Well, here we are, together again for a few moments, my thoughts bridging a gap to enter yours. Why so philosophical, you might well ask? I read this post over at Animanachronism, and thought I should really tender a response of some kind.
Now, before I enter anything that approaches an opinion, I want to first say that I adore Daniel in the way only an obscure anime blogger with crazy literary ideas can. He does good work for the community; in a practical sense, it is the promulgation of serious literary study of a work that makes the work “literary,” rather than anything inherent in the work itself, and so work like Daniel’s furthers the general cause of getting some serious mainstream consideration for anime.
I’m afraid I let some of my opinion leak out there — the thing about what makes something literary. That’s now quite what I want to talk about, but it’s related.
Here, then, is the short version: what’s the difference between “good and bad” and “I liked and didn’t like?”
I have to disagree with Daniel’s conclusion: in my opinion there is no difference at all.
Bold, I know. Allow me, for a moment, to wield the powers of quotation at you. According to Northrop Frye,
the difference between good and bad is not something inherent in literary works themselves, but the difference between two ways of using literary experience. The belief that good and bad can be determined as inherent qualities is the belief that inspires censorship, and the attempt to establish grades and hierarchies in literature itself, to distinguish what is canonical from what is apocryphal, is really an “aesthetic” form of censorship. (The Stubborn Structure, Essays on Criticism and Society. 85.)
Let’s take this in two parts. First, “good” and “bad” are determined by how one uses the work in question, not by anything in the nature of the work itself. On the level of “serious business” criticism “good” works are works we can take things away from that affect our lives.
We can move away from that realm now to something a little more fun: enjoyment. At its core, literature (and I use the term here to mean anything consumed that functions with narrative) must be entertaining. Indeed, the whole “taking something ‘good’ away from a work of literature” concept is merely a form of entertainment. Just between us friends, right now, we could, if we wanted to, define “something good” as “having a good time.” So, if you have a good time when you watch an anime, or read a book, then the anime or the book was “good.” In the same way, something that bored you would be “bad.”
The issue with this — or, at least, one of them — is that it seems to leave us with nowhere to go. If everything is subjective, you might be saying, then what’s the point? Well, look at it this way: Derrida claimed that any work based on another work — he was primarily concerned with acts of criticism and scholarship here, probably not being aware of fanfiction at the time — is its own self-contained work, and not a kind of “lens” to view the original through. That is, T. S. Eliot’s famous essay about Huckleberry Finn is just as much an original piece of work as his The Waste Land is. The audience for criticism, then, reads criticism to get “something good” out of it, just as they might read the “original” pieces that the criticism is based on. Hopefully I was clear enough there to illustrate why it doesn’t matter if a critic is objective or subjective, but here’s the short version: it doesn’t matter because readers read the criticism to be entertained, given that intellectual stimulation is just another form of entertainment.
The second part of the above quotation is important as well, and also provides another reason why we might consider sticking to the “everything’s subjective” view. Frye argues, and I agree, that claims of objective reading lead to censorship. “This is good” and “this is bad” are judgments passed on the works in question, just as much as verdicts are in the courtroom. However, recast thost statements: “I thought it was good” and “I thought it was bad” say the same thing — because anyone who spends a moment to think about the first pair of statements will likely believe they’re opinions anyway. What the second pair of statements does is allow for disagreement. Of course we can disagree with any statement, but discussion, criticism — the forms of entertainment we’re concerned with here — aren’t safe when things are phrased as fact. (I know this forthcoming example has exceptions, just bear with me.) We can argue with theories about why gravity exists — scientists don’t know yet why mass, rotation, and other things cause bodies to pull at one another — but we can’t argue with the facts that gravity does exist.
Like the cast of House often say — there are two diagnoses, and only one of them has a solution. We don’t need a “solution” so much as a continuation of our discourse, but I would claim that discourse can’t function at its best when objective judgments rule the day. On the other hand, discussion can take full flight when we all accept that it’s just our opinions — because, re: Derrida, we’re all just entertaining each other.
