Orphans & Alzheimer's, Extras & Eels: Death of the Author as Defense of Independent Thought
After having written my reflections upon the Amazing Digital Circus, I decided to look online and see what other people were saying about it. People's opinions were all across the board, with some declaring that it was amazing (and that anyone who disagrees is a worthless pile of fake-fan scum), and others that it was an absolute travesty (and that anyone who disagrees is an empty-headed shill). This was expected. What I find more intriguing, though, is how people discuss not their opinions about its quality, but their interpretations of what it means and why. I encountered some interpretations of the finale that I disagreed with quite strongly, but found understandable given support from the show. Crucially, one of these interpretations came from the show's own creator. This means, in other words, that I'd found myself disagreeing with the writer about the material the writer had written. At first glance, this appears to put my own countervailing interpretation of Circus in an awkward and tenuous position. On what grounds can I possibly assert that my interpretation is on equal footing with that of the showrunner, let alone that my interpretation is the better of the two?
Media savvy readers likely have already identified the lens through which I choose to interpret media as Death of the Author. A short description for those unaware: Death of the Author is a framework for analyzing media which holds that the author's intentions, and indeed anything beyond the reader, are irrelevant for use in its interpretation. For my present purposes, this means that I don't care whether Circus's creator apparently insists upon a definitively correct interpretation of the show; I arrived at my own interpretation which I believe is more supported by the text, and therefore I believe that, at worst, my take is just as valid or, at best, that my take is superior.
Death of the Author tends to invite a lot of criticism online. It evokes the image of a developmentally stunted wackjob who integrates a piece of content into their own identity with misplaced zeal, such that they cannot accept when a narrative goes in a direction not in alignment with their own headcanon and insists that somehow they know better about the story than the people who actually made it. It evokes the idea of a fan who refuses to analyze media rationally, centering their own preferences, feelings, and preconceived expectations above the objective qualities of the media itself.
I don't believe this characterization of Death of the Author is valid, though I don't care to defend the sort of vacuous, identity-driven consumers who tend to act as its most stalwart defenders. The arguments in favor of Death of the Author have been written about a lot in a lot of different places, and perhaps I may write about those reasons at another time. For now, however, I want to expound upon one particular argument in its favor that I don't often see discussed: that it is the only way to defend your own independent thoughts with regard to the analysis of media. Put another way, just as the pathetic consumer who integrates a corporate product into his own identity is failing to act rationally, so is the person who values the author's interpretation as the only valid one that can exist, or as the one with the most objective sort of validity. In fact, Death of the Author is the lens through which you may safeguard your own capacity for independent thought. This seems counterintuitive, given how "this guy thinks he knows better than the author" is, on its face, a pretty powerful knee-jerk repudiation. But follow it to its conclusion, and you lose your footing very quickly.
Orphans
To reject Death of the Author is to characterize stories in much the same way that we characterize jigsaw puzzles; that is, there is but one indisputably correct configuration of pieces. You can arrange them however you'd like, and you might find that an alternate configuration looks prettier or that the puzzle looks good enough even if you've lost a couple pieces in the couch cushions, but nonetheless you are still incorrect. Moreover, the single correct solution to the puzzle is determined by the one who makes it. I could take a photo of a puppy and turn it into a jigsaw puzzle, but then decide that the correct solution is actually a particular, but completely random, configuration that leaves the puppy completely unrecognizable. You may argue that the puppy-configuration would be the better solution, but as I am the one who created the puzzle, it is up to me to ordain the proper solution. You don't get to claim that a jigsaw puzzle is correctly solved just because you don't like the intended solution. At best, you must resign yourself to merely preferring it your way with the knowledge that you are, objectively and unarguably, wrong. To reject Death of the Author is to see stories like this: There is one, and only one, correct interpretation of a story, and it is ordained by the one who writes it. To interpret it any other way might make you feel better about it, but it's still wrong. Harsh, one might say, but reasonable. Reality doesn't bend to your feelings, and you don't get to tell an author that she's wrong about her own story.
