At IKnight’s request, and because I couldn’t think of anything other than a post about the new Lucky Star OVA (which wasn’t serving much of a purpose), I’m going to take a stab at illuminating my theory of criticism, here, in front of the fives of you who read my posts. We’ll, uh, we’ll see how this goes.
I’ll start by getting something important out of the way that likely might not come up later. That is, people used to accuse Northrop Frye of not distinguishing between good and bad writing. He cheerfully responded that his critics were right, he didn’t. I like this about him.
[I'll be getting all my stuff from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism] unless I let you know differently.]
It’s also been said “that Frye strips away the historical and political meanings from texts” (1443). Much to the horror of certain other bloggers on this site, I like this about him as well. In fact, I’m not very well suited to be a critic in the current theoretical climate in the academy. That is, I’m not a New Historicist, a gender critic, or a Post-Colonial / political theorist. I’m simply interested in the text.
And yes, I accept that in some ways those concerns can’t be removed from a text. However, I am, basically, interested in the text for whatever reason the author was — or I’m not. So if the text is obviously (to my mind) meant to deal with gender issues I’ll discuss them, but otherwise I usually don’t bother, as I’m not catching any overtones from the author (and by that I don’t mean the person who penned / typed the text, but more on Barthes later).
I like to think that what I’m interested in is what interests the people. Like Frye, I would be perfectly willing to discuss a soap opera, except I am not, personally, interested in them. They do not entertain me, so I can’t sustain a reading long enough to have anything to say. But would I read an interesting piece of criticism about soap operas? Oh yes, because they’re valid topics of discussion in my mind. Everything is valid, because by the time a critic bothers to write something about it, it must have entertained enough people to prove it’s good in some way. The asshole writer/reader in me is horrified by how popular the Twlight books are in America right now. However, I accept they do something significant for the people reading them. Like Anne Rice’s earlier works they deal with sex in an erotic, fantastical way that still admits to problems — more or less depending on which author we’re talking about. I don’t really like Anne Rice either, so the entire genre isn’t really appealing for me, it seems.
Logically, I hate the concept of a “canon” of literature, in any field. Fuck that. If I find value in something, it’s in my canon. I don’t care about anyone else’s. In the end, I feel that’s all we can really do, come up with personal canons of texts we love, we refer to, so on. This happens in every realm of entertainment. Let me whip up a top five list for several of my fields of interest.
Anime:
- Cowboy Bebop
- Genshiken
- Tenchi Muyo!
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
- Slayers
Books:
- The Lord of the Rings
- Stardust
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- At the Mountains of Madness
- Nine Princes in Amber
Movies:
- Star Wars: A New Hope
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Mallrats
- Shaun of the Dead
- Fellowship of the Ring
Criticism:
- Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Tradition and Individual Talent
- The Archetypes of Literature
- Preface to “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
- Wizardry and Wild Romance
My theory has been shaped by my experiences as a creative writer. I found recently that people in school from the lower, working classes tend to write genre fiction (that is, popular fiction), especially sci-fi / fantasy and mysteries. This is my background and my chosen field of writing. However, I have been forced, by schooling, to learn how to deal with realistic fiction, which, in its modern guise, holds no interest for me. I am, then, by habit an egalitarian. In my lists you probably noticed a strong strain of fantastical / speculative / imaginative fiction, or interest in same. Mallrats speaks to me because it illustrates the way nerds look at the world.
So, for various reasons, I feel everything can have value. My actual process of criticism is very much a myth-critic’s — I usually begin by matching characters to mythic archetypes. I then (try to) use those comparisons as a baseline to find something interesting in the text. And that’s probably the next thing I should address, since it has a lot of cache on Superfani right now: the purpose of criticism. I’ve already come out as a defender of criticism as an art. There are three things, I think, criticism could be — it exists, so it must be something. It’s art, it’s artisanship, or it’s science. I think most people, at least right now, would agree it’s not science. Even the critics who claim the ground of objectivism usually don’t go that far. They used to, so maybe they still are and I’m missing it. But, for me, the debate seems to be between art and artisanship. So, thus: is criticism an art of its own, or a tool useful for viewing pieces of art?
