How to Make Music Videos in the Modern World

I'm a big fan of the idea that there are no such things as new ideas. As Coco Chanel says, "Show me a man of originality, and I will show you a liar."

I happened to catch Beyonce's video for "Get Me Bodied" this weekend:

http://www.vh1.com/video/play.jhtml?artist=1236911&vid=140291

For the first few seconds, I was pretty thrilled that the director was using touches of the '60s in the costume design and was amused by the throwbacks. Then I realized I had seen this before:




For a second I thought I was making too much of a stretch, and then I found this mashup also on YouTube:



"Get Me Bodied" is just a photocopy of The Rich Man's Frug from Sweet Charity.

Yes, Beyonce just didn't Xerox the choreography and call it her own, but it's too similar to really be called anything but a copy. The concept (displaying "modern" dances in a nightclub), design (dresses) and movement (again, the choreography) are taken straight from the musical number. Just because the director uses a few different camera angles to get closeups of Beyonce doesn't make it an "homage" or "pastiche;" it's still laziness.

This is probably a bit of an extreme example of what I'm trying to get at. But my bigger fear is that no one really tries to be original anymore. I feel that more and more movies and television shows are repeats of shows from the '80s (one of the summer blockbusters was Transformers, this season alone brought us The Bionic Woman, American Gladiators, and the new Night Rider premieres in a few weeks). Has living in such a mediated society make it possible to accept this? Or are new ideas just being put on hold until we can find a new technology to facilitate them? Hmm...