I will never stop thinking it’s extremely fucked up that creators will get less credit and more shit, for trying to be progressive and inclusive but falling short in some way, than creators who don’t try at all.
And they will never not ‘fall short’ because no creation will accurately reflect the experience and worldview of every member of a marginalized group that’s depicted. Marginalized people are also individuals with wildly different lives from one another, after all.
But of course we don’t tear apart creations that only have white cis straight able characters. We don’t even notice that they’re not even bothering to try … and when we do, too many of us shrug and think it’s too much work to try to make them change.
Instead we do what everyone else already does: pick on the people who are trying because we know they care.
(But when we’re all doing that, with the huge amount of access that modern social media gives us to creators, it’s clear that pressure is nigh unbearable.)
You mean the people who believe in “Death of the Author” treat authors like crap? How surprising.
Death of the Author means letting their work speak for itself instead of insisting the creator’s intent is the only reading worth anything. It doesn’t mean the creator is expendable, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be used in any kind of proper critique. If someone IS using Death of the Author to excuse shitting on a creator, then they’re a piece of shit who needs to grow up tbfh.
Death of the Author does exactly that. It’s stealing people’s work from them so it can be critiqued in absurd ways that have nothing to do with their intent or even often the words on the page so Marxists in academia can push their propagandizing on their students in exchange for money stolen form them for a product that has no value in the career marketplace. It’s applying communists’ disrespect for the individual on fiction, and it’s disgusting. The fact anyone would defend it is cringe-inducing and perhaps evidence you are still a neophyte that is naive to the true nature of academia.
Creators are not gods who get to override other people, I’m sorry to inform you. Different people are going to have different readings of the same piece of fiction. Even on a basic fandom level, it’s how we get various groups of people thinking completely different ships are going to be canon (or not) even though they all consumed the same piece of media.
This isn’t about liberal or conservative “propaganda”, it’s basic facts about how media and media consumption works. It’s how literary analysis works. Surely you’ve seen posts that went something like this:
Someone: the curtains are blue to demonstrate the character’s depression.
The author: I just chose blue because I liked the color and so does the character, it’s their room ffs.
And the thing is, both can be correct. Just because two people see a work of fiction differently doesn’t mean one is right and one is wrong. They’re just two views on the same work. Death of the Author just allows for more interpretations than just the creator’s vision. Bc creators are not gods and their words are not laws of nature.
It’s not stealing a piece of work away from an author when they’re sharing it with the world by publishing it. Someone interpreting a work differently than the author intended isn’t stealing work away from them either. If the idea that someone might interpret something differently than you, then I sincerely hope you’re not a creator of any media.
Creators are not gods who get to override other people
Hell yes, they are. They’re the gods of their stories. That’s the entire point of being an author, to be in control of your own fictional world. The fact you think the reader and the author are on the same level is some new level of brainwashing. Really, pull your head out of that academic fog and reassess this. Your view point is beyond entitled, and the point of OP has completely flown over your head.
This isn’t about liberal or conservative “propaganda”
Academia is filled to the brim with Marxists who want to create a world in which individual people are not allowed to own property. Death of the Author is just an extension of that applied to fictional works. You’re right about one thing though, the left stopped being liberal a very long time ago as OP indicates.
Someone: the curtains are blue to demonstrate the character’s depression.
The author: I just chose blue because I liked the color and so does the character, it’s their room ffs.
And the thing is, both can be correct.
Incorrect. The author is correct. The reader is inventing meaning that doesn’t exist in the first place. While they are allowed to do that, it doesn’t CHANGE the original work. Only the author can do that. The fact you think such an illogical conclusion is actually logical again points back to the fact you haven’t spent enough time in the real world post-English department to deprogram yourself from these absurd academic concepts. Jesus, it took me only a few months to realize this stuff was garbage when I left grad school.
Death of the Author just allows for more interpretations than just the creator’s vision.
The fact academics invented a device to allow themselves to create more worthless critique and discourse doesn’t mean the idea isn’t completely idiotic. Of course these entitled, self-important academics want to be able to invent things they can talk about after the author is dead. It gives them the ability to keep getting that big fat paycheck from much poorer students who are actually naive enough to think these people are authorities on something when in actuality they’re pulling it all out of their butts. Just because I say Moby Dick is actually about modern identity politics and the whale represents white privilege doesn’t make it true, but through your own argument that interpretation matters as much as Melville’s. Give me a break.
It’s not stealing a piece of work away from an author when they’re sharing it with the world by publishing it.
It’s stealing when they take their work away from them, completely change the meaning, twist their words into something that was never intended or even implied and then tell others that it’s some kind of truth regarding the work. It’s definitely a form of theft.
I sincerely hope you’re not a creator of any media.
I am, and I doubt anyone with your mindset has the ability to create since you don’t believe in the ability of the author to create meaning for their own words. And while we’re hoping for things as a way of throwing thinly veiled insults, I hope you never become a parent because your disrespect for the individual and what the individual can accomplish independently would be disastrous in regards to raising another human being that can actually achieve success in life.
You’ll never see Conservatives masked up, rioting, committing violence, looting and murdering. Only Democrats do that. The parties never switched, Democrats are just more deceptive in their strategy.
The very reason why I created schooltrashers.com was to expose teachers like this. There’s a lot of sex predators in our school system grooming or preying on their students.
