the interpretive battles continue

[Brian Dillard <dillardb@pilot.msu.edu>]

Sam wrote:

----
any person, regardless of knowledge on the subject, can come up with any

piece of drivel <snip> Just because people think they can develop
meaning from thin air
----

but that's just it. we are not talking about someone who listened to
cloudbusting and thought it was a song about kicking the TV weatherman's
ass or
something else completely silly. we are talking about a particular
"take" on a song that several love-hounds have carefully delineated,
using their own personal backgrounds and evidence from the song to
explain how they arrived at their interpretation. given that shame,
capture, fatherlessness, persecution and hiding are themes in the lives
of many queer people, given the cultural meaning of "coming out," given
the gender-bending imagery of the video, no "thin air" is involved in
this interpretation. I could argue vociferously that Kate--the woman who
sang "Queen Eddie" when she was 16--probably knew quite well that
"coming out" has a very specific meaning in certain cultural contexts
would be besides the point. All language is polysemous--as you pointed
out with your "can" example--and given the incomplete and transitory
ways in which people interact with cultural texts it is not only
impossible for most listeners to go about trying to derive an author's
intentionality, it is highly unlikely that they'd bother to.

Anyone here watch Beverly Hills 90210 or Melrose Place? Watch it
straight-faced, or ironically? Most folks I know watch the shows to
laugh at them, to critique the riduculousness of the characters and the
crass materialism, sexism and racism that shapes their interactions with
each other. I'm pretty certain that those aren't the issues Aaron
Spelling wants people to grapple with. But folks who wish to engage in
cultural consumption without becoming completely invested in the
culture's dominant systems of belief have _always_ had to "read against
the grain." Pick up just about any bell hooks book--especially Black
Looks or Art on My Mind--for an accessible introduction to the complex
relationship between marginalized groups and cultural productions. (My
apologies here for not naming all the other theorists whose ideas I'm
co-opting in this and earlier posts).
 
----
If people don't know what A Book of Dreams is about, then they shouldn't
try
to "interpret the meaning" of Kate's lyrics.
----

Do radio DJs playing that song preface it with a recommendation to read
the book? Does the sleeve of the single or the album direct listeners
that they cannot engage the song without first doing their background
research? Even if both answers were yes (which they obviously aren't),
do you think the vast majority of listeners would follow such ridiculous
advice?

You are forgetting that as love-hounds our standpoint is different
(although not necessarily more legitimate or better) in that we have a
wealth of background information at our disposal to help us ferret out
as many dimensions of kate's work as possible. the vast majority of
listeners will not or cannot research every \pop song they hear on the
radio. Your gallant decision to refrain from discussing the meaning of
Cloudbusting and to defer to those love-hounds who are more in the know
indicates that you are casting the people on this list as the ultimate
arbiters of how to interpret kate's work.

however, the whole point i have been trying to make is that hundreds of
thousands of people have encountered and engaged this piece of cultural
production. any attempt to censure those whose positionality leads them
to "read" the "text" differently than you (or the other love-hounds) can
work only in the strict confines of the list itself. I'd venture to say
that there are folks all over the world right now who are listening to
this album or hearing this track on the radio who are deriving meaning
from those textual encounters - and in some cases deriving a meaning
along the lines of the "you son's coming out (of the closet)" - who are
utterly unconcerned with what kate meant, who peter reich is, and the
existence of rec.music.gaffa at all.

----
I know like I sound like a hard-liner on this one, but I believe the
rules
are there for a reason and that they apply to *all* written material. 
If
not, then interpretation is a free-for-all.  Once you begin to condone a

reader-response interpretational style, then all attempts to define
"meaning"
are irrelevant.  In my college literature courses, I was taught the
"reader-response" method of interpretation and it just never "clicked"
with
me.  How could someone in the very same classroom come up with an
entirely
different meaning than my own, or which even opposed my own
interpretation of
the meaning, yet we could still both be right?  It's simply not logical.

