Neil wrote:
That's probably my biggest gripe about not just slash readings but het
readings too. They reduce the characters to nothing but their sexuality. Nobody, straight, gay or whatever, is that one-dimensional. Adult fic seems to separate the entire universe into Sex and Everything Else, and promptly homes in on the sex. I consider the Everything Else to be not only more interesting but more important as well. Consequently I tend to avoid adult fic not because it squicks me (it doesn't, I'm virtually unsquickable unless animals get involved), but because it's just so bloody *boring*.<
Exactly my feeling. The concentration on only one aspect of the show - and one that did never play a significant role - does not appeal to me. But then, I *like* stories about Blake blowing things up. And about Avon and Vila taking the chance for some private enterprising when Blake's back is turned.
If the show had been about the crew sitting on Liberator's couches talking about their feelings, I wouldn't have kept watching. (Although seeing *that* lot psycho-analysing each other could be fun. :-) ) If they'd all been loyally following Blake's orders, I would probably have watched, but never become a fan. It's the combination of Action/adventure and life-like characters that appeals to me.
The recent discussion about slash has left me rather bemused about the blatant disregard for canon and the writers' intent expressed by some lystmembers. In writing B7 fanfiction, we are in effect hijacking characters created by others. It's something I, for one, am acutely aware of, and it makes me feel obliged to keep to the canon, out of respect for the show's creators.
As I writer, I'd hate it if someone would take the characters from my books and distort them to the point where they would become unrecognisable to me. And it would hurt even more if they then went on to claim that their version was the way I had really intended the characters to be, and kept ignoring my denials.
Of course, some parts of the canon can be interpreted differently. B7 fandom consists of all kinds of different interpretations and preferences that can exist happily alongside each other. But, IMO Fiona's excellent comment about the lack of canonical evidence for homosexual tendencies in the main characters is pretty conclusive, as are the declarations of the writers and actors.
I'm not suggesting that people stop writing slash, apparently it brings a lot of fun to a lot of people, and having fun is what fandom is about. However, there's a difference between "I know it's not canon but it's fun," and "I don't give a damn about the creators' intent!"
The first approach at least recognises the input of the creators and takes their feelings into consideration (up to a point). The latter amounts to theft of the characters. Characters that are not ours, but that we are privileged to be allowed to use.
Just IMHO.
Marian
[This posting is *not* an administrative announcement!]
"Marian" == Marian de Haan maya@multiweb.nl writes:
As I writer, I'd hate it if someone would take the characters from my books and distort them to the point where they would become unrecognisable to me. And it would hurt even more if they then went on to claim that their version was the way I had really intended the characters to be, and kept ignoring my denials.
Avoid becoming a professional writer; you'll hate it.
Before I turned to the dark side and became a sysadmin, I studied literature at university for three years. One of the very first things we were taught, in the very first course of the first term, was that the author's opinion of a work and/or intent behind it is utterly irrelevant.
This is not just nastiness on the part of the litcrit crowd, there is some sense behind it. Most of that sense is that the creator of a work is much too close to it to provide any sort of unbiased commentary. When the creator looks at her work, she does not just see the work, she also remembers the Platonically ideal version of that work that she had in her head while she created, and that ideal *does* get mixed up with the actual work as seen by others.
The way we were taught, all works are supposed to stand by themselves. When evaluating a literary creation, you look only at the creation itself. You disregard when it was created, you disregard who created it, you disregard why it was created; you just look at the creation as it appears before you. No more, and no less[1].
A consequence of this view is that there is no such thing as a "right" or a "wrong" interpretation. There are interpretations that can be more or less strongly argued for or against, but that is not at all the same thing. There are also no such thing as an impossible interpretation. As soon as someone has interpreted a work in a certain way, that interpretation is obviously possible, and all that remains to do is to argue for or against it (or to ignore it, of course).
In this pro/con-slash flamefest, you and others have argued that the pro-slash interpretation of Blake's 7 shouldn't be made, because it wasn't the intention of the creators of the show that it should be interpreted that way. I and, I think, several others reject this argument for pretty much all of the reasons given above.
The slash interpretation can be made. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of fanzines as evidence of that.
The non-slash interpretation can also be made. There are just as much evidence for that.
