Betsy, believe me, I had conversations with Buffistas, both current and former, back in the day in which words like "self-congratulatory" and "pretentious" got used plenty to describe then-ongoing discussions and/or modes of discussion. I think it's healthier for the community that we're willing to lay our cards on the table.

I had a couple of film criticism classes where the teacher would say, "The colors of the scenery in this particular scene emphasize the warmth of the characters, which shows the inherent dichotomy of the story, because these characters are the villains." My main reaction to that was "OK, I guess you could read it that way. Or maybe that's just the color of walls in a building that age."

With stuff like that, my view is that it doesn't really matter whether it was "Let's go find some red buildings to shoot in front of" or "Huh. These red buildings will work for this scene," or even just, "Let's shoot here." It's that putting all those elements together will enhance the mood of the scene, if it's done well. Or, sometimes, you'll get movies where the scenery or the lighting just really don't work at all with the characters, and they just destroy the mood of the scene. Personally, I love going through and trying to figure out how a particular mood or tone was created -- noticing that a scene seems really tense, for instance, then going back and looking and seeing that, in addition to the characters fighting, there's a lot of tension in the shapes and colors of the sets, and harsh lighting with lots of contrast, and sound that emphasizes every movement. Maybe some of it was intensional, maybe some not, but I find it interesting to look and see what's going on, and think about how that same scene would play if some different choices were made.

This is a question that has bugged me for ages--What *is* literary criticism? Is it discussion of why an author chose one word over another? Is it fitting a work into a particular historical/cultural background? (I'm predicting the answer to those two questions will be "yes".)

Good call. Literary criticism is, simply put, writing about literature. Exegesis, the most common form of lit crit in modern times, is about trying to draw meaning out of a text, whether a novel or a TV show or a comic book -- to make an argument about the stuff in the text, and explain why it could, should, might matter to our reading of that text.

There is historicist lit crit (Raymond Williams's The Country and the City, showing the different ways these two locales and the relationship between them are depicted over the course of the rise of capitalism in England), there is formalist lit crit (the New Criticism of people like John Crowe Ransome, who puzzled over every word in "The Waste Land" looking for its meanings), there is psychoanalytic lit crit (Kaja Silverman's reading of It's a Wonderful Life as a celebration of masochism clarified for me why I don't like the movie). Any way of thinking can spawn a way of looking at the world, and a related way of looking at culture.

Michele, how do you know this is what's going on in those passages? I had a couple of film criticism classes where the teacher would say, "The colors of the scenery in this particular scene emphasize the warmth of the characters, which shows the inherent dichotomy of the story, because these characters are the villains." My main reaction to that was "OK, I guess you could read it that way. Or maybe that's just the color of walls in a building that age."

OK, but here's the thing -- they chose to shoot in that place, with that lighting, that day. This is the Elizabeth Bennett thing in different form. Jane Austen created Elizabeth. The color that my building is a historical accident. There might be some interesting urban history to it, but there's no intent. There is intent, there is form, there are thinking minds behind works of art. And no, you can't ever know what a writer or director or painter was "really" thinking, even if they tell you, because God knows there are all sorts of aspects of the creative process that happen somewhere in the unconscious. But you can take the work and look at the ways in which the pieces work to make it what it is, and make an argument about what it says about itself, or its times, or another time.

Some of this is practice, pure and simple -- you need to spend a lot of time looking at the world with an interpretative eye before it becomes natural. I still remember the teacher who graded down my essay on Plato's "Ion" because in discussing the dialogue's take on truth and fiction, I'd neglected to consider that the dialogue itself was a fiction of sorts. Once he said it, it seemed obvious, but we're so used to taking the frame as a given that it's hard to see it for itself.

juliana is wise. I'm unsure how much I want to say and not feel like I'm baring my soul for attack, but a lot of my reactions in a discussion like this stem from the following three factors:

1. I'm the Smart Girl, and that's equally how others have labeled me from early childhood up and a central part of my identity and self-esteem.

2. I don't have any academic training in lit-crit to speak of--I'm just an insanely voracious reader who took a grand total of two English lit classes in college.

