Closing Thoughts

    Well, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at different sources and comparing the varying opinions of people. And to be honest, I’m still kind of up in the air about the issue. I guess you could say I’m leaning towards one opinion but if I had time to do more research my opinion might very well change again. This really is such a big topic! There are so many different views on it, and almost all of them have reasonable support. It seems like such a simple question, but in the end I think it really all comes down to your own point of view.

     I’m leaning towards the idea that once a creator puts their work out into the public eye, it’s out there to be interpreted however the different viewers chose. In the end that’s what makes these kinds of things so amazing as a creator: seeing just how other people will interpret your work. Not to say that there aren’t ridiculous interpretations, but that comes with the business.  I admit I’m still a bit split on the issue because I do think that the creator’s interpretation of their own creation does hold a bit more weight to it than your average Joe.

    There really is something so enjoyable in seeing the analyses of others though, especially when they’re outlandish. I once happened upon a theory that said the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was actually a metaphor for Christianity and that it was retelling the fall of the devil. They even had pretty plausible evidence to back the theory up, even if they admitted it probably wasn’t true. Is this interpretation any less valid when compared to the intentions of the creator, which was just to make a good show for young girls? I don’t think so really, but that’s the fun thing about art. It can be interpreted in so many different ways, and I think they’re usually able to hold their ground.

A Turn For the Books

    This entry is going be handled a little differently than the ones before, in that I’m not going to be discussing any one movie in particular. Instead I’m going to focusing on an essay written by David Bordwell that examines and discusses the state of film interpretation in the modern world. I will also be covering a video made by Lindsay Ellis that briefly analyzes the book Ender’s Game and discusses author’s interpretation, how relevant it is when analyzing their work, and how relevant different kinds of interpretations of said are, which you can watch here (it's about 12 minutes long). 

 

    Bordwell’s essay mostly just goes over the different facets of film interpretation; how qualified do you have to be, how important is interpretation when criticizing a film etc. It’s a little dry, and to be honest, he doesn’t really go much into creator’s intent. There are some interesting parts to it though, such as his definition of interpretation. “Interpretation, by contrast, ascribes abstract and nonliteral meanings to the film and its world. It ascribes a broader significance, going beyond the denoted world and any denoted message to posit implicit or symptomatic meanings at work in the text” (Bordwell, 96). He doesn’t really discuss author’s intent so I’m left to guess at what his opinion might be.

    Ellis’s discussion is more focused on its two topics: Ender’s Game and author intent. She brings up a lot of the issues I had concerning strange theories (in relation to The Shining) and how valid they are as a whole. She also doesn’t really state her opinion on the issue of how important the author’s intent is, but implies that Orson Scott Card’s own views and intent colored her interpretation of his books. 

 

     Ellis’s video really made me want to get a more definite answer from her on the issue. It’s an issue that I’ve seen get brought up a lot, but haven’t really seen many actual resolutions to. To me, it seems that if you know what a creator’s intent is before you analyze their work, it will affect your own interpretation. I really liked her brief covering of how valid the strange theories are, though again I wish she talked about them more. Because really, how valid ARE these theories? Ender’s Game is related in some way to Hitler? If you dig deep enough you find a parallel in ANY story, but the real question is whether or not it was intended. In most cases, probably not. It just comes off as sounding like an outlandish conspiracy theory. Whatever Card intended in his book, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an allegory for Hitler.

     This could be applied to other works as well. As I brought up in the first post, many literary scholars see Lord of the Rings as an allegory for World War I. Are they just reading too much into it? Sure this theory isn’t nearly as out there as some of the theories in relation to The Shining, but they still to go against what the author intended. 

    In this essay the author raises a few good points. He states that while both methods of interpretation are valid, an interpretation is not a "bet to be settled" by the author. The author's interpretation of their work should not be the final word on what the intention of the work is.

 Bordwell, David. "Film Interpretation Revisited." Film Criticism 17.2/3 (1993): 95-119. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.Vancouver/ICMJEReferences

Shining Theories

   For this entry I’m going to be covering a film a bit more well-known then Grave of the Fireflies.

   While I’m sure most people have at least heard of The Shining, the movie in a nutshell is about a writer recovering from alcoholism that gets a job as a winter caretaker of a huge hotel and goes to stay there with his family. They’re stuck in the hotel all winter due to the snow, and the writer eventually goes crazy (from ghosts who apparently haunt the hotel or cabin fever) and tries to kill his family with an axe. He eventually wanders out into the snow and dies while his family escapes.

    So apparently, The Shining has a huge cult following of conspiracy theorists that say the film is full of different subliminal messages and hidden meanings. This article briefly goes over the cult following and some of their theories, saying that while some of the theories are certainly very strange, others are very interesting. This essay is quite well-known as it goes over one the earliest theories about the film, saying that the movie is actually about the genocide of the Native Americans.

