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shadowkatAs an aside, I keep having people I have never heard of friending me on Facebook. Is this common? Why would you friend someone on Facebook, you don't know? LJ is different - that's blogs you read. Unless of course, you think they are someone else? Also why would you want to friend 347 people? How do you keep track of everyone?
Should go to bed, tis late and must get up at 6 am to go to work tomorrow. But my brain is busy thinking deep thoughts again on this bitterly cold night. Not inside, outside. Inside toasty, and a bit on the dry side - even with radiators that hiss and spit in the background.
While thumbing through an entertainment mag as I half-watched the news tonight, I hit upon an article about the new TV show Dollhouse - with a summary statement by the co-creators of the series, Joss Whedon and Eliza Dusku, which said - the series is about identity particulary in this age of information overload, with ipods, media saturation, internet blogs, and so many venues telling us who we are, what we should be, and how we are perceived. Actually that's my summary, this is the exact quote:
Dusku credits a four-hour lunch with Whedon in creating DOLLHOUSE, 'We talked about life and what was in the forefront of our minds in terms of what's going on in the media, the world, politics, the Internet, everything."
"Everybody is questioning their identity, the meaning of who they are,"Whedon says. "Are they a good person? What are they doing with their lives? How can they sum themselves up?"
It hit me reading this bit - that this may be why I've been so fascinated by Whedon's writing, the concept of identity, and how it gets mixed up with how we think we are percieved by others - or another way of putting it, what we see reflected back at us.
But this is not what's been tossing about in my brain tonight and I'm not even sure I can convey it well here in this measley blog. Words aren't after all always interpreted the way we intend, not always through any fault of our own.
I think that sentence above may be the key to what's been nagging at the back of my brain for some time. This tendency to misconstrue or misinterpret what we see or read. To make assumptions and adhere to those assumptions without looking at all the information. It's the flaw, I believe in the analysis, what makes the analysis slippery and questionable.
Example - years ago, I wrote a short story for a creative writing course in college. It was called Just a Bunch of Ants - and was written in the point of view of a young, lonely, frustrated art student yearning for his girlfriend. I based the character and voice on a bunch of letters I'd received from my brother. Where he jokingly tells me that he's so lonely he's writing notes to his trash can. In the story the art student has a shaved head and so does his girlfriend. I don't explain why. The class read the letter and according to the rules, I was not to say a word until they finished discussing the story and what they believed it meant.
The teacher thought it was about a survivor of a holocaust, dying of radiation poisoning. That, my teacher told us explained the bald heads and the notes to the trashcan.
Other's thought the main character had cancer or was just insane.
While a few, about a handful, figured out it was about a lonely, somewhat eccentric, art student yearning for his girlfriend and frustrated with his life.
All caught the abject lonliness, the internal struggle for identity, and the battle against a world that lacks meaning or purpose - but they didn't really understand the story - they were too busy making assumptions.
When I told them what the story was about, what my intent was - I was told that it did not matter by my teacher. Who was a bit ruffled by the fact that he'd gotten it all wrong.
He said if the plot and intent is not clear to the reader or audience, then the writer has failed. A friend of mine who was taking the class with me at the time and obsessed with Samuel Beckett's plays, specifically End-Game, vehmently disagreed - stating just because he didn't get it, did not mean I had failed. Why couldn't it be the simple story of someone who was struggling for meaning? Was it my fault they'd complicated it? Or my fault that the story wasn't the one they wanted or needed it to be?
I guess it depends on how we view stories. Are they a conversation between the reader and the writer? The writer telling us something from their perspective, sharing with us how they see the world, what is bugging them, and who they are? Is the story they are sharing about them or is it about us? I wonder sometimes if we can seperate the two - take ourselves out of the equation. Try to see the story from the writer's perspective, see what they are telling us.
Without superimposing our desires, fantasies, dreams, nightmares upon it?
