The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

[Frozen_Feet]

@Ramza00: I only know of Jordan Peterson (?) because an RPG publisher got undeserved flak for posing in a photo with him and because he made the local evening news recently. I could use "semantic mapping" in place of "maps of meaning", which would coincide with a method of teaching language instead of a book.

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@Lethologica: I made a similar point myself already. Twice. At this point there isn't anything I could reply to GloatingSwine that wouldn't be me repeating myself.

[SuperPanda]

Hehe this may not be the best month to talk about JK Rowling and

Some Fans (not me) are super angry about all these ret-cons in the last month with the new movie for it makes a complete and utter mess of the themes, and timeline of the books. The books were never real strong tightly structured works but the threads JK Rowling has been pulling recently makes her series much more of a mess and produces contradictions the more she pulls.

That is interesting - I haven't seen the new film and hadn't really planned on it - the conversation with the friend in question was many months ago and was specific to the context of and example of "If it wasn't in the book / film / movie it doesn't get count" - basically that person had just got fed up with people trying to push multiple mediums for single story (Well to understand X Y and Z in text A you also need to check out the comic sold separately here and read these director interviews - then it all makes sense). Didn't realize the new film had started a controversy when I wrote that example.

[Ramza00]

That is interesting - I haven't seen the new film and hadn't really planned on it - the conversation with the friend in question was many months ago and was specific to the context of and example of "If it wasn't in the book / film / movie it doesn't get count" - basically that person had just got fed up with people trying to push multiple mediums for single story (Well to understand X Y and Z in text A you also need to check out the comic sold separately here and read these director interviews - then it all makes sense). Didn't realize the new film had started a controversy when I wrote that example.

C'est la Vie, that is life.

It is probably good for such Harry Potter fans to find new loves in this world, and to detach for a brief moment (or maybe longer) from their HP love. When they return to their HP world they will find their old love again. What is happening now with them is the concept of grief, and since the grief does not have an answer (it just must be processed) there is anger and frustration that causes them to forget about why they love HP temporarily.



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"If it wasn't in the book / film / movie it doesn't get count" - basically that person had just got fed up with people trying to push multiple mediums for single story (Well to understand X Y and Z in text A you also need to check out the comic sold separately here and read these director interviews - then it all makes sense)

Note I agree with your friend. This task is cognitively exhausting for all humans, but some people have more tolerance for this type of exhaustion (compared to other forms of cognitive exhaustion.) In addition people are different for other reasons so if you are really into HP you may deal with the "cognitive exhaustion" and not notice it is exhausting for you either have energy stores saved up, or the new medium is energizing. (But add enough mediums and you too will get exhaustive, it is just a question of how many.)

It is a balance, where multiple mediums can be virtuous some of the time and vile other times. Furthermore there is no one universal math formula of the idea number, each person has a different number depending on their interest level and what types of tasks exhaust them more than others.

Good writers understand this both due to intuition and experience. I feel the success of JK Rowling has made her blind to this "truth" recently, but this may be projection on my part.

[Teddy]

But hey, let's get back to "death of the" author in terms of the essay, not my response to druid91:

The essay makes sense as a critique of a particular state of academics. But here's the thing: why would anyone treat finding a correct interpretation of a text to be the endpoint of discussion of the text?

That's not even criticism yet, it's a matter of linguistics (etc.) or, in the case of actually dead and long-gone authors, of etymology and textual archeology.

In most of communication, all the interesting things to do and discuss lie past the point of understanding the initial message.

So even if you don't buy most of the essay, the chase for meaning through interrogating an author... doesn't really seem like an endpoint for literary criticism as all. It looks like the beginning.

If everyone is obsessed with finding the true meaning behind a piece of work, there won't be anyone left to study how that work affects society, what society does or creates in response, and what we can learn from all that. For example, to pursue the question "What meaning does a modern audience glean from Romeo and Juliet, how does it affect them, how do they retell it and what new stories does it inspire them to write?" requires the death of the author. Shakespere most likely had no thought whatsoever about what he wanted his work to say to an era of time as completely different to his as ours. And if you can't let go of the original meaning of the original time, you're only going to end up telling everyone you talk to how they got it all wrong and how it's really about the folly of young love.

