There are four pages here to help you think about writing. The second is about interpretation.

Interpretation

In most of my classes, you’ll have to do some critical thinking about the kinds of issues I raise: the portrayal of masculinity in films, say, or how artificial life is described in a novel like Frankenstein.  But most novels, short stories and movies don’t make an argument the same way an editorial or an article does.  And other forms of culture—painting, sculpture, dance, or music—probably don’t make an argument at all.  Can you re-state the argument of Beethoven’s 5th symphony? Neither can I. Some works of literature do have a point, of course (Candide argues that optimism is a foolish philosophy, and Dante’s Inferno tries to explain how divine justice works in the afterlife), but these points are usually quite clear even to readers in high school. It is what the book says. No one can read Madame Bovary and not realize that adultery is a tragedy, and so is Madame Bovary’s boring life. No one can watch Casablanca and not get the main point: in times of world-historical importance, you ought to sacrifice your personal desires in favor of larger, ethical duties. 

These lessons that books and films teach us are important, but I assume that you are all capable of understanding them immediately after a first reading or viewing. This is the first step of critical thinking, in fact—can you say what the message is, what the novel or the poem or the movie is saying? For most texts (“text” is a technical term that includes novels, stories, poems, films, works of art, and so on, and I will use it from here out), I think of getting the message to be a relatively basic task. I will not congratulate you for doing it, and papers that argue that the message of Casablanca is one of moral sacrifice will get a mediocre grade at best. It is necessary that you understand the message to get a good grade — but it is not sufficient to get a good grade.

A second, slightly less basic, way of thinking about texts is appreciation. If you ever take a class on music appreciation, or an introduction to film class, you will learn about what makes great music great, or all the clever things that Orson Welles did when he directed Citizen Kane. Afterwards, you’ll be able to say to your friends: “Oh, this must be a piece by Bach—listen to that melodic sequencing, that counterpoint and that harpsichord in the background!” Or, “Look at this amazing use of ‘deep focus’ in Citizen Kane!” Appreciation is very important: it often teaches us to pay attention to culture in a way that we might not have before; we learn new, technical language to describe what we’re seeing and hearing; and we learn about some of the great works of art. But appreciation has its down side, too. Actually, at least three down sides that I can think of off the top of my head:  it isn’t critical (it basically just gives you specific language for saying why something is really, really great); it doesn’t allow you to talk at all about popular culture; and ultimately, it’s about cultivating “good taste,” an idea some people view as elitist, arbitrary, or both.

Instead, what we are hoping is that you will learn how to interpret. An interpretation is a critical account of, not what a text says, but of what it means. What is the difference? Some examples will help.

• At the end of Faulkner’s novel  Absalom, Absalom!, Shreve asks his roommate Quentin why Quentin hates the South (Quentin is from Mississippi). Quentin says “I don’t hate the South. I don’t hate the South. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it. I don’t.”  Clearly, he hates the South—his excessive repetition indicates that his meaning is different from what he’s saying.



•The television thriller 24 claims to be set in real time.  Every second of the show corresponds to a second of the real viewing time. Such a view suggests (says) that our everyday, real time is also a desperate race against terrorist disasters that we might not know anything about. It makes it real, or at least helps confuse the fictional and the real. But it isn’t true: 22 minutes of every episode are given over to commercials and disappear from Jack Bauer’s life. How does this change the meaning of the show and its formal device of “real time”?



Interpretation assumes that texts have meanings that are not obvious and readily apparent. They conceal them, like a hidden code (some texts, of course, literally do conceal hidden codes that the reader might figure out). The interpreter is supposed to use his or her advanced knowledge to reveal those hidden meanings. What kinds of hidden meanings might a story, a film or a novel conceal? Many people believe that texts often have political or cultural meanings that are not immediately apparent—sometimes not even to the person who wrote them. If that seems strange, consider how people will understand a movie like Superbad two or three hundred years from now.  The people who made the movie were probably just trying to make a funny film, but those future anthropologists will probably be using it as an example of early 21st-century culture, embodying our ideas, anxieties and tensions about sex, politics, race, police authority, and so on. Sometimes the author of a text even sends the wrong message by mistake. That is, the text says one thing but ends up meaning the opposite. A film like 300 is clearly supposed to convey a heroic and stoic masculinity which struggles to defeat an exotic enemy in the name of freedom—arguably, however, the film is deeply permeated by homoeroticism and suggestions that the truly authoritarian society is the Spartan one that the movies promotes. Arguably, the film ends up suggesting that true freedom is found in a repressive and authoritarian militarized society that murders infants with disability — is that what the film meant to say?

In short, the “interpretive stance” assumes that there is a gap between what people say and what they mean (something we experience every day, by the way), and a similar gap between what a text says and what its larger cultural meaning is. To interpret is to say: “this text is obviously saying x, but a careful examination indicates that it really means y.”  (Some modernist texts—movies by Antonioni, plays by Beckett—might not seem to have any obvious meaning, but the task of the interpreter is still to say that they do have a concealed message.)  How do you do this?  Let me offer some quick suggestions:

• perhaps the content of the text (what it is saying) is not matched by its form (how it is saying it). The example I gave above of 24 is an instance of a form/content mismatch. You then need to explain which one prevails, or how they interact, and what the final “meaning” of the show is.



• perhaps the text is an allegory, a story where many characters, events and objects stand in for some other story.  For example, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books seem like “mere” fantasy novels for children, but they are structured on a series of images and ideas that are (for adults) obviously Christian.



• perhaps the text has a subtext—that is, perhaps embedded within the text are clues and codes that speak to a different message, one that forms it own coherent text hidden beneath the primary message. That message might be one that is perhaps intended (at least unconsciously) by the author (I’m looking at an article right now that claims the Harry Potter books promote a libertarian political philosophy—I’m not convinced, by the way), or might perhaps be exactly the opposite, as was the case with the homoeroticism of 300.



• perhaps the text seems innocent, or mere entertainment, but actually contains hidden messages about race, class, gender, sexual orientation or the like. Watching the movie Transformers, for example, I couldn’t help but think how strange it was that one of the Autobots—Jazz—was so obviously “African-American,” insofar as a car/robot from an alien galaxy could be African-American. He breakdances, doesn't speak standard white American English, and he’s the only Autobot to get killed (Black car dies first?). Frankly, I’m pretty sure that’s sending a message, whether it was intended or not. Typically, such interpretations suggest that the texts of popular culture are sending out constant messages, especially when they appear to be simply stupid, inane or brainless, and that they are especially effective, precisely because they are concealed by the apparent innocence of the medium. We might say that such texts support the dominant ideology about race (Transformers) or class (Titanic), or that they challenge the dominant ideology about sexual identity (Superbad, Eurotrip). Some might do both at the same time (Fight Club).



These are just some ways to interpret a text—but any interpretation is always predicated on the difference between saying and meaning.  You have to be smart enough, and get to know the text well enough, so that you can tell the difference.  You have to be creative enough to see what the other possibilities of meaning might be. This is especially hard for students when dealing with popular culture, which we have always been told is just dumb. It isn’t.

Ready to move on, and read about writing problems? Let's go to page 3.