Arguing that the slash interpretation can't be made or shouldn't be made is utterly pointless. So many people, many of them entirely independent of each other, have come up with the slash interpretation that we can say that it is, undeniably, one valid interpretation of Blake's 7. Trying to argue it out of existence will achieve absolutely nothing except a lot of bad feelings and ill will.
[1] This is not the only way to do literary criticism, of course. Marxist critics, for example, invariably try to see works in relation to the Marxist view of historic progress. But the views I describe above were the predominant ones a few years ago, and as far as I know they still are.
----- Original Message ----- From: Calle Dybedahl calle@lysator.liu.se
Taking a philosophical turn here...
This is not just nastiness on the part of the litcrit crowd, there is some sense behind it. Most of that sense is that the creator of a work is much too close to it to provide any sort of unbiased commentary. When the creator looks at her work, she does not just see the work, she also remembers the Platonically ideal version of that work that she had in her head while she created, and that ideal *does* get mixed up with the actual work as seen by others.
I think your point about the authors and intent is well taken, Calle. After all, Virginia Woolf went to her grave arguing that the lighthouse was not a phallic symbol, despite the interpretations of thousands of others :).
The way we were taught, all works are supposed to stand by themselves. When evaluating a literary creation, you look only at the creation itself. You disregard when it was created, you disregard who created it, you disregard why it was created; you just look at the creation as it appears before you. No more, and no less[1].
However, this strikes me as effectively impossible to do. Whenever you read a programme or watch a book, you cannot avoid bringing in some of the surrounding context. For instance, if I watch *Casablanca,* I can try to disregard everything but the film itself... but the fact remains that I know when 1943 was, I know where Africa is, I know who the Germans are, and I know why they happened to be in Africa at that time. If I could shut all of these side points out of my mind entirely (which I can't), all I would see would be a sequence of one picture following another.
A consequence of this view is that there is no such thing as a "right" or a "wrong" interpretation. There are interpretations that can be more or less strongly argued for or against, but that is not at all the same thing. There are also no such thing as an impossible interpretation. As soon as someone has interpreted a work in a certain way, that interpretation is obviously possible, and all that remains to do is to argue for or against it (or to ignore it, of course).
This last point is certainly true, but I still think it's impossible to take anything, including interpretations, totally free from context or value judgement. People make their interpretations for a variety of reasons from a variety of backgrounds, and unless they can somehow erase their minds totally prior to the interpretive act, this will inform their interpretation thereof.
At the risk of getting into philosophical areas here, also, this viewpoint has always struck me as very similar to that of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that "poetry is as good as pushpin [a kind of eighteeth-century children's game, as I understand it]." Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept-- and frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year Mills and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
In this pro/con-slash flamefest,
Ahem! I sincerely hope I haven't flamed anybody. If anybody got that impression, I do apologise.
pro-slash interpretation of Blake's 7 shouldn't be made, because it wasn't the intention of the creators of the show that it should be interpreted that way. I and, I think, several others reject this argument for pretty much all of the reasons given above.
Actually, I've also been trying to argue that when you take the images in the series independent of the series' creators' stated views, it still doesn't read. Furthermore, a lot of the justification for the pro-slash viewpoint has involved taking scenes out of the context of the work-- which to return to Eng. Lit. could be analogised to drawing conclusions about Hamlet based on the scene of Ophelia's madness, without reference to the rest of the play :).
Arguing that the slash interpretation can't be made or shouldn't be made is utterly pointless.
As I said before, IMO it's not a matter of can't or shouldn't be made. It's a matter of whether or not it does fit the canon and, in some threads of the argument, the author's intent.
[1] This is not the only way to do literary criticism, of course. Marxist critics, for example, invariably try to see works in relation to the Marxist view of historic progress.
Are there no structuralists in lit-crit anymore? Sigh...
Fiona
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From: Fiona Moore nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk
The way we were taught, all works are supposed to stand by themselves. When evaluating a literary creation, you look only at the creation itself. You disregard when it was created, you disregard who created it, you disregard why it was created; you just look at the creation as it appears before you. No more, and no less[1].
However, this strikes me as effectively impossible to do. Whenever you
read
a programme or watch a book, you cannot avoid bringing in some of the surrounding context. For instance, if I watch *Casablanca,* I can try to disregard everything but the film itself... but the fact remains that I
know
when 1943 was, I know where Africa is, I know who the Germans are, and I know why they happened to be in Africa at that time. If I could shut all
of
these side points out of my mind entirely (which I can't), all I would see would be a sequence of one picture following another.