As for the image...that is weird. It works fine in my Chrome browser but does not in an incognito chrome tab or in Edge. Thus I edited the post and included the imgur link, not just the tags that are supposed to make the image from imgur appear automatically in those spoiler blocks. Weird but whatever and thank you for telling me about the image not working.

Imgur is blocking their images from being loaded from other sites than Imgur, but some privacy browser plugins scrub the referrer tags and thus circumvent the filter.

If you want your Imgur image to be visible to everyone, you have to link the Imgur page with the image, not the image itself.

[Ramza00]

Imgur is blocking their images from being loaded from other sites than Imgur, but some privacy browser plugins scrub the referrer tags and thus circumvent the filter.

If you want your Imgur image to be visible to everyone, you have to link the Imgur page with the image, not the image itself.

Thank you for teaching me. That make sense for I use uBlock Origin but if I were to go incognito the uBlock Origin would be turned off.

I now know what to do in the future.

[Frozen_Feet]

If everyone is obsessed with finding the true meaning behind a piece of work, there won't be anyone left to study how that work affects society, what society does or creates in response, and what we can learn from all that.

Which still leaves unanswered why everyone would be obsessed with that singular task, when in most forms of communication people are quick to move past that.

For example, to pursue the question "What meaning does a modern audience glean from Romeo and Juliet, how does it affect them, how do they retell it and what new stories does it inspire them to write?" requires the death of the author.

But it doesn't require that. Anyone can point out " that interpretation is invalid" and then continue to analyze what that invalid interpretation made people do. "That's wrong" and "This isn't the meaning" aren't natural stopping points for discussion either.

That sort of argument from necessity only makes sense against a specific background of stiffled academics and quickly loses power outside of it.

[GloatingSwine]

But it doesn't require that. Anyone can point out " that interpretation is invalid" and then continue to analyze what that invalid interpretation made people do. "That's wrong" and "This isn't the meaning" aren't natural stopping points for discussion either.

Pointing out that an interpretation is "invalid" requires just as much support from the text as forming a valid interpretation does.

Anyone can say that an interpretation is invalid, but there's no compelling reason to listen to those people unless they can support their argument from the text.

[DomaDoma]

You keep making these nebulous references to academia or academics. Who? That's the problem with this entire thread. Of course there is someone somewhere who has stated that the author was completely wrong about what their art meant, and that they knew, truly and unambiguously, what the art was actually about. And in all likelihood we'd all agree that it was nonsense. However, without a specific reference to a specific statement by someone other people take seriously, this scans entirely like a straw opponent who is conveniently anonymous.

More like a petty tyranny with English teachers (pick almost any you've had from seventh grade up), and more like a low-key call to censorship with social critics (e.g. Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Media Matters, any popular criticism of Twilight.) The latter, minus an Allecto or so, are pretty sound criticisms as far as they go, but, y'know, they really don't account for things like girls shunting aside all gender statements in favor of intensive roleplay about the evilness of spindles.

I would be interested to read the books you must have read to inform your view on the history of how "the masses" viewed poetry. Or at least, y'know, some kind of source.

Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death), Anthony Esolen (Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of your Child, Life Under Compulsion, Out of the Ashes), old sixth-grade textbooks packed with high-level allusions, old newspaper clippings that neglected a story in order to cut out a poem... being a seller of used books is the good life. As to town bands and suchlike, just find the dive in your town that has all the vintage photos. You'll see it, when you look for it.

We also live in the only time in American history (why are we confining ourselves to American history? Oh, right, it'd be harder to justify sweeping generalizations if literature were a global enterprise) where attending local political debates in person isn't the only or best way to find out what our local politicians are about, thanks in part to that "mass media" you're intent on denigrating.

Sound bites and the mostly-ignorant arguments they inspire are a poor substitute for the Lincoln-Douglas format. So are candidates' "Issues" pages, and that's the only reliable info you've got on small fries like state senators. Which, it cannot be stressed enough, is the seat Lincoln and Douglas were contesting in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. State senate. With bands, vendors, an audience in the thousands. (This kind of thing represents a distinctly American culture, which is why I confined myself.)

