something something individualist society but i feel completely ignoring the author's life and intention in your own interpretation is incredibly flawed. this can lead to people re-claiming narratives (which is cool only if the author is not profiting (ala h.p.lovecraft or lL frank baum)) but it more often than not leads to people erasing narratives. by ignoring the world and life the author lived you're ignoring how the story was written to begin with.
one of my favorite things to say about Undine is that the story can be viewed as an allegory for mental or physical disorder, and how people will marry someone disabled or neurodivergent knowing they are, and then freak out when they act disabled or neurodivergent. she says "im a weird fish lady and if you stay with me you're in it for the long haul" and he said "sure whatever" and immediately when she started acting like a fish lady he freaked the fuck out. i am also well aware this book was made in 1811 and that this was in no way close to the author's intention, so i always state beforehand that this interpretation comes from a modern lens. Similarly with another favorite book, the entirety of Rebecca the main character definitely has some type of anxiety disorder, as most of the book is within Mrs. DeWinter's head as she spirals before being broken out of it. I am also well aware in 1938 when it was written; "female hysteria" was just being phased out. This one can be a little closer to home and can have me speculate about Daphne du Maurier's own experience, but from the angle that this is not a modern author writing about a woman's anxiety disorder.
I think more people should know that L. Frank Baum was racist asf, in later books taking inspiration from minstrelsy for how the scarecrow acted and creating a society of white and black dolls where the black dolls were the servants and that's "just how things were." because it gives amazing context to the social issues Wicked has always been commenting on, and now even more obviously. Something like this would never fly (lol) under L. Frank Baum, but he's not profiting and his work is being reclaimed by those he hurt.
When I say there's no right answers to media interpretation but there are wrong ones, take people posting about the first Wicked movie saying Elphaba shouldn't be played by a black actress or "why can't they just be two girl friends" where they completely miss the point the original author and later writers were trying to make. You're ignoring how queer the original author was. THIS is removing the art from the artist, but something like The Wiz I don't think is. The original author was racist, fuck that, we're doing it anyway. Something more like taking or removing the art from the artist, not completely ignoring that they ever existed.
"the Portrait of Dorian Gray should've been more openly gay" is a very-well known shitty goodreads post for good reason. Oscar Wilde was in a time period that got him imprisoned for being gay, it's from such a modern perspective it hurts. THIS is separating the art from the artist.
Separating the art from the artist is hard because it is a surgical procedure with only casualties, similarly to separating the heart from the body. We can medicate the heart, and do surgeries to fix problems and keep the human alive, but you can never remove the heart without killing the host
Have we gotten so far from art being a window and not a mirror that the work itself must've been written for you? Have we expected so many self-inserts that when a character is not the work is bad, even if the character was a self-insert of the author? Why do we demand the curtains are closed so we can only see our reflection from the glass, falling in love with ourselves instead of the work like narcissus at the lake, as even echo who could only repeat what he said, begs for him to love her? Why is separating the art from the artist a triumph instead of a tragedy? When Natsume SĆseki wrote a parody of a philospher's thoughts of the future in his time, "No one at all will read your poems. Not because the poems are yours and you are a bad poet, but because individuality has intensified to such an extent that anything written by other people holds no interest for anyone. This stage of the literary future is already evidenced in England where two of their leading novelists, Henry James and George Meredith, have personalities so strong and so strongly reflected in their novels that very few people care to read them. And no wonder. Only readers with personalities of matching force could find such works of any interest. That trend will accelerate and, by the time that marriage is finally recognized as immoral, all art will have disappeared. Surely you can see that, when anything that either of us might write has become quite meaningless to the other, then there will be nothing, let alone art, which we can share. We shall all be excommunicated from each other." why did he receive a prophetic vision instead of a laugh?
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