Let’s clarify a few things. Someone read my last essay, and said they found it “incurious” and “anti-intellectual” which strikes me as a little odd, since it’s an inquiry into things, more of a starting point for dialogue than any proscriptive about interpretations of text. I’m quite literally in a major in college that is entirely based on reading and interpreting texts; I don’t think that I’d be doing that if I felt it was a waste of time. So, here’s a few clarifications:
I don’t think interpreting texts is a waste of time. But you don’t have to do it. It’s fine, in one sense, to just watch or read or listen to a thing, be entertained, and move on from it. I have seen the film Friday the 13th Part V more than a dozen times: it’s loud, goofy, and dumb. It’s a kind of comfort food, and serves no other purpose to me. There might be some value of a close reading of the movie, but I’m not gonna do it. There’s almost certainly value in looking at it in terms of story and structure; what works and what doesn’t is a question that can give us insight into what draws us into a work of art, but again, it’s not something I’m inclined to do with this particular film. I chuckle at its excesses, half pay attention to it, and move on. It’s perfectly acceptable to engage with something on that level; however, this does not preclude others from looking at it differently. No one, and I mean no one, should dictate to you how you enjoy a piece of art.
It is possible to misread a text. I return to my prior example of The Shining and the person who thinks it’s “about” the mistreatment of Native Americans. It plainly isn’t. Having said that, you’d have to have a specific set of blinders on to not notice the mention of burial grounds, Native American motifs in the rugs, etc. It’s explicit within the text of the film, and it provides “spooky” background in a way that kind of strikes me as a little regrettable in this day and age. “Indian Burial Ground” is horror trope that peaked in the 80s, and I know there’s an inclination to treat Kubrick as somehow ‘above’ using tropes, but almost any storyteller will use one form of shorthand or another at some point.
It’s fine to misread a text. Really, you’re not hurting anyone, and engaging sincerely with something, even if you’re incorrect about it, is ok. But engaging sincerely and critically with something means you are ready to encounter differing perspectives, and have dialogue about them. The philosophical term for this is “the dialectic” — and implied within that is also the possible merger of viewpoints. Dialogue rules, didacticism drools.
We should look at what is explicit in the text first. This is as close to being proscriptive as I will be. If you want to claim, for example, that the original Friday the 13th is somehow about the Vietnam War, ok, but it’s not explicit anywhere in the text. While I think the Native American interpretation of The Shining is wrong, there are things in the text that are explicitly about Native Americans. I just don’t think that what is stated explicitly in the text does too much in the way of supporting the guy’s theory that it’s the focus of the film.
“I think we ride a möbius strip of meaning.” My friend, who is quite literally engaged in literary analysis for a living, said this, and it rings very true to my ears. We bring ourselves to everything we do, and that shows up in how we communicate about something. When I read Kurt Vonnegut in my teens, I loved his cynicism. When I read him now, I am struck by how much hope he has for us. The text hasn’t changed, I have. I don’t think this is avoidable, nor do I think it is desirable to avoid.
My original thought about why we choose to interpret texts is still the same. We do so because we’re inclined to share our enthusiasms (and lack of enthusiasms) for art. We want people to see the texts as we see them, but that’s nearly impossible for us to communicate. So we dip a little in and out of the text and give it an extra layer to explain why we are moved (or not moved). I could be wrong about this, sure, but it’s what I am working with now. And with that, I am done clarifying; anything more on this particular subject will have to wait until I have new thoughts about it.
The Lithole 
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