Consider, though, the consequences regarding my jigsaw puzzle if I were to die without having told anyone the solution. I leave a note that the solution is not the puppy, but a very specific configuration of pieces arranged randomly, and beyond that I leave behind no indication of which configuration is the correct one. Instantly my puzzle becomes incomprehensible. The only possible configuration which makes sense, the puppy, has already been disconfirmed, and there is otherwise no process by which we can determine which arbitrary configuration I had deemed to be correct. In fact, absent a solution, my puzzle is arguably no longer a puzzle at all. There is no possible way to know when you've solved it; even if you somehow stumble into the solution, you'd never know it. So why would anyone bother to try my puzzle in the first place?
This is the scenario in which we find ourselves regarding orphaned works, or stories whose authors have died without leaving explicit information about what their stories mean. We can be sure that there was, at one point, a knowable solution, but no longer. Just as working on a jigsaw puzzle is performed to the end arriving at the single correct configuration of pieces, analyzing a story is performed, without Death of the Author, to the end of figuring out the single correct interpretation as ordained by the author. And just as a puzzle with no solution is not worth working on, a story whose author died without telling us what it meant is not worth analyzing. It may be fun to read, but it is pointless to think about.
It may be objected that this analogy is faulty. An orphaned story isn't like a jigsaw puzzle whose solution is a random configuration of pieces because the correct interpretation of the story is not random. The author had a vision and crafted the story to serve that vision. The story's meaning can be known by interpreting the "puzzle pieces" present in the narrative.
But this is just wishful thinking, and it only saves the day by tacitly surrendering to Death of the Author. Unlike my jigsaw puzzle, for which the puppy is a coherent and reasonable candidate for a backup solution if the correct one is otherwise absent, stories are too complex for a singular interpretation to stand as one which is obviously better than all others. After all, even a single sentence can be imbued with deep meaning, and stories comprise thousands of sentences. Even if two people agree on a broad interpretation, they may never agree on the interpretation or symbolism of every individual sentence. Regardless, this line of thinking is invoking Death of the Author anyway, so the game is already lost.
If you truly reject Death of the Author, you must concede that analyzing a story and making your best guess is as pointless as making your best guess at my jigsaw puzzle. For example, if C. S. Lewis had never confirmed The Chronicles of Narnia to be allegorical for Christian theology, pointing out that it is obviously so would not be sufficient for establishing that we'd arrived at the correct interpretation. After all, as we know from my incomprehensible jigsaw puzzle, a solution doesn't have to coherent to be correct; the only necessary condition is for the author to so designate it. Therefore, we may point all we want at how Aslan is transparently allegorical for Christ, but we'd never know for sure. For all we'd know, Lewis intended the stories to have meanings that are less congruent with their textual content than our allegory interpretation, such that nobody reading them would ever be able to figure it out. We can't just declare the whole situation absurd and grant an exception to ourselves, insisting that we understand Narnia anyway. If you reject Death of the Author, you must concede that Narnia would be a puzzle without a solution, and therefore of no value to interpret. You have declared that objective, indisputable reality may only be revealed from the lips of one person, and now that person no longer exists to interpret reality for us. To grant an exception for orphaned works with no pre-established meaning has no justification beyond ameliorating our frustration about stories which so obviously must mean something, but whose interpretation would be utterly intractable unless we allow ourselves to cheat.
Given the choice between consistency of principle and allowing for orphaned works to be worth thinking about, I bet most who reject Death of the Author would twist themselves into making exceptions where it appears, on the surface, reasonable to do so. So let us relent and allow for this arbitrary exception. Stories may only be correctly understood by knowing the intent of the author, unless the author is dead and didn't tell us what they meant before they died. Have we arrived on solid ground yet?
Alzheimer's
To have even a cursory grasp on human psychology is to know that the mind is squishy and unreliable. I may have an argument with my wife in the morning, stew over how she was so obviously in the wrong in the afternoon, lighten up and realize that I might have been off track in the evening, and then apologize and admit that the whole ordeal was my fault by the time we go to bed. At each stage I was absolutely sure that my present interpretation of our argument was correct, yet before the day is out I'd completely flipped my perspective.
