Appropriation

Use of pre-existing media or texts within a new work, often to critique, comment upon, or pay homage to the original source material
Polina Barmina 2025-09-24

Explication

Appropriation involves reusing existing content — text, images, audio, or videos — and turning it into a different creation, such as memes, remixes, and mashups. The term derives from the Latin word appropriare, which means “to make one’s own”, from the Latin root proprius, meaning “own,” the root of the word “property” (Rogers 475). The idea of appropriation has been common in art since the 1970s (Pichlmair 1). In the second half of the 20th century, appropriation art aimed to decontextualize the symbols of consumerism, such as brands, advertisements, and logos. Today, this practice is well-established in mass-production of cultural products and digital content, including films, electronic literature (e-lit), video games, etc.

Appropriation intersects with the term adaptation. Both terms are dependent on the established canons, whether in the realm of traditional literature or in the emerging field of digital narratives and are closely interrelated. However, adaptation usually signals a relationship with an informing source text either through its title or through more embedded references. Appropriation often transforms the original work into a different cultural product by adding elements or offering critique, which may result in a new genre (Sanders 35) or implicit collaboration (Skains 1). Appropriation is based on re-interpretation and implies comparative approaches and juxtaposing the initial work against a new creation. Such creations involve complex, layered, and hidden relationships with their source material compared to the more direct approach of a film adaptation of a well-known text.

Historically, appropriation is deeply rooted in postmodernism, where techniques such as pastiche, intertextuality, bricolage, and sampling have come to define aesthetic and textual strategies. Postmodern artists and writers had blurred the lines between high and low culture, originality and imitation, making appropriation a hallmark of postmodern expression and a method for questioning authenticity, authorship, and the stability of meaning.

Among problematic aspects of appropriation are the modern legal notions of copyright (homage, plagiarism), ethical questions, and cultural heritage preservation. The concept of “cultural appropriation”, intertwined with cultural politics, is often associated with the commodification of marginalized and/or colonized cultures (Rogers 474). It reconsiders the accessibility of art forms across different cultures, the issues of inclusion, and the questions of cross-cultural justice. Sinnreich et al. (2009) showed that the attitudes of audience toward appropriation depend upon the perception of commercialism and originality in the piece; if the work was appropriated for profit, or if the appropriated work was seen as copying rather than contributing something original, it was more likely to be seen as unethical.

With the rise of AI-generated content, remix culture on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, and the mass circulation of memes, the debates surrounding the ethics of appropriation, authorship, and originality have become even more complex. For example, Nicholas Carr argues that the digital environment’s emphasis on fragmentation and rapid consumption undermines the very depth of engagement with cultural works. He claims that in a digital age where users are encouraged to quickly consume and repurpose information, the practice of appropriation becomes shallow and loses its critical potential. Carr writes that the digital age promotes “cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning” (Carr 116), turning the act of appropriation into a surface-level interaction rather than a meaningful transformation. In contrast, Lev Manovich offers a more optimistic perspective. He highlights sampling, remixing, and database logic as fundamental features of new media, suggesting that digital artworks often emerge as compilations or recombinations of pre-existing cultural materials rather than entirely original creations. Manovich contends that creativity lies not in inventing entirely new elements, but in assembling existing objects in a new selection and sequence that makes the work original (Manovich 130). In a similar fashion, Jonathan Lethem defends appropriation, claiming that appropriation, imitation, quoting, referencing, and subtle collaboration are essential parts of creativity and appear in all forms and genres of cultural work (Lethem 61). He argues that appropriation, whether in traditional or digital forms, is a flow of shared ideas rather than a simple case of stealing.

Lawrence Lessig’s work on remix culture provides a key legal and ethical framework for understanding appropriation in the digital age. He argues that remixing—creatively reusing cultural content—is vital to modern cultural production and that digital technologies will reshape the way people access content (Lessig 72). Lessig critiques traditional copyright laws for conflicting with non-commercial creative practices and advocates for a more flexible legal approach that supports free culture.

As for the existing examples of appropriation works in the field of e-lit, Donna Leishman’s Red Riding Hood (2001) illustrates a postmodern shift toward minimalism and layered meanings through its reimagining of the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. While the basic plot elements remain similar (Red Riding Hood’s mother sends her to her grandmother with a basket, and she travels through the forest, meeting a boy, instead of a wolf), Leishman then updates the story to reflect contemporary issues (Almas 83). The modern appropriation questions traditional distinctions between good and evil, innocence and experience, highlighting a more nuanced and ambiguous portrayal of the characters.

In the medium of video games, a new media piece PainStation (2001) exemplifies appropriation of art in two ways: it incorporates an intuitive reference to the Sony PlayStation (home video game console released in 1994) while also appropriating Pong (table tennis–themed twitch arcade, 1972), one of the earliest video games. PainStation is an interactive game where two players compete against each other, where losing points results in physical discomfort, such as heat, electric shocks, or whips, as controlled by the game’s feedback system, adding a unique and intense sensory dimension to gameplay_._ The game merges cultural concepts such as brands, merit, endurance, and competition and unites these elements into a single interactive art piece (Pichlmair 3).

See Also

• Digital Narrative - Any form of storytelling driven by algorithmic narrativity, inflected and mediated by computation or the context of ubiquitous technological networks.
• Electronic Literature (e-lit) - Variety of born-digital genres and formats that engage the capabilities of computing, often investigating the materiality of our everyday interactions with digital media
• Remix - The recombination of existing media elements to create new works, highlighting issues of authorship, originality, and copyright in the digital age
• Remediation - Representation or incorporation of a creative work into a newer medium

Works Referenced

Almas, Neelum. “Digital Appropriation of Children’s Literature: A Postmodernist Critique of Red Riding Hood.” Journal of Gender and Social Issues, vol. 21, no. 2, 2022.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Leishman, Donna. “Red Riding Hood.” Electronic Literature Collection, 2001, https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/leishman__redridinghood.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Bloomsbury Academic, 2008.

Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence.” Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 2007. https://www.najculture.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/74cca1a6-aa58-4d42-8dd8-ae71fe0f4fa1/content. Accessed 8 May 2025.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. MIT Press, 2002. https://dss-edit.com/plu/Manovich-Lev_The_Language_of_the_New_Media.pdf. Accessed 2 May 2025.

Pichlmair, Martin. “Pwned — 10 Tales of Appropriation in Video Games.” Mediaterra Conference, Athens, 2006.

Rogers, Richard A. “From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation.” Communication Theory, vol. 16, no. 4, Nov. 2006, pp. 474—503. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2006.00277.x.

Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. Routledge, 2015.

Sinnreich, Aram, Mark Latonero, and Marissa Gluck. “Ethics Reconfigured: How Today’s Media Consumers Evaluate the Role of Creative Reappropriation.” Information, Communication & Society, vol. 12, no. 8, 2009, pp. 1242—1260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691180902890117.

Skains, R. Lyle. “Creative Commons and Appropriation: Implicit Collaboration in Digital Works.” Publications, vol. 4, no. 1, 2016, p. 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications4010007.

Further Reading

Bastin, Hugo, Vandal-Sirois, and Georges L. “Adaptation and Appropriation: Is There a Limit?” 2012, pp. 21—41.

Camfield, William A. “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917.” Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century, 1990.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Penguin Press, 2004. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.

Voyce, Stephen. “Toward an Open Source Poetics: Appropriation, Collaboration, and the Commons.” Criticism, vol. 53, no. 3, 2011, pp. 407—438. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23133908. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.

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