

In 1996, Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton (along with two major studios behind them) were accused of lifting an idea from Stephen Kessler for their movie Twister. Two years later, Spielberg was again accused of plagiarizing someone else’s idea for his critically acclaimed feature, Amistad. Spielberg and Crichton won their case, while the Amistad issue was settled out of court.

The question is what constitutes plagiarism in filmmaking? Would the use of a particular style of special effect, a classic scene or a certain thematic idea be considered an act of plagiarism?

“Plagiarism in anything means that you have taken someone else’s idea or work and claimed it as your own. There is no excuse whatsoever for this behavior,” insists Robin Moran, an independent filmmaker, producer and editor whose works include Maskot, Rumah Ketujuh and Ajang Ajeng.

“I think [filmmakers] misunderstand the term ‘outside influence’. We can only incorporate the influence so long as it is treated with the individual’s spin on the idea.”

Leila Chudori notes that “external influences” are part of the process of creating a work.

“Look at Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, how many other films have been influenced by his work. But he didn’t seem to mind it, because he knew it was part of the process.”

Many of Kurosawa’s films are in some way derived from someone else’s artistic works, such as Ran (based on Shakespeare’s King Lear), Ikiru (Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich) and High and Low (Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom).

Because the concept of “originality” is at best a dubious one, it may be concluded that the fine line separating what is permissible and what is not in creating such derivative works is not so fine after all.

Contrary to popular belief, copyright laws do not recognize an unprocessed idea as an entity. An idea can only be protected after it has been polished, pruned and turned into a copyright-able commodity (literature, music, visual images).

Therefore, in the same context, when it comes to a cinematographic work, then dialogues, music scores and special effects are about the only things that fall under the supervision of the law.

The rest requires hard (often unattainable) proof and interminable hours of “this is mine” and “that is yours”.

“Plagiarism is an ‘internal’ dilemma,” says Robin.“The problem with piracy is mainly from structuring a means to account for monetary loss. Plagiarism, on the other hand, displays an individual’s disregard of integrity — which makes it worse in comparison.”

Responding to the same question, Leila likens the practices of plagiarism and piracy to cheating on a test.

“Plagiarism is when you take your seatmate’s answer sheet, put your name over his and submit it as your own,” she says. “Piracy is when you copy your seatmate’s answers onto your own answer sheet, but leave your seatmate virtually unharmed.”

All the same, both practices account for a certain amount of loss, whether the currency in use is human morale or dollars. What should have shocked us is not the fact that there are people out there who resort to illegal conduct in order to succeed, but how the same people always seem to be able to get away with it.

Isn’t there a code of ethics that filmmakers hold in their trade which would, at least, imbue a sense of guilt in the violators?

“Responsibility, honesty and integrity,” Robin answers.

Or perhaps it should be about the desire to do something that is truly original, instead of merely jumping on the hackneyed bandwagon for success, pilfering someone else’s ideas along the way. Now that would be news.

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