Re: Narnia movie (was Re: Religion in SF)

Sea Wasp wrote:
>
> We are both arguing color with blind men. To me, it's so obvious that
> there is a difference between "Meaning" -- as in, what the author, the
> creator, put there -- and "meaning", as in "whatever inkblot you see
> when you stare at it", that I can't comprehend that this difference
> isn't totally obvious to you, immediately, in the same way that it
> would be totally obvious to you that you cannot flap your arms and fly
> to the moon.

This is what it comes down to (and yes, it does amuse me to continue it). :)

How do we know what the author put into her work? We have two or three avenues
of inquiry:

a) We can ask the author for her opinion.

b) We can read the text ourselves and interpret from textual clues what the
purpose of the text was intended to be.

c) We can combine an examination and interpretation of the text with an analysis
of the circumstances in which the text was written - historical events, social
trends, the author's life, and so on.

Accepting these, for the moment, as our options, how are they problematic?

a) Authors, being human, lack a perfect knowledge of themselves and the
motivations behind their behaviour. This naturally extends to the "behaviour" of
the writing process; no author is aware of everything going on in her head at
any given moment, nor of every factor influencing her choices as she writes,
revises, and edits. My personal canonical literary example is Stephen King not
realising to what extent Jack Torrance in "The Shining" could be seen as a
reflection of his own problems with alcoholism and drug addiction at the time he
wrote the novel.

b) It is a demonstrable fact that every individual interpretation of a given
text is different - though not always greatly so - from any other. Individual
readers may interpret certain elements of the text in ignorance of factors which
could be relevant, for instance, as in my example of Raiakafan and Son Goku.

c) Analysis of a text in its circumstances of creation does afford an insight
into what might have influenced its creator, but the insight is neither sure nor
necessarily simple to achieve. There are questions of distance (what can we know
about a society we do not live in, even one from which we socially descend?),
exposure of the author to various possible influences (neither a living nor a
dead author can offer a comprehensive and accurate account of such things),
undiscovered details (even close family members can be unaware of events and
circumstances in the life of an author which may have influenced her work, so
what chance have we?), and so on.

None of these factors is intended to suggest that an author is *ignorant* of the
content of her own work. Indeed, she has a perspective on it which no other
person can have. Does the special uniqueness of this perspective, however,
*necessitate* that the author's interpretation of her own work be privileged
above all others? Must the one *always* follow from the other? Consider:

Authors' opinions of their own work change over time. Stephen King's response to
and interpretation of his own novel "The Shining" is, by his own account,
different now to what it was prior to his becoming clean and sober and realising
the extent of his own addictions' being reflected in Jack Torrance. Which of
King's two interpretations, historically, is to be more privileged than the
other? Is it possible that King's interpretation of his own novel while an
addict and a drunk could be *less* perceptive and accurate than that of, say,
his own wife and other intimates who suggested that Jack Torrance is a
reflection of King himself? If King's own interpretation can be said to have
improved as a result of his realisation of those parallels, is it not possible
that the interpretation of others who saw the parallel before he did could be
more accurate than his own at that time?

If King's interpretation was ever less perceptive or cogent than that of another
reader, does that not admit the straightforward possibility that any author is
capable of being blind to an element of her own work, whether gross or fine?

Another way in which an author's interpretation of her own work can change over
time is purely because of the march of history. Science fiction is full of
examples of stories where the author made use of the best and most accurate
scientific information of the day, which was later demonstrated to be false by
further research and inquiry; this debunking wreaks an inexorable change in
*anyone's* response to the story once it occurs, the author not excepted. I can
recall several introductions in volumes of early Asimov stories where he
apologises for now-outdated scientific elements, for instance; his attitude to
the stories certainly seems to have changed. Again, whether gross or fine, such
elements being recontextualised alters anyone's interpretation of a story.

Authors are also not perfectly capable of communicating their intended meaning
to the reader. Bad authors who fail to communicate their intended meaning are a
dime a dozen; even discounting the fact that an author may include in a work
elements of which they are not consciously aware, talented and skillful authors
can *never* know if their intended meaning reaches any given reader, because
they can *never* experience the work itself as the reader does - short of a
memory wipe, anyway. Their response to the work is unavoidably entangled in
their memories of writing it with a given message, just as any reader's response
to it is unavoidably entangled in their own personality, history, and
circumstances.

All of this is without even admitting discussion of the inherent lack of clarity
in any form of communication - language does not represent or transmit thoughts
perfectly, nor does any alternative.

Enough theses and examples. Given all of this massive unreliability, how do we
defend an author's interpretation of her work being the most privileged?

How can we say that her intentions are accurately reflected in the finished
product, given the author's inability to extricate the text from her memories of
writing it and her intent in doing so?

How can we say that her intentions will be communicated to any given reader,
given that every individual experience of and response to a text is different?

How can we say that the author's awareness of her intentions in writing the text
accurately reflects the content of the text itself, given that authors are
incapable of perfect self-awareness *and* lack the ability to evaluate their own
work in this regard?

Given all of that . . .

.. . . how *can* what the author intended for the text be more or less true, or
relevant, or important than what you, or I, or anyone else sees in it? She can't
tell you everything she put in there; she can't tell you whether or not the
intended meaning was accurately conveyed; she can't guarantee that anything she
included in the text means no more than what she thought it meant.

We lack certainty of the author's intention. What else do we have to fall back
on besides individual interpretation?

--
Christopher Adams - Sydney, Australia
-------
The question is whether it's pathological for a dropped egg to fall.
-------
Nothing says gritty fantasy like a whacky leprechaun knifing you in the junk.
-------
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mhacdebhandia/prestigeclasslist.html
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mhacdebhandia/templatelist.html


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