Poll of the Day > I enjoy watching analysis videos like this, but they kind of make me wonder..

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jZ6tXwEX-M

I watch a lot of videos like this that go into detail about the themes, patterns, and possible intents in classic video game music. They offer some very cool and interesting explanations, such as at 0:49 when he compares the constant presence of the high notes to a lighthouse, serving as a beacon so that you don't feel intimidated or overwhelmed.

Ideas like that certainly sound plausible, but I often wonder whether they're actually accurate and that was truly the intent when the music was written. But I suppose that's probably why they call it music theory.

keyblader1985 posted...

Ideas like that certainly sound plausible, but I often wonder whether they're actually accurate and that was truly the intent when the music was written. But I suppose that's probably why they call it music theory.

That applies to a lot of artistic analysis. People often find thematic parallels in art that might not have been intended by the artist, or sometimes even which the artist explicitly denies including.

Where music is almost always pretty abstract (especially non-vocal stuff), there's a lot of room to speculate about what feelings are evoked by a given motif, often going well beyond what the composer themselves consciosuly thought about. Even if the composer didn't try to represent any particular idea, though, they likely made the choice to include that motif because it evoked the feeling they wanted to express, and subsequent analysis of that feeling may find that it's representative of/represented by a more concrete idea.

In this case, I would guess that Kondo didn't specifically think "I want all of these arpeggios to land on the same high root because it's like a lighthouse." However, he probably was aware that consistently landing on the root makes pieces feel more stable and grounded and liked the vibe of working that into a piece that was meant to accompany water levels (which specifically are not grounded) and otherwise felt kind of floaty and ethereal (with the reverb, sustain, dynamic ebb and flow, and syncopation). From there, the abstract idea of something stable and grounded existing amid something floaty and ethereal is well-represented by a lighthouse, so the analysis effectively picks up on the correct themes and vibes, regardless of whether or not that was actually Kondo's intent.

adjl posted...

or sometimes even which the artist explicitly denies including.

That just leads to the weirdos who say the artist is wrong about their own work.

Revelation34 posted...

That just leads to the weirdos who say the artist is wrong about their own work.

They can be. They might not be wrong about their intent, but they can be wrong about the message that they end up communicating. That's just the nature of any form of communication: Audience interpretation is just as important as the speaker's intent.

One of the best-known examples of this wold be Tolkein's objection to the concept of allegory, and insistence that nothing he wrote in LotR was meant to be allegorical. Whether he intended it or not, so much of LotR expresses Tolkein's longing for the idyllic countryside of his youth, his resentment for the war and industrialization that took that idyll from him, and the trauma he experienced in the war. There's room to debate whether or not it truly qualifies as allegory for an artist's ideal of the perfect escape to shine through in their efforts to create escapist art, but regardless of where that argument settles the fact remains that Tolkein's opinions on the real world are reflect in Middle Earth, and that means LotR is at least a little bit allegorical.

adjl posted...

They can be. They might not be wrong about their intent, but they can be wrong about the message that they end up communicating. That's just the nature of any form of communication: Audience interpretation is just as important as the speaker's intent.

No that just means people saw something that wasn't there and made a message up. It also applies to "racism" with Harry Potter.

Revelation34 posted...

No that just means people saw something that wasn't there and made a message up.

I take it you're not much of a believer in the concept of subtext.

Revelation34 posted...

It also applies to "racism" with Harry Potter.

There are people who will wholeheartedly argue that it's not racist to say "I think we should kill all the *n-word*". People saying "I didn't write anything racist in my books" means absolutely nothing.

adjl posted...

I take it you're not much of a believer in the concept of subtext.

There are people who will wholeheartedly argue that it's not racist to say "I think we should kill all the *n-word*". People saying "I didn't write anything racist in my books" means absolutely nothing.

Citation needed.

If you can't handle reading two whole sentences to get the information you need, it's probably best for you to drop this particular line of belligerence. Discussing artistic subtext is quite a bit more nuanced than that.

adjl posted...

If you can't handle reading two whole sentences to get the information you need, it's probably best for you to drop this particular line of belligerence. Discussing artistic subtext is quite a bit more nuanced than that.

"This writer is such a genius!"

keyblader1985 posted...

Ideas like that certainly sound plausible, but I often wonder whether they're actually accurate and that was truly the intent when the music was written. But I suppose that's probably why they call it music theory.

adjl posted...

They can be. They might not be wrong about their intent, but they can be wrong about the message that they end up communicating. That's just the nature of any form of communication: Audience interpretation is just as important as the speaker's intent.

This is the main problem with Death of the Author as a concept though. Analyzing themes, concepts, and ideas in stories can be fun and interesting, and looking for underlying messages or deliberate allusions and allegory can definitely give you a deeper appreciation for the work. It can even make a work more meaningful to you than it otherwise might have been if you can relate it to your own personal views and experiences.

But once you start insisting that authorial intent is absolutely meaningless, because what the reader takes away from a work is automatically objectively more meaningful than what the author actually meant, you're kind of an asshole. And most of your own interpretations just become the equivalent of masturbation.

It's fine for someone to say "I enjoyed this story because [insert personal interpretation here]", or "I really disliked this story because it reminded me of [insert personal interpretation here]". But the moment you start saying "My personal interpretation is the only one that matters and everyone else needs to agree with me" or "The author says the story is about X, Y, and Z but they're wrong and stupid because it's actually about Q", you've rendered your own opinion worthless.