I think that's a slight misinterpretation of what Calle said. Understanding Casablanca requires an awareness of the city's status in 1943 amid the war in North Africa, because that is the situation in the film. What Calle means is forget that the film was *made* in 1943, that it came from a Hollywood studio, starred whoever, was directed by Michael Curtiz etc.
Though Umberto Eco has had a bit of fun with postulating the kind of interpretations bits of popular culture might get when divorced from common contextual understanding: "We are struck by the lines of another fragment, apparently from a propitiatory or fertility hymn to nature ... It is easy to imagine this sung by a chorus of young girls; the delicate words evoke the image of maidens in white veils dancing at sowing time in some pervigilium. 'I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain...' "
A consequence of this view is that there is no such thing as a "right" or a "wrong" interpretation. There are interpretations that can be more or less strongly argued for or against, but that is not at all the same thing. There are also no such thing as an impossible interpretation. As soon as someone has interpreted a work in a certain way, that interpretation is obviously possible, and all that remains to do is to argue for or against it (or to ignore it, of course).
This last point is certainly true, but I still think it's impossible to
take
anything, including interpretations, totally free from context or value judgement. People make their interpretations for a variety of reasons from
a
variety of backgrounds, and unless they can somehow erase their minds totally prior to the interpretive act, this will inform their
interpretation
thereof.
I think the process you're referring to is essentially that of
Author + Noise --> Text --> Reader + Noise --> Reading
where 'noise' is all the impedimenta interfering with either creation or interpretation, whether it's limitations of ability, cultural constraints, or some bloke from Porlock knocking on the door.
Which leads to the question of where meaning actually resides. In the author? No, because authorial meaning is inevitably altered in the act of authorship. In the reader? No again, because no two readers can be guaranteed to extract the same meaning. In the text itself? Not even there, because its extraction depends on an ideal noise-fre reader, who can't possibly exist.
Personally I think it is hiding behind the fridge.
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept-- and frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year Mills and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
Actually I find it very easy to put high literature and popular literature. Why shouldn't you be able to interpret a M&B in the same way you would, say, a Bronte novel? They've both got plot, characters, setting and areas of emphasis.
Though most of the criticism of popular literature that I've read has treated it as generic, and looked for generic conventions. I've seen this done with short stories in womens weeklies, for thrillers, for detective stories, and Joanna Russ gives the modern gothic a wonderfully readable going over in an essay called "Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think it's My Husband." Such analyses are more concerned with the messages they intend to impart to their intended readership, as in the way protagonists are constructed in such a way that readers might identify with them, or the moral reassurances peddled by such genres. Individual works are cited as examples to illustrate the variation of form within the conventions.
Some subgenres of fanfic are wide open to that kind of treatment.
Neil
Wheee! Theoretical debates! <bounce bounce>
----- Original Message ----- From: Neil Faulkner N.Faulkner@tesco.net
However, this strikes me as effectively impossible to do. Whenever you
read
a programme or watch a book, you cannot avoid bringing in some of the surrounding context. For instance, if I watch *Casablanca,* I can try to disregard everything but the film itself... but the fact remains that I
know
when 1943 was, I know where Africa is, I know who the Germans are, and I know why they happened to be in Africa at that time. If I could shut all
of
these side points out of my mind entirely (which I can't), all I would
see
would be a sequence of one picture following another.
I think that's a slight misinterpretation of what Calle said.
Understanding
Casablanca requires an awareness of the city's status in 1943 amid the war in North Africa, because that is the situation in the film. What Calle means is forget that the film was *made* in 1943, that it came from a Hollywood studio, starred whoever, was directed by Michael Curtiz etc.
OK, fair enough-- but again, I still hold that that information is also pretty much impossible to get out of your mind. It may be possible to, say, find someone who has no idea who Michael Curtiz was, what Hollywood is, etc.-- and I'd be really interested to see what they had to say about Casablanca--but not, I think, in the lit- or film-crit world, and in my experience, prior knowledge still tends to bias one.
