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leportraitducadavre · 3 months ago

Text

About DoA and its use by the fandoms

It's been quite a while since I've been here, I wasn't sure about posting anything new (more so this, as it's still incomplete) but dear lord, every couple of weeks I receive a notification of someone demonizing me because I decided to critique their character instead of Kishimoto, using the "blame the writing and not the character" and all that idiocy as their primary argument. So, I've decided to post this in order for you to understand what that type of "defense" actually entails.

I should note that this post has no conclusion of its own, I personally won't be dictating what you should think about this matter as that's a personal conviction, it's my desire to give you different perspectives on the subject (of course my own ideology is intertwined with the text, so it should be easy to see where I stand) as to give you tools to understand, basically, the arguments you're using.

It's a long post, so everything will be under the cut.

“Death of the Author” is a theory created by Barthes in 1967, roughly speaking, it’s presented as a juxtaposition to the idea that the Author, as a metaphorical God, has imbued the text with a single meaning–what Barthes does by presenting this idea is to argue against the power that the Author continues to have inside the text because he says, “writing is the destruction of every voice”; therefore, imposing the Author on a text limits its meanings, as then only one true meaning exists, which is the one “Author-God” gave it.

Barthes’s concept isn’t without logic: if The Reader does not bring the fictional product/situation/character to their own perspective (that is, their individual reality), it is impossible to give it verisimilitude. Only through this process can we appropriate fiction. And we can’t “appropriate it” in the same parameters or spheres of understanding (social, political, economic, and cultural) of the Author. What Barthes says is that the textual meaning can’t be located in its “origin” but in its “destination,” thus, Readers are constantly working to create the meaning of text.

The main issue with this perspective is that it implies that the relationship with a text is bipartite, as the text either exists in relation to its Creator or in relation to its Reader; it also implies that a work of literature (as Barthes calls it a “tissue with signs”) is of no more value than a User’s Manual or a flyer as they too contain signs to communicate information.

The most important thing about this essay, however, is the notion that a fictional work stops being from The Author the moment they write the last paragraph, as it now belongs to The Readers; in this process, each Reader performs a different work, as they bring their own ideology to the text.

The existence of the relationship between text and Reader isn’t questionable, but it doesn’t exist in a void: in order to believe, we have to detach the text from the Author’s intent (which they definitely gave, as every writing is ideological) and their framework. It’s true that we can read a work without knowing the Author’s name, nationality, and social and economic background; but we see their ideological position through their creation, as all of those aspects we don’t know about were intrinsic to the text at the time of its creation and development. This is not to say that The Author’s “intention” will be one hundred percent understood or will translate as intended to every Reader, but their “death” isn’t as spontaneous nor as definitive as some might think.

“To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is 'explained' - victory to the critic.” Barthes.

The thing about this phrase is that the “Critics” Barthes speaks of no longer exist, as they don’t hold the same level of power inside literary works as they used to. To understand what he meant we need to take into account the context in which he wrote the piece and the intention behind it, that is, we should ask Barthes what he meant; and if he denies those that go against his original intention, he’s contradicting his own principle.

Literary discourse is opposed to truth—truth as in the culturally affirmed “truth”. This distinction between truth and fiction allowed the author to avoid the “appropriation” that overwhelmed science discourses. Michel Foucault, who like Barthes was against structuralism and opposed the concept of expression, asked the question as to why the author even assumed the position of the “ideological figure”. That, Foucault stated, resulted from considering the author to be the source of meaning—authorial intention. That’s the reason why Foucault and Barthes both opposed this method of “closed reading”. As the author functions as the figure who controls meaning, his “mystification” in this regard is linked to the control of distribution and profits.

Now, the power is no longer of the “critics” Barthes antagonized, but with the masses' interpretation of the text, which is not one but multiple ones, as not one reading stays the same in the vast ocean of consumers. It's there that the debate starts, and it's there that the debate ends because it becomes the "let's agree to disagree" ad infinitum. There's, again, no exact reason why the debate should have an ending, as the text trespasses time, and its reading is modified by historical events that impact the cultural spheres.

“The Reader” here is a figure of speech because it is a term used to define a large group of people with different histories, cultures, and interpretations.