 

   This is going to be a bit different form some of my other posts mainly because I couldn’t find anything about the director’s thoughts on any of these theories, but I think this kind of thing is still important to the original question. How valid are these theories? Going off the essay, the writer obviously managed to find some evidence of how his theory was supported. But how valid is the evidence even? Many of these theories are just going off continuity errors. One of the theories I read about was a poster of Dopey from Snow White being on the door of the kid in the film, but not being there later. Apparently this means that the child is no longer “dopey” or rather, he understands what is happening better. 

    A lot of these theories might have come about simply because the director, Stanley Kubrick, has a history of making very surreal films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. Obviously this film MUST have a deeper meaning besides just an interesting horror film. A chair is in a slightly different position then it was before? There must be some symbolism there! It can’t just be a continuity error. 

    Maybe it’s because these theories are so outlandish that I have trouble swallowing them. But does the strangeness make them any less acceptable then a theory more grounded in reality? Honestly, my opinion so far is leaning towards “if there is acceptable evidence to back up a theory, it is more valid”. These theories are odd, but considering the director’s past work and the evidence found to support them, they’re more acceptable than many other theories.

The Meaning of Fireflies

   The first film I’ll be looking at is Grave of the Fireflies, a historical Japanese war film made by Stuido Ghibli, directed by Isao Takahata, and based on the book of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka.

    In a nutshell, it’s a film about two Japanese children who become orphans during World War 2. The older brother, Seita, has to take care of his five year old sister Setsuko. After leaving their cruel aunt, the pair try to live on their own but eventually die of starvation.

      In the first article writer Chris Cabin gives a short summery of the film and gives his review, basically calling it an anti-war movie. In the second article, Transcending the Victim’s History, author Wendy Goldberg describes her own analysis of the film. She says that the intention of the film was to show the youth of Japan the history of their grandparents and their country. 

 (If you try to go to the Transcending the Victim's History page, you don't have to download it; just exit out of the little box that pops up asking you to download and it'll be right there) 

    These two different analyses perfectly represent what I’m trying to figure out. Cabin describes the film as an anti-war movie, as many who watch it do, since it shows two children dying tragic deaths due to war. However, Goldberg’s analysis is actually what the director’s intentions were. There’s a lot of history behind his motivations for the message of this movie that I won’t get into, but he wanted to show the youth of Japan what their grandparents had to suffer through to give them all the good things they had at the time. He’s even stated in an interview that Grave of the Fireflies is NOT an anti-war movie. But if a person sees it as an anti-war movie, is that wrong? With this movie, I would say no, that interpretation is a valid one. I think this based mainly on the fact that the imagery used in the film, the brutality of war and how it affects the everyday person, truly does support that interpretation. I myself see it as being something of anti-war film. 

    There has to be more to this though; obviously anyone can think whatever they want about a film. But where do the boundaries come in? When a person tries to publish their analysis? Or maybe if they have no evidence from the film to support their analysis? I'll have to keep doing more research before I have a concrete answer.

First thoughts and Guidelines

    How important are the intentions of a creator, be they an author or a director, when analyzing their works? I don’t think this question is brought up enough when you consider how often we analyze these works. Many times, we analyze without even realizing what we are doing. If you see a movie or read a book and give any thought at all to it after, then you are analyzing it. This question is something that I’ve heard brought up many different times in my life, but I have yet to really hear a conclusive answer for it. I myself am still very divided on the subject, and I hope to have gained some ground by the end of this blog. My main inspiration for this blog is how often people say Lord of the Rings is an allegory for World War 1, yet Tolkien himself has said that it is not. Does this invalidate the analysis people make of it when that analysis directly contradicts the author's intentions? How much should the author's intentions be considered when analyzing their work? Should it be considered at all, or does it not matter? This is the conundrum I hope to solve in this blog.

   First, I should set up my own guidelines. The works I will be analyzing will be primarily film, with the occasional piece of literature. Even though the inspiration for this blog was the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien, I know the medium of film best, and I already have some examples in mind to analyze and with my main subject being films, I can include the Lord of the Rings films in my analysis, if only because of how faithful they were in their adaptation. Honestly, I think film and literature have a lot more in common than many people realize which is why I’m including both in this exploration.

    One of the main parts of my research will be looking to see what other people’s opinions are on this matter, and what support they come up with to justify their answers. I have already started asking some people I know what their opinions are, and they are surprisingly varied. Some say that the creator’s intentions shouldn’t have any effect at all on the viewer’s analysis, while others say it’s the only thing that should be considered and the creator’s intentions are the only thing that matters. I may also research different films and works of literature and use this blog as a soundboard for my thought process.