animated marginalia

When crafting an apologetic for Christians in the arts, the inevitable starting point is our status as image bearers. We were created in the image of a Creator God, thus we, the creatures, have an urge to create. Usually, we also intimate that since God created wonderfully and imaginatively out of nothing we, too, can and should strive to make something that echoes God’s brilliance in a completely original way.

This is probably where some Christians get a little uncomfortable with the idea of a derivative artwork.* It’s not “original,” thus it’s not fully reflecting the imago Dei, thus it’s second rate art or, maybe, not even art at all. But my discomfort lies in attributing an almost moral status to “originality.” I'm suspicious that we actually just co-opted this worship of the heroic genius from our humanist Renaissance friends. After all, "original ideas" were not one of the gifts bestowed on Bezalel, the Old Testament artisan who has become the Christian-artist poster child. In fact, God gave very detailed, specific instructions about everything that Bezalel made, and those items were still considered good, lovely, and meaningful.

So I wonder if, in our self-application of creation ex nihilo, we short-change two other important, related ideas: (1) God's continuing interaction with His creation and (2) our call to dominion.

I reject the notion of the “watchmaker God” who winds the clock and then lets entropy take its happy course. Scripture seems to make clear that God is still actively involved in the lives of His people today. He made us and is continuing to make us. In fact, He will not stop until the consummation. So what if the drive to keep reshaping and reorganizing and reexamining – the urge that may manifest itself in derivative art – is another part of reflecting a Creator God?

I also want to think of remixing as a way of exercising dominion over creation. When done honestly and intelligently, appropriating images, movie clips, sounds, and words allows us to own and order the world. Making culture is made participatory. Derivative art can emphasize our finitude while shaking us in and out of context. It can point out folly, offer perspective, make connections, and challenge assumptions about the hierarchies and genres, and it packs resonance and clout because the pieces are already familiar and embedded in culture.

I wonder. The remix may not be an entirely original work, but, at its best, it is a startlingly creative work that Christians would do well to explore.

* Just so we’re clear, “derivative artwork” does not cover plagiarism, which would be stealing and passing off “the ideas or words of another as one’s own” or using “another’s production without crediting the source.” (Merriam-Webster) But, I am leaving some room here to argue with Lawrence Lessig that some copyright laws can actually inhibit the creative prosperity of a society.