The same sort of thing could happen if I painted a picture. Let's say I reach down into my soul and paint something really artsy. I feel inspired and impassioned by taking up this new hobby, so I paint with the intention of making something vibrant, happy, and hopeful. I'll even paint a bright sun in the corner, representing warmth and light and joy. It takes a while to paint, though, and I make some mistakes throughout the process which leave me less than impressed with the result. As the paint dries and I reflect on my creation, I decide that it doesn't represent hope, not really. It actually represents the idea of personal which springs from trying new things, and the enthusiasm you feel when you're discovering your own abilities. That sun in the corner actually represents growth, not joy, I decide; just as seeds need sunlight to sprout, new skills take attention and effort to blossom. I put the painting away. Ten years later, my wife says, "Remember when you tried to take up painting? That didn't last long. I think you only made one painting. What was it, again?" Now a middle-aged man feeling bitter and foolish at having impulsively rushed into an expensive pursuit, I think long and hard about it, and tell her that it was a painting representing youthful naivete. It even had a sun in the corner, which, by looking more like a child's caricature of the sun rather than the actual thing, represents being sure of ourselves despite a lack of ability. Finally, on my deathbed several decades later, my great-grandchildren tell me they found an old painting in the basement, and ask me what it means. I look at the faded colors and relive the memories, and tell them that it represents the indefatigable human spirit. The sun in the corner represents how even though we may experience periods of pain and darkness in our lives, if we work hard and persevere, eventually the sun will shine on us again.
The most relevant question for our purposes here is which of these myriad interpretations is the one you'd designate as the objectively correct one. The one I made while painting? The one I made while reflecting on the painting shortly after it was done? Or one of the others, which I made after reflecting on the it over the years thereafter? To reject Death of the Author is to assert that the painter's intention is the source of the painting's meaning, but in this example, the painter's intention appears malleable. Are they all correct? If so, when did each subsequent interpretation become correct? If my wife had been looking at the painting right after it was finished, when I had decided that it represented growth, and insisted that it actually represents the indefatigable human spirit, was she wrong, because she disagreed with me at the time, or right, because she agreed with what I myself would later decide it means? Does the meaning of the painting itself change as my mind changes? If so, at what moment does it change? When I come up with a new interpretation, or when I first announce it to the world? What if I only announce it to the readers of a small, local magazine, and then everyone who read about it also dies immediately thereafter? Is the rest of the world, who are working under the assumption that my outdated, previous interpretation is the real one, all wrong?
Let's take it a step further. Let's say that instead of lucidly interpreting my own painting on my deathbed, I have developed Alzheimer's, and my mind is shifting back and forth between when I was a younger man and when I was middle-aged. Right now I have the mind of my younger self, and declare with gusto that the painting represents growth. Five minutes later I have the mind of my older self, and insist with vigor that it represents naivete. However, every once in a while I regain lucidity and can think clearly, and in those periods I decide the painting actually represents the human spirit. Which of these three interpretations is correct? Does the true meaning of the painting change like the wind as my addled brain rocks back and forth between states of mind, or does only my lucid self get to decide what it means? Who decides when I'm lucid enough to change the meaning of my own painting? What if I forget altogether having painted it? Does it become an orphaned work? What if I remember having painted it later? Does it become un-orphaned?
This example isn't extreme or absurd, given how common dementia is, so we can't rightly just dismiss it as beyond consideration. Hopefully by now it is becoming clear that far from standing as the rational man's framework of choice, rejection of Death of the Author actually complicates the nature of media analysis and requires its own subjective, arbitrary method of enforcement before any set-in-stone, facts-don't-care-about-your-feelings declarations about what stories mean can be located. With Death of the Author, you are free to read the story as it exists, come to the conclusion about what the text most reasonably means, and defend it as the best interpretation. Without Death of the Author, you can't even begin interpreting the story until you decide the exact circumstances, along with innumerable edge cases, under which the author's intention is correct, after which you risk the model collapsing and rendering the story effectively meaningless if you can't come up with a straight answer to a dubious scenario you hadn't thought to account for.