(actually, anthropologist Nigel Barley does have a small piece about the time a kindly-intentioned missionary showed the [fairly culturally isolated] West African tribe with which he works a Tom and Jerry film, and how he went around the next day trying to learn their interpretation of it. All he learned was that most of them had in fact ignored the film in favour of gossip or other activities :)...)
Parallell example: in anthropology, the postmodernist movement went through a phase of arguing that anthropological attempts to extrapolate from data were "stifling informants' voices," and, instead, advocated getting one's informants to give one their life history and writing it up as a sort of biography. They promptly ran into trouble-- because when you get down to that, even the very act of approaching someone to ask for their life history is going to affect the way it comes out, to say nothing of the editing process etc.
Though Umberto Eco has had a bit of fun with postulating the kind of interpretations bits of popular culture might get when divorced from
common
contextual understanding:
So does Peter Ackroyd in "The Plato Papers." His take on Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy" as divorced from context is both funny and disturbing.
I think the process you're referring to is essentially that of
Author + Noise --> Text --> Reader + Noise --> Reading
where 'noise' is all the impedimenta interfering with either creation or interpretation, whether it's limitations of ability, cultural constraints, or some bloke from Porlock knocking on the door.
Which leads to the question of where meaning actually resides. In the author? No, because authorial meaning is inevitably altered in the act of authorship. In the reader? No again, because no two readers can be guaranteed to extract the same meaning. In the text itself? Not even there, because its extraction depends on an ideal noise-fre reader, who can't possibly exist.
Personally I think it is hiding behind the fridge.
Absolutely :).
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept--
and
frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year
Mills
and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
Actually I find it very easy to put high literature and popular
literature.
Why shouldn't you be able to interpret a M&B in the same way you would,
say,
a Bronte novel? They've both got plot, characters, setting and areas of emphasis.
Actually, that's something that I think should be done, and advocate for repeatedly-- my first-year final paper, for my masters' thesis, was an analysis of the soap opera "Howards' Way" as a cultural text, which opened with a paragraph pointing out exactly *why* it was valid to interpret a soap in this way. The first thing the examiner said in the viva-voce was "Well, Ms Moore, you obviously *enjoyed* writing this paper..." in a voice which made it plain that she thought that no one should enjoy writing a first-year masters' paper. Still, she had to admit it was anthropologically sound, and gave me a good pass...
Unfortunately, though, Neil, English departments are a bit less enlightened than we are :(.
Though most of the criticism of popular literature that I've read has treated it as generic, and looked for generic conventions.
This is true, though it is getting better. There's a bloke at my uni writing a doctoral thesis on Philip K. Dick, although it has to be said he's getting a fair bit of scorn from his colleagues...
Some subgenres of fanfic are wide open to that kind of treatment.
Neil, if we did, we'd get lynched :).
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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Calle / Fiona:
A consequence of this view is that there is no such thing as a "right" or a "wrong" interpretation. There are interpretations that can be more or less strongly argued for or against, but that is not at all the same thing. There are also no such thing as an impossible interpretation. As soon as someone has interpreted a work in a certain way, that interpretation is obviously possible, and all that remains to do is to argue for or against it (or to ignore it, of course).
This last point is certainly true, but I still think it's impossible to take anything, including interpretations, totally free from context or value judgement. People make their interpretations for a variety of reasons from a variety of backgrounds, and unless they can somehow erase their minds totally prior to the interpretive act, this will inform their interpretation thereof.
I guess you could come up with some notion of implausible readings. How you'd judge implausible would be an interesting one.
Fiona:
At the risk of getting into philosophical areas here, also, this viewpoint has always struck me as very similar to that of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that "poetry is as good as pushpin [a kind of eighteeth-century children's game, as I understand it]."
But Bentham isn't a relativist - he makes value judgements on, as you say, the utility of the activity. I thought that point was meant to be that he might argue, for example, that football is 'better' than opera (more people get pleasure from it, it makes more money as a business, etc. etc. etc.).
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept--
I guess since I'm invariably looking at this from the perspective of how these things are received, the reception of a romance by its readership is as interesting to me as the reception of a Shakespeare play.
and frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year Mills and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
They do in third year sociology <g> 'Reading the Romance', by Janice Radway.
Um, there is no B7 content in this post.
I think Avon would like snooker. Because I do.
