[C] [Wittrs] Re: reflections on the grammar of pictures pt.1
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:50:56 -0800 (PST)
... a couple of reactions (not quite sure what you are looking for)
1. I noticed a similar issue when speaking to my daughter about Harry Potter.
This was when, after all the books were out, the author came out and said
"Dumbledore is gay." My daughter then had said to me, "Dumbledore is gay!" And
I said to her, "Now wait a minute. You have read the books? [yes]. All of them?
[yes]. And did you know that Dumbledore was gay before this news story?" She
replied something to the effect of "no," but it did help expound upon certain
things. So what the declaration did was, in effect, put another picture in her
head. Prior to reading it, she had other pictures. And had the author said that
Dumbledore wasn't gay, those other (friendship) pictures would have worked just
fine.
And so now the philosophic question: was Dumbledore really gay? In other words,
can an author declare something that isn't otherwise declared? Can the story
change after publishing? (In law, the view that Dumbledore is only ever what is
in the book, is called "textualist.").
Imagine the author saying of Harry Potter, "I've decided to write an 8th novel.
In this novel, Harry awakes from bed. It was all a dream. He never was a
wizard." What would one do with this? If the 8th novel is written, I suppose it
means what it says. But let's say she says, "this is the way it really is"
without writing it. Does it make it so?
2. I think this game confuses affect with declaration. The one is the learned
way to receive art and the other is the power to pronounce things. The
confusion arises because aesthetics commonly teaches the learning of affect by
bowing to artists. In other words, to appreciate art properly, you have to
learn how to receive it. This is the teaching of an aesthetic. Once the
aesthetical criteria is learned, that alone is what the behavior of art
appreciation is (the indulgence of the criteria). And so, because we frequently
have to learn the criteria from the artistically gifted, we confuse this with
the idea that they have power of declaration -- to simply say what is the case,
outside of the aesthetic criteria. What I want to say is: what the author
declares is irrelevant if it is not part of the criteria for enjoyment
(aesthetic criteria).
So if an artist says, "that's and X," when you are seeing "Y," the only issue
is whether his seeing X is part of the aesthetic criteria for appreciating the
art. One wants to say here: be very careful before telling Beethoven the note
is wrong. But absent this, we could say to one: I don't take the Potter stories
that way. (We have this power because we know what it means to enjoy them. We
understand the genre).
Stickman drawings from children are different because the activity is
different. It is PLAY, not art appreciation. The children tries to draw, and
whatever it is has value in the same way as when she mispronounces words. So I
would set the activity of play aside from the activity of enjoying art.
... just off the top of my head, J!
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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