How could there possibly be limits to interpretation? Certainly, there can be arguments over elements intentionally included in a work. If a film, book, poem, musical composition, &c. was made long beforehand, it doesn't follow that links or allusions to World War II, for example, are intentionally placed within the work, but that hardly negates the possibility of a viewer/listener having various links appear in its mind. Because all interpretation is subjective, any "right" or "wrong" interpretations are only able to be defined so through the imposition of an artificial, arbitrary framework of cognitive restrictions by an authoritarian body whose continued importance and existence is contingent on the maintenance and continued longevity of these structures.
There is no "wrong" interpretation. When asking if a work of art can erect boundaries within which interpretation is valid while anything outside is not, there is a conflation of two separate elements: what is intentionally placed within the work by the artist(s), and the way said artist(s) desire for the work to be interpreted, and what the observer experiences upon contact with the work. It would be exceedingly silly to suggest some wildly divergent element was expressly included in the work if it is not in the artist's (immediate?) frame of reference and experience. However, what is experienced by the viewer is dependent upon said viewer's own frame of reference and experience, and this cannot be quantified for all possible viewers. It stands to reason that there can be no wrong interpretation in this territory.
To say that the filmmaker intended for an element of the film to evoke the idea of pedophilia can be wrong. To say that viewing an element of the film evoked in one or more viewers the idea of pedophilia cannot.
Side note: I'm sorry to break it to you professor, but "correct" interpretation is defined by the current hegemony of one's discipline and not by something inherent in the material being interpreted.
What wonders will spring forth in the coming class meetings?
2 comments:
Fuck, you could've said some of this shit in class instead of leaving me and Rob and Mike to battle alone (or as a threesome.. with Alison jumping in.. whatever.. the point is you could've verbalized some of these points).
I was very tempted to say all of these things at the time, but since I don't know my general standing in his book, my desire to pass the class trumped my competing desire to undermine his sense of worth and place in the world.
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