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_Scythe_
Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 12
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 4:45 pm
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_V_ wrote: |
Charred Knight wrote: | "death of the author" is a theory of criticism, not how you criticize literature. Some people such as V and I don't believe in death of the author, while I can't answer for V I simply see it that instead of searching for the true intention of a story "death of the author" is simply inserting your own bias into the series. You have a tendency to find what you want to find. |
Actually, you hit the nail on the head, CharredKnight. I see "Death of the Author" as often (not always but quite often) just an excuse for "Did Not Do The Research". |
Wish I knew what Death of the Author was
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YotaruVegeta
Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
Location: New York
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 4:49 pm
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It's Roland Barthe's theory that the author and his work are separate from one another and the author's life or influences shouldn't be taken into consideration. ( I bet I screwed that up somehow)
I certainly don't believe that.
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firehawk12
Joined: 04 Jul 2010
Posts: 22
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 4:55 pm
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On the flip side, utter devotion to authorial intent is just as untenable a position to take. Certainly when authors make a point out of "trolling" their readers.
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agila61
Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:08 pm
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scottfrye wrote: | @agila61 Why can't we do both? Doesn't hurt to let them read about it and to check it out if what they read seems interesting. Point them to info about the show (or just tell them) and where they can legitimately watch it. |
We most certainly can and should do both: "strategic" does not mean "we don't need anything but that".
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YotaruVegeta
Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
Location: New York
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:09 pm
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You shouldn't take either extreme when it comes to how an author came up with his work.
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Ornette
Joined: 22 Apr 2006
Posts: 9
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:45 pm
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It's also important to remember that in the context of Evangelion, the "Author"'s own statements require much interpretation, considering that over the course of the 15+ years of (very little) written statements and interview transcripts from Hideaki Anno related to the show, he seemingly contradicts himself and is mostly vague and cryptic. His staff however, has more statements, that also seemingly contradict each other and require a bit of interpretation just to make it jive together. There's also a lot of supplemental materials, like episode drafts, unused scenes, storyboards, theatrical programs, the NGE2 game's CI, etc. that still don't completely agree with each other (or in some cases, even with itself). Throw into the mix that these statements are almost always in Japanese, and sometimes one translation seems to imply something another translation doesn't.
This isn't really a clear case of a death (or not) of said author. It's not to say that there aren't statements that leave little room for interpretation (e.g. origins of the characters names) that are pretty explicit.
The Tsurumaki statement given at the 2001 Otakon interview is that "There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool." Is he saying that there is zero meaning whatsoever in the visual symbols? Or is he saying that there is simply no "Christian" (or religious in general) meaning? Some people think it's the former and some the latter.
Last edited by Ornette on Sun Nov 21, 2010 10:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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HeeroTX
Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 2046
Location: Austin, TX
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Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 8:31 pm
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Wow.... so, when I was between the 30min and 45min marks and reading the forum, I was like "WTF is everybody arguing Evangelion in here, there's this interesting discussion on anime fandom that is going untouched". But then, you hit the back half of the thing and ... yikes.
OK, so _V_, one thing here. You're a Lord of the Rings fan, cool, so is my wife, but you're bringing WAAAAYYYYY too much baggage to this discussion. Honestly, with half an hour to go in the conversation I was thinking, you could take Zac's audio out of the thing and a person might wonder if this was a discussion about Evangelion or "Lord of the Rings".
_V_, you are OBVIOUSLY a literary fan, PROBABLY an overly academic, literary fan. I'd suggest to you that more than 90% of anime fandom are NOT literary/academic fans, heck I'd suggest probably 98% of anime fandom are not those fans. And just trying to "clearly explain" things isn't going to MAKE them literary fans. That's the discussion that makes "mainstream" people think "anime is for nerds", and then they go back to waving their glowsticks and veg'ing out playing Halo.
I agree with your 90s era comics industry analogy, but I think you drew the wrong conclusion there. Anime had it's fad years and now the fad is something else.
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Unholy_Nny
Joined: 22 Jun 2005
Posts: 622
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:26 am
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_V_ wrote: |
Charred Knight wrote: | "death of the author" is a theory of criticism, not how you criticize literature. Some people such as V and I don't believe in death of the author, while I can't answer for V I simply see it that instead of searching for the true intention of a story "death of the author" is simply inserting your own bias into the series. You have a tendency to find what you want to find. |
Actually, you hit the nail on the head, CharredKnight. I see "Death of the Author" as often (not always but quite often) just an excuse for "Did Not Do The Research". |
I would say the opposite.
If I interpret something one way and someone says "No, you're wrong" they're more likely to whip out "The author said..." instead of debating using material from within the work.
Art is subjective. Saying "No, I meant..." removes the subjectivity. I would debate that this sudden lack of subjectivity makes the work of art solely a product of consumption. A painting is only a pretty drawing when there is only a single solid interpretation enforced by the painter.
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YotaruVegeta
Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
Location: New York
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:55 am
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By the way, I'm glad I'm not the level of fan that feels compelled to "do the research" I love anime, but people have basically made a second job out of pouring over things like Eva and Yamato. Good for them, but not me.
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zrdb
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:53 am
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After about 45 minutes of listening to that V guy I stopped-it was like listening to funeral durge. What is his problem? Anime isn't classical liiterature or masterpiece theater-it's popular entertainment. I watch it to be entertained-same reason I read a good book.
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YotaruVegeta
Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
Location: New York
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 11:13 am
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To be fair to V, anime isn't all explosions and mindlessness either.
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bahamut623
Joined: 23 Jun 2005
Posts: 1463
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:17 pm
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_V_ wrote: |
Charred Knight wrote: | "death of the author" is a theory of criticism, not how you criticize literature. Some people such as V and I don't believe in death of the author, while I can't answer for V I simply see it that instead of searching for the true intention of a story "death of the author" is simply inserting your own bias into the series. You have a tendency to find what you want to find. |
Actually, you hit the nail on the head, CharredKnight. I see "Death of the Author" as often (not always but quite often) just an excuse for "Did Not Do The Research". |
You can definitely go too far in both extremes, which is not good, but I really REALLY dislike this "Did Not Do the Research" idea. Don't you think that if you can't process a work of art/literature without "research, " that work has utterly failed? Context can be important, but the work should be able to speak for itself. Why bother consuming the work in the first place? It's like buying a puzzle only to have the person who made it solve it for you.
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luffypirate
Joined: 06 Oct 2006
Posts: 3187
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:23 pm
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Charred Knight wrote: | I have no illusion that anyone really plans to license anymore SRW. |
It happened once so it could happen again. I'm guessing it did sell for them because half of those DVD's are damn hard to find. I'd buy an R1 release of The Inspector day one.
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grooven
Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Posts: 1425
Location: Canada
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 1:55 pm
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Oh wow that would be so cool to take people on tours! I would love to work for them! Having been there many times it would be really neat! I wish they were recruiting or something
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dtm42
Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
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Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:03 pm
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bahamut623 wrote: | Why bother consuming the work in the first place? It's like buying a puzzle only to have the person who made it solve it for you. |
I don't think your analogy is quite right. Context isn't solving a puzzle for you, it is merely stating what sort of a puzzle it is.
And I get sad when people read Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and think the author was a ruthless guy, when in fact the treatise was a work of satire.
You've got to have context.
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