History Quotes / DeathOfTheAuthor

-> ''What directors--especially the good ones -- put into their films is different from what comes out of the viewing of those films. Directors are an authority on the former, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools which is why an interview with a good director is almost always worthwhile]]. But, when it comes to the experience of watching a film, the director doesn’t know any more or any better than the average viewer. One great director who understands this is Creator/JeanLucGodard, who discussed the matter with me when I interviewed him in 2000. We were talking about "La Chinoise," his 1967 collage-like drama about a cell of young Maoists in Paris and [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized their inclinations toward political violence]], which, I thought, he filmed with a significant degree [[GrayAndGreyMorality of critical distance]]. He agreed, but said that, at the time of the filming, his critical perspective was 'unconscious,' adding, "My unconscious was right, but it's the cinema that was right...often what [[UsefulNotes/TheAuteurTheory the auteur says]] is even less right, because the auteur is in what he does, not in what he says."''

-->-- '''[[WebVideo/BrowsHeldHigh Kyle Kallgren]]''', encouraging this trope during his vicious take-down of the "[[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Authorship Question]]" and its instigators in his review of ''Film/{{Anonymous}}''

->''What I remember most vividly was the time I had the temerity during one of the rehersals to suggest a different phrasing to one of the pros. She lowered her violin, turned to me and said icily, "We usually prefer it when the composer is dead."''

->''"Yeah, the problem with TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 as a "[[PoesLaw satire]]" is that it presents the Imperium as [[VillainHasAPoint completely right]]. The Emperor MUST subsist on a diet of countless lives or else everyone will die via demons. Dissidence MUST be purged because the risk of Chaos would overpower anything else. Xenophobia IS justified because yes, all the outsiders DO want to kill you. The universe is written in a way that fascism's hatred of outsiders is completely justified.\\
Its like reading Literature/AnimalFarm, except the book tells you that Snowball DID destroy the windmill, Napoleon IS making the farm a better place, and Boxer DID go to a hospital."\\
\\
"When your "blinkered view of purity" can banish demons and create miracles yeah you are the good guys… in the setting.\\
Honestly it feels like GW is trying to clean up for their failure to actually show the grim dark in the writing. The majority of the writing, fluff and lore definitely don’t illustrate the Imperium as evil or grimdark or whatever. At worst it illustrates a humanity desperately trying to hold on in an eternal heroic last stand. At best it illustrates self sacrifice and nobility against cosmic evil.\\
If they really wanna show the imperium as a bad guy among bad guys they are going to have to step up their writing and improve the way they illustrate their fluff."''
-->-- '''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/qxf1ts/the_imperium_is_driven_by_hate_warhammer_is_not/hlb9ljr/ Anonymous]] [[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/qxf1ts/the_imperium_is_driven_by_hate_warhammer_is_not/hlcx5ij/ comments]]''', on a Website/{{Reddit}} thread about [[https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/11/19/the-imperium-is-driven-by-hate-warhammer-is-not/ an official article clarifying the Imperium as the bad guys]]

->''What I remember most vividly was the time I had the temerity during one of the rehersals to suggest a different phrasing to one of the pros. She lowered her violin, turned to me and said icily, ´´We usually prefer it when the composer is dead.´´''

->''Personally, I take no satisfaction in imagining meaning where there is none. I’m not the type to stare at orange blotches on a canvas and ponder the universe. Either it’s got solid, intelligent ideas embedded in it, or it’s nonsense. Subjectivity isn’t a virtue. If my theories are wrong — if [[Creator/HideoKojima Kojima]] would fully acknowledge and shoot down what I’ve written – I would lose most of my respect for the game. The interpretation is key, because there’s a world of difference between a masterful metafiction disguised as an incoherent mess, and an incoherent mess that tries and fails to be a masterful metafiction.''