[SuperPanda]

More like a petty tyranny with English teachers (pick almost any you've had from seventh grade up),

First off, I'm sorry to hear that you had some terrible English teachers but we are not all this way. The good teachers, trying to be humble while including myself in the category, merely open the door in the students minds to an Author's intent being wrong rather than stating it definitively. The example I use in my classes is The Hunger Games. The author's stated intent for the book was as a rebuke of violent media and a hope that it would cause change in society. It did cause change, but that change was more diversity in the kinds of protagonists in our violent media rather than the author's explicitly stated desired change. The question I pose to students then is "Can this be considered a well written and successful book of the Author's stated intent and effect objectively failed?" with the answer being "Of course it can because there are other definitions of success and they are not more or less inherently valuable or correct."

English classes in Middle and High School should never be about teaching you what a text says - that is a pointless exercise that wastes everyone's time. It is about teaching you how to read carefully, think critically and argue effectively. There are texts where I help walk them through as examples of the steps in question, "A Modest Proposal" was written as a trap for people who do not read carefully and it becomes an example of careful reading because of that in my class. The poem "40 Love" by McGough is often an introduction to poetry in my 9th grade class as it offers so much in the visual and grammatical organization which students often neglect to consider in their reading.

and more like a low-key call to censorship with social critics (e.g. Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Media Matters, any popular criticism of Twilight.) The latter, minus an Allecto or so, are pretty sound criticisms as far as they go, but, y'know, they really don't account for things like girls shunting aside all gender statements in favor of intensive roleplay about the evilness of spindles.

Bemoaning popular critics lacking anything regarding skill or ability is hardly new. Alexander Pope's rebuke of that same thing is still one of my favorite texts. Its pages and pages of iambic pentameter heroic couplets that pair together into a coherent essay on why literary critics is much harder than most "critics" are capable of and that people should be as discerning with their critics as they are with their authors.

Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death), Anthony Esolen (Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of your Child, Life Under Compulsion, Out of the Ashes), old sixth-grade textbooks packed with high-level allusions, old newspaper clippings that neglected a story in order to cut out a poem... being a seller of used books is the good life. As to town bands and suchlike, just find the dive in your town that has all the vintage photos. You'll see it, when you look for it.

The language and the discourse changes - but that does not mean that Literature and poetry are gone. There are artists still weaving poetry and rap (not the commercial "gangsta" rap) still has a lot of elements of poetry in it. Imagine a 16th century "rap battle" and you'd likely get a poetry slam in which people have to out-clever each-other in Elizabethan sonnets. The word-play, ryhme, structure is just as complex, if not more, than much of 20th century poetry was - it is just privileging the experiences of a different class. Rather than being the domain of the elite, rap is the poetry of the oppressed more often than not.

But that's not all, we also live in a time with a thriving theater from the likes of Hamilton to the Cinema. The poetry inherent in cinematography is an area people are still exploring. Even video games have begun blurring the lines between "art" and "entertainment" in their domain. The masses are still attracted to shiny objects and things made for larger audiences still need to appeal to the lowest common denominator - that hasn't changed. The size of the mass a work can be made for has and this has driven the general level of discourse down - but this doesn't mean that elevated discourse is dead. It instead means that people need to choose to participate. This same issue covers news and politics which I won't go much into because of forum rules. Far more than in the past we need good teachers in those classes you besmirched at the top of the post to help people navigate the low-hanging fruit of public discourse and recognize all the many moments of genius that will survive our generation. This might be more obvious now - but then again, most of the famous writers we cherish today went largely unrecognized in their own lives so maybe it wasn't all that different then.

[zimmerwald1915]

But that's not all, we also live in a time with a thriving theater from the likes of Hamilton to the Cinema.

Film is not theater. Also, theater is dead.

[Grytorm]

Film is not theater. Also, theater is dead.

It's often been said
That theatre is dead
The critics repeat it en'masse

But the theatre' alive
It's gonna survive
Although its a pain in the ass

[SuperPanda]

While it is true that film =/= stage that does not mean that cinema and theater hold no common ground. Theater as a mirror unto the life is a role that film also plays. The old role of Greek comedies is regularly done now by talk shows on television. While it is true that film is a different beast in its form - it often plays a similar function.

Also theater is very much not dead. Wicked has been touring in my area and there were plenty of advertisements for it in my area. Hamilton tickets have been part of potential corruption and bribery scandals in the news in recent months.

