First the boring part: I agree with everything you've written, mrshouse.
Then I would like to add something I dealt with over and over again during my film studies at university. As an example let me talk about the Film Noir a bit. Because in Film Noir (and again, this is just one example among many others, you could also talk about the Western genre) there are certain stylistic, artistic elements and also elements with regards to content which need to be there to regard a film as (fully) belonging to the Film Noir genre. And there is an agreement among film scientists what those elements are; it's about lighting, darkness, camera angles, certain types of characters (the femme fatale, the doomed hero), certain topics (the married woman who has an affair with another man and together with him murders her husband; the innocent hero who unknowingly stumbles into a crime). Not all of these need to be there, but at least some of them. And if you know about them, this makes it easier for you to recognize such a film when you see one.
What I'm trying to say is that there are typical elements to every film genre, and of course sometimes they can be mixed with one another. But apart from that, there are certain stylistic elements in film which mean certain things, they are used to create a certain result. You can watch a film and not pay any attention to them and just enjoy the film; but you can also perceive a certain kind of subtext if you know what those elements are and what they mean.
Directors of photography know exactly what each and every camera angle they're using means, lighting directors know what it means when they light a scene in a certain way. And when the audience knows about these things as well, a whole new universe can open up.

 

Last edited by SolarSystem (February 19, 2015 12:48 pm)

I disagree in two points:
1) Personally, I wouldn't even go as far as to call the artist's intention "objective", because also the artists undergo a personal and artistic development in their lives. It happens not so seldom that people in the artistic genre distance themselves from former projects. For example amongst actors it's quite often they cannot sympathize with a part anymore that made them big names. Does that mean it's suddenly bad work? Surely not.
2) I think the moment the artist makes his work public it's not his and his alone anymore. The moment my children move out from home they are still very much my beloved babies, but I have limited influence as to their life choices or how they are seen by friends. I can only hope I have prepared them well for the scary world outside (= made my intentions clear).

SusiGo wrote:

And another thought - there are works of art that are meant to be ambivalent, that have interpretive variety as a default setting. 

I had to think about this earlier, too. Of course if you believe that the artist's intention is the only true intention/interpretation you could argue that even in such a case the artist had several specific ideas about the ambiguity of his work of art, what it could mean but also what it certainly doesn't mean. This then would bring us back to the idea that there does exist a true and valid interpretation that has been predetermined by the artist.
 

Vhanja wrote:

If all I need is my own mind and my own thoughts, I won't need external stimuli. When it comes to art (I am now thinking more of things like paintings and poems, not entertainment media), I want the creator to teach me something, to show me something, to give me an epiphany that I wasn't able to get to by myself. To me, good art is philosophy, it makes me think. 

To do that, I need someone else's thoughts and opinions, not just my own. If all I need is me, I can just chuck some painting on a canvas and interpret that by myself. Because my personal interpretations will (usually) not surprise me, will not give me any epiphanies and will not teach me something new. They will just confirm what I already want to see. 

But then what do you do when you're looking at a painting where we simply don't know anything about the artist's intention? Maybe because his intention just hasn't been passed on or because he simply refused to make his intention known? I totally agree, good art is philosophy, it talks to me, communicates with me and makes me think. The difference between you and me simply is that I don't need to know anything about the artist's intention in order to feel enlightened or to think. If the artist and/or his work of art is any good - or better: is any good to me - I won't need any information about it from the artist, because his painting or photography or film will communicate with me all on its own. And if it doesn't communicate wth me and I can't 'hear' or feel anything, then maybe it's just not for me. There are people I like and people I don't like, people who mean something to me and people who just don't. It's the same with art.



 

Last edited by SolarSystem (February 19, 2015 2:28 pm)

The tragedy of the artist is once a work becomes public...they have given away any control over it's perception.
And Perception really is everything in the end...the majority of people that view or read or hear or whatever any kind of art will have no idea of the who, what and why it was created...or what the creators said..the artist has control only over self...not other.

Many war memorial crosses in the uk were actually once put up during the plague as a place to leave food...and the statue of Eros in London.... is actually not Eros..@the mona lisa...is still mona lisa even though we now know her actual name..but now all can be referred to as their new perception..and neither are wrong. They have become both.

Tv@Film as art is interesting..@of course regarding Sherlock..because there isn't one artist or source it's a team..all working to their own perception of the theme.
Consider Marys thumbsup @ thumbsdown shirt..and the writers surprise and laughter at that
And who put the hearts on the wall between J@S in Hounds and did the graffiti in Vow...etc

Also the time frame and culture is important..consider shows like love thy neighbour...and that other series with Una Stubbs as the infamous Alf Garnets daughter in...  and why they can't be shown now.(racism).
Surely the modern perception of those shows was not the creators intent at all.

In ten , twenty or whatever years time..the perception of bbcSherlock may be completely different...will they still be able to show it?
And how many viewers will know or care about who wrote it and what they said about it..?
It will have become it's perception.

In my opinion, such thing as the "objective" reading of art is impossible.