Like many things in the critic's toolkit, Death of the Author and similar concepts is more of a tool than an immutable law. The problems stem from when people misuse it.



adjl posted...

There are people who will wholeheartedly argue that it's not racist to say "I think we should kill all the *n-word*". People saying "I didn't write anything racist in my books" means absolutely nothing.

The flip-side of that coin is that "apophenia" is a thing that exists. Just because you think you see a pattern doesn't mean that the pattern is real, or meaningful. Just that humans are really, really good and seeing patterns in things.

The harder you look, the more likely you are to find what you're looking for. Not because it's actually there, but because you can force any square peg through any round hole if you smash it hard enough.

Robert Anton Wilson explained this idea pretty well in regards to conspiracy theory and similar mindsets waaay back:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma#In_literature

Also, as to the racist point specifically, there are certainly people who will say "I'm not racist", and then say something incredibly racist. But that's not necessarily a question of them subconsciously writing racist themes or elements into their work without realizing it, as much as it is them defining what racism IS differently from how you define it (which is one of the things that has led Mark Twain's work going from being seen as being incredibly progressive anti-racism to being seen as being somewhat racist itself, by people who are ignorant of authorial intent or the environment in which the work was produced while insisting on judging every work by their own narcissistic and ethnocentric worldview).

The thing is, when Tolkien says "Orcs were never meant to be Russians" (or worse, the "Yellow Peril"), that is probably an objectively true statement (especially since, if anything, for him, the "Threat from the East" would probably have to be the Germans, if we're assuming his own life experiences were dramatically shaping his work - because his defining war was WWI, not WWII).

Saying a lot of Lovecraft's work has racist implications is probably valid, because he was incredibly racist even for his own time, and he'd probably have happily agreed with you that the idea that some races are just inherently inferior was always a deliberate part of his themes because clearly white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were better than everyone else based on all the things they'd achieved civilization-wise, and those dirty savages should be grateful that we brought them culture and learning and technology.

But saying Tolkien was racist because you're deliberately forcing an interpretation of his work he never intended and would never have agreed with is the point where critical analysis sort of stops being meaningful and just becomes "Everything must reflect my personal views because my views are the only ones that matter".



adjl posted...

One of the best-known examples of this wold be Tolkein's objection to the concept of allegory, and insistence that nothing he wrote in LotR was meant to be allegorical. Whether he intended it or not, so much of LotR expresses Tolkein's longing for the idyllic countryside of his youth, his resentment for the war and industrialization that took that idyll from him, and the trauma he experienced in the war.

That's arguably not allegory at all though. At least not in the sense of when he repeatedly said that he loathed allegory and avoided writing it.

The point where discussion of allegory with Tolkien becomes BS (and the thing he was specifically objecting to), is when people say things like "Orcs/Sauron/Mordor is clearly an allegory for the Soviet Union" or "the dwarves are clearly meant to be a negative parodies of Jews" or "elves are supposed to reflect an Aryan ideal" or whatever "X really means Y" comparison you want to make. Doubly so in cases where his writing was a direct allusion to existing folklore or fairy tales that predated those things by hundreds of years.

He never really denied or made a secret of the fact that a lot of the themes of his work were based on the idea of "Merry England" (and most of its related tropes). Down to the point of basing the Shire on his own childhood home town. Or that a lot of the cosmology was shaped by his own strong Catholicism (with Eru Illuvatar being God, the Valar being angels, and Morgoth being the Satan figure). And he himself would admit that at least some of his interpretations of what "EVIL" was stemmed from his own experiences in the WWI trenches and seeing the negative effects of industrialization on both the land and on society (and on warfare).



adjl posted...

I take it you're not much of a believer in the concept of subtext.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk7M2jGdnxU

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This is the main problem with Death of the Author as a concept though. Analyzing themes, concepts, and ideas in stories can be fun and interesting, and looking for underlying messages or deliberate allusions and allegory can definitely give you a deeper appreciation for the work. It can even make a work more meaningful to you than it otherwise might have been if you can relate it to your own personal views and experiences.

But once you start insisting that authorial intent is absolutely meaningless, because what the reader takes away from a work is automatically objectively more meaningful than what the author actually meant, you're kind of an a******. And most of your own interpretations just become the equivalent of masturbation.

I would argue that in the case of music, there is a legitimate argument to be made for overruling the composer's intent in some cases, just because there are so many facets to music theory and many composers don't have the formal training needed to have the vocabulary to describe why they felt like a given motif was the right one to use in a given moment. You're obviously skating on very thin ice if you start saying "my interpretation is better than the composer's because I have more music education than they do" but I wouldn't categorically say that you're never going to find a legitimate instance where the composer made a musical choice just because they vaguely liked the vibe, and somebody who understands music theory better deciphers that to reveal an more concrete intent that they didn't realize they had.

Of course, music is heckin' subjective and even the most sophisticated analyses of theory boil down to "doing X generally invokes feelings of Y" and not anything more definite, so even that can be a bit of a crapshoot. Even so, if a composer says "I've written a happy song about walking a silly little dog on a sunny beach" and whips out something with all the hallmarks of a funeral dirge, people aren't wrong to say that the song conveys sadness and infer that the composer at least subconsciously injected such an intent into the work. Even if you can't necessarily assume the intent, you can say that they failed so spectacularly at communicating that intent that there's no point in considering it in analyzing the piece.