-->-- A comment in Webvideo/ErrantSignal's review of ''Videogame/HotlineMiami''

-> ''"I would love to live in a world where ''Dancer Taking A Bow'' wasn't painted by [[NiceCharacterMeanActor a vicious anti-Semite]], where ''Imagine'' wasn't written by [[Music/JohnLennon an inveterate wife beater]], and where ''Film/AnnieHall'' wasn't directed by [[Creator/WoodyAllen a monstrous child rapist!]]"''
-->-- '''[[WebVideo/BrowsHeldHigh Kyle Kallgren]]''', encouraging this trope during his vicious take-down of the "[[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Authorship Question]]" and it's instigators in his review of ''{{Film/Anonymous}}''

-> ''What directors--especially the good ones -- put into their films is different from what comes out of the viewing of those films. Directors are an authority on the former, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools which is why an interview with a good director is almost always worthwhile]]. But, when it comes to the experience of watching a film, the director doesn’t know any more or any better than the average viewer. One great director who understands this is Creator/JeanLucGodard, who discussed the matter with me when I interviewed him in 2000. We were talking about “La Chinoise,” his 1967 collage-like drama about a cell of young Maoists in Paris and [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized their inclinations toward political violence]], which, I thought, he filmed with a significant degree [[GrayAndGreyMorality of critical distance]]. He agreed, but said that, at the time of the filming, his critical perspective was 'unconscious,' adding, "My unconscious was right, but it’s the cinema that was right...often what [[UsefulNotes/TheAuteurTheory the auteur says]] is even less right, because the auteur is in what he does, not in what he says."''

'''Mike:''' Some people probably can, and I’ve sure tried.\\

'''Mike:''' [[DeconstructedTrope I realized “separate the work from the author” is easy for me to say when I’m not one of the people they dehumanize]].

-->-- '''Yusuke Kitagawa,''' ''VideoGame/Persona5Strikers''

-> ''"[[DefiedTrope There is no “death of the author” (that Parisian cliché) in my worldview.]] Authors strive and create against every impediment, including their doubters and detractors."''

"When your “blinkered view of purity” can banish demons and create miracles yeah you are the good guys… in the setting.\\

->"Yeah, the problem with TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 as a "[[PoesLaw satire]]" is that it presents the Imperium as [[VillainHasAPoint completely right]]. The Emperor MUST subsist on a diet of countless lives or else everyone will die via demons. Dissidence MUST be purged because the risk of Chaos would overpower anything else. Xenophobia IS justified because yes, all the outsiders DO want to kill you. The universe is written in a way that fascism's hatred of outsiders is completely justified.\\

If they really wanna show the imperium as a bad guy among bad guys they are going to have to step up their writing and improve the way they illustrate their fluff."

-->-- '''Creator/HermanMelville''', ''Literature/MobyDick''

->When I left the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

->Every fiction should have a moral; and, what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every fiction has.

->There is an impression abroad that literary folk are fast readers. Wine tasters are not heavy drinkers. Literary people read slowly because they sample the complex dimensions and flavors of words and phrases. They strive for totality not lineality. They are well aware that the words on the page have to be decanted with the utmost skill. Those who imagine they read only for "content" are illusioned.

->I don't know who wrote this essay, but he obviously doesn't know the first thing about Creator/KurtVonnegut!

->All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.

->As for our intentions, well, that's all bunk. We may intend our music for one person or another, but who's to say? I can't decide who reads my novel or buys my record. Look what that did for Jonathon Franzen, who snubbed Oprah for liking his book. It's an arrogant, imperialist motive to try to determine who will receive you and who won't.

->The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

->...authors [[ShrugOfGod seldom understand what they write]]. That is why we have critics.

->What it comes down to is my interpretation of my work is really immaterial. I'm not really a believer in art or music being institutionalized or put in galleries and stuff like that. I think art is something for the use of the public. It's for the public to interpret it, and to use it almost like a sustenance to life. It's the interpretation of the listener or the viewer which is all-important.

->I love it when someone tells ME what goes on in [[VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars SotS]]... I find it so educational.

->The beauty of music is that it's so open to the interpretation of the listener. I've said over and over again that the intent of the writer is so much less important than the interpretation of the listener.

->''"I think that many confuse '{{applicability}}' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."''