But perhaps one could still insist that these objections are just cherry-picked, that the existence of ambiguous edge cases doesn't obviate the author's claim to the the right to decide what her own story means. True, if we dismiss all of the circumstances under which our idea doesn't make sense, our idea makes perfect sense. So dismiss all of these concerns; is there anything else to worry about?
Extras
As we've seen, to reject Death of the Author is to complicate to the point of absurdity the notion that we can rely on the author to provide us with the only valid interpretation of a story. The examples thus far have involved stories that are created by only one person. But as we know, much of the media we consume is created not by one person, but hundreds or thousands.
Let's say I go watch the newest hit blockbuster, The Life and Times of Chad McThunderFist. It is a delightful romp full of comedy, drama, action, romance, and horror, and took a team of thousands of people seven years to make from beginning to end. Against my better judgement, I decide to go on Twitter to see what people are saying about it. First, I see that before it even released, the director said it was going to be a movie about overcoming adversity. After it was released, the director is saying something subtly yet substantively different, that it was about proactively working toward your goals. The lead writer tweets that it's a movie about family, specifically being a good dad in a hard world. Another writer says it's about the importance of sacrifice, not about dads specifically. Somebody whose name was buried deep in the credits says it's about the importance of following your conscience no matter what anybody else thinks. The lead actor says his character represents a healthy sort of masculinity, and that the movie should inspire men to do great things for good reasons. Some random extra, who was visible in the background during one scene and had no lines, says that the movie is a jab at radical feminists who try to disempower men. The catering company's CEO says that it's about how tasty the food is from Jay's Super Duper Catering Company, and that you should reach out today for a 5% discount on orders for parties of 200 or more. Additionally, this movie was adapted from a book, whose author said it was about something completely different.
Which claims among these are we to identify as the single valid meaning of the movie? There is not "an author" in this scenario, but rather "authors" numbering in the thousands. In the best-case scenario, perhaps every single one of them, from the director to the least important extra somewhere in the background, agrees broadly about the movie's meaning, but it is not realistic that they should all have the exact same interpretation, completely in accordance with each other in every single way. Do we just default to the "most important" roles? But then who is entitled to our deference between the director and the lead writer? And that's not even considering how much hold over the truth the original author has, whose book was adapted into the movie and which itself involved dozens or hundreds of people from first draft to publication and marketing. Take this thorny issue, which likely has no clear answer, and compound it with the issues which we've seen arise from trying to discern the meaning from just one creator. We find ourselves in an impenetrable morass of uncertainty, where rejecting Death of the Author is a faulty, smudged map which seems always to lead us back to the mucky center.
The only way out is to sit down and devise a detailed outline for precisely who has the right to determine a story's meaning, along with when, and how, and for how long. It's not enough to say that the director decides, for reasons we've explored above. If we hope to have a complete understanding of the objective, unarguable truth of the matter (which is the entire reason we've rejected Death of the Author in the first place), we can say, for example, that the true meaning comes from the director, either during the movie's last two months of post-production or within the first six months following its initial release, including those not yet known to the public but recorded via video, audio, or writing within one or both of these periods (with the post-production interpretations taking precedence should an inconsistency arise between statements made in either period, and earlier statements taking precedence over later statements made within the same period), to be unchanged by his own future declarations except for when they serve only to clarify details of sufficiently inconsequential import, all pending on further revelations that the director was actually just a figurehead and that the actual director was someone else unknown, in which case we may default to equally qualified interpretations made by the head writer, lead actor, and film studio CEO, respectively, the absence of all of which would render the movie officially void of meaning.
If you have formulated such a way to navigate this complex labyrinth of qualifiers, you aren't even ready to rest on your laurels and bask in the glow of the undeniable truth; you still have to defend why these exact conditions are the correct ones for determining the authors' intent, as opposed to any others, or even these same ones but with minor tweaks. So rejecting Death of the Author hasn't even freed you from the burden of argumentation. The only thing it's done is shift the subject of your argumentation from the story itself, which is interesting to talk about, to the legalese-esque terms and conditions under which the authors' intent may be determined, which is not. Rejecting Death of the Author has not made the job of finding out what a story means any simpler, quicker, more fun, or more secure against objection. We aren't dealing with edge cases anymore; these problems arise from just taking a look at pretty much any story you'll encounter, declaring that "the author decides what it means," and then trying to pin down what conclusions you may draw.
