Self-reflecting onto art and the Death of the Author - Your meaning vs the author's meaning

[Desire Lines]

Picture this: you are a teenager alone in your room, riddled with mental illnesses, problems at the school, girl problems etc. Nobody understands you, not your friends, not your mom and dad, NOBODY. Naturally you turn to your favourite media to soothe your nerves: be it a game, a movie, an album: it can be anything. This piece of media is something that resonates with you deeply, it's something you cherish and know everything about.

Where am I going with this? Media usually has a meaning to it, it's usual for books/movies/music and not so much games. But when you like something very much, you tend to project YOURSELF onto the art/meaning aka self-reflect on it. So my question is: do you think the meaning of the author's word is more important than the meaning you pull from the art yourself? Is it ok to omit certain things the author said to continue to support your own personal meaning?

If you are not familiar with the concept of a "Death of the Author", here is a TV Tropes yes i know tv tropes is autistic shut up description of it:

Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing. This is usually understood as meaning that a writer's views about their own work are no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader. Intentions are one thing. What was actually accomplished might be something very different. The logic behind the concept is fairly simple: Books are meant to be read, not written, so the ways readers interpret them are as important and "real" as the author's intention. On the flip side, a lot of authors are unavailable or unwilling to comment on their intentions, and even when they are, they don't always make choices for reasons that make sense or are easily explainable to others (or sometimes even to themselves).

 

[gobbogobb]

If you ever get a chance read the foreword to fight club. Chuck talks about all of the people that came to him trying to give him their theories about what the book was really about. It was really just about dudes fighting each other with a twist.

 

[Richardo Retardo]

Your own meaning but only when you're sufficiently informed about the material. 's easy for novices to make mistakes and use works as cardboard cutouts that only hold up there pre-existing ideas, destroying the work as they do so.

 

[SJ 485]

I think the concept of the Death of the Author is essential to how we work as people. There's a lot of value in exploring what a narrative means to us, discovering new meaning in a new way of telling a story, though there's a blurry line somewhere between a valid interpretation of a story made after the fact and autistic fanfiction.

The oral tradition of storytelling is a mechanism by which we discover more about what matters to us on a fundamental level, with the passage of the story to each new storyteller it evolves and is reshaped into something new, like a rock face shaped into a cave system through millions of years of erosion, the softer rock is worn away and we see a deeper, more solid face. We discover a version of the story that's more "true" on a psychological level.

 

[IV 445]

The greatest heist of the 20th century was the theft of authorial intent.

What is the point of literature if anything can mean anything? This is why people pay millions for vomit on a canvas.

 

[Woke Blue Muttlema]

I feel like there no interpretation that holds more importance however the author has the last word on what their work means.
Death of the Author has become an easy excuse for hacks to ramble about nothing with their favorite media.

 

[Marco Fucko]

I come down on the side of the author. It's their story, and they're the ones who have created and taken into consideration the characters and world. Can they cave to outside pressure or be a hack? Certainly, not all stories are created equal. But a genuine, solid author is the one who knows what his characters will do, not the fan with a second opinion.

Don't like that X happened when YOU think Y should have? Congratulations, you have a writing prompt. Make a new story.

 

[Manah]

It's a tricky question and there's no blanket statement I could give that would really satisfy me.

Authorial intent is important. The weirdo bronies who try to argue My Little Pony is a deep character analysis with hard-hitting political commentary are utterly retarded and I don't want to be associated with them.

But on the other hand, David Cage said Detroit: Become Human isn't supposed to be a commentary on race in America when literally everything in the game points to it being so.

:autistic: as fuck but to give an example of what I mean:

Spec Ops: The Line was created as a work to be interpreted. The lead writer has a definitive version of what he intended the story to portray, but the nature of the story is such that it can be seen in a variety of ways. If your way of reading it is different than his, that doesn't make it less valid.

On the other hand, Watchmen very specifically is not intended to portray Rorschach as someone who is to be admired or emulated. The people who read it and try to argue Rorschach is the actual hero of the story are really missing the point.


At the end of the day I think death of the author is good in theory - Fahrenheit 451 was (memory serving) originally intended to be a message about how new forms of media like radio or TV are innately inferior to books.

However, in modern times, it's a much easier to see it as a cautionary story about the dangers of censoring offensive content and questioning who should get to set the line of what is offensive or not.

Death of the author is good there - It makes the book relevant to our modern day.

But the majority of people are absolute cretins and will completely miss any message that isn't explicitly spelled out for them. And sometimes *even when it is*, like Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA.

 

[eldri]

Due to my upbringing, it is difficult for me to articulate my emotions and ever since. To combat this, I compartmentalize my emotions using hundreds of songs that I listen to. Everyday, I either have headphones on loud speakers for a few hours of the day.

With that in mind, in observing myself over the years, I can guarantee that I've killed the author's intent in many songs; however, it is something I must keep doing until I'm able to articulate my emotions in a healthy manner. It also helpful in not feeling lonely in your emotions.

That being said, each meaning I imprint onto a song is personal and is not shared with others unless it is close to the author's intent. Many people do this; however, distorting or changing the unwilling author's intent and then projecting it onto the world is conceited and, by SJW standards, a form of erasure (which is ironic).

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

As far as I see it, the work itself is paramount, as it is direct information. The author comes a close second, as long as he doesn't explicitly contradict the work itself. Anything else is just an interpretation of the work, of varying degrees of soundness and validity.