# Anti-Ecphrasis: Works of Art That Diminish Other Works of Art **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 10, 2007, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155 "2007-07-10T03:40:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2007, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/21 "2007-07-10T22:38:53Z")
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara] While watching the stage show it slowly dawned upon me that I was witnessing an example of anti-ecphrasis. Far from enhancing the reputation of this ancient prehistoric monument to the ubiquity and versatility of stone in the UK, the band diminishes the standing of Stonehenge in the eyes of the viewer. [/QUOTE] Reminds me of an ep of [_The Goodies,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goodies) set in Roman Britain: BILL: And what’ve **we** got to be proud of? TIM: Well . . . Stonehenge! BILL: Oh, yeah, Stonehenge! We built that thing, all right! It’s been sitting out there for **two thousand years!** Still doesn’t fly! ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2007, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/22 "2007-07-10T22:40:35Z")
The first thing that comes to mind is Marcel Duchamp’s _L.H.O.O.Q._, which was just the _Mona Lisa_ with a mustache drawn onto it. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2007, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/23 "2007-07-10T23:58:12Z")
Will Smith’s _I, Robot_ Verhoeven’s _Starship Troopers_ Demi Moore’s _The Scarlet Letter_ The list is endless. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/24 "2007-07-11T02:14:36Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] Will Smith’s _I, Robot_ Verhoeven’s _Starship Troopers_ Demi Moore’s _The Scarlet Letter_ The list is endless. [/QUOTE] Add to it the new [_Underdog_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467110/) movie. Live action. What were they thinking?! ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/25 "2007-07-11T02:16:07Z")
I disagree. Verhoeven caused me to re-read Starship Troopers and appreciate it more. It’s interestingly subtle at points, once you realize that Heinlein doesn’t agree with all of his characters, but is simply writing from their perspectives. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Ryle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8dc957/32.png) [@Mark\_Ryle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Ryle)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/26 "2007-07-11T05:02:02Z")
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara] Does anyone have their own favourite example of anti-ecphrasis … ? [/QUOTE] I do, and I’m glad for an opportunity after all these years to vent in front of an audience that might care. As children, Saturday nights we watched the hour-long _Sing Along With Mitch_ on TV. An all-male choir called “Mitch Miller and the Gang” sang popular and traditional favorites. Mitch would energetically call out, “Sing along! – just follow the bouncing ball,” and then, just as energetically, conduct the choir while he, too, sang. It was a fairly big show in that era of only three channels. It really was wholesome entertainment and, if your tastes ran to that sort of thing, musically very enjoyable. Choir members were good-looking men of all ages, their dress coordinated, and all smiled appealingly at all times while singing. They would sometimes gesticulate in unison at appropriate points in a song. Their harmony was deep and rich and showed the power of male voices joined together. There was a pleasing reverb in the miking that gave a subdued echo in the silences. I liked the show. My favorite song was their version of _Yellow Rose of Texas_. One thing about the show I lament with sighing, though, and to this day. It is doubly inexplicable because Mitch Miller knew music. He was head of A&R at Mercury and Columbia Records in the 1950’s and 60’s. He discovered and developed very notable new talent on a regular basis. He was born on the Fourth of July!! So why, why, why did every single show end with Mitch and the Gang – energetically, and with all their considerable musical talent – goofing on _Stars and Stripes Forever_, John Philip Sousa’s greatest work, and greatest ever in that genre. \*Stars and Stripes Forever \* is too great a work of art to be diminished in any absolute sense by such nonsense, but the repeated, strident, visible nature of the offence (weekly television show) and the high quality of the musical production assure its lingering cloyingly in my mind – and, I’m sure, many others – indefinitely. The goofiness, having been ingrained in our memories, will always somewhat diminish our appreciation for one of the most dramatic experiences in music, _The Stars and Stripes Forever!_ I won’t dignify the lyrics by printing them, but they are [here](http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/b003.html). I’ll just say that instead of singing the last line, “Well it is!”, Mitch Miller and the Gang substituted “Well it ain’t!”, and the show abruptly went to commercial. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/27 "2007-07-11T06:17:26Z")
[QUOTE=Mark Ryle] One thing about the show [“Sing Along With Mitch”] I lament with sighing, though, and to this day. It is doubly inexplicable because Mitch Miller knew music. He was head of A&R at Mercury and Columbia Records in the 1950’s and 60’s. He discovered and developed very notable new talent on a regular basis. He was born on the Fourth of July!! So why, why, why did every single show end with Mitch and the Gang – energetically, and with all their considerable musical talent – goofing on _Stars and Stripes Forever_, John Philip Sousa’s greatest work, and greatest ever in that genre. \*Stars and Stripes Forever \* is too great a work of art to be diminished in any absolute sense by such nonsense, but the repeated, strident, visible nature of the offence (weekly television show) and the high quality of the musical production assure its lingering cloyingly in my mind – and, I’m sure, many others – indefinitely. The goofiness, having been ingrained in our memories, will always somewhat diminish our appreciation for one of the most dramatic experiences in music, _The Stars and Stripes Forever!_ I won’t dignify the lyrics by printing them, but they are [here](http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/b003.html). I’ll just say that instead of singing the last line, “Well it is!”, Mitch Miller and the Gang substituted “Well it ain’t!”, and the show abruptly went to commercial. [/QUOTE] Mitch Miller was just doing the same thing [Spike Jones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Jones#Murdering_the_Classics) did (albeit Spike Jones did first and did it better). ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/28 "2007-07-11T11:38:35Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] Isn’t this the entire point of satire? [/QUOTE] Perhaps, but the diminution doesn’t have to be satirical. I haven’t read the book but I’d be surprised if Dan Brown intended to satirise the Mona Lisa and other da Vinci _oeuvres_ (post #2). Similarly the Bertha’s Kitty Boutique jingle sung to the “cat theme” of Peter And The Wolf (post #4) is surely not specifically designed to diss Prokofiev’s work. There are other examples upthread. This doesn’t deny that satire and parody fall entirely within the remit of the OP. Speaking of which, the butt of the joke is of course not Stonehenge but the heavy metal genre itself. Stonehenge, as a work of art, is unlucky to undergo devaluation by proxy, a circumstance which surely cannot be unique. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/29 "2007-07-11T11:55:14Z")