Another interesting tid-bit about that creative writing class - I wrote over 20 stories for that class. I submitted numerous ones to literary publications at the school. But only one was I told by my instructor to submitt to a contest. A contest that was judged by middle-aged male and female professors. The story I submitted was about a middle-aged man struggling with what to do with his mother who was currently in a nursing home. It was in his point of view and took place on an airplane, about ten-fifteen pages in length if that. In the story an annoying, elderly passenger who resembles his mother, sits next to him, and suffers an attack, getting violently sick - much like his own mother is sick. She's not his mother, but he is struggling with the guilt. Because he's not taking care of her, he is far away, taking care of his own life. I wrote the first draft while suffering an 105 degree fever. OF the stories I wanted published, that was my least favorite and it was the hardest one to share with my family - because I'd based the tale on my own father. My intent was to discuss the complexity of how people feel about their family members, about illness. The complicated emotion. This story was more successful than Just A Bunch of Ants - because it made sense to those judging it. It fit within their framework. They identified with the main character and had experienced or were experiencing that character's anguish. Just A Bunch of Ants did not make sense to them - it was about a 18 year old art student, alone, and frustrated - farther away. Who cursed and used foul language. And was angry at the world. Just A Bunch of Ants pushed my teacher's buttons or it was a story that by itself, without the nuclear holocaust, etc - was uninteresting.
In school, when I was taught how to do literary analysis - you are taught by the way, you don't just wake up one morning and do it - I was told that you should try to figure out authorial intent, as well as what it meant to you. One is subjective and one objective analysis. The second in some respects is far harder and requires greater skill, because you are attempting to get inside someone else's head - someone you don't know. But by understanding the author, the work itself often makes more sense. I'm not sure you can fully understand Faulkner's Sound & The Fury by the way - if you did not know about the loss of his child and his own grief. And Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire takes on a whole new meaning when you find out about the child she lost and obsessed over. Same deal with Joss Whedon - it helps to know when watching Buffy, that Whedon originally wrote the story for his activist mother, who died of Cancer before the TV series aired. OR that he has written in numerous interviews that he is fascinated with the conflict about an individual's identity and society's view of what that identity should be. Also the fact that Whedon himself is a white guy, who went to prep/boarding schools, and is the child of an activist and literary mother and a television writer father. These facts do provide insight to his work. Just as the fact that James Joyce was Irish, poor, and had the majority of his later transcripts typed by French Nuns who couldn't speak English - is critical to understanding his work. He wrote about Dublin. He often wrote in Gallic and English. He had a love for the rhythm of language.
But, I often see in analysis - these items forgotten or overlooked. Critical reviews do this a lot, I think. Until they become or feel if you will excuse the term, like masturbation.
The critic indulging him or herself. Not all. I'm not saying that. Certainly not. Nor am I saying that I think you have to take authorial intent into consideration. But, to a degree, perhaps we should?
It's like having a conversation with someone - in which after a while you realize the other person is misinterpreting every word you say. Putting their own twist or meaning on your words. I've had these types of conversations with both Wales and my brother. As they have had with me. Where, we are reacting to what we think is being said, not listening and thinking about what is being said. I think this is true with stories too - the difference between the emotional reaction - which is vicerial and does not always have anything to do with the author's intent but our own perceptions or moods or what have you, and the thoughtful reaction. Right vs. Left brain if you will, although I don't believe it is nearly that cut and dried.
Anyhow it is late. Must sleep. Just letting this hang out there for whomever may pass it by, for the moment.
Should go to bed, tis late and must get up at 6 am to go to work tomorrow. But my brain is busy thinking deep thoughts again on this bitterly cold night. Not inside, outside. Inside toasty, and a bit on the dry side - even with radiators that hiss and spit in the background.
