By Addison Gernenz | Copy Editor
I’ve been writing since I was five years old.
I have dozens of notebooks in my parents’ garage, stories of knights and princesses and runaway children spilling out of the pages. I spent many nights whispering under the covers with my sister, spinning fantastical tales for her. My little cousins would gather around me during the holidays, giving me prompts and characters and anthropomorphic animals to weave into storylines.
My childhood — and now, my adulthood — has been shaped by story.
And thus, I have grown increasingly aware of their decline.
Books are promoted by a laundry list of tropes: enemies-to-lovers, one bed, love triangle, or a morally gray character — all of which reduce these stories to a marketing stunt. The books become valued for the common, clickbait-y storylines rather than genuine, artistic craft.
This same lack of originality can be seen in movies.
The first Toy Story was made in 1995, and the fifth installment of the series was released this summer. A live-action Moana is on the horizon, a mere two years after Moana 2 and only ten years after the original animated version.
Disney has poured out remakes and live-action adaptations for the past decade: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Pete’s Dragon, Lilo and Stitch, Mulan, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid. Even Lady and the Tramp and The Lion King received the live-action treatment, although the remakes were only fancy CGI and different animation.
You can scroll through the upcoming Disney movies for the next two years and see that nearly every single movie is a remake, sequel or both.
Humans love nostalgia. This is not inherently harmful, but it has continuously shifted creators away from original ideas and toward the same remakes and adaptations of stories that are tried and true.
The issue is we’ve gotten to the point where we are retelling stories for the sake of retelling stories. It’s safe, it’s familiar and it will bring in the audience needed needed to make a profit..
The 2019 live-action Aladdin remake is a good example of an adaption done well. There’s adjustments and additions to the story, like the opening song being expanded plus Jasmine’s storyline growing and gaining her own solo song. The heart of the story, however, remains the same.
A story does not need to be retold unless there is more to say.
Suzanne Collins, the author of ‘The Hunger Games,’ has said in interviews that she that she doesn’t write unless she has something new to say.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of ‘Great Gatsby’, wrote an excellent philosophy for creative endeavors. “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
The TV shows, books and movies we put out should be saying something of value. They should not rely on simply nostalgia, shock value or a pre-existing fanbase.