I just thought of a perfect example: **The Kingston Trio** took a great folk song in “[Tom Dooley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Dooley_(song)),” sucked all the soulfulness out of it and turned it into white-bread pablum. (Actually, a _lot_ of folk groups did that to a _lot_ of folk songs in the late-50s-to-early-60s.) ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/30 "2007-07-11T12:36:09Z")
Would “A Fifth of Beethoven” count? ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/31 "2007-07-11T12:51:26Z")
[QUOTE=FriarTed] Would “A Fifth of Beethoven” count? [/QUOTE] If this post is a work of art then, along with post #11, it celebrates post #9 in ecphrasis. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/32 "2007-07-11T12:56:50Z")
Rolf Harris’ cover of Led Zep’s _Stairway to Heaven_ diminished the original, but IMO, that sorely needed to happen. Sometimes pomposity is just begging to be pricked. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/33 "2007-07-11T13:02:16Z")
How about 80% of **Weird Al Yankovic** ’s recorded ouevre? He usually parodies not only the music of his victims but the subject matter (“Amish Paradise”) or even the bands themselves (“Smells Like Nirvana.”) Also, **NOFX** ’s “13 Stitches” is a remembrance of going to punk and hardcore shows in the early 80s, and disparages several legendary bands, including DRI and MDC. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/34 "2007-07-11T13:42:49Z")
If we’re looking at examples in which the author of the new work was deliberately attempting to damage the reputation or value of the original, a lot of these examples don’t work. Here’s one that does: e.e. cummings’s poem about Ernest Hemingway’s _Death in the Afternoon_ > [@](#): > > what does little Ernest croon > in his death at afternoon? > (kow dow r 2 bid retoinis > wus de woids uf lil Oinis Daniel ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/35 "2007-07-11T19:10:26Z")
I disagree that Smells Like Nirvana diminishes the original. It celebrates it… face it, to get parodied by Weird Al means you’ve _made_ it and your work has meaning. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/36 "2007-07-11T19:15:12Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] I disagree that Smells Like Nirvana diminishes the original. It celebrates it… face it, to get parodied by Weird Al means you’ve _made_ it and your work has meaning. [/QUOTE] Very few of Weird Al’s parodies directly reference the original song or the original artist. “Smells Like Nirvana” does both - first by joking that you can never understand what Cobain is “yelling and screaming,” then by mentioning the group’s hometown, adding that being in a rock band “sure beats raising cattle,” which I took for a dig. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/37 "2007-07-11T19:47:37Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] Very few of Weird Al’s parodies directly reference the original song or the original artist. “Smells Like Nirvana” does both - first by joking that you can never understand what Cobain is “yelling and screaming,” then by mentioning the group’s hometown, adding that being in a rock band “sure beats raising cattle,” which I took for a dig. [/QUOTE] Weird Al get permission from everybody he parodies\*, and he says he only parodies songs he likes. **E-Sabbath** is right about it being a humorous celebration of the original. The artists have to know some level of ribbing is coming, look at “Achy Breaky Song.” Yankovic is a skilled enough lyricist that he avoids crappping on the songs by making bad parodies. \*: Yeah, yeah, I know, one highly publicized exception resulting from confusion about permission. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155/38 "2007-07-11T21:03:55Z")
To me, the key points of the OP’s definition of anti-ecphrasis are: 1. A work of art A, 2. inspired by or heavily referencing an older, well-established work of art B, 3. ends up with a seriously diminished artistic reputation by the existence/popularity of A. As **Reality Chuck** points out, this is pretty much the whole point of good satire. But ruling out deliberate satire, I still think there are works of art that fall in this anti-ecphrasis category. Parody, which usually has some qualities of an _hommage_ to the original, can itself become so popular that the original languishes. “What’s Opera, Doc?” is a good example; I’d bet at the time more folks knew Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as the “Kill the Wabbit” song than how it functioned in the Ring cycle. Some works of art “inspired by” an original are just so bad that you’re led to wonder if the original was all that good to begin with. “A fifth of Beethoven” might fall in this category (though this I think is more charitably a satire of the disco/pop music biz of the 1970’s). Movies based on books are another notable example. “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” were awful films based on books that–at one time–were considered good works of art; I think its fair to say neitehr book’s reputation ever recovered from its film version. To be fair, I never read “Midnight”, and although I read “Bridges” thought it was a pot-boiling melodrama even before the film revealed just how thin the material really was. I also don’t think A necessarily has to be bad for B to lose some of its luster. I study classical literature, and the Roman writer Ennius was a classic in his day–until Virgil came along, imitated and improved on this “father of Latin poetry”, and produced the Aeneid. Now the latter poem is a part of the Western canon, and Ennius survives in barely 600 lines of fragments. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-ecphrasis-works-of-art-that-diminish-other-works-of-art/411155.md?page=1)