If The Reader approaches the text (by taking ownership of the story and its characters) and decides, for instance, to give a character what “they truly deserve”, then they strip that character of their overall value. A character exists within the story for a purpose; and if we strip Shylock (Merchant of Venice) of the context Shakespeare wrote him for, he loses his long-term importance as he exists as the opposing force in the narrative. If he suddenly has nothing to oppose, then he ceases to exist as Shylock. If he’s suddenly given a “happy ending” (as him obtaining the pound of flesh from Antonio’s heart; or him rebelling against Antonio’s and Portia’s revenge request, because Portia as a lawyer not only saved Antonio’s life but also gave him the retribution she thinks he deserved), he stops being the Tragic Character and loses the relevance. By taking away a character’s place in the narrative and giving them a new story, personality, or actions (which The Reader thinks a specific character should’ve had), readers create an entirely new character inside an entirely new story and framework that simply shares some vague similarities to its canon counterpart; furthermore, they’re not giving the character what they deserve; they’re giving their own character (as the story is nothing but their own interpretation) what they think they deserve.

In the same manner, The Author is no longer relevant or talented, as now, the brilliance lies in the readers' interpretations of the writing, not in The Author’s work that, apparently, simply “allowed” The Readers to reach their brilliance.

Two “new” approaches to a story, Watsonian and Doylist, add layers to this issue: the former implies that we can answer questions about the story by simply looking inside the work’s universe and not outside it, whilst the latter is concerned with answers outside the framework of the text–meaning, in real life.

If a person considers the Watsonian approach the only well-founded one, then the answers are subjected to The Reader’s interpretation, which as I’ve said are many; so if the Author gives their input, they do by becoming a Reader, which makes their vision just as valid as the one of any other. With this approach, the Truth (implying that the text has a singular meaning) does not exist, or rather, there isn’t a single truth as there is a “coexistence of truths”.

If, however, they decide to see the story through the Doylist approach, The Reader assumes they know the only intention the Author had; but how do we know the author's “true” intention? Even the use of interviews to state what they did or did not achieve is… debatable because the interviews are clippings of conversations not chosen by The Authors themselves but by PR teams –never mind the fact that if there are many of these “PR members”, The Author can appear to contradict themselves or be untruthful.

So how do we try to (try, is a keyword in this) reconcile the Author's intent with the Author themselves? We look at the story and its framework and at the structure and the plot as a whole.

Shakespeare’s narrative introduces Shylock as the antagonist; we aren’t supposed (in a very generic manner) to care for him or his destiny, because what we should want is Antonio’s safety; those who read the story today and see this structure will quickly draw the conclusion: “Shakespeare was an antisemite, so Shylock deserves better.” Yet Shakespeare, who again, built Shylock as the opposition to the framework’s stance, gave him the strongest, most humane speech inside the story. We’re given his perspective; we are told of Antonio’s mistreatment towards him; and we are forced to learn the reasoning behind his animosity:

To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Shylock exists as a villain-like figure, yet “villain-Shylock” doesn’t exist outside this speech. The reason why we care for Shylock is that we know about his pain, and we know about his pain because Shakespeare allowed us to see it. The Reader gave Shylock complexity because the complexity existed prior to The Reader’s intervention; it’s, however, The Reader that vindicated him, but they didn’t do it alone.

Characters aren’t independent of the Author’s decision-making process, Readers can't “blame the author” and spare the character from any responsibility as they are the vehicle The Author uses inside the story; neither the story nor the character or The Author has to endorse The Reader’s views because that doesn’t diminish the work’s value.

There are many ways in which a reader becomes frustrated with a story; a very common route of this event transpires when the consumer finds the ending dissatisfying. The dissatisfaction with the conclusion (and I’m using that word as reading or engaging with any form of art it’s both an ideological and emotional process) does not detract from the “brilliance” of the plot.

If we decide to forever and ever separate the Watsonian and Doylist perspectives to study them in a manner that they shouldn’t interact then we take the events that don't fit our perspective of the text as mere coincidences; furthermore, we kill the author because our brilliance, our appreciation, our “writing” of the story is better. The Reader becomes the Author’s murderer by “divine right”. The children rebel against their parent, who metaphorically created them for that specific fictional universe, and they murder them, creating, at last, the creature: the text. The inheritance that is “rightfully” theirs.

Detractors of the theory accuse DoA of becoming a means for cultural erasure, in their words, if they’re going to read everything of themselves into the work, then what happens to the cultures that are told through art? Is their art meant to be repackaged, remodeled—or erased for The Reader to find their brilliance through fiction? There’s a case that perfectly exemplifies this where a Western portion of Naruto's fandom considered Tobirama to be “femininely” designed because of his use of “make-up,” yet if we look further inside the same story and the author’s origins, we can easily draw a connection between that specific character’s design and Kabuki Theatre, where actors use Kumadori in bright colors in order to emphasize veins, muscles, blood vessels or the connection of the Samurai to a Kami, becoming Hitokami. The lack of knowledge from Western Readers about Japanese Culture prevented them from seeing the reasoning behind specific aesthetic choices giving sense to a specific design by coding it “feminine”, instead of tracing down its conceptual roots.

