We’re always looking for new, amazing art to inspire us. Your favorite author has a new book coming out, that experimental weirdo director you follow is working on their next film, the musician who got you through the down days just released a new single; these are all things to get excited about and, hopefully, cherish. But it is also worth expanding our horizons. In this case, I don’t mean reading a book from a genre you normally wouldn’t — though doing so wouldn’t be a bad idea — I mean looking beyond the usual roster of artists that you are familiar with on a day-to-day basis.
It’s a big world out there
there’s a lot of inspiration to be found in
international art.
Artists take ideas from others artists, knowingly or not. As long as you do something new with it, respect those that came before you, and you’re not painfully obvious about the theft, there’s no great shame in the act. David Bowie was one of the most original voices in music of all time and he famously said, “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.” Let me suggest that it is worthwhile to study art from overseas. The art from your own backyard is great and you shouldn’t ignore it, but other people are already taking ideas from that stuff. It seems like a fair bet that there are fewer folks in your field taking notes from international art.
In film, the Spaghetti Western was Italy’s take on Hollywood’s Western genre. The subgenre was kicked off by Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) (Fistful was itself based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai film Yojimbo) and led to the creation of some of the best Westerns from any country including The Great Silence (1968), Django (1966), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). They were sometimes cheaper than their Hollywood counterparts but they had a special energy to them that was starting to fade in the films that had inspired them. One film historian noted that Leone’s films caught on because it was as though Leone loved Westerns more than Westerners did.
Hong Kong’s John Woo was inspired by America’s crime pics from the 70’s and 80’s. Woo’s ‘heroic bloodshed’ shoot ‘em ups then went onto inspire America’s crime movies of the late 90’s and early 00’s. This back and forth of ‘you inspire me and now I’m gonna inspire you’ is cool to see. It may not last long – by the time Woo became a Hollywood director himself, that style of action movie was starting to lose its appeal – but for a brief moment that fire of inspiration and influence can burn very bright.
America is going through something of a giant monster revival right now and Japan’s Godzilla is to thank. Interestingly, though, Japan’s last Godzilla movie before this new popular boom, Godzilla: Final Wars (2004), was a big box office flop domestically. Then Legendary’s American Godzilla (2014), directed by Gareth Edwards, seems to have sparked new interest in the big guy back in Japan. Toho’s Shin Godzilla (2016) became one of the biggest hits in the series. It’s difficult to quantify how much renewed interest sparked by the Hollywood reinterpretation played some part in that film’s success. On the same note, we tend to think of these giant monster movies as a distinctly Japanese thing. But the creators of the original Godzilla (1954) were not shy about admitting they were inspired by Hollywood’s King Kong (1933). And if you’d asked Ray Bradbury, he’d probably tell you 54’s Godzilla ripped off his idea as seen in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), which had been based on his short story The Fog Horn (though there are similarities between Godzilla and Fathoms, I think Bradbury was needlessly grumpy about a perceived theft of ideas). So the back and forth of inspiration between international artists has been a constant in giant monster sci-fi from the beginning.
Hollywood’s also big on superhero cinema right now, so it makes sense that other countries would try their hand at something similar. The results have been… interesting. Foreign films are lacking name recognition and a back catalog of hundreds of comics to work with, so they’re really just working with enthusiasm and inspiration, and you can’t really knock that.
There is a risk of cultural appropriation when you look to take inspiration from artists of wildly different backgrounds than that of your own. Please, please try to be respectful. The notion of looking overseas for inspiration is not about remaking a culture to fit your own but about finding something you love about international stories and seeing if notes from those stories can fit your world. Example: You can write a cyberpunk sci-fi inspired by Ghost in the Shell (1995). But maybe don’t actually make a Ghost in the Shell movie with a white lady in a Japanese lady’s role and set it in Tokyo though most everybody’s white. Basically, if anything in your story reminds you of that Katy Perry music video in Egypt, you’ve messed up… But if you’re a respectful artist, you know the line and when not to cross it. Chances are you’re surrounded by multicultural art already without ever leaving your home country. So, you know.
It’s not about trying to outdo your international counterparts. On some level, we’re all telling very similar stories but in different ways. Yasujiro Ozu’s family dramas about contemporary Japanese life in 1950’s are relatable to American dramas. Similarly, American Westerns have a lot of in common with Japanese samurai action movies. Our countries, our cultures, and our circumstances shape stories to fit a particular mold, but some ideas are universal. Look beyond your borders for international inspiration.
