I don't know what got into me but it has something to do with the title of this blog post. Anyway, I responded with the following, which is probably incoherent and arrives at nothing:
Viva, Sigur rós! It's good to know they have fans here at UCI. Good point :), though there are some points that need to be made. The other day I was thinking about the eminence of the critic, or the interpreter in contemporary society. I would have to think about this more, but it seems like, outside of literature, 20th century U.S culture (and perhaps, western culture) values the interpreter or performer more than the originator or 'author' of a work.
Case in point, Sinatra baby! How many of the crooners that danced the nights away to Old Blue Eyes' booming voice know the names of the composers that wrote the songs Sinatra 'made his own'? The truth is, probably quite a few of them. But, look at pop music today.
Many of the music groups that are popular among 14-20 year-olds don't write their own music (this is especially true in pop and country music). Why does the director get all the credit/blame for a great/crappy film when there are so many other hands that stir the soup, including the writers? Why are actors so celebrated when all they do is play a variation on a theme of themselves, representing a person that the writer dreamed up?
Couldn't tell you the answer. Was there a rise of the critic/interpreter/reader/performer in the early to mid 20th century? Whereas in classical music the composer used to get top billing, it's now important that you buy an album with a great symphony orchestra AND conductor interpreting the composer's work. Maybe it has to do with "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," a phenomenon that has allowed the work of art to exists at a distance from the originator of the same.
Still, perhaps more than any other field, in literature we continue to give most of the acclaim to the author rather than the critic or interpreter of the work (with a few notable exceptions).
Whatever the case may be, I think reader-response criticism reminds us that, though the interpreter of a jazz tune, the performer of a role in a film or a play, or the critic of a literary work does create and is original in their interpretation of the work, it is always within a framework provided by the author/script-writer/composer, etc.
I would argue that rather than kill the author, Sigur rós (who do write their own tunes by the way!) acknowledged that once they create a framework or a limited artistic space, the work of art itself (in the example above, the music and the presentation of the same in the CD booklet) the receptor then is free to improvise, find significance, even create meaning within that framework.
After all, if we throw out the chord progression that Gerry Mulligan wrote for "Jeru" on the album 'Birth of the Cool,' Miles Davis has nothing to improvise from. He could play whatever he wants but it won't be "Jeru". Further, there are limitations within jazz itself that must be followed. If a tune is to sound like jazz, the V7 chord always has to go back to the tonic chord, and so on. The corollary for us as budding critics being, if we don't write a certain way and respect certain defined parameters, our work ceases to be literary criticism.
Was Barthes saying the same thing? I don't remember. I have to go back and re-read "The Death of the Author." Still, like :) wrote, "Maybe it's still possible to be original." Or maybe Oscar Wilde was right and "[m]ost people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Watch 'F for Fake'
-The Fake Orson Welles
(If you've made it this far, please let me know what you think. Am I full of hot air? Yes, I know I that I am, but what are your thoughts on the subject, dear reader?)
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