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From TV Tropes: (the most valid of sources) "Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no weight in determining an interpretation of their writing. This is usually understood as meaning that a writer's views about their own work are no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader"

After seeing some debate on the All-Female "Lord of the Flies" entry page arguing between the author's clear clarification on how the characters sex is a main factor in the story as adding girls or having them all be girls would lead to a different narrative outcome, versus the common interpretation on how the characters sex doesn't matter and instead focuses on the universal themes of humanity, savagery, power, etc., I've been wondering just about to what extent should we consider Death of the Author when analyzing or interpreting a work?

Basically, should this always be in effect or should we consider perhaps the authors intent for creating a certain work or whether or not they were trying to get a specific message across?

Probably it would be a good idea to look up the Roland Barthes essay where he coined the term, which you can find here.

It's a rather complex essay, but to the extent that it can be boiled down I'd reduce it to two main points:
1) The author's intentions are unknowable.
2) The demand that criticism always refer to authorial intent is a pointless constraint.

As for point 1, it strikes me as a rather simple issue. You cannot read minds, first of all, and even when an author reports on their goals, they may not be entirely honest, or may simply not remember what they thought at a given point in time. It's entirely possible, for instance, for an author to write a story, then later notice a pattern or theme that emerged by chance, and then say, when asked, that it was their goal all along – either because they mis-remembered, or because they lied.

But point 2 is both more interesting and more important. As Barthes writes, "The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination." Which is to say that the meaning of the text does not emerge from the writing, but rather from the reading. The reader, often understood as a passive recipient of information, is actually an active, powerful figure, the one from whom meaning arises. It is for this reason that Barthes refers to the "author" as a "scriptor" throughout the essay – to imply that they serve a largely secretarial function, more like a photocopier than a genius.

As for the remake of the Lord of the Flies, if we buy Barthes's argument it follows that neither Golding's opinions on the role of gender in his story nor the opinions of the people doing the re-make should hold any special importance. One should treat them as one would any literary critic: you should put their words next to any other paper on the role of gender in LotF and let them compete on their merits alone.

Far more important here is the larger reaction to the film, both to the idea of it (which is all we have at the moment) and later to the film itself. Gender representation is a dynamic system that responds to everything that touches it, so it makes no sense to treat the response to the story as separate from the story itself. What we must remember is that, while the writers and directors of the film are responsible for arranging the images presented in the film, they have no special role in determining its meaning. We, the viewers, perform that role: that is the source of our power.

I've thought about this plenty before, but I still haven't come to a solid conclusion. All I can offer is a series of partially-contradictory thoughts. Part of me believes that a piece of the artist is represented in the art. That's why we celebrate great writers and not just their books. Creating art is a deeply personal process and one of the incentives of creating art is that the artist feels compelled to communicate a message to others.

At the same time, we should respect the subjectivity of art. An artist cannot control who experiences the art, who likes it, and how it is interpreted. Without a reader, only half the activity can happen. A wise storyteller takes advantage of this and leaves the reader enough room to come to their own conclusions. Besides, the creation of art (or writing, at least) is a collaborative process, so when you read a book, it's likely that many different people had a hand in what appears in the pages. While I respect the artist's talent and am up for learning a little about them, I don't want to know him or her intimately, because that makes the art seem less real. For example, I like some of the shows by Rooster Teeth, but I avoid their podcasts and talk shows, because I'd rather not hear about their opinions and flaws and sex lives. True, I've actually met a few of the voice actors at conventions, but I usually keep the discussions focussed on their shows. That way, I can show my appreciation for bringing the characters to life and putting a little of themselves in the role, while understanding that the actors and their characters are seperate entities. That doesn't stop me from getting excited when I hear a VA I like is heading to a nearby convention or getting a little thrill when I recognize his or her voice through one of their characters. In other words, the relationship between voice actor and character is complicated.

And as Chevy Chase and Kanye West have shown us, even assholes are capable of creating worthwhile art.

So, which is correct? I'm thinking both, but I'm not sure of the exact balance. We owe respect to the artist for creating something we like and their insights should be taken into consideration at least a little bit, but it's valid to come up with our own interpretations. But what if the artist isn't just an asshole? What if the artist is evil? This is where my opinion probably differs from a great many. Because I beleive the artist is represented in art, part of the penalty for being evil is that one's art should be disregarded. That is why I refuse to watch Polanski films. Yes, they are influential and probably well-made, and lots of much more savory people worked on them. But those films were his brain-children and his presence taints the experience.

Confused? Me too. Ask me again later and I'll probably change my mind about some of it.