But, with all these points made, various questions arise: if the Author’s Intention doesn’t necessarily translate into the Readers’, which text is more important? It’s the text to be read as the Author intended or as the Reader interprets it? Could both of these visions coexist or are they bound to fight for dominance indefinitely?

#doa #death of the author #barthes #naruto fandom #anti naruto fandom #roland barthes #anti hinata fandom #anti sakura fandom #anti tobirama fandom #anti hinata #anti hinata hyuga #shakespeare #william shakespeare #merchant of venice #the merchant of venice #shylock

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bunniefaery · 7 months ago

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Claims Tobirama didn't hate the Uchiha for no reason and hen proceeds to quote things Tobirama said that contradict that, one of them being him asking his brother if he's heard the rumors about the Uchiha ocular power getting stronger with hate... Also the part where he said he treated anyone who pose a danger to the village with extreme caution (as if they weren't allies already)...

He spent his whole life, up to that point, fighting the Uchiha in war... But so did the Uchiha when it came to the Senju and they didn't think twice when choosing Konoha over Madara... Saying that he was right about their emotions, excluding two Uchihas, Kagami and Shisui, and the rest were fucked up in their own way and were led by their hatred or mistrust of the village...

Hatred... Mistrust? Since when is not wanting to be oppressed and discriminated against by the government in charge of the village your clan helped create, hatred and mistrust... ?

Tobirama said the leader should be chosen by the village, which we can all agree with... But was he, Hiruzen, Minato, Hiruzen on his second term, Tsunade, Danzo (for his brief time, before Sasuke saved Konoha from that nightmare), Kakashi, Naruto (perhaps), Shikamaru chosen by the village? 🙂

Yeah, that's what I thought...

This person saying Madara was trying to make them rise against the peace and safety they achieved, when he simply (while being mislead by zetsu, but was still right) trying to protect them from danger that he was noticing, because he felt something bad would happen to the clan if they remained in the village, especially since he suspected Tobirama would be named Second Hokage.

"How many Uchiha we've seen rise against their own self importance?" You mean how the Uchiha wanted to do a coup to protect themselves and the Uchiha children from further discrimination? Like how Sasuke wanted to get rid of the Shinobi system that had caused more harm than good? Like how Sasuke helped save the world and eventually went back on his plan because, even though he knew was right, he wanted to believe in Naruto and his dream for peace, yet was imprisoned, but Orochimaru wasn't?

Why would Tobirama give a position of power to the Uchiha, like the police force, if he saw no use for them and wanted them gone? It's almost like he also mentioned he wanted to keep an eye on them, in case another Madara showed up, despite the Uchiha turning their whole backs to Madara... And "if they self-destructed, for the sake of the Village, so be it" how are those words even ones anyone would use to claim a character doesn't hate a group of people? Especially when the context of it is Tobirama, and the other Hokage, excluding Hiruzhit, finding out that the Uchiha were exterminated, including the children, pregnant women, elderly, babies... Speechless 😶

"He was weary of them (with a good reason) but he also saw that they could be harnessed for to do good."

To Tobirama, to "transcend the framework of clan and devote themselves to the village" apparently means to commit mass murder and genocide against your own people, since he mentioned Itachi... And since he mentioned Kagami, well, does that mean he would be okay with what happened to his own people? I surely hope not...

Saying that Tobirama rose above the clan mentality but the Uchiha didn't is funny, because he never seems to think of the Uchiha as Konoha citizens but instead Uchiha clan members that need to be kept an eye on, because they're "sensitive individuals" who, if exposed to strong emotions, can be taken by "darkness" and fall "to evil"...

"Madara going completely crazy over something that he perceived but we have no actual evidence of" 🙂🙂🙂 he said Tobirama would be named Second Hokage and that the Uchiha wouldn't be safe anymore in Konoha, among other things... And what happened? Where are the Uchiha? 🙂

"Only two [Uchiha] had no bad deeds to their names" 🙂 so the children had bad deeds to their names? Weird.