At this point, the only feasible counter is that these concerns are "overthinking" it. The edge cases and the uncertainty stemming from works with multiple authors can be dismissed because they make things too complicated to bother with. The fact of the matter is that stories have an author, and the author says what the story means, end of discussion. Anything beyond that is just finding excuses to quibble over unimportant details to muddy the waters and obscure the plain and obvious truth.
To this I would respond that if your method of arriving at the truth only withstands objection if you declare a priori that objections are automatically wrong, you haven't actually conceived of a method for arriving at the truth. Rather, you've constructed a facade of rationality around your opinion, and you hope that by wielding talk about "objectivity" and "facts" you can evade considerations which challenge it, like a worm which retreats into the filth to avoid being plucked by a bird. By making a claim about how we may derive meaning from a story and then refusing to elaborate upon it, you reveal that your claim is as incoherent as a puzzle without a solution, and ought to be dismissed.
All that said, there remains one last point to consider. Let us accept, dispensing with all skepticism, that to reject Death of the Author is the way the savvy reader arrives at the meaning of a story. Even if we return to the idea that stories have just one author, who supplies just one interpretation which never changes in the least over time, there is still one problem to contend with.
Eels
Let's say it is discovered that George Orwell kept a secret diary in which he had written the true meanings of all of his stories, which he hid from the world for fear of mockery. Within this diary it is revealed that 1984 followed not Winston the human man as he tries to cope with a dystopian authoritarian regime, but Winston the writhing mass of super-intelligent eels wearing the skin of a man as it tries to decide which of its young, attractive bachelorette neighbors would feed it the most acorns, and also this takes place beneath the blood oceans of the planet Zygote-6.
Here we have a story written by one author who has supplied us with one unambiguous interpretation of the novel. If we reject Death of the Author, we have no choice but to accept this new information as fact, and adjust our thoughts about the novel accordingly. We have no defense. We can't reject this interpretation because it's really stupid and not at all supported by the text, because we've declared that Orwell is the one person with the right to decide what his stories mean. Carving out an exception for meanings which you personally find dumb just elevates your personal interpretation to equal validity to that of Orwell's, and we find ourselves back in Death of the Author.
This, ultimately, is the way Death of the Author provides a defense for your own independent thought. Without it, you are compelled to relinquish your own thoughts about a story and accept the author's, no matter how stupid or incongruent they are with the text. Orwell says 1984 is about alien eels in a human skin-suit, and so you have no choice but to grin and bear it no matter how much your rational mind screams at you that this interpretation makes no sense. Your mind can discern meaning from 1984 just fine without Orwell, but you're forced to squash that exercise of rationality down and replace it with the ravings of this madman who somehow happened to write a deep and compelling novel despite completely misunderstanding what his own creation tells you that it means. You are powerless to protest against "the truth," but only because you have decided that's what "the truth" is.
Though an example this extreme is unlikely to occur in real life, the fact that there is no recourse if it ever should means that this way of looking at things is untenable. It is not foolish, but very wise to exercise foresight and come up with contingency plans, and to abandon a course of action if even an unlikely disaster would lead to ruin. If the Secretary of Defense proposed that we abandon planning for the outbreak of nuclear war because it's dumb and unlikely, she would be deserve to be fired. Likewise, if your approach to the interpretation of media is never to trust your own thoughts because it's pretty unlikely for an author to insist that her own story means something stupid, you are obliged to change your approach.
Death of the Author is not best seen as a defense for overzealous fanboys who can't let go of their precious headcanon; it's best seen as your defense against an author telling you a story means something which it obviously does not mean. The fundamental distillation of independent thought is that though it can be guided and influenced, it cannot be railroaded into a conclusion that it rejects. The framework for translating this mindset into the analysis of media is Death of the Author, in which you reserve your right to elevate your own rational thoughts above the irrational thoughts of others, whether they come from random idiots online or from the author herself.