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How does Death of the Author apply to an actress? The discussion may be controversial, but deleting that entry was a fair decision, as the actress has no say on what happens in the show.

Has the Mandalorian page been the subject of such edits before? Immediately jumping in with such edits reeks of ban evasion.

Not to get involved in another angry debate, but Larkmarn's original edit was not even remotely "neutral". It was a rant about how "dangerous" and "baseless" conservative beliefs are, and then said that anyone who still likes the character is just employing a "coping mechanism".

And the removed Fargo example was a giant political screed accompanied by a litany of derogatory comments and some body-shaming thrown in for good measure. I don't know if it's a legitimate example or not, but it needs to be rewritten at the least. Maybe just parse it down to "based on his appearance and his politics, Vargas is seen as a Take That! to British politician Nigel Farage."

There's a difference between "conservative beliefs" and "the election was rigged and don't wear masks." Ie, the beliefs that only sprang up after the show came out.

And the Fargo example was garbage that I would probably pull myself, but that's kinda the point. There are valid reasons to pull it. But it was just pulled for being politically biased which is Right for the Wrong Reasons but still inappropriate behavior.

The deleted entry is a misuse and a complaint.

This is what the Death of the Author trope is all about.

"It only proposes that questions not explicitly answered by the text of the work cannot simply be resolved by Word of God or by trying to guess the author's intention".

Isn't it more Broken Base anyway?

Look, I totally agree that there are times when you're totally justified in dragging a person's name through the mud. Like, if some actor says "Hitler was right" or something, then no. We don't need to look at both sides, or be fair... they're just wrong.

... but there's at least enough evidence of the 2020 election rigging to have gotten many of the state supreme courts to order official investigations into it. As for COVID, it's a disease that over 95% of people just get over with no complications, and the effectiveness of the masks at stopping it is highly questionable.

The point is, even if you disagree, these aren't lunatic "martians killed JFK" style crackpot theories. You're acting like you're totally justified in dragging a person through the mud over some fairly normal and rational beliefs that I've heard from both sides of the political spectrum.

EDIT 2: Actually, no, I'm not deleting it. Because the point till stands, and because now that people have already commented on it, deleting it will only lead to more rumors getting spread that I don't need.

And for the record, I'm perfectly calm and chill. You don't see me screaming profanities or calling people jerkasses. When people say things I feel entirely justified in responding by giving my own opinion. There is no rage involved. This post is also all I'm going to say about it, as the issue has been settled anyway.

^ We're not interested in a political debate. Please calm down.

Mimic, you're doing it again, please chill.

Doesn't Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment apply here?

I actually agree with Larkmarn, I thought about bringing up OLIVER 5 here as well. Glad that I am not the only one.

From this wiki: "Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing."

One could argue that actors are creators too, and as such their ideology can be subject to this trope.

Regardless of if you personally agree or not, there's no "debate" on the falsehood of Gina Carano's claims as the editor claimed.

^^^^^ There's a point I can get out from your reply: this might apply to other actors as well and before the dust settles down it's difficult to know which works will be viewed in a different light by the audience.

Edit: in the sense that a good example should aim to be timeless.

Whatever her beliefs are, are they actually affecting her role on the show to the point that they merit mention on the show's page? If she were a writer, or if her character somehow reflected her beliefs I could understand the leaving it in there, but as I understand it Tomodachi is right in that that trope doesn't really apply to this situation. Death of the Author is about a creator's opinion being no more valid than the opinions of the viewers, while this example basically boils down to "the actress is controversial because of her political views" without explaining why or how those views are related at all to the show.

Standard procedure in most cases is to not bring up a creator's political ideologies unless they're somehow related to the work in question. In this case, I don't see that connection, so I'd say just cut the example wholesale.

I don't think actors who aren't involved in the writing process are relevant for Death of the Author as it's specifically about how fans interpret the writing. Her views as a person are not relevant to the page - only her career as an actress.

And Mimic, you've already gotten into too many political fights on the wiki to start "to be fair"-ing conspiracy stuff, especially when it's much easier to just remove the entry on the grounds of misuse than perpetuate the exact thing that makes the entry problematic. You claimed you'd stop doing this.

^^ It can get a bit closer to this sort of thing, such as when Orson Scott Card came out as being against gay marriage and it led to a debate over whether Ender's Game had any sort of anti-gay message in it. The Death of the Author viewpoint would naturally be "it doesn't matter" and the entry on YMMV.Enders Game even mentions that some gay people found special meaning in the story's theme of going against the grain of society, in spite of Card's beliefs.

Of course, even in that case the point was still about how the author's beliefs apply to the work not just about the author having beliefs that fans don't like.

^ The only thing I have to say here is there is no "this". What I said was relevant to the topic as I saw it, it involved no attacks against anyone, and I let it go at that. There is no "fight" here.

If you want to discuss it any further than that, you can PM me.

^ Card was the writer, so there's potential debate over whether his views would end up in the work. Not so much when it comes to Carano, whose views do not appear to influence the work as she's not even part of the writing team as far as I know. There's no Death of the Author if they weren't even alive as the author to begin with.