Film replaced some of Theater's old role in our society, which was the actual point I was trying to make. The role theater used to play isn't gone, it has been usurped in the same way that photographs replaced portrait paintings. The same issue I mention before about wide-spread distribution requiring catering to the lowest common denominator persists but then there are niche markets within both theater and film. Films made to wow critics and awards ceremonies tend to be more "artistic" than those made for mass appeal - though the same was true with books once upon a time (and still is).

We don't live in a time where there is a drought of art - we live in a time when there is such a surplus of art and "mass entertainment" and such an overlap of the two that it can be difficult to find the thing we are looking for.

[Mordar]

Having barely survived a similar discussion in the past, I am wary about sticking my foot in here...but fortune favors the bold.

I believe the author is the ultimate and sole authority on their meaning/intent/symbolism in their work.

The reader is the ultimate and sole authority on what the work means to them.

The two can align, contradict, touch tangentially...whatever. But as long as the key phrase "what the story means to me" is uttered by the reader then I just can't see how its wrong (assuming they properly understood the definitions of the words) as long as it relates to the story. Reading a work that uses a word that we currently view as a pejorative and then declaring that "to me, this story means Author was a horrible person" might be outside the bounds of legitimate interpretation.

In instances where the author was from a time long past, I believe "consensus" reader meaning can change. A lot. But that doesn't change the author's intent. It is an answer to a completely different question. So if the Lord of the Rings test included a question on "How does the political situation in Middle Earth resemble the political situation in the 1950s, particularly with a view towards US/USSR relations?" I think that's fine...but the easier question to answer is "What did Tolkein think about the Cold War and how is that expressed in Lord of the Rings?".

So, does that align with DotA?

- M

PS: As an aside, I have much better and specific memories of disagreements with instructors of my college courses than I do those instances in which there were no conflicts. As such, I totally believe that a person could have excellent recollection of elements of a class they failed if the reason for the failure was that kind of disagreement.

[GloatingSwine]

"What did Tolkein think about the Cold War and how is that expressed in Lord of the Rings?".

The correct answer being "it isn't, it wasn't happening yet". (Although LotR was published in '54 it was written between '37 and '47 before the cold war started being a thing)

Also, remember to read the work not the author. You can't actually tell what an author thought about anything, because they might have been deliberately writing something else for the purposes of their narrative. See: Robert Heinlein. Just about every political position under the sun can be attributed to him (and has) based on something he wrote, often diametrically opposed positions from things quite close together.

[SuperPanda]

Having barely survived a similar discussion in the past, I am wary about sticking my foot in here...but fortune favors the bold.

I believe the author is the ultimate and sole authority on their meaning/intent/symbolism in their work.

The reader is the ultimate and sole authority on what the work means to them.

The two can align, contradict, touch tangentially...whatever. But as long as the key phrase "what the story means to me" is uttered by the reader then I just can't see how its wrong (assuming they properly understood the definitions of the words) as long as it relates to the story. Reading a work that uses a word that we currently view as a pejorative and then declaring that "to me, this story means Author was a horrible person" might be outside the bounds of legitimate interpretation.

In instances where the author was from a time long past, I believe "consensus" reader meaning can change. A lot. But that doesn't change the author's intent. It is an answer to a completely different question. So if the Lord of the Rings test included a question on "How does the political situation in Middle Earth resemble the political situation in the 1950s, particularly with a view towards US/USSR relations?" I think that's fine...but the easier question to answer is "What did Tolkein think about the Cold War and how is that expressed in Lord of the Rings?".

So, does that align with DotA?

- M

PS: As an aside, I have much better and specific memories of disagreements with instructors of my college courses than I do those instances in which there were no conflicts. As such, I totally believe that a person could have excellent recollection of elements of a class they failed if the reason for the failure was that kind of disagreement.

Honestly when considering the context you likely encountered DotA in this is a perfectly understandable interpretation - though using your own interpretation it is important to look back a the context of the original theory to eek out just a bit more.

The original essay pertains to criticism which has not always been about arguing intent and symbolism (note I left out meaning). Criticism has also always been about measuring quality. Before DotA one of the major questions on quality was "What does the writer say the intended meaning was and do readers agree with them? If the reader receives the intended message this is a mark of quality. DotA opens the door a new type of question: If the writer intended A but audiences reliably interpret B - can this still be considered a well written text?

