# Unacknowledge Debts - But not Plagiarism **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 6, 2006, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334 "2006-07-06T05:25:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/1 "2006-07-06T05:25:51Z")
I was thinking about “Pirates of the Caribbean” and how much it reminded me of Tim Powers’ “On Stranger Tides.” I don’t think “On Stranger Tides” was plagiarized by PotC, but I do think there’s a similar “look and feel” between the two stories: the influence of the supernatural in the story, the two young lovers caught up in the adventures of a morally ambiguous pirate, etc. The two stories are different enough that I’m satisfied that no wholesale borrowing went on, but I think there might be some unacknowledged debts there. Any other such works come to mind? ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/2 "2006-07-06T05:40:39Z")
[Starting Over](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079948/) and [The Accidnetal Tourist](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094606/) Their plots are strikingly similar. They are both based on books. One is a comedy, one is a drama. The comedy came first. I don’t know if the later (Accidental Tourist) is debted to Starting Over but it really jarred me seeing both them within a day of eachother. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/3 "2006-07-06T08:59:56Z")
I’m pretty sure that **Pirates Of The Caribbean** owes a large debt of inspiration to George Macdonald Fraser’s novel **The Pyrates** , which is a gloriously funny send-up of every pirate book, movie and cliche ever. I was always hoping that someone would film the book, but in its joyful exuberance and sly send-ups of all things piratical {the crewman who had his tongue cut out and taught his parrot to talk for him - no-one’s quite sure how}, **PotC** is close enough to the spirit of Fraser’s book for me. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/4 "2006-07-06T10:20:25Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] Any other such works come to mind? [/QUOTE] Almost every pirate story since Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson. Though J.M. Barrie acknowledged the influence of Stevenson in his novellization of Peter Pan. Marc ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/5 "2006-07-06T12:29:12Z")
Any movie with a time machine has a debt to H.G. Wells. Same for alien invasion stories. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/6 "2006-07-06T13:01:31Z")
This whole thing gets tricky – is it plagiarism or borrowing or unintentional borrowing? David Gerrold swears that he didn’t intententionally steal his Tribbles from Heinlein’s “flatcats” from “the Rolling Stones”, although he acknowledges he read the book. The LucasFilm artists who came up with the two-legged “AtAt”-type Imperial Walkers for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi didn’t intentionally steal the idea from artwork portfolios that came out earlier and featured sucvh walker tanks. The guys who did “Joney, I blew up the Kid” say they didn’t steal Kit Reed’s “Attach of the Giant Baby”. I suspect that Stephen King didn’t knowledegably steal Robert Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril” for “The Running Man”. In other cases, I suspect he didn’t consciously know of his borrowing, or else thought the resemblance went no further than the basic premise (“Thinner”, "The Mist, and “The Ten O’Clock People”, especially the latter.) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/7 "2006-07-06T13:16:17Z")
[QUOTE=Case Sensitive] I’m pretty sure that **Pirates Of The Caribbean** owes a large debt of inspiration to George Macdonald Fraser’s novel **The Pyrates** , which is a gloriously funny send-up of every pirate book, movie and cliche ever. [/QUOTE] I think there’s some influence of **The Secret of Monkey Island** in there too. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/8 "2006-07-06T14:13:09Z")
[QUOTE=GuanoLad] I think there’s some influence of **The Secret of Monkey Island** in there too. [/QUOTE] In fact, it seems Dead Man’s Chest is even more inspired by Monkey Island. It has a main villiain whose “beard” moves like LeChuck’s. It also has a black “voodoo mistress” who guides them on their quest, like the “voodoo lady” in Monkey Island. It’s not theft. They just are quite similar. I hope they make a Monkey Island movie. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/9 "2006-07-06T15:39:39Z")
“Bridget Jones’s Diary” from **Pride and Prejudice**. Mark Darcy from Fitzwilliam Darcy. “Clueless” from **Emma**. Elton for Mr. Elton, a photograph for a painting. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/10 "2006-07-06T15:40:50Z")
Oops, I guess those don’t fit since they are pretty freely acknowledged. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/11 "2006-07-06T16:44:37Z")
When you do it, it’s plaigiarism. When I do it, it’s an _homage!_🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/12 "2006-07-06T17:08:26Z")
Um, are there any stories that _don’t_ have unacknowledged debts to other stories? Practically all fiction draws on established narrative conventions to some degree, yes? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/13 "2006-07-06T21:42:35Z")
[QUOTE=Fretful Porpentine] Um, are there any stories that _don’t_ have unacknowledged debts to other stories? Practically all fiction draws on established narrative conventions to some degree, yes? [/QUOTE] Sure they do, but in most cases, the debts aren’t all that easy to recognize. The thing about PotC is that even if they made a book based on “Stranger Tides” I don’t know if they’d do a better job of capturing the “look and feel” of Powers’ version of the Caribbean pirate scene. (In fact, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t.) In much the same way, I think the best movie set in William F. Gibson’s Necromancer universe is “Strange Days” which isn’t even based on a Gibson story – it’s much better than “Johnny Mnemonic.” The best John Norman adaptation is “Princess of Minerva,” an anime that’s far truer to the look and feel of Norman’s Gor than the two movies that were putatively based on the story (and that’s all I’ll be saying about that). None of these movies are plagiarism or anythign like it, but it sure do feel like SOMEBODY read the novels they capture the feel of so well … ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/14 "2006-07-06T23:16:30Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] This whole thing gets tricky – is it plagiarism or borrowing or unintentional borrowing? David Gerrold swears that he didn’t intententionally steal his Tribbles from Heinlein’s “flatcats” from “the Rolling Stones”, although he acknowledges he read the book. [/QUOTE] Not like Heinlein had a problem with it- > [@](#): > > “The Trouble With Tribbles”–the producers noticed that the Tribbles bore a decided similarity to Heinlein’s Martian flatcats in “The Rolling Stones” and so asked Heinlein’s permission for the concept (according to “The Trouble With Tribbles” author David Gerrold). Heinlein asked only for an autographed copy of the script. [http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/faqworks.html](http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/faqworks.html) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/15 "2006-07-06T23:46:24Z")
I once observed in an online discussion that Lois McMaster Bujold’s SF novel _Komarr_ has a lot of simularities to Ken Follett’s WWII thriller _The Eye of the Needle_. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/16 "2006-07-07T00:17:41Z")
I’m fascinated by the similarities between Timothy Hunter and Harry Potter. Disney’s “Aladdin” bears more than a passing resemblance to the story structure of the 1940 movie, “The Thief of Baghdad.” The various miniseries and one-shots U.S., _Justice, Kingdom Come, Kingdom, Top Ten,_ the superhero barrio subplot of _49ers_, all have a significant portion of their genesis in Alan Moore’s _Twilight of the Superheroes_ proposal. For that matter Moore owes a debt to Marvel Comics for borrowing elements of the Kree/Skrull/Captain Marvel war for the Qys/Warpsmiths/Miracleman conflict in Miracleman. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an explicit acknowledgement of that aspect of his analog. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unacknowledge-debts-but-not-plagiarism/363334/17 "2006-07-07T00:41:39Z")
[QUOTE=GuanoLad] I think there’s some influence of **The Secret of Monkey Island** in there too. [/QUOTE] As well as some inspiration from a theme park ride called…oh, dear. I’ve forgotten the name.