Una
----- Original Message ----- From: Una McCormack una@qresearch.org.uk
This last point is certainly true, but I still think it's impossible to
take
anything, including interpretations, totally free from context or value judgement. People make their interpretations for a variety of reasons
from a
variety of backgrounds, and unless they can somehow erase their minds totally prior to the interpretive act, this will inform their
interpretation
thereof.
I guess you could come up with some notion of implausible readings. How
you'd
judge implausible would be an interesting one.
I must say the whole Derridavian "nothing outside the text" approach reminds me of an exercise I once read in a book aimed at introducing teenagers to sociology/psychology; the exercise was to play a game in which there was one rule and that was "no rules allowed"-- the point being that before very long the kids started making up rules despite attempting not to do so.
At the risk of getting into philosophical areas here, also, this
viewpoint
has always struck me as very similar to that of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that "poetry is as good as pushpin [a kind of eighteeth-century children's game, as I understand it]."
But Bentham isn't a relativist - he makes value judgements on, as you say,
the
utility of the activity. I thought that point was meant to be that he
might
argue, for example, that football is 'better' than opera (more people get pleasure from it, it makes more money as a business, etc. etc. etc.).
He doesn't work for the BBC, by any chance :)? But it has to be said that later philosophers did use him to support the relativist position, IIRC.
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept--
I guess since I'm invariably looking at this from the perspective of how
these
things are received, the reception of a romance by its readership is as interesting to me as the reception of a Shakespeare play.
Me too-- see my post to Neil on my first-year essay on soap opera. But also note the reception it got. Value is tied up with the culture.
and frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year
Mills
and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
They do in third year sociology <g> 'Reading the Romance', by Janice
Radway.
Ah, but we all know social scientists are more enlightened :). All the same, though, it's a *third* year course.
BTW, how many Cambridge first-years does it take to screw in a lightbulb? :)
ObB7: let's have a first-year course in "Reading B7." *I'd* attend...:)
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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Fiona wrote:
At the risk of getting into philosophical areas here, also, this viewpoint has always struck me as very similar to that of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that "poetry is as good as pushpin [a kind of eighteeth-century children's game, as I understand it]."
But Bentham isn't a relativist - he makes value judgements on, as you say,
the
utility of the activity. I thought that point was meant to be that he might argue, for example, that football is 'better' than opera (more people get pleasure from it, it makes more money as a business, etc. etc. etc.).
He doesn't work for the BBC, by any chance :)? But it has to be said that later philosophers did use him to support the relativist position, IIRC.
And his Dr Who plot synopses were rubbish.
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept--
I guess since I'm invariably looking at this from the perspective of how
these
things are received, the reception of a romance by its readership is as interesting to me as the reception of a Shakespeare play.
Me too-- see my post to Neil on my first-year essay on soap opera. But also note the reception it got. Value is tied up with the culture.
Yep, we're dead on of the same opinion here.
BTW, how many Cambridge first-years does it take to screw in a lightbulb? :)
As many as we can fit, darling.
ObB7: let's have a first-year course in "Reading B7." *I'd* attend...:)
Yay! But Ika would have to run it.
Una
Calle wrote:
The way we were taught, all works are supposed to stand by themselves. When evaluating a literary creation, you look only at the creation itself. You disregard when it was created, you disregard who created it, you disregard why it was created; you just look at the creation as it appears before you. No more, and no less[1].
and Fiona responded:
However, this strikes me as effectively impossible to do. Whenever you read a programme or watch a book, you cannot avoid bringing in some of the surrounding context.
True - we're subjective creatures by nature, composed of our own individual experiences, and everything we perceive is affected by that.
But Calle's point is, boiled down, is that each creation is supposed to be considered as itself (through your own filters) rather than the creation plus a list of notes from the creator saying, "See, what I meant here was..."
Fiona continued:
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept-- and frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year Mills and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
Hang on. They are equally valid, but that doesn't make them equally good. (caveat: I've never read a M+B, and never read most of Shakespeare) M+B books are formulaic. I've often argued (though not here) that a M+B can be just as good as the best literature you can find - it's just *much* harder to do so, because you've also got to fit the formula, and so requires far greater skill from the writer. That doesn't make it impossible.
steve
-
Calle Dybedahl -
Fiona Moore -
Marian de Haan -
Neil Faulkner -
Steve Kilbane -
Una McCormack