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The Artist wrote:
 
The biggest problem I have with analysis of another person's artistic work is
that very often others read meanings into a projest that simply aren't there.
I'm not saying that the reverse is also true, for there are times when
discussion of a director's use of a metaphor is called for and diserved. My
big problem is that after I shoot/edit/light something, there seems to be
someone else around who is telling ME what I meant by using a certain
technique.
 
You seem to be limited in your notion of what analysis is and what is being
analyzed in film/media criticism.  At least in many forms of contemporary
theory and criticism, we don't look at what the director tried to do or say
with the film as much as we look at the meaning making process of the
reading of a mediated text.  So a filmmaker can try to express any message
she or he wants, but if a viewer reads a different meaning in the text as
it intersects with his or her frame of reference, that's legit.  I'd be
hard pressed to find any text that does "what it's meant to" for the
majority of an audience.  Once an "artist" (I'm not going to even get into
the politics of that term) creates a work, the meaning contained within is
open to any sort of reading that a reader brings to it.  Why value the
"intended" meaning of a director over any other reading that is experienced
in the reading process?  If you don't want anyone to "misread" your work,
don't show it to anyone.  I bet you can notice things in your own work that
were not intended but come out in collaboration with the other elements in
a film.  Or go back to a work five years after the fact - your frame of
reference has changed and therefore the meanings you derive from the text
have as well.
 
As for your implication that all of us academics are frustrated artists who
don't have the "talent" or "stamina" to make it, note that what many of us
are teaching has nothing to do with what you do.  We teach students to look
at media critically and deconstruct the closed concepts of "art,"
"intention," "apolitical media" and "singular meaning" - why would we want
to make texts that revolve around these notions?
 
Read as much exaggeration and sarcasm into the above rant as you bring to
it - nevermind what I intended.
 
********
jajasoon tlitteu  ([log in to unmask])
 
"You've probably heard that Microsoft has recently taken over the Catholic
Church. The Vatican was pleased, saying, 'Well, we've been using icons for
over 2000 years, and Microsoft has only been using them for 3, so we figure
we'll be able to help them out a bit.'"