You thoughts on the "death of the author" concept?

[Darth_Biomech]

It's a philosophical concept meant to dissociate the work from the person that made that work, originally intended as a rule for the critics to not judge the book basing their judgment on the personality of the writer ("this book is horrible because it was written by Hitler!").
But I often encounter this modern spin on it, which to be honest really grinds my gears: "your, as the authors, opinion and intentions (lore and story-wise) mean jack shit, your job was done after you published the thing, and it's now belongs to me, the reader's, to do with as I please". Note that this doesn't concern the legal stuff like copyright and IP rights, but is more philosophical towards what is canon and what was implied to be canon, the so-called "Word Of God" for example. Basically, you spend months or years (or decades) carefully worldbuilding the setting of your work and weaving the story and characters in it, then comes this guy and proclaims that his opinion on what is and isn't a fact is no less true and important than yours, the author. In fact, more so, because of the "death of the author", you "died" as soon as you put your work to the public eye, so your opinion is worthless.

[Prometheus]

Yeah, that sounds frustrating. I’ve never heard of it before. I guess my question to said person pulling that stunt is: “What makes you the heir to the story if the author is so called “dead”?

[Darth_Biomech]

I guess my question to said person pulling that stunt is: “What makes you the heir to the story if the author is so called “dead”?

It's not like they specifically as a person, their line of though is more along the line of "there's no such thing as canon, your version of what happened is no less true than mine or the author's"

[Prometheus]

@Darth_Biomech

Oh, I gotcha now. I don’t even know how to make a comeback to that argument. I can’t tell if that’s because it’s something I’ve never thought of, or because it’s so bogus and untrue you kind of just have to brush it off and let that person be stupid.

[keii4ii]

Death of the Author isn't that your opinion is worthless; it's more about how your work should speak for itself, and how other people are allowed to have their own interpretations. They don't get to claim anything about your intent, only about how the work comes across to them.

[Prometheus]

Oh, man. I’m misinterpreting this a lot. XD Okay. Now I think I understand the full scale of it.

[TAMAnnoying]

I don't really subscribe to either when i Read or watch something for the first time. I think Death of the Author is very important for entertainment because you should realize that... say: Just because the writer is left wing doesn't mean they cant explore or even write about right wing topics in a good light. For some writers they care more about their characters and the plot than they do about their own personal feelings. You get the extremes of people who use Death of the Author as a way to say that the story is saying WHATEVER they want it to say even tho the story has no real evidence. Its a problem but you cant do much for those people.

On the other side you have people who refused the interpretations that people have because "word of god" which i think is a bit strange sometimes. Some media is meant to be explored with diffrent interpretations. Even David Lynch who wants people to experience his work in their own way with their own interpretations, Still believes that his work has one correct interpretation. And you can always fine they crazy extremes of Word of God like JK rolling where she just changes race and sexualities whenever she feels like it, and you cant say shes wrong cause shes the creator!

Personally i think its good to have a balance of both, at least during your first watch. Interpret it as you feel but if you want to know what the Author was hoping you'd get out of it then you should investigate and make sure you're looking for context within the movie/book.

[Inspector_Spinda]

i think death of the author is more trying to get across that just because the author wanted their work to say "x" doesn't mean the audience will interpret it as "x" and if the audience instead interprets it as "y" then "y" is more valid than "x".

doesn't matter what you intend. what matters is what comes across. and just cause you didn't intend for it to be seen one way doesn't mean it won't or that that way is incorrect. also if you writing something terrible by accident, doesn't mean you're a bad person for it

[Rasp]

I tend to think of death of the author as a tool for literary analysis rather than an actual philosophy worthy of debate. It has value in understanding what the work says on its own taking away what the author says they intended. This is useful because we can use that to see where the authors intentions and the work they actually produced harmonized or are in conflict. To put it simply 'This is where ya f'd up and here is why.' Because not every member of the audience is going to look at the authors comments on the work so to say a criticism of the work is invalid because the author clarified X on their blog. It isn't fair to the average reader.

I also think as an author you can choose to practice death of the author by never speaking about your work. In that respect its a choice you've made as a creator rather than something forced on you. Nobody can force death of the author on you.

As a creator you don't own the experience of your readers. It is the one thing they are truely entitled to. The way they interpret or how they choose to enjoy your work is theirs to own. I cant take that away from them if they choose to take my work in a death of the author sort of context well that is not something I have control over.

And... THAT IS FAIR. I have my own feelings and interpretations of my work and even as the author these are no more or less valid than my readers. You'd think they would be but they absolutely aren't. Art is subjective even for its creator.

I might own the book I don't own the feelings it instills in people, I don't own the way they read it. I can give my take and they can choose to listen or ignore it.

[baasinsimple]

I actually prefer the concept, which is CRAZY I know. How dare I? But I think it's situational, but in the end it depends on what the reader thinks because it's up to them to determine what is canon.

