I'm more talking Wimsatt & Beardsley's Intentional Fallacy here, than Death of the Author. ;-) But I wouldn't put what I've stated in here in any particular camp - it's inevitable that if the author says they meant a work to mean something, we will take that into account in some way. Just like if someone says they see a shape in the clouds, we will look for that shape. The point is more generally that the author doesn't have the ultimate say, and can lack full insight/foresight. So it's possible for feminist literature to exist from before a time any of its authors would have known the term 'feminism', for example. I really don't think that's controversial. *edit* Complete reliance on authorial intent speaks to a fascination with the author themselves and the author's mind more than the text. It essentially treats the text as a communication between author and reader, rather than a creation in and of itself. It's not surprising, I suppose, then, that in fan communities or among people who desire highly asymmetric power structures (at worst, authoritarian rule) people will be more likely to subscribe to authorial intent.
Being a songwriter my opinion is definitely colored differently than yours. I'd laugh in the face of anyone who tried to tell me what one of my songs means if it was completely different than what I was trying to communicate. Then I'd set them straight. I will concede that if there was no direct statement by the writer of a piece as far as what the piece is about, then you most assuredly form your own opinion. I would never argue against that. Now if you HAVE that statement, then I feel you do a disservice to the creator AND the work by assuming contrary meaning. Just my opinion, mind you.
Ah, I see. My suggestion would be that since you regard your songwriting as a kind of self-expression, it's more important to you that a listener gets the message, ie. understands you, than that they find and stick to whatever it is they enjoy most in the song. I'm a writer too, but my entire practice revolves around accepting that people find their own meaning in a text, and that art is a poor medium for direct person-to-person communication. If There She Goes was a song that I played while I was pursuing a romantic relationship, that connotation would always be more central to me than the fact that (apparently) the song is about taking heroin. I don't think you can control that.
Ahahhahaha, holy shit this thread. The list of authors who have flat out lied about the content of their works is all the evidence you need that authors are not greater authorities on their work than anyone else with half a brain. After this debate of well trodden and settled theories i fully expect half of the tfw commentariat to come out in support of flat earth theories.
A lot of people these days abuse the heck out of the concept. I have not read all of Foch's posts here, so I don’t know if he's changing his stance on something once again, but he has argued for the idea that the audience's interpretation of the story is far more valid than the author's in the past. DotA is useful, but not when you use it to ignore what the actual meaning is, and twist everything that the author wrote through a tinted lense to get a message that is 180° from the original. BTW, I am sure that the author and work mentioned before was Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, but it has actually happened quite a few times. Children's author Pat Thomson: 'I failed the test set on my own book' Stranger than fiction: Ian McEwan’s son got a C in an A-level essay about one of his father’s books Also, DotA is not a universal truth in academia. There's plenty of critics who oppose it, or at least don't agree with the way it has been applied.
I agree with all of this and I've always agreed with all of this. If you think I've changed my position then it's because you've misunderstood it. I've always maintained that the best interpretation is the one that fits, but that there may be more than one that does the job.
I understand. Your opinion has never changed, only our understanding of it. In related news, we're at war with East Asia, and have always been at war with them.
We can all see what happened on this thread. First you said: "Well, even when he used characters that weren't invented whole sale, he'd warp their personalities or completely change them to be whatever he wanted." This is obviously a reference to Roberts introducing different takes on older franchise characters, eg. Star Saber, Deathsaurus. I said there wasn't a problem there, and there isn't. Then you came out with a completely different statement: "If you have to alter an already established character's personality without giving them a reason to change, also known as a character arc, that is just bad writing." You've now switched to accusing Roberts of altering characters mid-story without any rationale, and I said: nope, didn't happen. Every character that was in circulation before Roberts got his hands on them was given a pretty good impetus to change their outlook as a result of the war ending and a new phase of their life beginning. It's funny, y'know - I'm used to getting accused of stubbornly refusing to change my opinion. This is the first time anyone's had to reach as far as suggesting I've secretly changed my opinion between takes and hoped no one would notice.
Yuck, what a reach. Get over it. Trans folks dont even give a shit about this any more, their minds are pretty well made up. The only people still carrying on about it is... yeah wow the kind of people still unsure of highschool lit lessons.
Since it gets brought up TO THIS DAY by people deriding it, I'd say you're wrong. Whatever, though. I'll simply refuse to debate since you can't see past your own sense of superiority.
What you hear is the supersonic sound of Prowl dodging out of the way to miss the point. In any case, what was this topic about again? Oh yeah, Froid's back (cool i guess?) and despite the toy-accurate stylings of the series so far, Quake isn't the bisho hottie we all expected I refuse to let the latter point go.
I really hate to butt in on this debate but I'm curious about this list of lying authors. Which authors are you referring to here?
I mean, J.K. Rowling is the probably best recent example with her now famous "Voldemort's pet snake was always intended to be a Korean Lady transformed into a snake despite that contradicting what happened in the books"... to say nothing of the Werewolf AIDs thing. It's been her that's really gotten the ball rolling again for a lot of the current "Death of the Author" VS "Authorial Intent" conversations. The conversation there stems on what's important when a much beloved piece of work is beginning to be lessened by a stream of retcons and EU nonsense from an author that, for whatever reason, feels the odd need to insist that the new content is not things she recently thought of (when it clearly is) rather than portraying it as what it is. Oh, the irony again. Get a mirror if you can stand looking at yourself.
This is a delightful assertion, and certainly bears out in this community, but i maybe wouldnt go so far as to say that it applies to fan communities per se. Rather i’d see it as one of the aesthetic and perhaps epistemological functions of late capitalism. For instance, early fan communities (from the turn of the century to the 60s say) were performing quite a lot of interventionary practices. By which i mean basically anyone reading weird tales at the time, flowing into scifi pulps, and then say the star trek fandom which was very interventionary and very radically so. However since then, fan communities have become increasingly reactionary, conservative, and self loathing. The constant derision aimed at tumblr and deviant art is a great example of this; the artificial division between the amateur (whose work is not yet commodity and therefore without worth) and the expert (whose work has worth only vis a vis its commodity value). All that is really left to the fan community is to “vote with the wallet,” or rather judge with the wallet. Which is to say, the aesthetic now has a dollar value because it has been robbed of everything else.
