From: Harriet Monkhouse hflysator@jarriere.demon.co.uk
Re what Lisa calls:
the whole interminable business.
(and I agree with most of what she said)
I have been thinking on this interminable business as I stared out my insomnia, and have come to the conclusion that it is not actually impossible for Fiona and me to discuss it (which is why I have said very little), because our mindsets are completely alien to one another.
Because of this, I was in two minds over whether to answer this post. I'm trepidatiously going ahead though, with the proviso that I'm just trying to clarify my position here, not to beat you over the head with it.
It is not merely a question of how we interpret the series, it is a question of how we think it can be interpreted. Fiona, as far as I can make out, believes that an objective viewing of Blake's 7 is not merely possible, but easily defined, and can be separated from interpretations built upon it.
I'd challenge that "easily"-- neither Betty nor I found it at all easy to stick to the canon :). I also, I have to say, do actually believe that it is impossible to separate the show from the context of its creation, just as it is impossible to separate the viewer from the social context in which they view it. However, that having been said, I think it is possible for the sake of an intellectual argument to confine one's evidence to a particular body of work and, even though one may have had contact with other bodies of work, to leave those out of the discussion.
When one starts writing an essay or scientific paper, one generally starts with an opinion or even a gut feeling. However, in order for the paper to be taken seriously, the writer has to provide evidence to support this feeling, from an agreed-upon body of material. If the writer can't, they might then modify their initial premise in the light of the evidence out there.
I can't even imagine such a possibility, and therefore perceive every account as interpretation influenced by the individual viewer. All the things which she sees as evidence mounting up to proof (eg comments of writers and actors, individual gay people, fans in general),
Actually I used those more on side threads than in the main argument, and to support the evidence from canon. But even in a case where there can be no "absolute" proof, you can still provide the balance of evidence. IIRC we can't actually prove the existence of evolution in the way that one can prove that 2+2=4, but most biologists still seem to accept it as a theory.
I see as interesting pieces of information to sift through and accept as enriching my interpretation - or reject as not. That doesn't mean that anyone else should pick and choose the same pieces of information, because I regard all interpretations as subjective.
But sometimes the picking and choosing can be more justifiable than others. For instance, at the moment I'm reading through some historical material on Germany, and I'm doing exactly what you say-- I'm sifting through the material and accepting some of it and rejecting other bits. However, I'm not simply doing this from a personal, subjective basis. Albert Speer, for instance, swears blind in his books that he had no idea about the death camps. I find Speer an excellent, sympathetic and on the whole accurate writer, and so I'd like to accept what he says as true. However, I'm also aware of independent documentary and anecdotal evidence that Speer *did* know about the camps (not to mention of a number of reasons why he might lie in his books), and so, even though I desperately wish that I could make it so that Speer didn't know about the camps, I have to accept that the balance of evidence suggests that he did, and I also have to reconcile this with the fact that I find him an admirable human being in several other areas of his life.
So yes, you're right. We do go through life accepting some bits of evidence and rejecting others. But as we do this, we have to justify this, and often our own personal views and wishes aren't enough justification.
Consequently, I am often baffled by attempts to "prove" an argument. I read such debates in order to sift through other people's ideas and see what I'd like to add to my account. But it begins to seem that in some cases it's impossible to discuss this, because such discussion keeps falling back on an appeal to common ground which doesn't appear to exist.
Which is why we stuck to the argument from canon. Initially the argument was anything-goes: actors and writers' interviews, my mate with the gaydar, other people's fanfic, whatever. But it quickly became apparent that this was where we would get bogged down in lack of common ground.
However, Betty and I both knew our canon, agreed what it was (52 episodes, no Barry Letts, Tony Attwood or other outside material), and, at a particular point, agreed to keep our evidence only to that narrow band of material, even though we both knew of and could cite material outside this band (a bit like how someone in media studies might have, for the sake of an essay, to confine herself only to the cut version of Bladerunner, even though she is familiar with the extended version, the Philip K. Dick novella, and the other works of Ridley Scott). It was by defining the turf that we could find common ground for discussion.
In a discussion like that one, where things could so easily spiral off into other directions, the first principle is to find out what the common ground is, and to define it, and to make sure each of us sticks to it.
I'm actually thinking of writing the argument-from-canon up as an essay (again, not in the spirit of oppressing other people, but so that it's out there for anyone who wants to refer to it). Anyone think this is a good idea?
None of which will stop me defending a tribe-member in any Blues War - we'll merely have to work out some sort of code for emergency communication...
A dark blue semaphore flag, perhaps :)?
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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