Criticism certainly can serve as a tool — see my metaphor in my title line; it’s common to speak of criticism as a lens to view a work through. However, I believe that’s inaccurate. I think one person’s critical approach serves as the lens through which they view literature (of any kind). But a work of criticism can’t be such a lens, because it’s not a transparent work. ”There is no outside-text,” Derrida claimed (1825). It is more commonly translated as “there is no outside of the text,” but that is misleading. As the editor’s footnote in my text puts it, “a text is constituted by the attempt to represent what is outside it: every attempt to get outside of that ends up repeating, not transcending, the structure” (1825). A text, any text, acts, in the beginning, to deal with or represent what it outside it — the world around the author(s), the ideas the author holds, so on. However, the reader isn’t reading all of that — the reader reads the text. So, a critical essay, in turn, reacts to something outside — the “original text.” However, when a reader reads said article, they are reading only that. Again, “there is no outside-text.” There is, by extension, only the text one is reading at the moment. So, in the moments a reader reads a critical essay, that is the only text that exists for that reader. The reader responds to it, must respond to it, as a text in and of itself. Sure, some essays are so poorly done, stylistically, that knowledge of the initial referent is essential. I could make the same argument for books, and will do so right now: certain classes of literary fiction require the reader to be familiar with outside texts, to greater or lesser extents. The Inferno refers outside itself, but functions on its own. These references are like treats, easter eggs on a dvd. Good criticism refers outside in the same way — that is, good criticism can be read on its own. Bad literary fiction refers outside itself and cannot function without the references. Most allegory works that way (I should warn you now that, like Tolkien and Poe, I despise allegory). The best example I can come up with is dangerous: I haven’t read Finnegan’s Wake, but my impression, from others, admittedly, is that it requires knowledge of the texts Joyce referenced to understand it. I’m sure Pontifus will correct me if I’m wrong. The next-best example I can think of is Everyman, which requires an understanding of Christianity, and an understanding, really, from inside the religion, to work. Now, at the time it was meant for exactly that. Simply, Everyman was originally a work of artisanship, not art — it was meant to instruct.
Some criticism acts in this way, sure. Pick up any journal of criticism — you may be particularly interested in Mechademia, the journal of anime and manga. Most of the articles therein will require knowledge of the text it examines, like the article in Mechademia’s first issue about Revolutionary Girl Utena. But sprinkled in there will be pieces about the world of the text.
Actually, easier example: look at Superfani. Granted, in the past few weeks we’ve all been feeling pretty meta, but there are still a few posts about particular series or episodes. Those are works of artisanship. This sounds incredibly self-indulgent, but other posts here are art. I would cite Pontifus’ piece on video game theory as art.
I may or may not have succeeded in setting up my opinion that criticism is art, but I have nothing else to say about it at this point, so let’s move on. What is criticism doing? As I have said earlier, in various places, at its core criticism (in my opinion, as always) is an entertainment. If you don’t like criticism, you won’t read it. I feel the senses of catharsis, epiphany, enlightenment, and other fancy terms writers have come up with for the emotions invoked by “good” fiction are all merely forms of enjoyment. People enjoy texts that don’t do those things. People enjoy texts that do, but not for that reason. In my opinion that means it’s not a “higher” form of meaning, simply another, an equal form, as compared, say, to the primal enjoyment of watching a character you like beat the shit out of a character you hate. I would put these forms in a sack, not on a scale. I think if one were “better” than another then the “higher” form would be what people noticed about the text. But some people read, for example, The Lord of the Rings and don’t notice the eucatastrophes (Tolkien’s neologism for good catastrophes) or the themes of loss, racial alliances, or moral / ethical struggles. Some people simply enjoy it for the evocation of something different, or for the swordfights (if swordfighting is all a person gets out of LotR they’re probably watching the movie, as there’s not enough of that in the book to carry it). Again, if one set of entertainments are “better” and “higher” than the other, everyone, I think, would necessarily latch onto them. The fact that some people don’t says, to me, that everything’s mixed in a sack and people grab the stuff that works for them. Like a buffet.
