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Old 06-08-2005, 08:21 AM   #140
Bęthberry
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Boots Backtracking a bit

Well, I see that Mr. Underhill has riden into town in the classic manner of all good westerns--our Dread Horseman remember--and decided to take upon himself the role of all twelve jurors.

I am woefully late--call me Poster of the Woeful Timeframe--but there are some points I wish to reply to some posts back. So, let me sidestep this legal drama, despite my temptation to use a judicial procedure I heard about on Law and Order whereby judges can dismiss a jury's verdict (only in America, you say?), and answer some points davem made. Perhaps my case will be strengthened by this delay and my respected sparring partner will have forgotten the frame of mind in which he composed his extemperaneous post!

Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
I think what you're talking about here is 'unconscious' baggage. What I'm talking about is conscious baggage, where we are deliberately looking for these connections & consciously interpreting what we read or view as we watch or read . The more we bring in these things the more we will detatch ourselves from what we are experiencing.
No, if I had meant to use the word 'unconscious' I would have done so.

This dichotomy between conscious/unconscious and pure attention/ wrenching split is part of your theory, davem, but it is not part of what I am talking about. In fact, it reflects your procedure here, in that you take our words and ideas and recast them into your frames of reference. To our detriment of course and the merit of your argument. (Who's to say that we don't all do this?) I want to go back and examine this a bit. All the way back to post #9. (And, no, this was not a love potion # 9. *insert grinning smilie here so I don't exceed my limit*).

Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
I think the point is that if the artist does their job well, & we don't fight too hard, put up too many obstacles between ourselves & them, don't allow (or make) too much 'noise' to disturb us then there is a greater chance that the spell will remain effective.

A bit like someone talking in the cinema - it will distract us from the movie, take us out of the secondary reality, & jerk us back into the primary world of sitting in a big darkened room watching flickering images on a screen. Of course, it is entirely possible that the disturbing voice which breaks the spell may be our own!

Another question would be why we're so prone to disenchanting ourselves? Perhaps we've forgotten how to shut up & listen, or maybe we've simply gotten so used to only listening to ourelves that anything which contradicts or challenges our own 'secondary world' of beliefs, values, concepts & connections can't hold our attention - we simply want to be told what we already know. If an author says something that can't be fitted easily into our own secondary reality then we stop listening & walk away.
Here we have the idea that the reader's connections ("Only connect" Auden I think it was, said) in the process of reading reflects bad manners: we "don't shut up" ; we "listen only to ourselves", we don't want to hear anything which challenges us; we only want to hear what we already know; we walk away from difference.

Now, this is hardly an accurate summation of my position. It is a lovely form of rhetorical debate--create a strawman who is thus easier to knock down--but it does not represent what I have maintained happens when reading. My point in post #7 had, in fact, mentioned

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bethberry
Does it come down to a willingness to be enchanted? Heart's desire as a reading strategy?
So, I had already considered that in some measure the good reader must begin with some kind of desire to attend to the text and even be willing to fall under its sway. Nor, I think, have my posts shown the kind of tendency suggested here, that of small minded refusal to listen to difference and new meaning. This state of respectful attention does not, as I said above, make the reader into a blank slate upon which the text writes. That, I argue, is a psychological and linguistic impossibility. Here is where our difference lies, not in any rudeness or insensitivity to the text, but in understanding the nature of reading.

Each text is, if you will, an idiolect, with its own frame of reference. Yet that idiolect is part of the dialect which Tolkien referred to as the 'Common Speech' inevitably turned into modern English (Appendix F). No reader can forego his or her knowledge of that language as he or she reads. (Probably the only reader for whom such was/is possible is our redoubtable HerenIstarion, who, he claims, learnt English by readingTolkien. And we all know and love the idiosyncratic style of our Istarion--I say this affectionately, let none take it the wrong way.)

So, my comparison of Shelob, for instance, was not an analytical imposition, but arose from the associations of the description Tolkien gave me. I can later 'step back' and ask if those associations were truly applicable, but I cannot deny their occuring as I read. This is the state of reading for many of us [edit to remove over generalisation of 'all']. One does not shut the door to keep the noise out, because in fact that noise is part and parcel of the language. Reading is not a process of inputing text and placing it in a holding pattern until some conclusion is reached and then interpreting. Reading is an always, ongoing process of interpretation.

Now, on to some other points where I wish to question the construct you use to interpret, in this case, Star Wars.

Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
The impact of the scene you refer to, of Luke's return to find his aunt & uncle dead, may be enhanced for some viewers by similar scenes in other movies, but it is more likely to prove a distraction from the actual events on screen, & produce a 'general' feeling of sadness & loss, rather than a specific feeling related to Luke's loss - we won't be empathising & connecting with Luke here, but with all the characters we've ever seen in similar situatons. Now, as I said, this will probably happen unconsciously with all viewers, but the more we focus on those other episodes, the less we will be focussing on the very specific case of Luke. Why tell this specific story rather than just show a series of old movie clips - that would produce general feelings of loss & bereavement more effectively. It is the specific story of Luke that moves us.
You make the assumption here that SW is only Luke's story, only personal, and that only the personal story can move us. This is like saying LotR is only Frodo's story. It is that, but much more. And with Luke. The personal is intimately connected with the cosmological, so there is no reason why viewers should, from this moment, not begin to piece together Lucas' frame of reference. They don't have to start here--like any good story, there are other points in SW where the reader can begin to understand how the historical events impact upon the personal--but it is available. To deny that is, once again, to posit the creation of meaning only after the fact rather than in process. It is also to make a claim about Luke's story as the only story.

We can love and be moved by Luke and Frodo even while attending to the 'larger' meaning of the Force or the Dark Side or the tantalising references to the history 'behind' Frodo's story, which ironically for some readers of LotR comes at the same time rather than before or, even, after the book closes.

As I said, this is backtracking a fair ways, but it seemed to me time to point out that the almost Manichean dichotomy which davem supplies in his view of reading is not the same framework I suggest.

Last edited by Bęthberry; 06-09-2005 at 09:50 AM. Reason: typos
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