Well, it was the point when I was in school: to write a coherent essay about something you believed it. Not to write bullshit. Maybe that’s changed.
But it’s yours. If everyone one can assign their own meaning to a work, then the work has no inherent meaning. And with no inherent meaning, then the assigned meaning by the reader has no validity.
Absolutely not. Symbolism and allegory are revealing, not hiding. Maybe the reader doesn’t get them on first glance, but they are there to provide themes develop depth. If you have something to say, why hide it?
So, basically, the text is unimportant. The words are meaningless. Readers can just make up whatever they want and give a justification. So it shows, as I pointed out, that it doesn’t matter what’s in the text and any analysis as a good as any other (provided there’s a justification). That means any analysis is worhtless.
I won’t call this “reader response theory” the stupidest concept I’ve ever heard, but it’s in the top ten.
That wasn’t my intention. I have observed that people who champion this sort of analysis do not write fiction and I wanted another datapoint. I was not mocking you; I just wanted to see if the pattern held.
But your comment “I’ve read enough bad fiction to recognize that this is a fallacy” is clearly condescending. First of all, what’s bad fiction? Second, just because it isn’t high literary fiction, it doesn’t mean the author doesn’t know how to write fiction (I’m not talking about self-publishing, BTW). It means they write a type of fiction that doesn’t appeal to you – and know how to write that type of fiction.
Man… Spoiler for @OdesioAt this point he thinks the alien is the size of a cat. Parker (Yaphet Kotto, RIP) tried to kill it with a steak knife a few minutes ago. He’s wrong, but he doesn’t know that yet, and there’s no reason for him to know or suspect.As far as they’re concerned, at that point in the movie, it’s basically a venomous extraterrestrial bobcat. Yes, YOU know the movie is called Alien, and it’s really a badass lion/ninja killing machine, THEY don’t know this. It is realistic that they’re treating it more like a serious case of pest control than all out war against a superior foe. You think they should abandon a spaceship and 20 million tons of ore in deep space because of a pest the size of a shoebox.
The fact that your high school teacher gave you an A for that essay suggests otherwise.
That’s not my argument. That’s part of one of my premises, plus your own absurd conclusion.
Everyone has a different reaction to art. The validity of that reaction is not dictated by how close their reaction matches the reaction the artist intended to invoke. Whether that reaction is interesting to anyone else depends on that person’s ability to articulate their reaction, and tie that reaction to specific things found in the text. Rarely, it turns out the author is available to comment on a specific reaction, and confirm or deny if it matches the reaction they intended to evoke. While this information can be valuable, it doesn’t change the fact that the person originally had a different reaction. And in some cases, a person may find that the artist’s expressed intent is less interesting or entertaining that the interpretation intended by the artist. In such situations, that person may decide to continue to engage with the work using their original assumptions, and disregard the artist’s explicit intent, because they find the work more enjoyable that way.
Because things are more meaningful if you have to work for them. A reader who has to think his way through a story to find the meaning is going to carry that experience with them much longer, than they would if the themes were state up front and clearly explained.
You literally just described it as “reasonable.”
I’m sure.
Are you seriously copping this in the same thread where you’re crapping on Alien for having an “idiot plot?”
Yeah, I’ve read a lot of books that I think were bad. And by “bad,” I mean I didn’t like them. Some of them were popular and bad. Most of them were bad and sold poorly. Pretty much all of them were genre fiction of one sort or another. I’ve got no idea where you got the idea that I’m prejudicing “literary” fiction over popular fiction, but it definitely gives me the impression that you’re having half this argument with someone in your head, and not me.
This thread is all over the place so I hope nobody minds me continuing the Alien hijack.
Does anybody know if killing off the characters in the same order as the relative fame of the actors playing them was intentional? I tried to Google up an answer but only came across an intriguing claim that the actors in real life are dying in the same order as in the film.
Yeah, maybe this is true, for the good ones. My current angst is about knowing what to do, but not how. But there is a ton of bad stuff out there and there are definitely people writing who have no idea what they are doing. But they’re not like Irving, you know.
I still maintain that not everyone knows what their work means. I think at a certain point it stops being about the writer and becomes about the reader.
But interpretation is not (to me) the same thing as meaning. You can look at the dregs in a teacup or the guts of a bird or a deck of cards and interpret a message. But that doesn’t mean that the meaning is actually there. Holding up a book as a mirror on yourself is all well and good if you enjoy it, but I still don’t think it is any more real than a clump of wet caffeiney leaves.