Yes, I’m comparing literature to a buffet restaurant, a Ponderosa perhaps.
Again, this is a supremely egalitarian way to view things. Earlier, IKnight referenced the “correction of taste.” Some people view criticism in that light, as a way to “fix” people. Unaltered, this concept horrifies me. It feels like 1984, to claim that some form of enjoyment is good, while another is, essentially, thoughtcrime. Fuck that noise. I’ll say now that IKnight, to my understanding, wasn’t pushing the “correction of taste.” I’m not trying to equate him with Big Brother, he simply brought up the term.
This thought explains, to some extent, why I like myth-criticism. It, more than other fields of criticism, is equipped to handle any form of entertainment. It’s difficult for most forms of criticism to deal with a soap opera — excepting perhaps readings of it to further a reading of the society which produces it. That is, one could write about Days of Our Lives and what it proves about American society’s views of marriage, gender, domestic violence, whatever. But I feel that isn’t actually reading the text, it’s using the text. Myth-criticism, on the other hand, could conceivably examine Days of Our Lives in light of the story of Jason, Medea, and their children, and show why DoOL appeals to people — because that sort of story always has. That’s circular, of course, and not very useful by itself. But that equation, as I said earlier about what I try to do, could then be used as a springboard to launch into the rest of the text, illustrating why characters act the way they do, why people respond in the way they do, and so on, so forth. Like I said, I’m not actually into soap operas, so this is hypothetical. Maybe I’ll do a myth-critical reading of Lucky Star sometime.
Simplified — I think criticism acts to connect two worlds, that of the thought and that of art — and the two aren’t the same. It shows the reader a way to think about things, beginning with a particular text and ending with the world itself. The critic reveals something about the world, and oftentimes the reader, in revealing something he or she saw in a book or movie.
If you made it this far, just remember, this post is IKnight’s fault — he asked for it. Don’t blame me, I’m just the piano player.
[EDIT: I realized that I claimed, earlier, that I would get to Barthes. I didn't. Sorry about that. Some other time, hopefully?]
There’s a new Lucky Star OVA?
Yup. : ) Check tokyotosho.com
I should keep my big mouth shut. Keeping myself brief, here’re a couple of things I’d pick up on:
- In my (admittedly limited) experience, whenever someone draws a distinction between using and reading/receiving, and exalts the latter, something fishy’s going on. I’m not sure I can say why (so feel free to discount this) but I think the only way to avoid using a text would be to copy it out word for word. Or photocopy it, perhaps, in an effort to preserve the way it looks. Or just read it. Or possibly not touch it at all.
- You’re right, I’m very worried about ‘the correction of taste’ myself. But, just to play devil’s advocate, I don’t see why everyone would necessarily latch onto the ‘better’ entertainments in a text, and why the lack of a consensus about the better entertainments is evidence for their nonexistance. To attempt a rocky analogy, I’m perfectly capable of physically drinking wine but if I wanted to know what a good wine was, and how to tell, I’d hire an œnologist. (In a hypothetical world in which I wasn’t an impecunious teetotaller.)
@IKnight:
Blah blah, you and your sensible comments. : ) Let me try to define what I mean by “using” and “reading,” and see if that makes you any more comfortable. “Using” a text is taking it as a tool to do something else, like arguing the inherent racism of a group, or defining a culture’s gender ambiguities. That can be interesting, but it starts with the text, rather than ending with it, which is what I would say I meant by “reading.” I should probably come up with a different word. Everyone will read a text differently, but I consider criticism that “reads” as criticism that ends with the text. One would use other things as tools to get at what one saw in the text. If you have a better term I’d love to hear it.
Well, as apart from wine, all the entertainments in a book, or movie, or anything, come in the same package. They’re all thrown at the audience at the same time, like spaghetti at the wall, and only some of them stick.
