Because everyone that thinks that not everything has a hidden meaning and not everything benifits positively from fine dissection is autistic?
Okay, I’m not really seeing the connection you’re trying to establish between, “What did this book make you think about,” and “What is the purpose of your grandmother’s cancer.” It’s not my bag, but there are certainly religiously inclined folk who find solace in the face of personal tragedy by ascribing events to some larger plan.
Now I want to go to an art museum and walk up to people looking at a picture and ask them, “What do you think of it…objectively.”
He hates literature. That’s his problem. He thinks literary analysis is a made - up concept with no value and that we’re stupid for liking it.
No, we don’t. Some, to be sure, but hardly all of us. I’ve had symbolism pointed out in my own work, and, oh yeah, that fits. But for many it’s just an unconscious process. Part of the problem with making authors the sole arbiter of the meaning of their work is that we often don’t know what it is. Or, as is the case with a project I spent six years on, the meaning evolves over time, it served a specific function to me, the writer, and now it no longer has that meaning, and has evolved to be something else. It’s a common refrain in the field that when you ask prolific writers about their process they just pull answers out of their asses because they don’t really know. Stephen Pressfield has talked about how his editor has to explain to him the meaning of his own work. Show me 10,000 writers and I will show you 10,000 ways to write a book.
Do you truly believe that James knew she was subverting a clichéd trope? Have you listened to interviews with this woman? Are you familiar with her larger body of work? She elephanted her way through the China shop of literature, as many do. And while I hate 50 Shades, and find her prose cringey, the woman knows how to tell a story, and I promise you she lacks the self - awareness or commitment to her craft to learn the abstract skills to do that. She just did it. Innately.
I’ve worked with so many writers over the years, experienced and new, myself, my colleagues, random people on the internet, amateurs, successful published authors, and the idea that we all know what we’re doing is just laughable. Forty years from now I still won’t know what I’m doing.
Yes, and for a hundred given religions there are a thousand different, contradictory, nondisprovable answers.
Here’s what I’m seeing from “reader response” classes:
Teacher: “What does the hat symbolize?”
Student 1: “My feelings tell me it symbolizes the Dark Side of the Force.”
Teacher: “Excellent! You get an A for having feelings!”
Student 2: “My feelings tell me it symbolizes racism.”
Teacher: “Excellent! You get an A for having feelings!”
Student 3: “My feelings tell me it has a good beat and I can dance to it.”
Teacher: “Excellent! You get an A for having feelings!”
I see it as deepity. I see it as not hugely removed from post-fact “science.”
No, you are absolutely not seeing anything like that in reader response classes. That’s a crude caricature that exists only in your own mind, and bears no actual resemblance to what anyone has said in this thread, much less what’s taught in any actual class room.
For real: why are you so angry that some people like to think about literature?
I think that just because you are holding a hammer not everything you look at is a nail. And I have read thousands of books, I simply do not use them for bibliomancy.
Oh shit, thousands!?
General Jack D. Ripper:
I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake:
No.
General Jack D. Ripper:
But I… I do deny them my essence.
What I’m taking away from this thread is that Alien is an awesome movie.
It’s chest - burstingly amazing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
(Happy 21st Cake Day, wow!)
That is indeed what I wanted to convey. It is pretty clearly illustrated that the meaning that the audience ascribes to a work is not determined by the author. There are just too many examples of such to ignore. To use something somewhat contemporary: The Room by Tommy Wisseau was originally intended to be a dramatic story about man whose girlfriend cheated on him, not a comedy. But humor is the meaning people get out of it today.
I’m sure that, if you thought about it for a second, you can also think of works where the author’s intended meaning was rejected by the audience. It seems pretty clear that the author is not the sole arbiter of meaning.
I also am not a fan of this devaluation of study and expertise in our culture today. It does not make sense that the poorly backed up argument by someone who has not studied the subject is so often treated as being just as valid as the experts. I don’t think we should give much weight to the average Joe who comes in and declares that an entire field of study is going about it the wrong way.
That’s not to say that anything is unassailable, and that an outsider perspective is meaningless. But, when the current consensus came from a whole lot of study, the refutation will generally require the same level of study.