There are to kinds of post-publishing additions and neither of them are perfect, they are:

Retcons and Additions.

Retcons are the change of important, plot-focused facts in order to progress the plot. If they happen inside a project, that's fine, that shouldn't be the case, but whatever. If it's outside of a publish work, what right, even as the author do you have to change it to something so half-baked and ruin someone's reading experience and change the main interpretation simply so you can piss people off on twitter.

Additions in a project would be called either A) Characterization and B) World Building. If it happens outside of a project and it directly contradicts a readers experience (Like J.K . Rowling's bullshit, like 'Oh wizards just shat in their pants and made it disappear.)

Simply put, to contradict "Death of the author" isn't fair to the reader just because you decided to wake up one morning, scratch yourself, then add dumb BS on social media.

[burginlewis]

Are we trying to understand the author's point of view when we read or just look for something that will validate our own? Seems like "death of the author" is another flower on the funeral pyre of Listening.

Context does matter. Too much meaning gets lost down the ages (Beowulf, anyone?), and I think the farther in space, time, culture, etc. you wander from the work in question, the more you lose in "translation." Even if the written language is the same.

[FenneFox]

Truth be told, I wouldn't exactly disassociate a work completely from its creator if you happen to have knowledge of their experiences. For instance, knowing Kojima's situation with Konami and how he likes to be semi-autobiographical can put some things in P.T. into a new light. At the same time, if you don't have this context, then I don't think it's necessarily someone's duty to seek out some context (although if they want to, they can). A story can be interpreted without one having knowledge of the authors circumstance. That being said, critiques done through the lens of this modern "death of the author" can in themselves be critiqued. Will that necessarily change the critics mind? Maybe, maybe not. I guess personally I can see where the concept comes from and how it can make sense, but I can also see where it falls apart and how it can be misused.

[KRWright]

I'm going to come at Death of the Author from a different viewpoint, the viewpoint that analyses it from a different space if that's okay. I mean the basic "I meant the metaphor to mean X, but readers are interpreting it as Y" is okay, but it's not the part of it that interests me.

I'm more interested in who the lens is applied to. Overwhelmingly, creators who operate within the default often get their work benefited by 'Death of the Author' interpretations, whereas marginalised groups very rarely benefit from being able to word of god their own works. Own Voices, it could be argued, is a movement that directly contradicts Death of the Author as a concept - because it demands that space be made within creative circles for those creators who traditionally (through their identity) have not been able to write about their experiences. The pressure to tie identity to a work is growing stronger, but at the same time, works are becoming more diverse and people from within communities are getting their voices heard, so in some respects that's a good thing.

In general, I'm not totally against Death of the Author as a means to analyse something to see if the work presents its meaning well - but as a work doesn't exist in a vacuum from society, I often find it leaves a somewhat superficial analysis of the content if that is where the discourse ends and other theories have to be put into place to make 'Death of the Author' really have any meaning on its own.

[IdiotWithPencil]

As a concept I like it, ignore who made it and let the work speak freely, Lovecraft was a racist bigot when he wrote his books(heard he condemned them after his retirement but don't quote me on that) and yet he created a horror genre that has survived up to this day,
most history books and old epics that are still talked or referenced today like Hercules, the odyssey, the argonauts, the divine comedy, etc were made by mostly slave owners or were ok with the practices of owning slaves. Hell Shakespeare lived in a place where if you weren't white and English you were less than dirt. So yeah forget the author and enjoy a good story.

however that's just the concept, what people do today is basically, ignore the actual themes of the story and what the author/story is trying to do/say and cram in their interpretation as a matter fact of what the story is saying or as having the same weight as the author themselves. This is less death to the author and more death to the story or better-said replacement of the story itself, and frankly, I think that's just stupid.

That leads to what we have today with people no joke, affirming that SpongeBob is an allegory for white colonization and violence

edit: I'm ok with death of the author when enjoying a work or to let a work speak for themselves but when you are trying to analyse a story and give your thoughts on it you really should check what the author actually wanted to say and who he is, or else you will lose a lot of context and will end up doing what they did to machiavelli

a man who loved rome and republics to the point of writing a giant 800 page novel documenting republic rome life and how a republic should function for it to survive and wrote "Conspiracies are stupid and never work". Called an evil tyrannical schemer for 80 pages of a book written as a satire of kingly rule

[indagold]

I think it lost it's original meaning completely nowadays, its just a loanword for annoying fans who think they're entitled to a piece of work cause the author didn't have x amount of gay ships and use death of the author not as a philosophical or literary idea but as a weapon.

Like I personally believe an author's meaning is above the reader's interpretation cause they made the damn thing but you can also get pretty interesting interpretations too from an outsider but no one really is making those claims now, It's just barebones nitpicking.