I think there's a lot of confusion going around as to what my intent was when making this essay (ironic, that).rereboy wrote:Of course, but that's nothing more than interpreting at different moments in time with the existing available factors and knowledge at that time.Zephyr wrote: I think what he's getting at is that, if you want to look at a piece of art with authorial intent in mind, you must both experience the work itself, and learn what the author's explicit intent was. Those are two distinct things that you need. When you are looking only at the work itself, explicit and external authorial intent doesn't factor in yet, since you've yet to look at things beyond the work itself on which to base your subjective evaluation of it.
That isn't to say that either one is the right way, but rather that authorial intent isn't inherent to the work itself. And if you're only looking at the work itself, as it is, then authorial intent doesn't matter.
For example, a person might interpret something in a certain way when he is 15 years old, and then interpret it differently when he is 35. Why? Because things changed. The view of the person has evolved, his knowledge has increased and that has caused his interpretation to change, to evolve.
In similar fashion, a person that prefers to interpret according to the original intent but has no way to know what the original intent was other than guessing and interpreting from the work itself, will interpret without that knowledge. However, if in the future that person learns what the original intent is, things will change, his knowledge will increase and the next time he analyzes and interprets the work, since he prefers to interpret according to the original intent and he now has access to it, his interpretation will perhaps change, evolve, compared to the last time he did it.
As for the intent being inherent to the work or not, a person that values the original intent would say something like: the original intent is always inherent to the work itself because it is born out of that intent even when it's not clearly apparent, and when it does become apparent then it should be a prime factor in the interpretation. Being possible to interpret without that knowledge doesn't mean that the work is not a reflection of that intent and, thus, the intent must be part of it.
In other words, not even wether the intent is part of the work or not is something that can be objectively defined. It's just a factor that people will consider important or not in their interpretation.
See, I don't mean to say that you can't allow outside forces to sway your opinion ever on a piece of work. I just mean that when producing evidence in a debate that centers around analyzing the work to most people (myself included) the evidence of "the author said this" isn't really all that valid. Now, I've recently had a conversation with someone where they said "I like how Toriyama worded it in this interview." which is fine. They didn't use Toriyama's word to try to convince me outside of borrowing his wording to make their position better known.
I made this post because I was running into the problem of people accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about simply because I didn't agree with them and wouldn't accept Toriyama's word as damning evidence to my points.
They were treating me like some stupid, crazy fangirl all because they happen to know that I do in fact love my ships, am on Tumblr, do call myself a fangirl and am, in fact, a girl. They didn't want to hear any arguments I had for them because in their mind, the discussion on what the characters were like was already over because there were Toriyama interviews that they could interpret to mean what they wanted. (We should never forget that even the Japanese misunderstand each other or misspeak sometimes, so acting like there's no other way to read an interview beyond what proves your point is also silly but I digress because - well - Death of the Author, I don't care to interpret Toriyama's word much.)
Of course you're allowed to respect Toriyama's word. I respect several critics, internet personalities and family members words on the basis of "these people know what they're talking about." But just as I can't force you to completely ignore Toriyama's word the way I do, you can't force me to accept it if we ever happen to be in a debate.