I didn't include meaning in my part of things the author is "always the definitive voice on" because the nature of cognition is that meaning is found more in the meeting of the transmitter and receiver. I can intend to say almost anything but if I fail to transmit it effectively you may not receive it. If the thing I transmit fails to deliver my intended meaning this does not invalidate your recieved meaning (something we agree on). If a third party can look at my transmitted meaning and finds that your received meaning is a more reasonable interpretation of what I actually said than what I wanted to say - then your meaning is more "correct" than mine. Just because the writer intended to write something does not mean this is what actually got printed.

language is an imperfect vehicle but more than that stories are not written for the primary purpose of delivering messages. They are effective means of delivering messages, but they are by nature not clear or direct means of that. There are extra layers of ambiguity in them.

My favorite example of this comes from Deep Space 9 when Bashir and Garak discuss the story of the Boy who Cried Wolf. Bahsir relies on the consensus agreement that telling lies eventually comes back to bite the liar. Garak offers an alternative interpretation that is a perfectly valid reading of the story. Bashir's reading is the intended reading, and we know this because of extra-textual clues related to the culture it originated from and the intended audience. Garak's reading makes perfect sense with regard to his cultural background and formative experiences. That Garak was able to arrive at a different, valid, interpretation of the text does not make the text any less good. That Garak arrived at a different, valid, interpretation of the text does not make him any less smart or literate. That Bashir was unprepared for the text to be able to be interpreted in a different way points more to a failure in his own critical thinking than in Garak's or a failure in the text.

[Mordar]

The correct answer being "it isn't, it wasn't happening yet". (Although LotR was published in '54 it was written between '37 and '47 before the cold war started being a thing)

Totally why I said it would be the easier question to answer . I'd have gone with "I don't know, and it isn't."

Also, remember to read the work not the author. You can't actually tell what an author thought about anything, because they might have been deliberately writing something else for the purposes of their narrative. See: Robert Heinlein. Just about every political position under the sun can be attributed to him (and has) based on something he wrote, often diametrically opposed positions from things quite close together.

I concur, though I have found it interesting at times to know more about the author to help understand why they might have written what they wrote, but that is only as a lark.

- M

[Ramza00]

My favorite example of this comes from Deep Space 9 when Bashir and Garak discuss the story of the Boy who Cried Wolf. Bahsir relies on the consensus agreement that telling lies eventually comes back to bite the liar. Garak offers an alternative interpretation that is a perfectly valid reading of the story. Bashir's reading is the intended reading, and we know this because of extra-textual clues related to the culture it originated from and the intended audience. Garak's reading makes perfect sense with regard to his cultural background and formative experiences. That Garak was able to arrive at a different, valid, interpretation of the text does not make the text any less good. That Garak arrived at a different, valid, interpretation of the text does not make him any less smart or literate. That Bashir was unprepared for the text to be able to be interpreted in a different way points more to a failure in his own critical thinking than in Garak's or a failure in the text.

For the rest of the audience.



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On the subject of lies and truth telling and intent. I wonder if the same people who have very opinionated beliefs about author intent and stories, how we should see the author and the story as linked even after the story was published. I wonder how they feel about "historical fiction shows' that are meant to educate but they do character inserts in order to give a "totem" for a child to understand the story. What am I saying here, well in some historical fiction stories there is a time traveling character and the main point about the story is to become "more familiar with history" but to educate the child you create a lie, a fiction, not tell the literal history but instead create a story in order to engage the child's imagination. Is it good to tell stories like Dr. Who or Johnny Tremain or is it not?

[Frozen_Feet]

@Ramza00: you might as well cut your preface and framing and directly ask: "is it good to tell unreal stories?"

There's no general answer to that. It's an ethical question. From a consequentalist viewpoint, it depends on causal effects of telling the story. From a virtue ethics viewpoint, it depends on the motivations and intent of the storyteller. From a deontological viewpoint, it depends on whether we accept that all such stories count as lies.

I would say that one task of criticism is to actually determine this on a story-by-story basis.

[DomaDoma]

You know, popular musical theatre really is a decent preserve for the epic poetry of the masses. Hamilton, Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables, Evita - I'll more subjectively add Little Shop of Horrors as well - these things ought to be treasured through the ages.

Johnny Tremain is not about a real person, but it is realistic and the events and historical figures portrayed are very much real. That's fine. (Great, actually. A MAN MAY STAND.) Doctor Who is neither about real people, nor realistic. Not my bag, but you can't call it morally wrong either. It's things like Titanic and Braveheart that enter the danger zone. Sure, the audience will probably recognize that Jack and Rose aren't real, but they probably won't say the same for the slanderous portrayal of Murdoch.

