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Wankers - Is it art, or poop?
Posts
OK, then I will simply consent that you and I will just not see eye to eye on this point.
Unfortunately, I think your philosophy is pretty unhealthy because, like it or not, your work - if published - will be interpreted. And other than stamping your feet about it or summarizing your intentions in a foreword, there's really, literally nothing you can do about it.
I won't begrudge you your philosophy, I just hope you don't go nuts about it in the future because it's not really compatible with the way society and art function together, PARTICULARLY in literature. I mean, if you were a painter, I'd say "oh well." But I think literature opens itself up to legitimate interpretation more so than any other art form.
One argument was about whether or not certain classes of objects were considered art.
The other was about whether an object of a class that is considered art is still "art" if nobody sees it but its creator. I'm not even sure how we got into that one.
They aren't two distinct issues - they are the same issue.
Your idea of "classes of objects" is completely arbitrary.
You cannot say "art is only what the creator intends to be art" and then in the same breath say "but certain classes of objects are inherently art by their very nature." It is a logical fallacy.
How did you manage to get the exact opposite of what I said?
Edit: For that matter, I said nothing about "art only being what the creator intended to be art".
I said that the meaning of a piece of art is only what the creator intended. Could it be that your entire side of this argument has been based on misreading?
But then you might as well be writing goobledygook - because if your interpretation of the piece is all that matters, and screw everybody else - your work can still be art if no-one understands it.
Therefore, me spilling your diet Pepsi is art - because I understand it, and if you don't that's your problem.
Starting with the fact that you confuse the word intent with interpretation. If I write gobbeldygook, it's gobbeldygook, end of discussion. The fact that I might try to convince someone otherwise doesn't change the intent.
You know, I think it is.
Shoot me in the face now, please.
However, parts of my arguement - specifically, those based around our argument as to whether the viewer's interpretation is as important as the artist's, still stand.
EDIT: My misreading was - when you asked if Emily Dickenson's poems were art to Drez, I assumed you were replying to me in regards to her unpublished poems.
If you argue that an audience is required for created objects to be art, then you are forced to conclude that, prior to 1886, they were not art. Which is ridiculous. The poems didn't go under any qualitiative change when they were published.
An audience however, is not necessarily limited to being someone who is not the creator.
Exactly.
If no-one can appreciate them, not even the author herself (beacuse she's dead), they are not art. They are objects.
If you want to say that "art" is only those classes of objects that are socially recognised as "art", then you are tacitly approving the notion that art requires an audience - because without a human observer an object cannot be classified.
I don't understand the fascination with what the intended meaning behind a piece of literature is. Because, quite frankly, I couldn't give two shits about the personal opinions of some complete stranger, much less someone who's been dead for decades/centuries. Maybe historians are interested in that angle, but for the average person I think it's irrelevant. You don't read books to receive a lesson from a dead writer with no context. In my opinion, what the author had in mind when writing the book is little more than an interesting piece of trivia, and your own personal interpretation of the morale behind the text is what gives it meaning. I would even go so far as to say that something could be called "art" without any intent on the part of the creator, if a sufficient number of people are able to interpret meaning from it in some way.
The main problem, in my opinion, is that it is entirely impossible to glean the author's intention. Unless he outright says "this is what I intended" and he is telling the truth, there is absolutely no way to suss out what he meant. You cannot, for instance, assume you know what an author intended considering his life, because writers can write whatever the hell they want. You can't assume their protagonists share philosophical, political, or moral or ethical views with the author, you cannot assume they even share the same tastes as the author, if that is delved into in the book. Hell, William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter, never having even touched a computer at that point. It's entirely possible that William Gibson is a secret Luddite. We assume he's not considering his work, and considering the interviews he's given, and considering many other factors, but it isn't really possible to know. Maybe his intentions were to scare us all at what the future of technology could portend. After all, the Bridge and Sprawl trilogies paint a very bleak future.
