Mistral wrote:

Jenny Kaye wrote:

...

How can you possibly say that you know what he "really" wanted to talk about? All you can go by is what's on the screen.

Exactly. There's a difference between text and interpretation. Text is that Vila changed the direction of the conversation (from his own grading to Tarrant's trustworthiness).

Yes, I agree.

Whether it was because he wanted to talk about something else, or because he wanted to distract Avon, are _both_ interpretation.

Yes, I agree with that too.

If you can see that my interpretation has added a layer of meaning

Now here's the sticky bit. Any meaning in this or any scene has to come from the context-- it would be mad to, say, interpret the change of subject as being due to Vila's having taken a large hit of crack cocaine and being totally high (not because Vila doesn't abuse substances :-), but because nothing else in that scene suggests he is mind altered). In that scene you see Vila telling a story, which could be the truth or it could be a lie. You then see Cally and Avon challenging his story, and Vila growing more defensive, then suddenly changing the subject. If you take the line and subject change out of the context of Cally and Avon challenging his story and Vila becoming defensive, then yes, he could be telling the truth and the subject change could be him remembering what he meant to say. If you take the whole scene, though-- why would Cally and Avon say that they think it's more likely that Tarrant was telling the truth than he was, and tease him about Dayna, if they think he's telling the truth and that he's making a serious accusation?

to what's on the screen, you should be able to see that

about your own; and should therefore realize that 'Vila distracting Avon' is opinion, not fact,

No. "Fact" is the change of subject which occurs. But in any sort of narrative, whether it's a novel, a play or a TV episode, any writer is going to drop hints as to how something should be interpreted into the surrounding context; in a TV show, also, a writer is going to be thinking of making a scene accessible to the audience, most of which likely won't have seen "Weapon." This thread began with the question of whether or not Vila was lying in this scene; to stand up, an interpretation should look at the rest of the scene for clues about the writer's intention.

and therefore not a stable platform from

which to argue.

If that's the case, then why do so many threads on the lyst begin with people posing a question about a scene and then stating an opinion? When you do this, do you seriously expect your opinion to go unchallenged, or nobody else to suggest another way of looking at the scene?

None of us are in the business of constructing "tortuous and long-winded" explanations, as you put it, for character behaviour.

But in the conversations that have taken place over the past few days on this thread, there have been long and tortuous explanations, some of which put words in the characters' mouths, some of which refer to long invented backstories, and which don't refer to what's on screen except vaguely.

We

each look at the screen and see something different, because we each have different perspectives and experiences, and thus see the characters and their actions differently.

No. It is true that everyone's interpretation is informed by their experiences and perspectives, and that is what makes for discussions. But "perspectives and experiences" are a different thing from "personal canon." It's the difference between somebody saying "as a prison-warder, with daily experience of thieves and pickpockets, I think Vila is lying," and somebody saying "I think Vila is lying because in the background which I have made up for him his father beat him with a shoe when he was a child."

In order to agree with your version of

this scene, I'd have to remodel my Vila and Avon considerably;

I thought, when the subject came up, that people wanted to discuss a scene. I didn't think that people wanted to compare personal canons. If we're going to talk about a scene, we have to leave our own personal invented backstories for the characters aside and talk about the show.

however

they fit rather well with my version (as I'm sure Sally's do with hers, etc., etc.)

This is reminding me a bit of that salt creature in Star Trek where everyone sees a different person when they look at it. Not only is this denying the author a voice in his own story, since it means rejecting the things that he says which contradict the "version" one has made, but it means that no debate can take place, because if you see all interpretations as "versions" divorced from the text, then we have no common ground on which to argue.

If the discussions themselves become tortuous and long-winded, it's perhaps because it's sometimes difficult to take off the lens of one personal canon and put on the lens of another personal canon, particularly if one has forgotten one is looking through a lens.

This, though, is exactly *why* people in literary studies talk about focusing on the text and keeping the analyst's personal views out of it as much as possible. I think perhaps this is why there seems to be very little discussion about the show itself on the lyst-- I've seen most of the attempts to do so follow exactly the same pattern, that of starting out fine and then one participant saying "Well, that doesn't fit my personal canon, so let's just stop." Which isn't much of a basis from which to talk about the programme.

If this list is for talking about people's personal canons and not about the programme itself, then I apologise, and I'll go somewhere else.

Jenny

_________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.