----

who are you to be a "hard-liner" or to "condone" anything? you can
uphold your mysterious, mythical "rules" ("the rules," as if there is
one overarching set for every text and every occasion), but many critics
long ago abandoned the search for a set of "rules" for how people _can_
interpret texts and began instead to try to articulate the complex
processes by which people _do_ interpret them. Any set of "rules" for
the interpretation of texts emerges from a particular historic moment
and reflects that biases and power investments of those who develop
them. The fact that you were exposed to reader-response criticism in
college and didn't "click" with it leads me to believe that you are so
invested in hegemonic modes of controlling discourse that no argument I
make could possibly get you to change your perspective. however, I will
continue to try, since you have at least done me the courtesy of
acknowledging the impact your current profession and engagement with
Biblical texts may be influencing your theoretical standpoint.

time, place and mode of exposure, class, race, geographical origin,
gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, aesthetic preferences, etc. all
have a bearing on how a particular listener interacts with and derives
meaning from a piece of cultural production. For you to say that only
those listeners who remove themselves from the equation and attempt to
mimic as closely as possible the intellectual/emptional  journey that
kate took in writing this song can _truly_ understand the song is a
crock. it's the result of your refusal to see the European, high-art,
romantic tradition for the a tired, outmoded, fundamentally conservative
view of cultural production that it is.

of _course_ someone else in the same classroom with you can and will
have a completely differet interpretation of and response to the same
work of cultural production. it _is_ logical. it's only illogical if you
come from such a priviliged standpoint that you cannot possibly conceive
of the idea that _your viewpoint is not universal_.

a rather mundane illustration of what i'm trying to get at is the
telling of jokes. i'm sure many of us have had the experience of telling
a joke in which a certain racial or sexual group is the butt, of having
most of our audience laugh, and of having one or more member of that
audience declare the joke "not funny" and announce their own
membership--or the membership of a close family member, friend or
comrade--in the group that was the butt of the joke. the positionality
of the listeners determines whether the joke will be funny. for the
teller of the joke to insist to the offended party that the joke _is_,
indeed, hilarious is beside the point. A white Southerner is probably
not going to find jokes about hillbillies funny, even though a white
Northerner may. When the text is far more complex than a joke and when
we begin to take into account the vast number of variables that shape an
individual's positionality, we can see that the Romantic concept of an
"ideal reader" is not now--if it ever was--legitimate.

by the way, Cloudbusing isn't "written material." it is a song. and
although i've been using the term "text" throughout this thread, I am
using it in the poststructuralist sense of the term and I fully
acknowledge that people's reaction to and interaction with musical texts
is not necessarily the same as their interaction with text "texts."
-------
This "I'll do it my way and you do it
your way" is a nice, friendly, and peaceful way of tolerating others,
but
while we're all doing things our own way, there is no longer a sense of
responsibility toward the truth. <snip> But in the end, the MOST
IMPORTANT
part of this discussion is that we're all
enjoying Kate's music and *that's* what makes us a happy community of
Love-Hounds, despite our differing beliefs on certain matters!   :-)
-----

I find it highly amusing that you are attempting to attack "nice,
friendly" toleration of differing modes of discourse as a flight from
the truth and then you attempt to evoke a hippy-dippy
can't-we-all-get-along mentality at the end of your message. The rather
urgent tone of the rest of your message indicates the truth of the
matter--that this is not a discussion for easy concensus or simple
peaceful coexistence. My view of modes of cultural production and
consumption is pretty much fundamentally opposed to yours, and simply
evoking the fraternity of kate fandom isn't going to change that.

Tag. You're it.
 

--
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Brian J. Dillard     dillardb@pilot.msu.edu   773.348.9319
+++ "State of emergency ... that's where I want to be."  --Bjork +++
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PS After regurgitating all these fiery anti-hegemonic politics and
poststructuralist theories, I guess I should practice what I preach and
position myself as a listener and theorist: I'm a 24 year old urban
queer white male with a personal and academic background in issues of
art and media representation. I worked for newspapers for five years as
a reporter and editor, I have a degree in English with an emphasis on
cultural studies and theory, and I am currently helping corporate
America co-opt the World Wide Web.