[zimmerwald1915]

You know, popular musical theatre really is a decent preserve for the epic poetry of the masses. Hamilton, Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables, Evita - I'll more subjectively add Little Shop of Horrors as well - these things ought to be treasured through the ages.

The books and librettos of these are all works of individual or small groups of authors, and while some pretend to draw on the culture of the masses ("Sweeney Todd," for instance, is framed as an urban legend even though it has a definite and quite recent origination), they cannot be said to do so in any meaningful sense. Nor is the experience of seeing the works in performance really communal. It is marked by the decorum, enforced silence, and passivity of the audience.

On a practical level, ticket prices for "popular" musical theater are as high as for the opera and symphony if not higher, especially for works like "Hamilton." It is an exclusive medium. It has to be - mass culture (to the extent such a thing can be even said to exist anymore) has moved quite on, and like the opera and symphony, theater must survive on the patronage of snobs and nostalgics.

[DomaDoma]

When we get into "communal" in that sense, we're talking about other lost bits of culture-- dance, say, or craft fairs, or singing around the piano. Poetry has always been from book or performer to a passive audience -- good poetry sticks in the memory and the heart ever after. (Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse is my eternal favorite. If Guy Montag is Ecclesiastes, then I'm Ballad of the White Horse.)

As to availabilty, all I mentioned but Little Shop have filmed versions of the play or, in the case of Hamilton, a soundtrack specifically designed to give you the full sense of the play. Little Shop, meanwhile, has a GREAT track record in local productions. Broadway ticket prices severely not required. And if you think the songs don't become a part of people and their communal life thereafter, then you my friend do NOT know many musical fans.

EDIT: Huh. I actually blanked on the existence of the film of Little Shop of Horrors. Ah well. I was thinking of the George Hearn Sweeney, too. There is such a thing as an adaptation that's too changed to count.

[zimmerwald1915]

And if you think the songs don't become a part of people and their communal life thereafter, then you my friend do NOT know many musical fans.

And you don't know me, because this is all kinds of untrue. But what you have described as "communal life" I would characterize as anything but. Knowing and repeating various songs is a thing that happens mostly in the inner life, or as part of a job interview/audition. As you say, "singing around the piano" for pleasure is not a thing that happens anymore.

Broadway ticket prices severely not required.

Ticket prices for tours and local productions take into account the cost of living in the areas where they play, to be sure. That doesn't make them not prohibitively expensive for most of the population. It's just that prohibitively expensive doesn't mean the same thing in, say, Wichita as it does in Manhattan.

[Lethologica]

As you say, "singing around the piano" for pleasure is not a thing that happens anymore.

Whoops, I guess I and my family and friends just vanished in a puff of irrefutable generalization from the wise and noble masters of this thread. I'll let you know what it's like beyond the veil before I pass on for good, I guess.

[Ramza00]

@Ramza00: you might as well cut your preface and framing and directly ask: "is it good to tell unreal stories?"

There's no general answer to that. It's an ethical question. From a consequentalist viewpoint, it depends on causal effects of telling the story. From a virtue ethics viewpoint, it depends on the motivations and intent of the storyteller. From a deontological viewpoint, it depends on whether we accept that all such stories count as lies.

I would say that one task of criticism is to actually determine this on a story-by-story basis.

Of course there will be a debate that will never be settled. I want to hear peoples opinions for I think the discussion is just as important as whether the question has an answer or not.

But you mentioned the various ethics systems, well what prompted me asking this question was actually related. I was reminded that Plato and Aristotle (his student) had very different opinions on this subject matter. Plato thought many types of stories were corrupting the youth and they were often bad in themselves for this reason. Plato thought they were a ridiculous waste of time but also because they were entraining they were taking people away from nobler types of stories that Plato thought should be told more often. (I am dramatically oversimplifying Plato's nuance point of view on this subject matter.)

Aristotle was much more measured and magnanimous / equanimous about this subject matter for he could argue both sides of the issue and thus his opinion was on a case by case measure. Aristotle pointed out the people who most benefit from these stories are the youth for these types of stories help connect them to the greater world. Too much telling of literal history, concrete history feels like "teeling" to young children and youth / adults it does not connect, but make that history a narrative and is better at connection with the audience for there is a show aspect.