While thumbing through an entertainment mag as I half-watched the news tonight, I hit upon an article about the new TV show Dollhouse - with a summary statement by the co-creators of the series, Joss Whedon and Eliza Dusku, which said - the series is about identity particulary in this age of information overload, with ipods, media saturation, internet blogs, and so many venues telling us who we are, what we should be, and how we are perceived. Actually that's my summary, this is the exact quote:
Dusku credits a four-hour lunch with Whedon in creating DOLLHOUSE, 'We talked about life and what was in the forefront of our minds in terms of what's going on in the media, the world, politics, the Internet, everything."
"Everybody is questioning their identity, the meaning of who they are,"Whedon says. "Are they a good person? What are they doing with their lives? How can they sum themselves up?"
It hit me reading this bit - that this may be why I've been so fascinated by Whedon's writing, the concept of identity, and how it gets mixed up with how we think we are percieved by others - or another way of putting it, what we see reflected back at us.
But this is not what's been tossing about in my brain tonight and I'm not even sure I can convey it well here in this measley blog. Words aren't after all always interpreted the way we intend, not always through any fault of our own.
I think that sentence above may be the key to what's been nagging at the back of my brain for some time. This tendency to misconstrue or misinterpret what we see or read. To make assumptions and adhere to those assumptions without looking at all the information. It's the flaw, I believe in the analysis, what makes the analysis slippery and questionable.
Example - years ago, I wrote a short story for a creative writing course in college. It was called Just a Bunch of Ants - and was written in the point of view of a young, lonely, frustrated art student yearning for his girlfriend. I based the character and voice on a bunch of letters I'd received from my brother. Where he jokingly tells me that he's so lonely he's writing notes to his trash can. In the story the art student has a shaved head and so does his girlfriend. I don't explain why. The class read the letter and according to the rules, I was not to say a word until they finished discussing the story and what they believed it meant.
The teacher thought it was about a survivor of a holocaust, dying of radiation poisoning. That, my teacher told us explained the bald heads and the notes to the trashcan.
Other's thought the main character had cancer or was just insane.
While a few, about a handful, figured out it was about a lonely, somewhat eccentric, art student yearning for his girlfriend and frustrated with his life.
All caught the abject lonliness, the internal struggle for identity, and the battle against a world that lacks meaning or purpose - but they didn't really understand the story - they were too busy making assumptions.
When I told them what the story was about, what my intent was - I was told that it did not matter by my teacher. Who was a bit ruffled by the fact that he'd gotten it all wrong.
He said if the plot and intent is not clear to the reader or audience, then the writer has failed. A friend of mine who was taking the class with me at the time and obsessed with Samuel Beckett's plays, specifically End-Game, vehmently disagreed - stating just because he didn't get it, did not mean I had failed. Why couldn't it be the simple story of someone who was struggling for meaning? Was it my fault they'd complicated it? Or my fault that the story wasn't the one they wanted or needed it to be?
I guess it depends on how we view stories. Are they a conversation between the reader and the writer? The writer telling us something from their perspective, sharing with us how they see the world, what is bugging them, and who they are? Is the story they are sharing about them or is it about us? I wonder sometimes if we can seperate the two - take ourselves out of the equation. Try to see the story from the writer's perspective, see what they are telling us.
Without superimposing our desires, fantasies, dreams, nightmares upon it?
Another interesting tid-bit about that creative writing class - I wrote over 20 stories for that class. I submitted numerous ones to literary publications at the school. But only one was I told by my instructor to submitt to a contest. A contest that was judged by middle-aged male and female professors. The story I submitted was about a middle-aged man struggling with what to do with his mother who was currently in a nursing home. It was in his point of view and took place on an airplane, about ten-fifteen pages in length if that. In the story an annoying, elderly passenger who resembles his mother, sits next to him, and suffers an attack, getting violently sick - much like his own mother is sick. She's not his mother, but he is struggling with the guilt. Because he's not taking care of her, he is far away, taking care of his own life. I wrote the first draft while suffering an 105 degree fever. OF the stories I wanted published, that was my least favorite and it was the hardest one to share with my family - because I'd based the tale on my own father. My intent was to discuss the complexity of how people feel about their family members, about illness. The complicated emotion. This story was more successful than Just A Bunch of Ants - because it made sense to those judging it. It fit within their framework. They identified with the main character and had experienced or were experiencing that character's anguish. Just A Bunch of Ants did not make sense to them - it was about a 18 year old art student, alone, and frustrated - farther away. Who cursed and used foul language. And was angry at the world. Just A Bunch of Ants pushed my teacher's buttons or it was a story that by itself, without the nuclear holocaust, etc - was uninteresting.