^It's a actually little bit more nuanced than that, Lindsay Ellis made a video about it and how continuing to enjoy a work after a creator is revealed to hold objectionable views, can mean support for them (both financial and of fame) and thus for their ideas, which many people would not agree with nor feel comfortable for doing it.

Consider this: If Gina Carano is hypothetically fired from the show because of her beliefs, it will be because Disney believes many fans think that continuing to support the show means to endorse her views even if they don't directly affect the writing of the show.

EDIT: Also, unlike Ender's Game which is a novel with just one creative person behind it, The Mandalorian is a Live Action show, it's not the product of a single writer, many creative people, including artists, composers and actors come together to bring the work to life. As such it's reasonable to say their work is susceptible (in various degrees) to be coloured by ideology.

I have my own thoughts and feelings about the idea of "Separating the art from the artist", but this isn't the time or place to talk about them.

Death of the Author is specifically about the author's interpretation not being any more or less valid than that of the audience's. It's not about the political opinions of actors.

I think the question is whether Death of the Author applies exclusively to writers or people involved with plotting.

Then why the tangent into politics? That question has nothing to do with the actual political beliefs of the person. It's still misuse because their personal political beliefs have nothing to do with the way the series is interpreted.

Honestly? While Mimic is about to wear out their welcome on the wiki, the Death of the Author example here feels like political soapboxing. DOTA is a concept that's mainly used for literary criticism, not to provide commentary on real world politics.

I get that, but that doesn't make it an example of Death of the Author specifically.

And if she does end up being fired over it, then we can find an appropriate trope for that, but as things currently stand, I don't think the specific example under discussion is valid.

I'll go with the majority's decision on this, however, one last point:

"It's still misuse because their personal political beliefs have nothing to do with the way the series is interpreted."

I'm not sure about that, if viewers are feeling uneasy of rooting for her character, doesn't this fall under "the way the series is interpreted"?

No, because (I'm assuming) there is no connection between her views and the way the character is written. "Viewers feeling uneasy about rooting for her character" isn't because of anything in the text or how it can be interpreted.

^Got it.

So, to kinda re (or maybe de)rail this, I didn't start this thread to discuss the examples, but to report a troper.

If he cut the Fargo example for being a misuse of Alternative Character Interpretation, I would've supported him. If he cut The Mandalorian example for being misuse, I would've discussed it. Instead he cut the first for being "biased" and didn't cut the second but instead both-sidesed it for being biased. I've made a post on The Mandalorian discussion page if people want to discuss the example there.

Back to the troper at hand, their only edit since I made this thread is kinda problematic as well. The kindest interpretation is that it's reporting xenophobia, but it definitely reads as xenophobic itself.

↑ Yeah, implying that the separation of Africa and the West is entirely Africa's fault is definitely not the best take, and that's without mentioning the pointless downplaying of "painful story" to history. It's not a great sign, at least.

^^ There's no excuse for that edit but if you remove it you could also improve the example while passing. ^note Africa is almost twice as big as Russia, is a separate land mass and has 54 times as many countries in it. There is some unity and there also isn't. Saying things like "Africans consider themselves as a very separated entity from the western civilization" might be true but North Africans will also consider themselves different from Sub-Saharan Africans and so on. And also there are significant cultural differences from Europe so it's unclear how this would be related to the trope at all.

Actually I'd opt to remove all the RL examples that pertain other countries than Russia. Sorry for going off-topic, that should rather go to a discussion page.

Edit: If someone is interested in the issue.

So his subsequent edits are clearly somewhat agenda-driven:

• Changing "of being frighteningly racist and borderline fascist" to "bordering on bigotry or at least coming across as bigoted."
• Removing entries regarding Boris Johnson with no explanation.

The entries might've been problematic to begin with, but removing entries critical of right-wing politicians and news outlets without discussion or an edit reason is worrisome.

This edit also sticks out to me - it's not inherently bad, but it definitely shows they've got an almost entirely political agenda here on this site and I'm note sure if there was any kind of discussion before adding on to a page-topping note. It's not a bad addition necessarily, but it certainly should've been discussed first, and given the rest of their track record it's not a great look.

↓ There's also all of that, but it was semantics in comparison so I wasn't sure if it was worth bringing up. And yeah, I'm not sure if that page existing is a good idea, but it's ultimately not this particular troper's fault.

^ They made a grammar error in that edit; they said "politics is involved" when it should be "politics are involved." Also, why the hell do we have a Real Life page for "The Reason You Suck" Speech? That's a terrible idea for so many reasons.

^ Sadly, as noted on Sandbox.Keep Real Life Examples, it's been downvoted in three separate crowners in the NRLEP thread.

I am bumping this up since it seems that there was no action taken, and now they've been removing all references to racism on UsefulNotes.The British Royal Family.

Saying “though many are skeptical” about tabloids being racist regarding Meghan sets off about 80 red flags

Did anyone send them notifiers or P Ms the first time around?

Yeah, that looks like an agenda. Suspending.