This is why interpretation is the only thing that matters, to me. Because the author's intention will never truly be known. It's just...there. A good writer will convey his meaning properly to as many as can hear his message. But it is simply not possible in 99.9999999% of the cases out there to know what an author truly intended with his work or what the "correct" interpretation of it is, in accordance with what the writer meant when he wrote it.
The paint sitting on the canvas is not art. Art only exists in its relationship with the audience, or between the author and the audience; it is a discourse. It's not a concrete object. If we were to burn the Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa would still be art, because the paint and canvas itself is not what makes it art. As such, art exists in a bizarre sort of realm, especially if it's written language art. Who is the author to say what his work means? What gives him the right to determine and restrict its meaning? Why does creation automatically grant ownership? There is a whole culture interpreting his work, and he is just one person. Hell, if art exists as a discourse, then the audience is creating it just as much as the author.
I have basically just summed up several critical articles on literature without even meaning to. Hoorah.
I also find this interesting:
If you write it, and you read it, and no one else, yours is the only interpretation, and you are the only audience. You're golden.
If someone else reads it, and they interpret it differently, what exactly is it that makes you, as the creator, more important than them in determining its meaning? Your response will likely be rolleyed and involve ideas like "self-evident" and "obvious," but I really would like you to attempt to explain it. If their interpretation is rooted in a close reading making use of evidence and observation and the linking of ideas, while yours is "well, I fucking wrote it," I think theirs would be the stronger argument, regardless of authorship.
Obviously, any reading that is stretching to grasp something is going to be weak and fall flat. But it is perfectly possible to do an alternate reading of a text that is well supported and strong, without conforming to the author's original intended meaning at all. The very fact that it is possible to strongly support the reading makes it a good and valid reading. I think that is the only metric by which you can measure the worth of an interpretation: the strength of the argument and evidence for it.
We're not REALLY debating the nature of art so much as we're dancing around it and debating the importance of audience involvement in art, and whether or not interpretation is valid or not. It is important for us to define our personal concepts of art, I believe, to discuss this issue at all.
TP, the idea that the author's intention was irrelevant probably first became popular (at least, most recently) with New Criticism in... the 40s or around there, I think? They called the idea that the author's intention was the only important (or even most important) interpretation of a work fallacy of intention (actually, they called it intentional fallacy, but that makes it sound like it's on purpose). They also believed that it was possible, if not prevalent, for a single work to contain multiple - even contradictory - meanings based on the reading, and called that overdetermination.
This is different from claiming the most important meaning is the one you feel after reading it (see: Zek's post). The New Critics (who are now old critics, really, but I don't know what else to call them) had a fallacy for that too. They didn't say that every interpretation was equally valid, or valid at all - the important interpretations were those with evidence not only from the plot, but from the diction and techniques the author used, such as the connotations of the words he used, or examining symbolism, or whatever else.
A few decades later the deconstructionists popped up and said "hey, look, you can find evidence for anything if you read things in a specific way." Personally, I really, really don't like deconstructionism, because it seems (to me) to be grounded in intentionally misreading the work and then defending that interpretation with fallacious reasoning, but that's not the point. I'm going off on a tangent.
The point is, TP, that thinking all that matters is the intention of the author is somewhat outdated. Of course, just saying "that thinking is outdated" isn't much of an argument, so I'd say you have to show that no matter what a work says, the only thing that matters is what the author says it says. Say you read a book about a megalomaniac who pushes his family and friends away as he rises to the top and subjugates others, and everything in the text itself shows the harmful effects this has on the rest of society. Now if the author tells you that the book is really about how people need to have ambition to succeed and that's the only thing the book could possibly mean, do you believe him? And what about books where we don't know the author's intention? Does the book then have no meaning, or is that an exception where we can try to find a meaning through close reading?
I'd just like to say that, as an English major about to apply for my master's degree, I found that link fucking fantastic.