3. Being a writer, and a talented writer, at that, is nearly as core a part of my identity as being The Smart Girl.

Throw that all together, and I'm just covered in hot buttons if I feel like anyone's questioning my intelligence, my intellectual credibility, or whether I'm making worthwhile use of my brain as a reader or writer.

X-posty goodness with Hil!

Also, to say, I absolutely don't "know" what's going on in a work I'm interpreting -- there's no final right answer. Just a whole bunch of partial interesting ones. The argument has to have what I call the "so what?" factor, and it has to not be contradicted by the other parts of the text I'm leaving out, but there's no final answer. Consider, e.g., the debates over whether Buffy in S6-7 can still be fairly considered a feminist hero. There are strong arguments to be made on both sides of that issue, and even a strong argument to be made that the show's incoherence on the matter says more about the real state of feminism in society than either side can lay claim to. All that criticism asks is that you make a compelling case.

(As my friend Hilary says to her students, "There are an infinite number of interpretations of any text. That doesn't mean some of them aren't wrong, though.")

I'm just covered in hot buttons if I feel like anyone's questioning my intelligence, my intellectual credibility, or whether I'm making worthwhile use of my brain as a reader or writer.

Knowing your own hot button issues is an admirable piece of self-knowledge. I wish I could be as clear about my own.

But now you've been told that your hot button issues are part of a thread culture that other people think is disparaging the use to which they put their brains as readers and writers. What do you do now?

But you can take the work and look at the ways in which the pieces work to make it what it is, and make an argument about what it says about itself, or its times, or another time.

So a lot of modern litcrit is subjective, then? Many of the pronouncements I've seen have tended heavily toward objective, received truth. I'm suspecting we're headed into the algebra/geometry type of dichotomy that messed about with me as a kid. I nearly failed algebra on several occasions, because my brain is wired in a very "a = x, x = a, none of this a = x if b = q, unless j is present as a factor of q, wherein b = a." Though, to give algebra credit, I once explained a problem at work using algebraic notation.

Anyway. If I understand this correctly, interpretations are presented, then defended with various readings of the texts modified by knowledge of the author's milieu. I imagine the reputation of the interpreter comes into play as well.

These kinds of discussions are interesting, but a great deal of the problem comes in when an interpretation is presented as fact and disagreement is considered willful obtuseness.

What is "deconstructiveism" or whatever the word is?

And my post turns into an x-post with Michele's further explanation.

t shrugs It'd probably help if I was quicker to ask for clarification and explanation, and slower to fly off the handle. That said, it cuts both ways--I've felt pretty damn disparaged myself at points today, and I feel like it should be a matter of agreeing to disagree or meeting each other halfway rather than one side submitting to the other.

Because really, if it can be done without making people feel belittled or disparaged, what people consider excellent in a book, what they see as the core point of literature/reading, is a fascinating topic.

Michelle, at this point, you're reminding me so much of my very most beloved prof that it's kind of creepy and I'm reading your posts in her voice.

You've managed to strike the exact tone that strikes a chord in me and makes me go out and buy books on lit crit in an effort to better my brain. Thank you.

Evergreen was great for giving me a broad knowledge base that was well integrated, but not so great for fine-tuning my writing skills as a critical thinker, despite my kick-ass performance in my critical reasoning class. I entered into the experience with undergrad level writing experience already under my belt thanks to my years in IB, and never was really forced to move beyond that. Did I mention the part where I am lazy?

Most of my critical discussion has been in a seminar format, with occasional formal writing, and my streams cross trying to talk about books as if it were seminar when my conversation is happening through my fingertips. If that makes sense. I want to talk in my free-flowing seminar riffing way, but my brain locks up with academic insecurity.

It was interesting catching up with this discussion on my short break this afternoon. I'm kind of in the middle. I understand a lot of what Hec and Hayden are saying, but I found the way in which they initially said it to be off-putting. It read as insulting, intended or no. Still, I do feel like people jerk their knees at genre slights, when many genre slights contain at least a grain of truth, and usually a whole beach, and this causes my eyes to roll something fierce.

You can find excellent work in any genre, but as a rule of thumb, it's harder with mass-market paperbacks than with something that aims for a less-broad audience. As a reader and a writer, there is nothing wrong or disloyal about saying, yeah, this is where I live, and the 'hood could use a little work.