To read authors intent "objectively", I would have to be sure that I´m seeing exactly what the author intended. In short, the objective reading of the art would only be possible under the premise that two people are able to percieve exactly the same content in the piece of art independently on each other.

So, for example, I would read the short story of Jorge Luis Borges, an author, who often inserts comments about his work and about the intent of his short stories into the text. Even if I keep my "subjective" interpretation to a minimum, am I reading exactly what Borges has written?

I don´t think so - I don´t have backround of being a man and Argentinian as well, I never experienced blindness, I know next to nothing about the Spanish-speaking world and culture, I know just the few words an author has spoken on the matter but I don´t have in my head his sheer experience in literature and his philosophical outlooks that form the silent background of his works. Even knowing the very minutiae of his biography, I still don´t know the contents of his head and therefore I cannnot be so arrogant as to presume I really know what Borges intended. I also cannot conveniently switch off my own mental "makeup", my identity as a woman, the influence of my own culture and country, the influence of my memories and feelings that form my background when reading or percieving the piece of art... I would only delude myself if I thought my reading of Borges is "objective".

And my reading would remain subjective even if I was a man, Argentianian and a blind person by chance. Those characteristic would make me similar to Borges by they won´t give me his memories, experiences and uniqueness of his mind.

That doesn´t mean that I am not getting new, exciting material from the artist. But it is still me, subjective me, who interprets it - so no, despite new stimuli to my mind, no "objective" reading is in play here.

I´m mentioning Borges intentionally because he very often speculated about art and its perception by an audience in his stories. Some of them speak about the very problem we are discussing now:

For example, in his story "Averrroes´s Search" Borges mentions that some pieces of art or philosophy, even when described by an author to maximal detail, can be incomprehensible for some people - intelligent people at that - solely because the culture in which they live forms a barrier that prevents them from understanding the problem. The hero of his story, Averroes (the great Arabic philosopher Ibn Rushd) who makes a translation of Aristoteles into Arabic, cannon for his life comprehend words "tragedy" and "comedy", because as a muslim living in Middle Ages he never experienced theatre and cannot imagine what it is. He finally finds an "objective" description for both terms, but of course, he only deludes himself thinking he got it right. (And then Averroes disappears and Borges ends the story by a candid remark that he was also deluded if he thought he could think like Averroes, about whom he has only an encyclopedic knowledge).

The other short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", deals with a French writer, Menard, who through some strange meditative techniques writes the exact, word-for-word copy of "The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha" by Miguel Cervantes. Althrough both texts are word-for-word the same, the literary critics interpret both texts very differently, because for them too, the authorship is more important than the work of art itself. And so they, for example, praise Menard for the innovative use of the archaic Spanish language while dissing Cervantes for his boring usage of the dialec that was normally spoken during his times.

All is just a nice illustration of how impossible it is to reach "objectivity" in such things as art.

In my opinion it is nearly impossible to view any work of art with an objective eye.  Even the eye of the creator themselves.   And, in my opinion, this is not a tragedy, but one of the most wonderful things about art.   Art can be a mirror.  Ulitmatly revealing more about the individual than the piece of art itself.

I think many artist know and understand this.  Not only accepting that once they release their art to the world it's not solely their own, but embracing this as part of the process.

 

I think it is even a condition of an art to include some ambivalence, some challenge to your intellect. Otherwise it would be in danger to be classified as a kitch:

"According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch is, unlike art, a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer; it "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, without sublimation." (Wikipedia on "Kitch")

I was not speciffically responding to your posts, Vhanja, but to the theme of the thread in general. Just my two cents on the matter - of course, that does not mean your views on the matter are somehow invalid, or anything similar.

Ah-chie wrote:

Well, I consider much of the discussion about Mary to really be part of the Johnlock milieu as well (because a lot of the angst surrounding that character stems from frustration of certain fans that John is married to her and thus thwarts Johnlock), so it still fits into that category from my POV.

This is a very serious issue with me. I know personally how much work goes into creating an actual book (it took many years for my husband's first book to be completed and published) and to have those who have never put their livelihood on the line in the creative arts, start prescribing meaning that contradicts the author's intent, when the author has stated that intent, is a step way over the line to me.

The old adage "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." is something that most of the audience can rarely imagine.  Until they have "bled" they really don't know how near and dear authorial intent and ownership of a creative work can be. 
--Val

Firstly, I think that those issues can indeed be discussed separately. And if I (as a Johnlocker) write about Mary this should be accepted as my take on Mary and not as the opinion of a frustrated fan. For me it is about credibility and Mary's story if taken at face value does not seem credible to me. 

Secondly, being a writer myself it is indeed a serious issue with me. But this is not what this thread is about if I understand it correctly. It is not about fanfic writers and/or fans trying to dictate the direction the writers have to take or to force their interpretations upon them. It is about the perception of a work of art, be it a film, a TV show, a book, or a painting and the validity of various readings.

Applied to Sherlock this means that we are talking about writers who have repeatedly contradicted themselves or openly confessed that they are not telling the truth in order to preserve the suspense and surprise of their future work. To me this seems like an invitation to interpret and speculate upon what we have got so far.