-->-- '''The New Yorker critic Richard Brody about ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'', [[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/02/birth-of-a-nation-revisited.html#ixzz2KWsfxWBh The Worst Thing About “Birth of a Nation” Is How Good It Is]]'''

->Personally, I take no satisfaction in imagining meaning where there is none. I’m not the type to stare at orange blotches on a canvas and ponder the universe. Either it’s got solid, intelligent ideas embedded in it, or it’s nonsense. Subjectivity isn’t a virtue. If my theories are wrong — if [[Creator/HideoKojima Kojima]] would fully acknowledge and shoot down what I’ve written – I would lose most of my respect for the game. The interpretation is key, because there’s a world of difference between a masterful metafiction disguised as an incoherent mess, and an incoherent mess that tries and fails to be a masterful metafiction.

-> ''The bard leaned back, retrieving his tankard. 'It begins with you,' he said. 'And it ends with you. Your eyes to witness, your thoughts alone. Tell me of no one's mind, presume nothing of their workings. You and I, we tell nothing, we but show.'''

-> "I would love to live in a world where ''Dancer Taking A Bow'' wasn't painted by [[NiceCharacterMeanActor a vicious anti-Semite]], where ''Imagine'' wasn't written by [[Music/JohnLennon an inveterate wife beater]], and where ''Film/AnnieHall'' wasn't directed by [[Creator/WoodyAllen a monstrous child rapist!]]"

->''What I remember most vividly was the time I had the temerity during one of the rehersals to suggest a different phrasing to one of the pros. She lowered her violin, turned to me and said icily, ´´We usually prefer it when the composer is dead.´´

-> "I have a rule that, even if I say something, 'it ain't canon if it ain't in the comic'. Therefore, it's technically canon that it's uncertain whether the TF gun had any impact on Elliot's level of comfort while a girl. This is in spite of the fact that I am typing [[TheRant right here and now]] that, in Elliot's case, that's just how Elliot is, and how Elliot would be even if the TF gun didn't do a single thing to help people adapt to new forms.\\
But that's just speculation on my part as the author of the comic."

-> "[[DefiedTrope There is no “death of the author” (that Parisian cliché) in my worldview.]] Authors strive and create against every impediment, including their doubters and detractors."

->Personally, I take no satisfaction in imagining meaning where there is none. I’m not the type to stare at orange blotches on a canvas and ponder the universe. Either it’s got solid, intelligent ideas embedded in it, or it’s nonsense. Subjectivity isn’t a virtue. If my theories are wrong — if [[Creator/HideoKojima Kojima]] would fully acknowledge and [[{{Jossed}} shoot down]] what I’ve written – I would lose most of my respect for the game. The interpretation is key, because there’s a world of difference between a masterful metafiction disguised as an incoherent mess, and an incoherent mess that tries and fails to be a masterful metafiction.

->''"... What ''"Birth of a Nation"'' offers, [[PeriodPiece even more than a vision of history]], ''is a template for the vast, world-embracing capabilities of the cinema. [[BrokenAesop It provided extraordinarily powerful tools for its own refutation.]]'' [[ValuesDissonance The real crime was not]] [[Creator/DWGriffith Griffith]]’s, but the world’s: the fact that most viewers knew little about slavery and little about Reconstruction and little about Jim Crow and little about [[UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan the Klan]], and were all too ready to swallow the very worst of the movie without question. [[ConfirmationBias They saw only what Griffith wanted to say but not what the movie showed]], and, [[AudienceReactions upon seeing what Griffith showed]], [[MisaimedFandom were ready to take up arms in anger.]]"''

- ->- - '''Camille Paglia''', ''Break, Blow, Burn''

-> "In part because of the common misconceptions regarding [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraft]] and sex, a number of different views of Lovecraft’s sexuality have emerged in the critical literature. While biographical details would tend to support a view of Lovecraft as essentially heterosexual, other interpretations of Lovecraft’s sexuality can be valuable for understanding particular critical interpretations of Lovecraft’s fiction, and in some cases for specific fictional characterizations of Lovecraft that are based of these views of his sexuality.”

- -> '''Bobby Derie''', "Great Phallic Monuments: Lovecraft and Sexuality”