3 ms·

Everytime this quote brought up; people on social media start jerking over how the real meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Death of the author and all that.

Everytime this quote brought up; people on social media start jerking over how the real meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Death of the author and all that. How does HN feel about it?

mindcrime 9y ago
Do you believe that the author has some privileged position w/r/t defining the meaning of a story for everyone else? I see no reason to believe that. As far as I'm concerned, no story has any universal, objective meaning. Meaning comes from the interaction of the story's contents and the reader's mind / beliefs / knowledge / biases, etc. The author can always say what he/she intended the story to mean, but that really has no bearing on what any individual reader takes from the story.
- convery 9y ago
  I feel that while the author shouldn't be the arbitrator of what the whole work is about, they should have a say in what it's not about. e.g. if Lewis Carol would have stated that Alice in Wonderland is not about drugs; then the public should respect that and stop telling everyone else that it is. Following that thought to its logical conclusion, if extremists of any kind praise a work for promoting their view while the author denies that it does; with whom should we side? I do think there's an interesting discussion to be had about it.
  - nsaslideface 9y ago
    The idea of "meaning" is synonymous with agreement. Individual words "mean" things because we agree on the mapping. "Subjective, individual meaning" seems to just refer to personal thoughts and interpretation. It's fine to have personal thoughts, but "the author's meaning" is what they ultimately attempted to make others think is the message within the work. So to make comparisons between properties of the author's meaning and personal "meanings" is comparing apples to oranges, no?
  - Retra 9y ago
    I care what the author thinks they were expressing because it matters if you want to know if the did a satisfactory job of expressing it, or why they didn't. But whatever you can do to learn something useful from someone else's work is valuable regardless. Some people fall in love with things and make their whole life perspective about things like this. I'm sure one could study a rock and learn how to be a great person if they have the mind to do it. On the other hand, people tend to think The Terminator is some kind of prophetic documentary ALA "fiction has some basis in truth" (as though the reality didn't have a better claim to that description.) So I'm wary of anybody who takes a work of fiction too seriously, except in the academic sense of being a good communicator.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
There are plenty of songs whose words I've interpreted in a way that was probably not what the writer was thinking of, but is nonetheless deeply meaningful to me. Of course meaning is in the eye of the beholder; it's certainly useful and interesting to ask what the author intended, but that doesn't invalidate other interpretations.
- Digit-Al 9y ago
  I think songs are a bit different to novels. Because of the format - having to incorporate rhyme an meter - songwriters are more often likely to put stuff in that doesn't neccessarily make sense but fits into the rhyme. I don't have any proper evidence for this, but I did used to know a musician and once asked him about the meaning of an ambiguous line in one of his songs (it could be interpreted in a coule of different ways) and he said that it could mean whichever one you wanted it to. I definitely got the vibe from him that he put it in because it rhymed and sounded good, without neccessarily having any particular meaning in mind for it. I would say some songwriters would be more inclined towards that way of songwriting and others would definitely consider themselves storytellers and have a definite meaning for all their lyrics. Telling the difference is not always easy.
bigbugbag 9y ago
What do you mean social media ? If you're referring to a website please don't label it social media as this is PR and novlang. Facebook and twitter share the characteristic of getting the worse out of people and capitalizing on it, so this would introduce a bias by giving a megaphone to idiots and people acting like idiots. To answer your question, no one better that Ray Bradbury can tell what Farenheit 451 is about (and he's been vocal about how people misinterpret it). He knows what he wanted to put in his books. But that does not imply that readers will get it or that in a different context the main interpretation can be different. His point is valid though, TV turns people watching it into morons, at least the worldwide scientific consensus says so and said so for decades.

Everytime this quote brought up; people on social media start jerking over how the real meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Death of the author and all that. How does HN feel about it?

mindcrime 9y ago

Do you believe that the author has some privileged position w/r/t defining the meaning of a story for everyone else? I see no reason to believe that. As far as I'm concerned, no story has any universal, objective meaning. Meaning comes from the interaction of the story's contents and the reader's mind / beliefs / knowledge / biases, etc. The author can always say what he/she intended the story to mean, but that really has no bearing on what any individual reader takes from the story.

convery 9y ago
I feel that while the author shouldn't be the arbitrator of what the whole work is about, they should have a say in what it's not about. e.g. if Lewis Carol would have stated that Alice in Wonderland is not about drugs; then the public should respect that and stop telling everyone else that it is. Following that thought to its logical conclusion, if extremists of any kind praise a work for promoting their view while the author denies that it does; with whom should we side? I do think there's an interesting discussion to be had about it.
- nsaslideface 9y ago
  The idea of "meaning" is synonymous with agreement. Individual words "mean" things because we agree on the mapping. "Subjective, individual meaning" seems to just refer to personal thoughts and interpretation. It's fine to have personal thoughts, but "the author's meaning" is what they ultimately attempted to make others think is the message within the work. So to make comparisons between properties of the author's meaning and personal "meanings" is comparing apples to oranges, no?
- Retra 9y ago
  I care what the author thinks they were expressing because it matters if you want to know if the did a satisfactory job of expressing it, or why they didn't. But whatever you can do to learn something useful from someone else's work is valuable regardless. Some people fall in love with things and make their whole life perspective about things like this. I'm sure one could study a rock and learn how to be a great person if they have the mind to do it. On the other hand, people tend to think The Terminator is some kind of prophetic documentary ALA "fiction has some basis in truth" (as though the reality didn't have a better claim to that description.) So I'm wary of anybody who takes a work of fiction too seriously, except in the academic sense of being a good communicator.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

There are plenty of songs whose words I've interpreted in a way that was probably not what the writer was thinking of, but is nonetheless deeply meaningful to me. Of course meaning is in the eye of the beholder; it's certainly useful and interesting to ask what the author intended, but that doesn't invalidate other interpretations.

Digit-Al 9y ago
I think songs are a bit different to novels. Because of the format - having to incorporate rhyme an meter - songwriters are more often likely to put stuff in that doesn't neccessarily make sense but fits into the rhyme. I don't have any proper evidence for this, but I did used to know a musician and once asked him about the meaning of an ambiguous line in one of his songs (it could be interpreted in a coule of different ways) and he said that it could mean whichever one you wanted it to. I definitely got the vibe from him that he put it in because it rhymed and sounded good, without neccessarily having any particular meaning in mind for it. I would say some songwriters would be more inclined towards that way of songwriting and others would definitely consider themselves storytellers and have a definite meaning for all their lyrics. Telling the difference is not always easy.

bigbugbag 9y ago

What do you mean social media ? If you're referring to a website please don't label it social media as this is PR and novlang. Facebook and twitter share the characteristic of getting the worse out of people and capitalizing on it, so this would introduce a bias by giving a megaphone to idiots and people acting like idiots. To answer your question, no one better that Ray Bradbury can tell what Farenheit 451 is about (and he's been vocal about how people misinterpret it). He knows what he wanted to put in his books. But that does not imply that readers will get it or that in a different context the main interpretation can be different. His point is valid though, TV turns people watching it into morons, at least the worldwide scientific consensus says so and said so for decades.