In my frankly highly uninformed opinion (Platus, given last I checked he was working on an English PhD, is probably the most qualified person on KYM to talk about this), there are two points to this. The first is the artistic side, which has been talked about.

Art is notoriously hard to define but I believe it's fair to say that part of it involves subjectivity (the interpretation of the viewer), as others have noted. Art loses a lot of its power and meaning if only the artist views it. As such, there is always a bit of "death of the author" going on. However, art can either be highly subjective, or it can be extremely dense with objective and discernible meaning (such as the icons of Cathodox Christianity). In this way, the author's intentions, weirdly enough, help define how much the author's intentions matter.

The second part is the communication side. Communication is similarly nuanced. Art, presuming it's made to be shared (as most art is, as previously noted), typically attempts to communicate some meaning. If you wanted, you could even go a layer deeper and say all art attempts to communicate meaning, even the hyper-subjective postmodern art works, by simply implying it's subjective. Communication is always two-sided in responsibility. The communicator must make reasonable efforts to make sure these points are understood, and similarly, the person receiving the communication must make all reasonable efforts to understand what the other person is saying. If this is not upheld, the following is a possible situation.

The reason both are important in this discussion is the relevance of moral responsibility. If an author poorly expresses their points such that their good point is easily corrupted into something morally repugnant, they are at least partially responsible for this. If a viewer is determined to pin ill-conceived, concerning understandings of a work on the artist, then they are to blame.

Having dealt with this issue a bit in my previous life as an academic and having returned after a nearly 30 year hiatus, I can now say it makes no difference.

Critics, of whom I count myself, have only one job to do. Write criticism. Whatever they observe they observe from their own perspective and history with the subject matter. If they happen to have a deep and interesting connection to the author, that too plays a part in what they observe. If not, then they use the tools they have and carry on, as it were. In the end the critic's job is as much about revealing themselves as about what's in the work. Critics are not gods, though of course they sometimes forget, nor are they rocks. They carry themselves into the art and come out changed. If they are good at their jobs they note the changes and invite others into the work, acting like tour guides in many ways.

The attempt to separate the critic from the art being observed is fruitless. The criticism takes place, within the heart of the critic. You would need to erase the experiences with the work and with everything else, if you really wanted a fair criticism of the work. But that criticism would be heartless. No critic is blank slate and what the work writes on the critics blackboard of experience is written in the dust of what was written there yesterday and the day before.

It's been my experience that any tool you can use to deepen the experience of the art is justified. If you have the impression that the work is autobiographical in some way, or that the life of the creator influenced this or that artistic choice, then use it. If you think the author's intentions were this or that, and can show it to be so based upon what is actually in the work, then use that too. In the end all "evidence" is fair and all points of view, exactly that…points of view. A critic is not god even if he or she acts like one. And the reader of criticism is just as much a critic as the writer of that criticism.

Just some quick thoughts.

AJ

It's a completely stupid idea with no merit whatsoever that has no use.

Of course the author is right about their own work, they wrote it! No amount of pretentious gibberish will ever change that, any more than a long and thought-out essay saying that 2+2=5.

This question struck me the other day as I discussed the play, "An Ideal Husband" with a director and the actors. It seems, in the last act, an argument is made that men are about conquering the world (my words) while women are about "emotional curves." The lines are delivered to a female who is "liberated" without her batting an eye, and then she turns around and uses the same lines on her husband to convince him to do what she wants him to do. The whole thing strikes us a rather sexist.

Now here is the problem, Oscar Wilde was a progressive (well, he would be one if he were alive today) and the lines would not have been something he believed. But he makes the resolution of the play revolve on those lines! What's going on?

The problem is that lines do not fit the actual tone and tenor of the characters but there is nothing in the play which tells you how to take them. To our modern ear they are jolting. And, no doubt, to Mr. Wilde they were too. The only way to know how to interpret them, I argued, is to put them into the author's context and see that they are meant as ironic. The "Ideal Husband" is not the one looking back (upon which the lines are used to convince him) but the man who uses the lines on the "liberated" woman. He uses them as a "wink-wink" suggestion of how to get her husband to do as she wishes. In other words, Wilde, I think, is saying, "the old fashioned and behind the times people need to be persuaded with old time ideas and we should use them as long as we get the results we want." This is in keeping with the general tenor of power politics of the day. The problem is, you can only get this if you know the author's attitudes and the culture in which the play was created.

The "ideal husband" in the play is the clever young man who has thrown out the old ways but is willing to use them when it suits him and his goals.

So, if you want to make it work in this pay, the author must live.

AJ