I think a better way to have explained it — too bad I didn’t think of this yesterday — is to refer to reader-response criticism. True RR allows that any reading of a text is a “good” reading if it can refer back to the text. That is, in Star Wars one person could see family dynamics, a second could see religious oppression, and a third could see awesome laser-sword fights. All three of those claims of content can be supported by the text. And so I would claim that if we’re going to assume that, somehow, the “elevating” part of the text is part of the text, rather than something the reader brings (maybe we can’t assume that, but bear with me for just a minute), then it’s simply another reading that’s supported by the text, no more or less valid than any other.
Hoo…yesterday consisted of theme editing and more theme editing, but now it’s comments catch-up time. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here, particularly on the point of critical writing as standalone art, and that the idea of a canon is bogus. The only canon I accept is the one that consists of all literature interacting as an interdependent mass, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”-style.
Yeah, mine too; I chose to be an English major because it seemed like a good idea given that I wanted to write novels. It led me to criticism eventually, but only after a drawn-out struggle. And I also entered creative writing through genre fiction, which may have to do with why I find myself agreeing with much of what you say.
For all the time I’ve spent on Ulysses, the Portrait, and Dubliners, I haven’t read Finnegans Wake yet, or at least not all of it. I think it’s safe to say, though, that it requires knowledge of texts, and language, and the incomprehensible inside of Joyce’s mind, and that’s probably the reason I haven’t read it yet; I’m afraid I won’t like it much. Even if I do get enough of the references to get something out of the novel, I have a problem with it being so inaccessible in the first place.
That considered, I have a question (or two). Can a text based on another specific text be art, or is it always “artisanship?” If the author leads in in such a way as to render a critical piece on a specific text accessible, due to broad applicability or what have you, can it be art? That is, does dealing with a specific text entirely preclude a piece of critical writing from being art?
Well, I certainly try.
I think you certainly can start with dealing with one text and arrive at art. I would classify several of Frye’s essays on particular Shakespeare plays in that category, and they begin with a single text and the alleged goal of explicating it. But Frye moves, in some of them, into his theories of how tragedy, romance, and so on work.
It’s been some time since I graduated with my Lit degree, but back then I was really into criticism. In hindsight what fascinated me was how critics were writing for and against other critics with their own respective readings of a text.
Canons are subjective. They’re also inevitable. Criticism cannot help but make value judgments regarding its subject – even while employing deconstructive methodologies. As much as this is true: there is no intrinsic meaning within signs, as there is no intrinsic value for them – every reader assigns these in the process (receiving) of communication.
It becomes hairy when a reader imposes her reading onto others, invalidating theirs in some way. This is what ‘official’ canon does. But the reactionary path is equally distasteful. In the interest of fairness they diminish the value of the canonized works – while all they ever needed to do was to proclaim the value of the works they champion.
I was absolutely guilty of this, as my undergraduate thesis was “Where in the world is Middle-Earth? a Post-colonial reading of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion”. I took a hypocritical stance and killed Professor Tolkien and read his work as a fascist cultural product. I mean, I loved The Silmarillion among all his works! Writing against it was like shooting Zentraedi in a barrel.
That’s why today I can’t be truly bothered about negative readings of my favorite shows. If I disagree with a reading I will respond to the reading – but not attack the shows the critic values (her personal canon). It would really be great if most commentators would spell out their methodologies like you have. But then again, they may not have it an articulate form.
All culture is deculture to me!
In my case, I just call it fanalysis. Reader beware, biased critic is biased.
@ghostlightning
Because I think that one can agree with you and still be a critic, and because I like to tout my own approach to criticism at every opportunity, allow me to address your concerns from my point of view.
In my opinion, writing against a critical analysis of a text is an exercise in futility. Criticism cannot be wrong; I believe that if even one person sees something in a text, it’s effectively there, regardless of the methodology applied by said one person consciously or otherwise to the text in question. Arguing theory is another matter, but again, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to disprove or discredit an approach with some modicum of logical foundation. Long story short: in art, there is no right or wrong.
Yes.