Also saying he had gotten over his hate for the Uchiha and now only mistrusted them is a stretch, because he was openly spreading harmful rumors he heard about the Uchiha, called Sasuke a "brat possessed by Uchiha evil", said that the Uchiha clan were "a clan possessed by evil" and even admitted that it wasn't "entirely true" that he didn't hate the Uchiha, that is an admission of him hating them, just because he said it's not entirely true doesn't mean anything, when his actions and words say otherwise....

Unrelated to this: I am making a series on YouTube (you can find the link on my pinned post), essentially it's defending villains and characters deemed villains who had a point or were just hated for whatever reason (but not necessarily deserved all the hate). I, as a pro Uchiha, thought it'd be funny to do a sad attempt at defending this anime man. So yes, when it's out (along with other character videos in the same YouTube series I am doing) I hope you all go watch it.

Chief what even is your profile picture? HE HATED THE UCHIHA FOR NO REASON

He didn’t hate the Uchihas for no reason.

“There were many sensitive individuals among the Uchiha… and nearly all who were exposed to strong emotions were taken by darkness and fell to evil.”

“Besides which… have you not heard the rumors about the Uchiha? That the stronger their hate, the greater their ocular powers.”

“That’s not entirely true… I simply treated any who posed a danger to the village, no matter what clan they belonged to, with extreme caution. The Uchiha just happened to be a clan particularly disposed to be considered such. ”

Tobirama literally spend his entire life in a state of war and the biggest enemies his clan ever made were the Uchihas. The same way the Senju killed Uchihas, the same way the Uchihas killed Senju; Tobirama (and Hashirama) lost two little brothers in battles involving the Uchihas; Tobirama did land the killing blow on Izuna but at that point the two of them had spent actual years battling each other.

Tobirama was completely right about their emotions and the power granted by the Sharingan - with the exception of two named Uchihas (Kagami and Shisui, not including Itachi), everyone else fucked up in some major way and were led by either their own hate or mistrust towards the village.

Tobirama said that the leader should be chosen by the people, Hashirama was indeed the driving force behind the creation of the village, the people loved Hashirama and even the Uchihas didn’t think Madara was fit for the role. The Uchihas at the time literally turned Madara down when he tried to make them rise against the peace and safety they had managed to achieve. He was unable to deal with that, so he decided to bring the Nine-Tails to destroy the village. Tobirama was entirely right about what destruction any Uchiha can bring on. We don’t know of any other person who turned against the village during the time Tobirama was alive, except for Madara - an Uchiha who managed to unlock the OP Mangekyo and couldn’t deal with the fact that he simply wasn’t viewed as a leader of a peaceful village and that Tobirama would most likely succeed Hashirama. Madara’s entire fate ended up decided by his inability to deal with his emotions, which was what Tobirama was entirely aware of. Nevertheless, Tobirama had seen the good the Uchihas were capable of - Kagami - but at the end of the day, how many Uchihas we have seen that have risen above their own self-importance?

“What is all-important is the village. The village is the keystone.”

“I thought I had arranged and guided things such that the Uchiha’s power could be harnessed to serve the village. Although… if they self-destructed for the sake of the village, then so be it. Either way, in the end, they were of use to the village of Konoha.”

If Tobirama truly detested the Uchihas for no reason, he would never have given them a position of power such as being the police force. No one gives additional power to someone they see no use of and want to dispose of.

He was wary of them (with a good reason) but he also saw that they could be harnessed to do good. By entrusting them with the protection of the villagers, he probably thought that could help them put the village over the clan. He didn’t have a problem with them dying for the sake of the village, but he also wouldn’t have a problem with either him or Hashirama dying for the sake of the village because it’s their jobs as leaders to sacrifice themselves for the sake of everyone else (which he did).

“However… it is also because they could feel such deep love… that there were quite a few Uchiha over the years like your brother and Uchiha Kagami. They could transcend the framework of clan and devote themselves to the village.”

Tobirama had risen above the clan mentality, but the Uchihas never did. As such, based on his previous - bloody - experience with them, Madara going completely crazy over something that he perceived but we have no actual evidence of, and that out of all the Uchihas we have seen, only two had no bad deeds to their names, Tobirama has all the justifications for his distrust of the Uchihas. But distrust isn’t the same as hate - he had gotten over his hate for the Uchihas when they build the village, as he openly said that Kagami and others had indeed proven themselves to be trustworthy; yet, the Uchihas possess power, the nature of which would always bring mistrust to them, justified or not.

#naruto #tobirama senju #senju tobirama #pro uchiha #pro sasuke uchiha #pro madara #anti tobirama #anti konoha #anti hiruzen #anti tobirama fandom

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