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In the same time they're claiming Algeria is woke and sent a trans woman, they also claim Algerians are backwards who beat up women.
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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All five non-transphobic ride-or-die Potterheads: "You're supposed to do a heckin' death of the authorino!"
Me: OK
yea 'i promise its better if you completely ignore the context and history of its creation' is not the artistic win they think it is lol, like for really great art you want to know more, you want to know how it was made and by who and what lead to the ideas behind it and what influences the artist(s) drew from, this 'death of the author' thing is classic reddit-ism championing less engagement and less intellectual rigor in our media and art discourses, demanding you 'turn off your brain' and divest yourself of all critical reasoning so you can 'shut up and enjoy' the corporate slop without too much friction. its anti-intellectualism and anti-art, even anti-humanity.
Depends on how its used. If anything I see things like "your autism headcanon is wrong because the author didn't intend that" as a reddit-ism.
Sometimes its used that way, sometimes its not. Most people citing it have no idea what the entirety of Barthe's theory was anyway. They can mean anything from "I dont think I should have to engage with the reality of the LIVING author's intent, the blatant bigotry in the work, and the actual hateful things they are actively doing in the world" to "I dont care if its intended, [character] reads [neurodiverse or queer] to me".
I have never heard of it on reddit and only on this site
literally google the phrase 'death of the author reddit' it is absolutely a thing that is discussed there. your personal internet anecdotes are not all-encompassing objective universal truths.
or reddits "culture" just changed since I stopped using it lol
No yeah unironically that would be a net good for everyone and if they really weren't transphobic they would agree with that. I have some mostly nostalgic affection for Harry Potter left over in me, mostly emotional attachments to a few specific characters, it would be nice to be able to able to engage in transformative works and shit without supporting her so if she was dead that would be great.
(I disagree with being so dismissive of death of the author though. Bartes's whole theory sucks because the idea that authorial intent means nothing isnt true but the way people tend to be mean it when they cite it is things like "headcanons are as real as you want them to be, it doesnt matter if the author intended them" and as someone who's had my autistic headcanons dismissed because of "the author didnt intend that" I think thats important.)
Clearly, Chuck Tingle's Harriet Porber series is the morally superior alternative
I look at works like Tsoi's Khochu Peremen and side with Barthes. When critiquing art the relation between the work and its audiences is the superlative factor to consider imo. Intentions generally have no influence on outcomes. It is audiences that give works their meaning because they are the medium that produces and transmits interpretations. A book has no meaning if no one reads it.
So the author's intents are, in my mind, a red herring when it comes to analysis. Especially when the intentions do not align with the way the work is received, as this demonstrates a disconnect between author and audience.
In my (non media literate) opinion, the author's intentions are often not where the use in considering the author's views lie. Every person is a product of their time and place, and that's bound to cause them to communicate ideas based on their biases, ideology, and other conditions even (maybe even especially) when they're unintentional.
There are definitely different schools of thought on this!
I would say that writing a book is like playing a game of telephone. Whatever may be communicated intentionally or unintentionally, is not guaranteed to be received in the same form that it was transmitted.
Additionally most works have contrasting messages that can be potentially interpreted. If I'm analyzing HP in terms of class struggle and power dynamics, what I'm going to look for is whether audiences resonated with the plight of poor broomless Harry and the enslaved house-elves, or whether they resonated with sacrificing the oppressed to maintain the wizarding world's status quo. This could inform me about what these audiences feel about exploitation of individuals in states on the empire's periphery. The interpretations reflect the audiences biases, ideology, and other conditions. The author's own background often has a minimal influence on popular interpretations.
Finally, when looking at works, we often find that the popular version is only the latest of a series of very similar stories published by different authors over a number of years. We don't learn much by looking at each of these authors: We can learn a bit about the author, but nothing about why one work resonated with audiences and another did not. To understand more we must recognize that works are received differently based on the time, place, and culture in which they are released. This leads us to investigating the differences between each work's audience. Oftentimes an author is ahead of their time and they don't find success, whereas derivative (but similar) works are released after a culture shift and they do become popular. We can also study how a work is interpreted differently over long periods of time, which can be very informative about changes in society.
A fun example of some of this is Starship Troopers - the book and the movie. The book was not a major success; its lasting impact was to spawn a satirical movie that mocked the source material. Meanwhile the movie's satire was largely missed by bloodthirsty audiences contemporaneous to its release. Their interpretations were in contrast to the backgrounds of their respective creators. Perhaps the book would have been received better at the time the movie was published, and the movie would have been received better at the time the book was published!
You wouldn't be wrong to have a focus on the author, but fwiw I think you would be pigeon-holing your analysis and limiting its utility.