(Skips sharing lots more thoughts on this subject matter. )

But yeah this subject matter is old as time, or at least old as written time for we had records on the subject matter

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So yeah I asked the question for I wanted to hear other people's thoughts articulated and I want to understand these other peoples viewpoint on the world, their ideas, their beliefs, their thoughts, etc. I think knowing these things are just as important as knowing an answer to a question or saying this is a question but we can't arrive to an answer.

Whoops, I guess I and my family and friends just vanished in a puff of irrefutable generalization from the wise and noble masters of this thread. I'll let you know what it's like beyond the veil before I pass on for good, I guess.

We call this idea Karaoke. Here is one of my favorite moments of Karaoke on tv.



Gods, I am going to miss both John Mahoney / David Ogden Stiers.

[DomaDoma]

Whoops, I guess I and my family and friends just vanished in a puff of irrefutable generalization from the wise and noble masters of this thread. I'll let you know what it's like beyond the veil before I pass on for good, I guess.

I would say, rather, that your social circle is a rare and wonderful thing, drawing from a box wrested from the fastnesses of Annuvin. Pass that as far and wide as you can!

EDIT: Should also address the issue of what is and isn't a prohibitive cost. A Broadway show in Wichita is worth maybe three or four restaurant meals per head, while actual classic poetry - the stuff Laura Ingalls was over the moon to get for a present when it truly was rare and costly - now typically comes in a two-dollar Dover Thrift volume. If we say we can't afford beautiful things - well, the biggest factor in any budget is priorities.

[Test Pattern]

Shallowness has always existed. Even when it was the nineteenth-century Methodists in charge, "progress" has always been a shallow concept - "does this conform with the current idea, and if not, better toss it" - but now, that's pretty much the whole enchilada. The only way an old book can win praise is if it can be said to "subvert" its contemporary order, unless the contemporary order in question happens to agree with us anyway.

Marry me, I will pay for airplane fees and if you already have some sort of spouse accidents can be arranged (Please don't take this seriously).

Its like you reach the novelty of a subversion....and then thats it. If evaluated on its own merits outside of that novelty its even more predictable and shallow then the "Standard" interpretation (The Good guy is really the bad guy!....But as a result is more shallow, and has less development and character put into him then a traditional bad guy).

And snubbing your nose at the past is utterly INFURIATING for a person like me. Its such massive ARROGANCE. "People in the past didn't have internet and where totally racist and intolerant, that means nothing is to be learned from them".

[DomaDoma]

I saw a for-college bundle of three plays by Racine, in which he was basically adhering as hard as he possibly could to the original flavor of Sophocles. How did the back cover spin this? Ah, Racine was an early postmodern, subverting the paradigm in the culture of Enlightenment France that men could master their passions. I mean. What's wrong with modeling your work after Sophocles?

Here's a case where I'm conflicted, though: when people interpret Taming of the Shrew as a feminist work... well, I mean, it's just not. This idea surfaced absolutely nowhere until the advent of Kiss Me, Kate. But it's sort of paying Shakespeare a compliment, isn't it? "Hey, Will, I love your stuff. Could I please please pretend that this one isn't actually putting a positive and therapeutic cast on wife-beating, so I can enjoy it?" I really do think it best to err on the side of liking things, so I'm torn here.

[SuperPanda]

The shallowness of “progress” has indeed always existed as has the prison of traditon - we loose as much throwing out all of the old as we do ignoring all of the new. If we cannot accept new ideas if worth we will forever be left in the cave, and if we never listen to the past we will simply smack our heads against that same cave wall for eternity.

On the question of people viewing Shrew as a feminist piece - ehh ... it really depends on which feminist lens is being used. Feminist literary criticsm should view the piece as reinforcing the gender dispairity of the time through its format as a comedy and the general plot of the story. I could see a valid argument being made that Shrew has a compelling and complex female character who has some agency of her own - something not common in much of shakespeare’s Writing - and this being held up as a good thing. I can also see the resolution where the male lead only finds happiness and “gets the girl” once he stops treating her as an object to be won could be viewed as genuinely progressive for the time - creating an intratextual argument for that whole “subversion” thing mentioned before (side note - subversion isn’t even new, rather it is trendy - Swift did it better).