No, because Tom Skerritt is still alive, and Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto died after him in the film. Though Holm played an android, so he was deactivated, he didn’t die.
Also, the actor who played the alien, Bolaji Badejo, died before any of the crew members. And the cat that played Jones, who survived with Ripley, is likely long since dead.
That’s just one example I googled up, but it is far a novel (sorry) idea that the way books are taught makes people hate books. (Here is an article from Cracked, for example.) Really, could you expect any different, making kids slog through the antiquated styles of things like Silas Marner and Ethan Frome?
Bear in mind that the fame ranking of the actors at the time the movie was released was very different compared to now. Skerritt and Stanton would have been much better known than Weaver in 1979.
Two pop culture things I see people bring up constantly despite being untrue
Empire Strikes Back and Mark Hamill’s Face - There’s been a consistent rumor ever since the film The Empire Strikes Back (1980) came out that the reason there’s a scene at the beginning where Luke is attacked by a Wampa and given surgery is to cover for a car accident that happened to Mark prior to filming and to explain “why he looked different” from A New Hope (1977). However this rumor isn’t true at all, as not only did Mark do Corvette Summer (1978) right after his accident and looks basically the same as he did in A New Hope, directly comparing his appearances in both Star Wars movies he doesn’t look THAT different.
John Wayne and Nuclear Fallout - Another popular rumor is the idea that during the filming of legendary bomb The Conqueror 1956 starring John Wayne most of it was shot in an place of Utah that was near an area of Nevada where multiple nuclear weapons were tested, and that they even later trucked in large amounts of sand from that same radioactive area to use for scenes shot at studio lots which lead to over half the cast and crew getting some form of cancer, and half of that number to die of it. All of this comes from a speculative People magazine article that didn’t do any actual scientific research on it, but according to Skeptoids Brian Dunning the rate of cancer among the cast and crew was actually the average amount for people of the time and place.
This Grandfather Paradox also appears in another spot in the movie: Needing some local money, Kirk and McCoy pawn McCoy’s spectacles (which doesn’t actually get them a small fraction of the money they are likely to need). McCoy is sad to part with them, saying “These were my grandfather’s glasses” to which Kirk remarks “They will be again.”
Just a helpful reminder: Darren’s the guy who accused me of a dishonest/disingenuous representation of other folks’ views.
Let’s rewrite this dialogue:
Teacher: “What does the hat symbolize?”
Student 1: “I think it symbolizes the Dark Side of the Force.”
Teacher: “Why?”
Student 1: “It’s black.”
Teacher: “Does everything black symbolize the Dark Side of the Force? What differentiates between this hat and all other hats? How does that symbolism help you understand the story?”
Student 2: “Maybe not the dark side of the force, but I’m wondering if it’s part of the tradition of using black hats to identify evil characters; it’s a quick symbol that the character you’re meeting is a villain.”
Teacher: “Are there other texts you’re thinking of that use hats in this fashion?”
and so on.
Expressing your opinion is only the first part of the process. Backing it up with evidence and reasoning is the bulk of the process.
Seriously, this is stuff I teach to third graders. It’s astonishing that adults don’t realize it.
All of the actors were better known than Weaver and that’s apparently why she was the last survivor. The more famous the actor the quicker they die in the film. Same expectation-defying trick Hitchcock used with Janet Leigh in Psycho on a larger scale.
Oh, I see, I misunderstood your previous post. I thought you were asking about their current level of celebrity and forgetting that it was Alien that made Weaver a huge star where she wasn’t before. My apologies.
Are you sure? How many grade-school kids really know the political leanings of their teachers? How many adults can truly think back and come to a true understanding? Maybe your grade-school music teacher really was Communist, and was trying to indoctrinate the kids - you know, part of the Liberal Cabal.
Yeah, not many people know the sarcastic last verse about food lines, and most people disagree with the “no trespassing being a bad thing” verse.
heh-heh-heh. This reminded me of the Rodney Dangerfield movie, Back to School, where he gets Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay on a Vonnegut novel, and gets an F with the teacher saying something along the lines of “You know nothing of Vonnegut!”
42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything; 37 is the age of the peasant in Holy Grail who wasn’t old. Therefor the answer to 37+42 is that you can find enlightenment while young, but not if you’re old.
Another interpretation - the brilliance of noting that what we call “science” would have been called “magic” or “alchemy” 500 years ago.
Maybe she was. After all, we had a day camp counselor who – hand to God – taught us the chorus of Country Joe and the Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag”:
And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, next stop is Viet Nam And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates Ain’t no time to wonder why, whoopee we’re all gonna die
