Everything is a remix

Have you ever imagined you might be living in some kind of repetition? Déjà vu? Well, I have too, and I'm getting closer and closer to the conclusion that all available audiovisual material is nothing more than a new copy of a copy—everything we hear and watch, aside from their differences, comes from the same template.

“The same recipe with changes from whoever produces it.”

The cultural industry has remixed itself with the right formulas, spanning films and even reaching big names in music, like Led Zeppelin. But to deepen the research and understanding, I asked the Oracle:

What does Remix mean?

"Remix is the modification or remixing of a song or other material, based on the original version, with the goal of creating something new and distinct while maintaining recognizable elements of the base work. It involves changes such as adding, omitting, or transforming parts of the original content.”

Reading this, the mystery that hung in the air revealed itself. Are we living in a loop? It might be so, as science-fictional as it may seem. Since childhood, I already noticed that songs and movies were very similar. We listen, process, and repeat the same catchphrases and stories; society has repeated itself in a loop of aesthetic patterns, entertainment, career pursuits, and life stories.

“How many trilogies are there in film productions? How many remixes of remixes do we have around the world, available in an app in your pocket?”

Surfing a bit on YouTube (yes, it's possible to find quality material there), I found a documentary released in 2010 called Everything is a Remix, which touches exactly on the subjects that were running through my imagination.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, you can trust me.

Discussing originality in music, copyright, and the cultural industry, the documentary shows that artistic creation is rarely completely original. Originality has dissolved; it has been repeated, chewed up, reformulated, and regurgitated. Even Gabriel Pensador—who would've thought—made his mark with his "famous" song 2345678.

It's worth watching; it's good fuel for the imagination. It's still possible to nourish mental space through the internet.

"How would human relationships be after years of conditioning by recycled entertainment? Have we become repeaters of an obsolete culture?"

There is a call to understand a new horizon, and it's necessary. The world is full of possibilities, and we are here to express what is most authentic through each voice.

I needed to write to somehow express the interpretations I had while watching, and even then, new discoveries kept appearing. I came to the conclusion that we are the actors and actresses of this life; we can and should cultivate our own art, music, ways of communicating and dressing, and last but not least—we cannot become passive consumers of canned "culture."

Is there still room for authenticity in a world of copies?