In school, when I was taught how to do literary analysis - you are taught by the way, you don't just wake up one morning and do it - I was told that you should try to figure out authorial intent, as well as what it meant to you. One is subjective and one objective analysis. The second in some respects is far harder and requires greater skill, because you are attempting to get inside someone else's head - someone you don't know. But by understanding the author, the work itself often makes more sense. I'm not sure you can fully understand Faulkner's Sound & The Fury by the way - if you did not know about the loss of his child and his own grief. And Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire takes on a whole new meaning when you find out about the child she lost and obsessed over. Same deal with Joss Whedon - it helps to know when watching Buffy, that Whedon originally wrote the story for his activist mother, who died of Cancer before the TV series aired. OR that he has written in numerous interviews that he is fascinated with the conflict about an individual's identity and society's view of what that identity should be. Also the fact that Whedon himself is a white guy, who went to prep/boarding schools, and is the child of an activist and literary mother and a television writer father. These facts do provide insight to his work. Just as the fact that James Joyce was Irish, poor, and had the majority of his later transcripts typed by French Nuns who couldn't speak English - is critical to understanding his work. He wrote about Dublin. He often wrote in Gallic and English. He had a love for the rhythm of language.
But, I often see in analysis - these items forgotten or overlooked. Critical reviews do this a lot, I think. Until they become or feel if you will excuse the term, like masturbation.
The critic indulging him or herself. Not all. I'm not saying that. Certainly not. Nor am I saying that I think you have to take authorial intent into consideration. But, to a degree, perhaps we should?
It's like having a conversation with someone - in which after a while you realize the other person is misinterpreting every word you say. Putting their own twist or meaning on your words. I've had these types of conversations with both Wales and my brother. As they have had with me. Where, we are reacting to what we think is being said, not listening and thinking about what is being said. I think this is true with stories too - the difference between the emotional reaction - which is vicerial and does not always have anything to do with the author's intent but our own perceptions or moods or what have you, and the thoughtful reaction. Right vs. Left brain if you will, although I don't believe it is nearly that cut and dried.
Anyhow it is late. Must sleep. Just letting this hang out there for whomever may pass it by, for the moment.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-09 02:27 am (UTC)Also I love your icon. But then I'm a BSG and Starbuck fan.
that mirror or somehow tell us things about our own lives, to teach us something about the world....and then I’m sure there are more).
I think you are correct. On the mirror bit - this can at times get in the way of a lot of good analysis. People often will get caught up in the aspects of the text that either mirror their lives or reflect aspects of their experience that they'd rather forget. For example - in Buffy, I have a friend who could not bear Lies My Parents Told Me because she closely identified with Robin Wood's loss of Nikki Wood. How that was handled was a bit like sandpaper across a wound. I, on the other hand, struggled with the character of Robin Wood - because his behavior as an employer towards Buffy reflected a bad job situation. While aspects of what we both saw in the series were valid, our focus was too narrow and because of the emotional impact of the content - how it made us feel, we were unable to see the other angles.
though I think I do also completely change my mind about what something means – usually through discussion, though sometimes from reading something the creator’s said, or merely by going back to something after a break.
A good friend of mine said recently that going online and discussing Buffy on a fan board or with others - provides more insight. We can't see the whole story by ourselves. We are limited by our own perception of it.