For individuals, sure — we all have our preferences — but the truth of the matter is that no two people’s canons are the same, so we can hardly call that canonization in the traditional literary sense. The widely accepted “literary canon” is, in my mind, a valiant but ultimately futile, illogical, and unnecessary effort. As inevitable as its creation may have been, I like to think its imminent demise is equally inevitable, precisely because it’s one big value judgment. Human beings will never cease to make value judgments, will always like some texts and dislike others, and will never agree on these matters, and it follows that there can be no one central canon above all others, no matter how many Ph.D.-holders would like it to be so.
My ideal methodology is that which is capable of making only one value judgment — “this text is valid” — and even then only indirectly. The way I see it, criticism is capable of ascribing its subjects with only positive value; if the subject was thought-provoking enough to spawn a critical work, it’s obviously useful for something. But, again, such a judgment strikes me as merely stating the obvious in most, if not all, cases, given my belief that a text in which value is found by even one reader is valuable. And I’ll note that I don’t believe in the distinction between “more valuable” and “less valuable;” valuable is valuable, regardless of how valuable something is to me personally.
This is precisely why no critic can be wrong, why there can be no objectivity in a text-focused critical approach.
I agree; that’s what official canon does. And imposition of opinion that results in the invalidation of others is bad criticism, I’d say, given that, when it comes to the subjective medium of art, all opinions are valid. Thus, I think that official canon is tantamount to bad criticism. Criticism shouldn’t try to disprove or discredit what has been said, because it can’t; it should (and can only) add to the usefulness of a text. For example, a critic should not say “Element x in text y is not tragic, as some have said; it’s ironic,” a critic should say something more like, “Element x in text y can demonstrably be seen as tragic, but we can also see it as ironic.”
I suppose my path is reactionary, but I don’t aim to bring canonized works down to the level of everything else, I aim to raise everything else up to the level of canonized works — and, in my mind, I already have. There can be no canon not because nothing is canon-worthy, but because everything is. Proclaiming the value of the works I champion is precisely how I mean to make that clear.
Yeah, post-colonialism isn’t my thing. For what it’s worth, I think the author is dead not because the author is necessarily (maybe) a product of an environment, but because the author effectively has very little to do with how a work is received by a reader. Dead as Tolkien himself may have been to you, you were still speculating into the nature of authorship, and as a Barthesian zealot, I think most lines of inquiry having to do with authorship, individual or otherwise, bear little fruit — but hey, whatever the nature of your paper, you weren’t wrong. You couldn’t be. Wrong doesn’t exist in criticism. You’d know better than I would, of course, but it doesn’t sound like your essay was “against” The Silmarillion anyway; in providing one possible reading of the text, it proved that The Silmarillion can be read in at least one way, rendering it valuable.
Also, nothing anyone says can change the fact that a paper on The Silmarillion is just cool.
Yeah, while I don’t think any reading can be wrong, I do like to go back and forth about methodology. Kind of like this.
Fanalysis…that may just be the perfect name for my approach!
@Cuchlann
I hijacked your comments. Sorry -.-
But ghostlightning’s comment was so good! I couldn’t help myself!
Hmm, for the “website” box for the comment I’d really put [73] which is gonna be published on THAT in an hour or so, so I’ll link later. Anyway, as per my other post on the “archaeology” of the text, is that different than criticism, is it a “reading” per se? You could read or interpret anime X as steeped in theory Y. That could definitely kill the author, but, in defense for myself, I don’t necessarily see – to use a horrible word – “deconstruction” as “reading”, which is horribly ironic considering how I’m always being told to “read” things “as text”. I just can’t get past the fact that “analysis” is objective in terms of the socio-cultural “ether” out of which it was born, you know, etc. etc. I mean, if there was animator that was racist and he animated several anime where black people were depicted in stereotypes (ie. mammy, sambo, jezebel), would the viewer that is unbeknownst to the racist animator who then proceeds with a reading of the anime as racist, is that “subjective”? I don’t necessarily mean this in a broad, philosophical sense, but more of a political sense:
Yes, that’s exactly why reiterating a canon’s subjective matter (ie. the ideology of racism employs tactics x, y and z to reify itself) is objective. It’s like saying when you look into the mirror, the image is subjective, not true, not a mirror image, when, well, it is a mirror image. Of course this image is not you, for it’s only an image, but it’s a replica, a clone, a budded product of asexuality. I don’t even know if I’m arguing the same point as the two of you =p.
