Today, when imitation is a good thing. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. 

One of my favorite movies to recommend is Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. You probably know the original: Steven Spielberg’s 1981 blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a swashbuckling adventure about a handsome archeologist who battles Nazis and supernatural forces to find a mysterious relic. Set in exotic locales and loaded with special effects, Raiders of the Lost Ark was a huge success. It spawned several lucrative sequels, keeping Hollywood making costly, extravagant action movies starring known characters and targeted at teen audiences. We still get that kind of content today, as digitally animated and augmented reality movies dominate the multiplex and streaming channels.

Theatrical poster for Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, Paramount, 1981). Depicted in accordance with fair use.

Raiders the remake, however, is quite different. In 1982, a year after the original film, two 12-year-old boys decided to make their own version. They loved Raiders so much that they had seen it many times, and the new VHS camcorders their parents used to film birthdays and sports games were easy to use. That summer the boys began improvising scenes with friends. Working full time each summer, it took several years to finish the remake, adapting to growing actors and necessary substitutions, like the family dog playing a monkey. 

For today’s filmgoers, accustomed to digital effects and production values costing tens of millions of dollars, the Raiders remake might look laughably amateur. Yet to dismiss it as a shoddy imitation of Spielberg misses the point. Behind the Hollywood hero’s on-screen exploits is the backstory of two teens who built their own adventure by aspiring to cinematic greatness. As they reverse engineered movie magic, their remake is an inspiring story—especially for parents and teachers like me—of kids getting off couches and screens, using their imagination, and working collaboratively and independently. 

Media scholar Henry Jenkins calls this kind of creative fan response “participatory culture.” In the past, audiences watched movies in a sort of one-way, passive consumption. But today’s media consumers, with powerful personal devices and communication platforms, are proficient in all kinds of image and sound manipulation. For them, adding to or imitating the stories they see is their form of admiration. 

Fox Elrod and David Wheelis in a scene from the fan fiction film, Indiana Jones and the Gifts of the Wise Men (Jase O'Brien, The Lost World Productions, 2024). Image appears courtesy of Jase O'Brien and The Lost World Productions.

Sometimes Hollywood tries to stop such imitations with legal threat. Steven Spielberg, however, never took action, and instead has praised the Raiders remake. Maybe it’s because Spielberg, who also started as a teen filmmaker copying movies he loved, knows how art grows through imitation. No doubt it’s also because he knows such ardent fan homage shows the impact of his work. 

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Oscar Wilde also claimed imitation is mediocrity. But if some copyright owners think imitation is theft, participatory culture reframes imitation as new art. 

Sometimes, remakes inspire originality.

I’m Karen Fang, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work. 

(Theme music)

Jim Windolf, “Raiders of the Lost Backyard.” Vanity Fair, January 2, 2008

Henry Jenkins, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture.” In David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.), Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 

This episode first aired July 30, 2024