Prompt #1
As Barry explains it, Liberal Humanism contends that, " a literary text contains its own meaning within itself" and although context of the socio-political, literary/historical, or autobiographical background of a text is valuable, the information is not necessary to properly explicate the text. Applying this theory to my classroom means that although it might be nice for my students to know that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in an effort to rally others to the abolitionist cause the information is not necessary to examine the text and decipher its meaning.
This also has implications for media studies because we are now free to examine any text and evaluate it for meaning without knowing anything about the creator. I can watch District 9 and I don't need to know anything about the cultural background of the filmmaker to properly understand the movie. If it sounds like I'm being a little sarcastic it's because I find this idea completely ridiculous. I suppose it is possible to examine a text's aesthetics without knowing anything about the context in which it was created but I do not believe you can gain an understanding of the author's intent without knowing something about the context. I suppose a liberal humanist may argue that it doesn't matter what the author's intent was because the critic is not concerned with intended purpose only in what is present on the page but I can't help feeling that this lends itself to a very shallow understanding of most texts.
Prompt #2
First, I should say that I love Beyonce and am very familiar with a lot of her videos and music and I found it difficult to distance myself from that contextual knowledge for the purposes of this activity. With that said, in just listening to the song and reading the lyrics it seems that Beyonce was describing "boy" behavior as selfish, unfaithful, etc. and contrasting that with the behavior she would exhibit if she were a boy, understanding, sensitive etc. This seems like a fairly classic take on the battle of the sexes, men are brutes, women are long suffering and so on. It becomes more interesting when examining the lyrics in combination with the visual imagery of the video. In the lyrics Beyonce places herself in a dual role as both the insensitive jerk and the sensitive boy who understands the pain that he is capable of inflicting on his partner, yet the visual imagery shows Beyonce acting solely as the loutish jerk with no moments of sensitivity to alleviate the behavior. Perhaps then we are to understand that it doesn't matter if you are a boy or girl because both sexes are equally capable of misbehaving in a relationship despite the author's protestations that girls would act any differently from their male counterparts. The takeaway lesson here would be that we are all capable of acting poorly in a relationship and that we should all make an effort to be sensitive to our partners and treat them as we would like to be treated.
3 comments:
I agree and disagree with your commentary on studying a work for the work itself and not taking into account the context in which it was created. I do believe that understanding the context of the author and their intended purpose is of great value to a piece of work for all the reasons you have espoused. I do believe that there is value in looking at the media text for what it has to offer without concerning ourselves with the context of the author because then our judgment of the work is based more on our own context and therefore allows the work to perhaps be of greater efficacy to us - meaning, when we derive the personal meaning we make the work more inherently meaningful. I do believe, however, that we should have a combination of both approaches because a completely narcissistic viewing of a media text is lacking in the kind of depth that will give us greater appreciation for the work and even greater personal meaning.
Seriously? I was going to say pretty much the exact same thing. I think that it depends on the situation, but I feel that we can, at the very least, appreciate the "artistry" of a work without knowing its full context. I totally agree that understanding a work within its context is absolutely vital, and essential when looking for author/creator's intent. However, I'm also of the opinion that sometimes the best lessons for us are in no way intended by the author, and in these cases, context may be less necessary.
Well, I think that Buckingham addresses this by explaining textual and contextual analysis as two separate things. Amberly, I agree that, particularly with the texts you mentioned, context is important. That said, no everything we gain from Uncle Tom's Cabin comes from the context. I haven't read the novel (is that bad? It's probably bad), but I've read the play several times, and there are textual complications that would remain complications in any context: though the text asserts that slaves deserve rights and deserve to stay together as families, in the end they always require saving by a virtuous white person.
Ignoring context altogether isn't feasible, but there are valuable ways to analyze a text without considering context (which is pretty much what everyone else has said...).
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