Note: for the purpose of this entry, the term author is used as a synonym for creator, and is not exclusively limited to literary creation.
Is anything truly original? This might seem like a broad question, but when it comes to artistic creation, authorship is a controversial topic of debate. The first known attempt at regulating and defining the concept of authorship was a flawed one, and was contested by the Structuralist mindset, which sought greater fairness when considering what constituted an author. Both currents of thinking propose valid arguments regarding the origins of an idea and the development of a standard. Ultimately, and due to the complex nature of these theories (and presumably any other arguments on the matter), it shouldn't be a surprise that said theories fail to reach a concrete solution.
In his essay titled Notas sobre la teoría del autor, Efrén Cuevas presents a profound analysis on the Politique des auteurs. The theory, which originated in the world of French film, set a clear distinction between the concepts of author and director. Authors were celebrated because of a notable repetition of recognizable standards and techniques present in their work, while directors who lacked such standards were lesser known in the industry. The argument was certainly beneficial in the development of cinematography as we know it today, but it did pose a serious downside: if what mattered most was the replication of a pattern in a creator's trajectory, then the quality of the film, not to mention the author-director's abilities and competence, became secondary.
For filmmaker and film theorist Peter Wollen, the structuralist approach to theories of authorship centered on identifying specific techniques within a genre and associating them to the filmmakers who popularized said styles (a popular example would be the standards set by Alfred Hitchcock in the psychological/suspense genre). By this logic, any given structure would be tied to a specific director who was not directly involved in the creation of the analyzed work. So, Wollen's posture becomes the ideal segue for the concept of the implicit author. However, there's still an important question to address. If the work of a renowned author is reinterpreted or adapted in a subsequent work, should the "original" author be credited?
The answer to the great debate on authorship, according to Cuevas, comes as a let down: there is no answer. Different artistic fields have different ways of pinpointing the origins of a specific idea, and even so, the matter is an ambiguous one. Personally, the debate reminds me of authorship conflicts in the music industry, where a set of established musical parameters are used to determine whether or not a published song incurred in some form of plagiarism. In an architectural sense, the fundamental elements of architecture have been reconfigured through centuries of human existence, resulting in the creation of specific design styles and of course, the emergence of renowned designers. But suggesting to credit classic designers as indirect authors of every single new design is nonsensical at worst and unnecessary at best.
Perhaps the best way to not lose ourselves in a complicated argument with many loopholes (and way more questions than answers), is understanding two things: that every work is derived in some extent of a previous creative expression and secondly, that there always has to be at least a small figment of originality, and thus, authorship. Otherwise, we'd be living in an unbearably monotonous world, wouldn't you think?
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