Today in class, we discussed the concept of how societal and historical contexts give meaning to what we define as an individual. At one point, I quoted the phrase:
“We live in the cities of the dead and their ideas live in us every day.”
I mentioned the context of this idea, which I wrote 10 years ago. Hours later, one student looked up the quote and noticed it was said not by me but by a character in one of the most influential filmmakers of the last half-century, director of many classics, like The Godfather (1972), Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024):
“We live in the cities of the dead and their ideas live in us every day…”
Who said it might be beside the point, but I still felt like I was lying or plagiarizing in front of the class.
Because I have an annoying memory and almost never forget things like this no matter how many decades pass, I looked for the phrase myself and kept finding in Google and AI the same answer:
“Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024). Script Context & Pre-Production Origins. In Coppola’s early versions of the screenplay, the monologue explicitly touches on this theme during Cesar’s defense of his utopian material, Megalopolis:
Mayor Cicero: «It’s the present we live in and the present we should concern ourselves with.»
Cesar Catilina: «If we don’t care about the future, there won’t be one… We live in the cities of the dead, repeating their habits, and their dead ideas live in us while we pretend to be alive.»
Nevertheless, since I remembered an essay I published in 2012 in several languages, I easily located it using the title “La generación FaceNoBook.”
“We live the cities of the dead and their ideas live in us every day.” From La generación FaceNoBook, published in Revista Alma Mater, La Habana (July 2012), p. 5.
This, like many other quotes, has been circulating in different languages for many years before 2024 (etc.). It was published in multiple major newspapers from 2012 through 2023) and saved, in a few cases, by the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org). The original text can still be located in some newspapers like:
Milenio , B (Mexico) https://web.archive.org/web/20120508132527/https://monterrey.milenio.com/cdb/doc/impreso/9146682 (2012)
Claridad (Puerto Rico)
La Republica (Uruguay)
Informa-Tico (Costa Rica) https://web.archive.org/web/20190903182823/https://www.informa-tico.com/30-07-2012/generacion-post-facebook-democracia-directa (2019)
And in old academic sites like: http://saavedrafajardo.um.es/WEB/archivos/tribuna/DOC0530-JM.pdf
(saved in http://saavedrafajardo.um.es/WEB/archivos/tribuna/DOC0530-JM.pdf )
http://biblo-saav-faj.inf.um.es/WEB/archivos/tribuna/DOC0530-JM.pdf
http://vestigiosdeunmismomundo.inf.um.es/
So, for the record, I did not plagiarize Coppola’s movie, even though Google and every AI keep stating the opposite. I published this 15 years ago –12 years before the movie was released.
No worries millionaires, I am not going to sue anyone; I have too many problems in my life to add a new one. I just want to keep my name clean.
JM.
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