Joss Whedon accidentally defines proper relationship between author and work, lit theory done now
kouredios pointed out a Reddit thread in which Joss Whedon answers the question "How do you feel about scholarship about your work and the fact that academics tend to delve quite deeply into it, perhaps to the point of publishing interpretations you did not intend?" with the following:
"All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you."
Now, I disagree with the idea that the relationship between an author and their work is anything like that between a parent and a child. While the metaphor in and of itself is rather understandable, that sort of language is all too often abused by fic-averse authors like George R.R. Martin to pretend that their "parent" position gives them the eternal moral right to decide how their creations can be used by other people. I'm also not very impressed with all the Reddit commenters who act like Joss Whedon just invented the idea that works might be open to interpretations not intended by the author.
But his throwaway mention that "art isn't your pet" is really rather interesting. I'd like to propose that in fact, your art is exactly like your pet! More precisely, your art is exactly like your cat. You can raise it from a kitten, feed it, and provide it with a home. You can cuddle it and put its pictures all over the internet. But you can't stop other people from taking the cat pictures you exposed to the world and putting a new spin on them with really weird captions that you may not agree with. And no matter how much you will want your cat to stay in the house with you all day and give cuddles only to you, it will squeeze through the merest hint of an open window to go spread cuddles (and fic kittens) around everywhere it goes. And no matter how profoundly and genuinely attached you might be to your cat, it really doesn't care. It's not equipped for caring about you. It's a nonexistent figment of your imagination cat.
Of course the cat metaphor isn't quite on the mark in a digital age in which copies of a work that are shared around the internet can be pretty much the exact equivalent of the "original" work. A picture of a cat on the internet is does not, in fact, have the same properties as a real-life purring and shedding domestic animal. And unlike copies on the internet, a real-life cat is not a non-rivalrous good. Although cat pictures on the internet are... So in economic terms, the real-life cat might be compared to a private good, while the cat pictures on the internet are non-rivalrous and non-excludable public goods. Or perhaps it's possible to reframe this idea in copyright terms and say that the real-life cat is the idea (not copyrightable) while the cat pictures on the internet are original expressions of the idea (copyrightable)? Or should that be the other way around?
Hmm. It is midnight here, and I should probably confess to not being at full thinking power. The "your work is like your cat" idea is clearly a complex theory in need of careful study and much refining, some other time.
ETA: Apparently someone linked this post on ffa as evidence of acafen being overly analysis-happy and hating on Joss Whedon. I agree with Joss Whedon, I'm just not fond of his metaphor. And I can't believe this needs to be clarified, but the cat theory is a joke.
Now I definitely feel like writing it up into a full paper and see if I can trick anyone into publishing. This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/49288.html. Please comment there using OpenID.