I do not restrict this to the “hard” science fields as many so often do. Just because there is some level of subjectivity in the pursuit of a discipline doesn’t mean that any and all opinions are equally valid.
The anti-intellectual streak in a whole lot of modern culture is not a good thing.
Thanks. Hard to believe you guys have kept me around for 21 years.
I know you included a smiley, and so are not putting this forth as a legitimate argument. But I do want to clarify that it doesn’t invalidate my premise at all. For one thing, my premise is that it is the strength of the argument that matters. You would thus need to make a strong argument that this is the case, one that is stronger than the argument made by experts.
I also was confining myself to literary criticism. Reality is somewhat similar but it is not entirely the same. Intent has a lot more importance in a reality where (we act like) free will is a thing. And discovering facts is a more convoluted process.
Analyzing real life is, unsurprisingly, much more complicated than analyzing fiction.
Some of the books on her list are awesome, though. And I begin to doubt her as a credible authority if she thinks there is any shortage of magic, epic adventures, murder, sex, violence, slapstick toilet humor, etc. I wonder if she bothered cracking any of them open? Makes one tend to dismiss her rather than pay attention to any valid points she may have concerning what books are appropriate for children.
I’m not saying it can’t happen. I’m saying that it’s unusual. And that the author is the final arbiter of whether it’s symbolism or not. Someone can point it out, but the author has the final say.
I haven’t read any of her work. Maybe it was accidental that she subverted the trope. But she did know how to write a story that people found compelling. In that respect, she knew what she was doing, even if she couldn’t articulate her reasons. Some writers innately know what they’re doing, but they still know what they’re doing.
That’s bending the definition. Authors know what they’re doing and what they’re trying to achieve. The difficulty is learning how to actually achieve it.
But there’s a difference between doing it organically from the character and situation, and contriving a bogus situation to make it work. The entire movie was filled with badly contrived situations and reactions that didn’t make the slightest bit of sense from a character/plot standpoint, but was only just there to make the audience jump.
I thought it was a pretty stupid thing to do from the beginning. By the time they explained it (which did make sense), everyone else was behaving like an idiot, so it didn’t particularly justify it.
It also was a pretty stupid justification. It made absolutely no sense for the people of the Evil Corporation to do what it did. It was risking millions of tons of ore (presumably valuable) for no return.
Raiders was an homage to 30s serials (including 12 distinct “chapters”), which were never known for deep characters or tight plotting. You’re pointing out nitpicks that the story doesn’t depend on. Alien depends on the characters being stupid.
You mean the “What the fuck is he doing?” scene. The one where, knowing that there’s a killer alien aboard the ship, he just ignores the possibility it might be around him? And what the hell is he doing taking a shower? Any actual human in this situation would be on the alert and wary of everying and would have his weapon at the ready.
This actually was the scene that showed me that the characters were idiots. It is not a great scene. It’s Stanton going around holding up a sign “I’m the next victim” in a neon sign. And it fails because the Alien’s appearance is not a surprise.
A very low bar. Jump scares just annoy the hell out of me. They’re cheap manipulation and the easiest effect for a director to achieve.
I agree, that scene is quite effective in all respects.
But it goes downhill after that. I remember watching it from that point on and constantly asking “Why is he doing that?” “Why is she doing that?” “What the hell are they thinking?”
She seems to be saying that the purpose of high school English/literature class should be to teach kids that reading can be good escapist entertainment. I heartily disagree: they should be taught that long before they get to high school. In high school they should learn to dig deeper.
I am reminded of what Laura Miller said about reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where she first learned to look beyond a book’s surface meaning:
This is from chapter 11 (“Required Reading”) of her The Magician’s Book (which I highly recommend), a book about C. S. Lewis and Narnia, but which also has some things to say about books and reading more generally.
I have never heard a writer say “I have the final say.”
But I have heard many many creative people say that they won’t offer interpretations of their work because they don’t want to interfere with their readers, or listeners, or viewers appreciation or enjoyment.
And horror movies aren’t known for character that make smart decisions. Why is a flaw endemic to the genre acceptable in the first, but fatal to the second?