Reflections Upon the Disappearance of ‘Actual Creativity’
In middle school, my friends and I used to play together by imagining we were characters in many different fantasy worlds, as childen do. It could range from the universes of Indiana Jones, Batman, Marvel, Star Wars etc.
At one point, we began pretending to be characters from the Lord of the Rings, roaming the schoolyard as if it was our very own Middle-Earth. Bill was cFrodo, Peter Sam, Frederick Pippin and James Merry; all of those names are fictional to serve as examples.
The key object at the center of our role-playing game, was the One Ring, naturally. I had brought it myself from home, as I had inherited it from someone in my family. I attached the envisaged ‘One Ring’ to a simple, white thread one could carry around one’s neck. So we went about immersing ourselves in our fantasy universe.
However, one day, Bill acquired something which caught our attention. On his weekend trip to London with his family, he had bought a Hollywood-manufactured, cheap One Ring product, which resembled the original more than my own.
By that point, however, our Lord of the Rings fad had worn off. Not due to his purchase of the One Ring, a capitalist consumer product, but rather because its novelty had expired long ago, so to speak.
The implication of his purchase is more what concerned me, especially at a later point. What was the point of imagining ourselves to be in an alternative reality if everything about the movies was to be replicated? Then there’s no difference from just acting in the films ourselves, as professional actors. It made no sense to me.
Sure, I know there are actual real life RPG-games out there, where people from all age groups and backgrounds dress up as hobbits, orcs, Elves and whatnot, and they’re free to do that as they wish. However, part of the fun of being able to play the Lord of the Rings for ourselves with limited resources was exactly that. By using an ‘inadequate’ ring visually distinct from the One in the cinema, with sticks as our provisional swords and hammers, we were necessarily forced to unlock the ability to become mesmerized in our very own self-formed universe. Everyone had their own special powers, and with our jackets serving the purpose of hobbit cloaks, an actualizing reenactment of the film trilogy and video games we were playing took place.
Indeed, we had not read the any of the books ourselves, as we went in fifth and sixth grade during that time period. Instead, we extracted our knowledge about the universe from what one could call ‘purist’ capitalist-consumerist avenues of connaissance. In other words, we were invariably affected by our latent global capitalist, advertising context, but the last piece of individual touchstone and activity had been through our own creation and desire for adventure in animo.
By removing this very last element, it is in my estimation no less than the obliteration of the animating principle of oneself. Our games and ‘pink and blue spectacles’ are already pre-made for us, at that point. Without this individual trait, creativity seems to hit a definite blunder, never to rise from its hibernation in pre-manufactured, plebeian and modern entertainment products. What happened to exercising ‘actual creativity’ through acting out what we’ve read and conceptualized on our own accord?
It’s being displaced by artificial ego formations through the schizophrenia of signifying chains, to borrow some terms from Lacan’s psychoanalysis, i.e. the generation and recombination of segments of identity (nationality, subculture, socioeconomic status, life experiences etc.). Advertising and entertainment in terms of Game of Thrones mini-games, Coca Cola-commercials, Buzzfeed quizzes (native advertising) and the latest Wii U-controllers lead to seemingly withering initiative to play creativity out for oneself, to form one’s identity through other, more self-participatory, active means.
Identity becomes distraction, a varied toolbox for moods and trends and triviality. This is set in motion by constructs and processes intended to make profitable consumers out of the populace.