I've also sat in on PhD presentations and scribbled down notes of complete gibberish with the express purpose of hiding away so I can pull it out later and laugh at it, but you know what else? I've also learned a lot from the actually cogent thinkers in the field, of which -- yes -- Derrida is emphatically one, and Foucalt is emphatically one, and oh haha they're French let's mock them (sorry, that article you linked had an equally appalling bullshit:meaning ratio as the field he's choosing to engage, so it's a little annoying).
Anyway, besides all that -- emphatically yes, the critical approach you take to the work will drastically change the various meanings you can draw from it. The major critical schools are founded on a long line of cogent reasoning to reach their assumptions, and it is emphatically justifiable to read Jane Eyre through a Marxist lens just as it is to dissect "Dover Beach" through a feminist lens just as it is to read Dave Eggers through a New Critical lens just as it is to read For Whom the Bell Tolls through a biographical lens, etc. Yes, finding these meaning does require that you write, assert, and create a critical platform upon which to stand and draw meaning. I really don't see why that makes people so uncomfortable.
Which reminds me, I meant to link this article as one I feel more fairly represents the negatives of the field, while still finding time to give it its appropriate credit.
angry
Forgive me for such a large, off topic post, but I just have to answer this question!
The book is supposedly symbolic of the Populist movement of the late 1800s to early 1900s (very successful 3rd party movement, although the progressive presidents such as Wilson and Teddy R are the ones who pushed much of their ideas through).
The book is clearly written to be a children's story, and I believe the comparison to populism was not "discovered" until the 50s or 60s. Although, Baum was a writer for a Chicago newspaper (and I believe at one point wrote opinion pieces). I don't think its too much to assume he wrote his political leanings, or at least opinions of the populist movement into the story. Keeping in mind the book is fairly different from the MGM movie version, heres a bit of the symbolism:
Yellow Brick Road/The Gold Standard: the US stopped freely pressing silver into coins in the 1870s due to ore being more valuable than coinage from lack of large minable deposits... large deposits were later found in the 80s-90s making coinage more valuable again... although the government wasnt pressing it into coins for free anymore. Farmers wanted the US dollar to be backed by gold and silver to inflate the value of money so they could pay off their debts more easily. Williams Jennings Bryan, the populist's presidental candidate, delivers a powerful speech called the Cross of Gold and he becomes the man in Washington (for a time).
Dorothy's *Silver* Slippers: Dorothy, the poor farm girl from Kansas, is waltzing around in silver slippers to represent the need for the free pressing of silver into coins.
Cowardly Lion: Williams Jennings Bryan... the guy who can speak big but gets nothing done in the end. WJB never ends up getting elected to the Presidency, although he eventually does come back to Washington and pisses Wilson off due to WJB taking an extremely anti-war stance on WWI (how dare he argue against neutrality of the seas!). Although, most people around here would probably shit all over him since hes responsible for turning the fundamentalist movement in this country against evolution in general. Very interesting character in US history, and historians love this guy.
Wicked Witch of the West: What is driving farmers mad? Why that bitch who goes down with just a little water.
Flying Monkies: The ignorant black vote at the time. In the movie, they're just beholden to the witch, but in the book they're controlled by a gold thymbol (empty promises). Generally, in the time period, to get the black swing vote politicians (the populists did this as well) would make promises they would eventually reneg on when they got to office. You got three wishes from the golden thymbol before the monkies got to do their own thing (these honkies playin some jive on us!).
Theres a lot more more symbolism in the book, and most can easily be traced to the objectives and history of the populist movement in the southern & western United States. This is the iconic American fairytale.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Eh, you can never be too dead. See: Zombie Apocalypse thread.
But, yeah, with regards to literature, I agree with you.
No, but! Deconstructionism! The death of the author! And stuff!