There are a few ways to read Shrew within a Feminist framework - and here we don’t have any stated “intent” from the author to deal with apart from “to entertain.” It is worth noting that romantic comedies in the current era serve mostly to reinforce the status quo but that “comedy” in shakespere’s time really only meant “ends with a wedding instead of a death.” Like Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare made beautifully layered texts. Shylock is the villain of the story - and an “evil jew” to the people of his day. His speech about how his community denies his humanity is poignant despite his actions clearly pegging him as a villain. The things he expresses in that speech could easily be read as the causes which make him so jaded and cruel - which in turn could be seen as a rebuke of anti-semitism while his portrayal as a outright villain can also be seen as endorsing the same thing. Shrew is similar in that respect. This layering speaks to how the text remains relevant hundreds of years later - it is proof of the quality of the text.

So while most of the people praising Shrew for those reasons are likely wrong - you should probably smile and nod because their wrongness doesn’t detract from the original genius - it helps prove it.

[Ramza00]

^{(please do not take this the wrong way.)}

DomaDoma I don't know how I feel about you, except I know exactly how I feel about you but it is just merely complicated. You say things all the time that I like and make me smile for I agree with them , only for two seconds later say things I have a different opinion on (an opinion that makes me raise my eyebrow ), but at the same time I can respect this viewpoint

People like you DomaDoma in this world means this world will never be boring.

So why am I writting stuff that sounds like mush in my mind? Well it is the type of feedback that is not often communicated in this world / society for it is complicated. So I want to say thank you and I am grateful for people like you, I want to say I see you, I respect you, but you also cause conflicted feelings in me for I often agree with you only to very much disagree with you 3 breaths later

The shallowness of “progress” has indeed always existed as has the prison of tradition - we loose as much throwing out all of the old as we do ignoring all of the new. If we cannot accept new ideas if worth we will forever be left in the cave, and if we never listen to the past we will simply smack our heads against that same cave wall for eternity.

Yeah I agree on the shallowness of progress, for example many people we call "modernist thinkers / philosphers" or "enlightment thinkers / philosphers" were deeply critical of the idea of progress, yet at the same time we consider them part of the enlightment when in reality they were critical of the concept even if they partly disagreed with it.

For example David Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau...dozens of other people we would consider skeptics or counter-enlightenment thinkers for they were very skeptical of one way track of history with meta-narratives. But we in modern times with a reductionist lense of history and not knowing the full writings (aka a middle school or high school understanding of history not an advanced course of high school history or college history) often teach these people are part of the enlightenment for even though they were skeptics they help "tighten" up things like the scientific method with their critiques, and since the scientific method leads to progress than they too must be for progress instead of being people who were naturally skeptical.

Case in point with Adam Smith. He loved markets for he thought markets that are healthy (and not unhealthy like few buyers and sellers, but a robust market) will uplift people from poverty. But in his writings he knew that markets are only good in the right conditions. Furthermore even in the right conditions they due have externality consequences completely seperate from the market. For example he writes in Section 3 Chapter 3 of Moral Sentiments a whole chapter on the corruption of our moral sentiments merely by who is rich and who is not. Literally this is the chapter title, Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition, in it Adam Smith argues humans are not rational and we use motivated reasoning and this can corrupt our moral sentiments where we think the poor deserve their fate, and the rich deserve their fate, and the rich must be generous and virtuous and kind and we believe this merely for they have money. But we want to be rich and we think highly of our selves and since the rich is our ideal future with wealth we bring in emotional baggage without even realizing it, baggage that then corrupts our own virtues and makes us vindictive judders. And suddenly our morality system is turned upside down.

Yet people preach and say all the time (lying without realizing it) that Adam Smith was always for X when in reality he was a big skeptic through and through. And David Hume was even more skeptical, skeptic to the point of doubting the ability to proove causality for much of what we think is causality with cause and effect we are relying on induction and induction with imperfect information merely for our perceptions are imperfect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction Now Hume is super critical of inductive thinking, but he also acknowledge humans are kind of built to do it, and sometimes inductive thinking is beneficial, but make no mistake inductive thinking is not rational and Hume will argue inductive reasoning leads us to bad conclusions some of the time.

[martianmister]

For a really clear-cut example: raise your hands if you think Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is canon.

*Raises her hand*