I CAME
Sorry, that was a tropish /m/ reaction to awesomeness.
Where has this blog been all my life?!!!
You people are dripping with coolness. Back at university I had virtually NO ONE to talk to about criticism. My thesis adviser wasn’t even as well-read in criticism at the time as I was. It was truly difficult going through it – not so much as defending the work, because I made sure I had an airtight case, despite the variability of value and the blanket validity I awarded any text (even then). It was just, so… lonely.
But after re-reading this whole post and comments section, I re-imagined it as how I wanted my defense to be like. I wanted this level of discussion. I can imagine the Chair of the Panel, Bro. Cornelius Buckley, FSC with his Ph.D from Oxford asking me what I felt were such superficial questions in his barely incomprehensible Irish.
@ Pontificus
I agree! With everything! And now I’m delightfully reminded about the validity of everything, thanks to you. Every reading, every experience by anyone interacting with a subject is valid. This sets up my own reading, my own blogging and criticisms as acts of sharing: building a collective experience that is always alive and different because my readers read it differently from my intention. But it is the sharing that is awesome. The reader enriches me, because she honors my intention of sharing.
Btw, fanalysis alliterates well with fanicom. I most certainly do not own the expression, so go ahead and use it.
@ Lelangir
I can only guess what turned you off about deconstruction, I’m afraid it was exactly how I read Tolkien then. I imposed an agenda on the text, and used deconstructive methods to execute it. I do believe that language is a medium of power, and is indeed used politically – the payoff being one’s world view or agenda prevails over others. So the “left” (I’m not too fond of this word myself) appropriated this methodology to politically malign “dominant” texts (subjects, if you prefer). Pontificus reminded me of the validity of everything anyway – nothing’s wrong or bad, including ‘incorrect’ deconstructions with obvious and non-obvious biases.
I use it because I feel comfortable with it – breaking down signs and their binary relations, and making things up along the way afterward.
Woo, look at that. I emerge from my Lovecraft presentation only slightly scathed to find new, interesting activity on my crazy post. Yay!
@ghostlightning: what Pontifus said.
My version is slightly different, actually. I like reader-response criticism as well, but tend to add on a whole lot of genre- and myth-criticism. My version of “everything is valid” reads in this way: narratives function as externalizations of internal themes and problems. The dragon is never just a dragon; it’s also greed, or lust, or anger. Mythology allows us to see this tendency in human narrative, because it’s the story of a culture, and as such tends to boil things down. So filtering texts through mythology reveals the component parts — and these are the parts people respond to. Every text that finds an audience has an echo of the internal problems we deal with. The more universal the problem dealt with, the more universal the text will be — theoretically. The old lit. major joke that everything’s about sex isn’t too far from the truth, in that almost everyone is concerned with sex in some way, so most texts that connect with a lot of people will feature some form of sex (even if it’s the null, the absence — that reveals a lot as well).
What I like to think I’m doing with criticism is examining the pieces and parts of a text that make it appeal to the audience, and then point out something really cool about how the text works for the reader. I’m working on a Soul Eater post, for example — and by “working” I mean that I have an intro. line and a picture — about the Gothic doppelganger, Freud’s Uncanny, and how the inclusion lends a level of discomfort that charges the atmosphere of Soul Eater, explaining why some people (like me) prefer it over a lot of other action shows, even though the plots are much the same.
@Pontifus & lelangir: Uh, yeah, you go, guys. :D
And now, as I return triumphant from Kansas City, Missouri…
@ghostlightning
That is the purpose of my existence, after all — making criticism relevant, I mean. And hey, I really like your site too, I just haven’t had a chance to link it yet because I’ve been out of town all week.
@Cuchlann
Yeah, you’re definitely heavier on the myth than I am. I like it as a starting point, though. Northrop Frye is a hero.
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