In Response To: Re: Purple and pink are long time Bungie game colo (thebruce0)
Cody Miller:
: What these people fail to understand is that culture shapes the outlook and
: values of the artists that come from the culture, and so works are
: representative of that culture. I do not meet many people who are
: outwardly sexist, but I know a lot of people who are a little sexist on
: the inside; mostly from societal depictions of women as child bearers,
: emotional / non rational, feminine, etc.
: And so while the creators may or may not be aware they are sexist, it is
: quite possible that the culture they were brought up in has shaped their
: views as partly sexist without them realizing it. As such, it's perfectly
: reasonable to focus on sexism in the work.
That's the argument that was being put forward. :?
: The proper thing is not to kill the possibility of real criticism by killing
: the author,
ah
I thought I should've read more, you're reading it backwards, the idea is that a dead author can't berate you (or worse) for interpreting their work in a strange way.
: but for the author to either refute the criticism and show why it is unwarranted,
: or acknowledge it and learn more about his own beliefs that his culture and
: experiences shaped.
this part seems good though
: How could a species of aliens which do not have 2 sexes relate to our stories
: about women? It would be nonsense to them. They would have to study our
: culture and use that as a framework for understanding and comparison.
kind of like the ones from The Left Hand of Darkness? hah, I was thinking of another of Ursula K. Le Guin's books when I mentioned how stories don't have to have messages
: You cannot discount the history and culture which produced a work if you seek
: to understand it.
Agreed, and I'll read the rest of the thread now.
General Battuta:
: I can happily say that you've misunderstood the idea here. The idea is not to
: strip context, but to deprivilege intent.
ah, yeah, same thing, this is you I should read through stuff first
Cody Miller:
: And as I explained, context and intent go hand in hand. By removing intent,
: you remove context and vice-versa.
You didn't say that anywhere in this thread (before this post).
General Battuta:
: The reader, after all, has access to the entire cultural context when they
: 'read' Ratatouille, or Halo: The Fall of Reach. That context is part of
: their experience.
I doubt anyone knows the full cultural context of anything. If you narrow that down to significant cultural context, a lot of people won't even have that, being too removed in distance or time or world-view.
I agree, but it does matter to some degree, so I see how someone could think that ignoring that means you're doing it wrong (and indeed I also think that).
Architechnid:
: I disagree: Art does not = intent. Many artist would argue this. For
: instance, the Wachowski Bros. (at the time) did not do a commentary on any
: of the Matrix movies, because they didn't want the variability of ones
: subjective understanding of the movies to be affected by their intent.
: They wanted to work to stand for itself, and if you got something out of
: it that they didn't intend, well that was their intent. And this is but
: one example.
I don't like it when people do this because it practically invites misunderstanding, which could be good or bad for the work or its author and either isn't really deserved, and someone could make something with no intended meaning and say it's open and people could interpret it as something other than what it is.
Dragonclaws:
: I don't think General Battuta is explaining it right. Here's my take: Every
: piece of art is made with intent, but the artist's intent does not dictate
: what it means. An artist can make something horribly sexist
: unintentionally because he himself is sexist. Analyzing the work and
: concluding that it is sexist is a judgment on the artist. The "death
: of the author" just says that the artist can't say "it's not
: sexist" and have that be taken as objective fact just because he
: created it.
Why not? The only alternative I see is to say the author is lying or deluded, in which case I understand why it would be applied to dead authors.
: For another example, I recently reviewed a bad piece of fanfiction I
: concluded to have racist undertones. Why? The white protagonists tended to
: have no description of their skin colors, while the villainous Asian men
: had their dark skin described as part of how scary they were. The one
: exception where a white person's skin color was described was when a
: Sephardic canon character is described as hot because he's really tan,
: presumably the result of the fanfic author mistakenly thinking he was
: white. Now, if I spoke to the author, I'm sure she'd say she never
: intended to write anything racist.
Maybe, but you won't know until you ask, now will you?
: The "death of the author" says that I can disregard that intent and say
: it is racist, and it's due to the author's racism.
and there's probably a law that says if you do that in a widely-seen publication you can be sued for libel
: Well that's where it splits apart, IMO. On one hand, yes it allows you to
: regard the piece itself as containing racist content, but to claim that
: the author IS racist is presuming their intent (conscious or not) was
: racist. But there is such a thing is mistake, error, unintentional
: coincidences and connections and whatnot. If the author had absolutely no
: racist intent, but it happened that people inferred racist undertones,
: there are two branches that can happen from there...
: The readers can presume intentional offense and blame the author, labeling
: them as something they claim they are not, or
: The readers can excuse the author for unintentional undertones, and hope the
: author addresses the issue respectfully in some manner, whether it be
: altering the piece or sufficiently explaining the content.
thebruce0:
: Raise the issue as an interpretation of the piece based on the removal of
: author intent, then see how it plays out. At worst, it brings to light the
: author's true intent. At best, it resolves a misunderstanding.
I'd call both of those positive outcomes.
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