My goodness. Work? The day blogging feels like work is the day I hang up my keyboard!
I imagine I’m going to wind up unconstructively restating my position here, but I believe we’re not ‘just’ entertaining each other – that’s all that we can prove we’re doing, yes, but out there somewhere lies objectivity. Discussion is far more interesting (or, if you want, entertaining) when the people involved are striving to accomplish something, to reach some kind of conclusive answer to the question ‘Is this good?’
Not that that answer is going to be reached, because an objective assessment of a work’s quality is far less scientific a matter than the empirical observation that gravity exists. For some reason, however, the general preference does appear to be for opinions about objective value: people love to draw up lists of ‘best/worst of all time’ and people love to read book reviews (which are, oddly, much more popular than articles about what other books mean).
Which brings us to canons and censorship. I’m not sure I understand why censorship’s such a dirty word. I’m happy with a reasonable amount of censorship, possibly because I lack physical courage, in a ‘I disagree with what you say, and if someone threatened me I would happily let them trample all over your right to say it’ way, but possibly because it can be a reasonable, pragmatic measure. Meanwhile, canons – and, more broadly, lists – seem to me to be essential to the way we think about literature.
I imagine I’ve misunderstood what you wanted to say, and that most of this comment was me talking past you, for which I apologise. I’m a pretty amateur theorist, if I’m a theorist at all.
Actually, I think you understood, and we just disagree, that’s all. It’s no big deal, as this is, practically, an incredibly esoteric issue. : )
Specifically, I despise the “canon” and the rearguard actions most critics take to keep it alive. As a myth critic, I look at literature of all forms in the way it connects to the audience, how it provides what people need, and if that’s served by a piece of realistic, semi-autobiographical fiction, that’s okay; but it can be served just as well, sometimes better, by something that would never be accepted into the “canon.”
I should probably explain that I write genre fiction, specifically fantasy, which is still almost universally despised by creative writing academics. Literature academics don’t have much of a problem with it, having accepted, to some extent, the idea that anything is a text. But every time I submit a story to a workshop and have my professor tell me I should be writing something else, I feel the effects of the censorship inherent in supposedly-objective judgments.
I had originally meant to add something on the side of “objective” judgments, though, but I partly forgot, and partly found that what I had written worked better without it. Here it is, though: I don’t rate things over on MAL according to my subjective views, I go after what you would call an objective valuing. That’s because I rate over there with an eye to recommending something to total strangers. That’s close, I think, to what you mean.
I should also mention that I only like “best something” lists when they’re personal, rather than an attempt to actually organize a body of literature, and I’ve never really liked book reviews. : D
Well, I’m more in favour of a canon, or canons, rather than The Canon. And I don’t think literature’s a matter of what people need (it might be a matter of what’s good for people, but I’m very suspicious of claims that literature is somehow necessary), either, so perhaps you’re right that we simply disagree on some underlying (and esoteric) points.
It’s true that I’ve never written anything from the point of view of creative writing. Now that you’ve brought that up, I can see what you mean about censorship. But I think it’s not the product of attempting objectivity, in and of itself, more the product of the problem you describe in the pedagogy of creative writing (?). Perhaps.
It’s obviously very possible for it to be in the pedagogy of creative writing. In fact it is. I just feel that, in part at least, it’s due to the need for objective thinking. I just had this thought, by the way, but it makes sense: creative writing is one of those realms of study where, practically, there’s almost no objective thought. Even the teachers only have so much authority based on what people have liked previously, but if there’s an editor somewhere who likes what you write, that’s basically how you get published. So I think, maybe, creative writers in academia over-correct, because they want more objectivity. So, practically, it might not be the objective-desire itself, but its application. The thing is, I don’t see a way to alter that without assuring them they don’t need it — they don’t actually have it, so why worry? : )
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