I also agree about changing one's mind about things. I've done it many times myself. I am admittedly stubborn and a bit opinionated. But I try to stay open and work hard to read views that I disagree with, sometimes vehemently so.
I changed my mind about the Seventh Season of Buffy. On the first two watchings, I found it clunky with huge plot gaps. The third viewing and reading some new takes on the season, changed my mind. That season is now arguably among my favorites. It's ambiguous in places. And deals with some complex and unanswerable questions regarding leadership, power, and friendship, not to mention gender politics.
And then there’s going for walks and mulling things over. People don’t give walking enough credit as an analytical tool.
I do my best thinking taking long walks. As a writer - walks often help my work out story problems. And at work - I take long walks at lunch - they work out stress and help me figure out solutions to problems.
I’m particularly put in mind of one season 6 Buffy commentary (I can’t remember which) in which the writers were miserembering details.
Ah yes. I remember that as well. Can't remember what it was though. But I remember laughing, because it is so true. I don't remember what I write half the time.
TBC
no subject
Date: 2009-02-09 02:29 am (UTC)I think Whedon has admitted that he is an intuitive writer. So am I, which may explain why I like him. Intiutive writers tend to be more interested in exploring characters and less into plot. Whedon often will team up with good plotters to counter-act that problem. Because plot is important. And knowing where you are going is as well.
That said, I think Whedon does know the end of his story, he just doesn't know the middle. I can relate to that.
But even writers who have a very clear idea of what all the parts of their work should mean, what it should all add up to... well, it won’t always add up to what they intend. Everyone has their own set of associations, their own intellectual world. So something that means X to person A because of association Y might mean Z to person B because of association K. That’s getting too much like maths for comfort.
Your last line about math made me laugh. I feel much the same way. Although it makes me think more of logical reasoning.
And it is a great analogy. If you look at some of the responses above - each person picked up something different from my post. CactusWatcher focused on the teacher reference.
Masq - focused on writing as communication. Embers brought up painting and art. And maeuve rigan asked if you can really know authorial intent if the author is unknown. All their associations are based on their experiences. Read together - you get a klaidescope of views. And your comments sort of brought all of it into focus. I've seen the same marvelous thing happen with Buffy. One viewer will focus on Willow's story, another Xander's, another Spike's. You'll get people who hate Spike - who will provide one interpretation. And those who adore with another. Then those in between.
(Do I get a cookie?)
Hee, for this and the K comment certainly.
I agree. A lot, in fact – it makes me quite cross when people say that the author gets to decide what something means just because they’re the author.
Yes, I used to want to kick people on fanboards who would argue points by saying well Marti Noxon said in this interview that the characters are this. And quote it. So you are wrong.
Or they would go to the transcript and pick stage directions that aren't seen on-screen.
On TV - there's too many people involved. Fool For Love had three writers. Conversations with Dead People - five different writers. And that's not including everyone else.
In regards to novels and short stories - with just one writer?
Same thing applies. James Joyce said once in an interview that whatever the reader decided was his intent, that was it. He was most interested in what the reader got out of it. And I have to say that sometimes, as a writer, I'll like what someone else has seen in my story more than what I may have intended. I know Joss Whedon and his writers have stated this - sometimes they like what we think of the story more than what they thought about it. It's why they go online and chat with fans. It provides texture to the tale and gives it a life beyond the page. Each person that reads or watchs it, extends the life of the work - gives it a new and richer dimension.
I'm not sure art can exist in a vaccume, if it does it is rather uninteresting. I think we influence each other.
Sure, they own the copyright, but they don’t “own” the meaning in the sense of having any control over it once it’s out there.
Right. You can't copyright an idea or a plot or a meaning. Those can't be owned. The only thing that can be copyrighted is the expression of the idea. How you told it. To own more than that, would limit expression, and creativity.
TBC