I always fucking despised any over-emphasis on the validity of interpretation, personally. I write something and you interpret it in any other manner than that which I intended, whoo, I'm happy for you. I hope you get something out of this new angle from which you're taking my work to pieces. I might even think of something else to explore within the work as a result - but when you get right down to it I could never think of it in terms of your opinion being just as valid. To me it'd just mean I'd got something wrong. <shrugs>
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
Pretty much. Not to pile on, but this article was a poorly written piece of snark. Deconstruction can be taken to silly extremes, but if you look at it as a reponse to structuralism it begins to make a lot more sense. If anything, the hubris of structuralism as literature's panacea is a lot more laughable. I got the feeling that the author learned just enough to misrepresent literary criticism and take a few shots at academia. Though those are valid targets, the arguments and supporting evidence he uses have serious flaws.
As to the topic at hand, authorial intent is terribly overrated. I mentioned Roland Barthes earlier, but anyone who wants to see what an excellent literary analysis can do should check out S/Z. To rely upon an author assign the ultimate meaning to a book (assuming the author is alive, cares to comment, and actually knows what the uber-meaning is) really stifles discussion. The point here is to investigate why and how the written word is able to evoke. That's not to say all interpretations are equally valid, of course. Crap reasoning/evidence = crap analysis.
Bad english on my part... what I mean is that until some date in the 1870s, you could take your mined silver/gold to a government office and they would turn it into coins freely for you. It was a good policy for a new nation attempting to circulate more currency, although not much silver was ever pressed due to the high value of mined silver. When large deposits were found soon after the removal of free silver pressing, a typical political shitstorm in this country ensued (wont somebody think of the farmers!?).
That's funny, I can do that just fine without disregarding that the author might have intended their work to convey one thing over another and that if I think (hypothetical example X) I'm reading it "wrong".
Confrontational replies aside, this is just another instance of me not getting most advanced schools of literary criticism... not so much thinking they're totally without merit but that all too many of them are vastly, vastly over-rated. But then I'm fairly resigned to not getting a first on account of neither being able to fall in line with my tutors on these things, nor possessing the eloquence to adequately explain why. It just seems too obvious to me.
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
It's not putting meaning in the novel that isn't there, it's simply re-interpreting it with a new perspective. No one thought to comment on Desdemona's frailty and secondary role to the story until the 1960s, that doesn't mean it isn't an interesting way to explore the meaning in Shakespeare's play.
That's a good way of looking at it, too, though, as a writer. Make sure you convey properly and clearly if you don't want your work misinterpreted. The threat of misinterpretation is a strong impetus to write clearly and properly. This is another reason I thoroughly detest Target Practice's philosophy: it has the potential for excusing bad writing.
If you don't want to be misinterpreted and you are strict in how you want your writing to be read, write well. Otherwise, tough shit.
Which is why such interpretations gain validity after the person is dead in literature.
1984, possibly.
EDIT: No, that doesn't work because the theme hasn't changed with time, just gotten more relevant.
I dunno, the old dead white guys really took it on the chin in some circles, and lost a lot of their purported meaning and vaunted status. I'm pretty okay with that, personally. Anyway, there's lots. We could go on. I mean, look at poor little Kusu hating the shit out of the Great Gatsby.
What a fucking overrated book
Book sucks
I've had big arguments with friends who have complained about abstract art. They'll appreciate it to a point (i think around impressionism they start to get turned off, and the saying "What is the difference between a childs painting, and one who chooses to paint like a child?!" starts to crop up), but once things start becoming difficult or emotional, the hate begins.
I'm wondering if there's a point, especially with visual art, where some people are justified in seeing no value in art. Can it get to a point where people are justified in saying "A whale floating in a swimming pool of my urine? That's not art." I'm not completely nerded up on my art school lessons, but from what I remember in Highschool a lot of Modern art seems to be one school of artists rebelling/trying to out-do another. This tends to leave the joe-bloggs museum goer out in the cold (what the fuck is that supposed to be?), but is that exactly what art should be doing? Is art designed to impress art critics really all that worthwhile?
Drunks Against Mad Mothers