In my previous post (which you may have missed, since FTB was down for a few days), I asked “What is the purpose of a reading?” I discussed a reading of Elden Ring that baffled me. I could not understand the purpose of the reading, other than arguing that it was intended by the authors. And the article didn’t really do anything to convince me of authorial intent.

I wanted to keep things simple, but my thoughts were spiraling outwards from there. So, if you permit, some more scattered discussion.

Elden Ring

First of all, the article on Elden Ring. I want to be clear: it’s entirely possible to justify the article’s reading without referring to authorial intent. For instance, villains often incorporate elements of the queer, not necessarily because of deliberate intent, but because they’re just following common narrative tropes, or simply common intuition about what is “evil”. Another possibility is that a player comes across this reading on their own, and just wants to talk about their experience. Alternatively, the purpose of the reading could be to educate readers on homophobic stereotypes by providing an example.

But I want to get to the core of the problem: the article did not say what the purpose was. It was not clear!  The article left me to guess.  There were several phrases about FromSoft doing this or that, so I guessed it was about authorial intent.  You’re allowed to think, maybe I just didn’t get the article, I didn’t read between the lines correctly. But… I think that would have been within the article’s power to correct.

Nimona

So that brings me to another example. Some months ago, I talked about the movie Nimona, and why it didn’t make sense to me. That was one of my most unpopular posts in quite a while, facing disagreement on two separate platforms with distinct readerships. I’m totally fine with accepting that it wasn’t a good article—I write lots of junk, not every blog post’s a winner. But I want to explain a bit, what was the purpose of that reading?

The real purpose was, I saw the movie Nimona for a movie club. I almost certainly would not have watched the movie otherwise, as I do not like animated films, or comedies, or movies. I complain about every single movie I watch. Anyway, the movie club was excessively positive about it, and it did not feel like an environment where I could complain about it. So I was venting. But you know, venting in a way so as to not make it look purely like a “vent post”.

So the purpose of the reading, was to describe my experience with the movie, and explore the question of “why didn’t I get it?”  And by extension, why might other people not get the movie either? I think it should be pretty obvious that the purpose was not to explain authorial intent, as I do not think it was the author’s intent to present (to me) a confusing mess. However, authorial intent was relevant, because if I could not find a sensible reading, one possible method is to search for the intended meaning, which was presumably more sensible than whatever I was coming up with.

The purpose of the reading was also not to persuade you of the reading. If I didn’t get it, but you got it, there is really no reason for me to try to make you not get it.

One of the commenters (on the other platform) tried to argue with me, saying that their reading was better than mine. At some point they asked (paraphrasing) “are you trying to make a serious analysis of the film?” suggesting that I was trying and failing to do so. My response was “absolutely not”, at which point they promptly ended the argument.

So, it’s easy to blame that on bad reading comprehension. But I don’t think that’s fair to my readers, and as a writer I think it’s really more productive to think about what I could have done better. And my thinking is, I should have been way more blunt about what I saw as the purpose of my reading. Readers don’t know what’s in my head, so if I don’t communicate, then how are they to know?

Lord of the Rings

I recently saw a video talking about the history of queerness in Lord of the Rings. It highlighted the homoeroticism between Sam and Frodo, showing why the reading is compelling, and demonstrating that this had not escaped the awareness of the people who worked on the film. Did J. R. R. Tolkien put that in there on purpose? No, almost certainly not. Tolkien was drawing upon a different set of tropes that are no longer familiar to modern audiences. The hobbits are still gay though.

I thought this was a pretty great example of being clear about the purpose of the reading. Rather than arguing that Tolkien intended to make hobbits gay, it argued that they could be read as gay despite authorial intent. It explained why queer (or straight) audiences might read it that way, why that’s better than following the potentially regressive views of its author, and why later adaptations might benefit from drawing those themes out further.

There’s a reason that the video is so explicit about the purpose of its queer readings. In a way, every queer reading is on the defensive. When we talk about queer readings, it’s really common for people to say, “that book was published in 1954, surely they’re not really gay.” The video pre-empts this common argument by explaining that it’s not just about authorial intent.

There is something to be said about straight people being willfully obtuse. All the same, plenty of people are accidentally obtuse. Sometimes, I am the obtuse person. None of us were born with the innate ability to understand the purpose of a queer reading, not even queer people. So it really doesn’t hurt to be explicit about why we want to read it this way.

What lives when the author dies?

“What is the purpose of a reading?” is a broad question, but we keep on circling around to authorial intent. That’s because according to the naive understanding, the purpose of a reading is to describe authorial intent. If a critic doesn’t explain the purpose of their reading, then there will always be some people in the audience who assume by default that it’s about authorial intent. For all we know, the critic themselves takes the naive view, and it really is about authorial intent.

And that’s why “death of the author” gets so commonly repeated. It’s not (always) about authorial intent, and we need to say it over and over again. But I think it would be helpful if, instead of saying that it’s not about authorial intent, explain what it is about.

Since people barely talk about it, I feel like I only have a few basic tools at my disposal to really understand. If it’s not about authorial intent, then maybe it’s about understanding society, or maybe it’s just for fun. Then show me a reading that not about understanding society, nor is it fun, and I’m at a loss. Is it about authorial intent now?

I’m saying over and over again, in multiple ways, that I think people should explain the purpose of readings that they make.  I think it should be standard practice.  I think it makes the discussion much more accessible, and opens the path to deeper thinking about fiction.