Mistral wrote:
Una McCormack wrote:
Well, that depends on your purpose. Writing fanfic, I feel able to keep or
dump
whatever I want and am more interested in reading/writing different
perspectives
on the characters (the writers' included). Similarly, finding out the
different
ways in which fans view the same show doesn't involve knowing the intention
of
the writers.
Absolutely. However, the thread does appear to have become some people saying 'this is what I see on the screen' or 'this is how I enjoy looking at it' vs. Fiona saying 'but one must factor in what the creators intended'. My point is simply that neither side is going to convince the other because they're not using the same criteria for validation of evidence.
I quite agree - Alison posted definitively on this yesterday - and it's why I haven't really entered the debate.
Of course audiences receive texts in unexpected and multiple ways. But that doesn't make the issue of how they were *supposed* to receive them any less interesting.
I agree completely that it's an interesting topic, and an interesting debate. It just seems a bit like apples and oranges at the moment, though.
I think I'd flip it round the other way: there are several debates going on at the moment all of which are related to the general topic of how media are produced, received and appropriated. It's interesting to see the various ways in which pointing to authorial intent is used or dismissed as a legitimating tactic within these various debates.
What have we been discussing recently?
- Whether pornographic or violent media affects behaviour (i.e. whether the 'weight' of authorial intent allows no resistant readings). - Whether the lack of authorial intent undermines a particular reading of B7 (here slash) or whether viewers' readings have as much legitimacy. - How authorial intent is itself affected by the social and political context in which a TV show is produced.
What do I think? I'll give my standard answer, 'It depends on the context' which leaves me in the nicely self-congratulatory position of being able to champion resistant readings while shaking my head and stroking my beard when I think about the deleterious effects of propaganda.
Of all the three debates I've found the final one the most interesting, since we seem to have been generating new perspectives on the cultural context in which B7 was transmitted. I hope more people will post on this one.
Just to clarify what I'm trying to say: If Shakespeare turned up on my doorstep, I'd be pumping him for information about his works. I'd want to know _his_ opinion of what he'd written. And his ideas _might_ inform and alter my opinion of those works - but they might not. Because Shakespeare isn't an authority on what his works mean _to me_. The Bard lost control of his art and its interpretation when he put it into the public eye; how much more so in the case of the BBC.
I think I'm pretty much with you on that.
Una