[lbo-talk] "Ambiguities"

[andie nachgeborenen]

Doug distinguishes between "commercial" and serious"
ambiguity. What are Shakespeare's ambiguities, Doug,
given that he was trying to write hits and evidently
did so? Is a "serious: ambiguity an Adornesque
ambuguity that is intended not to be a commercial
success and isn't -- maybe luke Melville's Pierre, Or
The Ambiguities? What about Sondheim's ambiguities,
which are intended to be commercially successful and
aren't? This distintiction won't hold water.

Btw, Doug, just finished Raymong Geuss's Outside
Ethics, which contains various stuff that might
interest you and some others here, including a lot of
interesting stuff on Adorno.

--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:

> Justin wrote:
> 
> > > It doesn't make sense to conflate different
kinds of
> ambiguities as  
> if they were all the same old Ambiguity. 

Well, Empson distinguished Seven Types, one might do
the same with Irony, but if Doug had in mind a
particular target other than "commercial ambiguity,"
he was the one who conflated them.

 Some
> ambiguities are  
> purposefully included in the work. 

Ah, the author's intention's. And Milton's intentions
were, I believem to justify the ways of God to man,
not to be of the devil's party . . . .

 Whether Jack was
> really killed by  
> gay-bashing homophobes unbeknownst to his wife who
> thinks that he  
> died by accident or Ennis only imagined Jack's death
> by gay-bashing  
> is an example of that.  Ang Lee could have easily
> given one certain  
> take on it if he had wanted to, but he didn't want
> to do so, so we  
> don't know. 

And you know Ang Lee's intentions because he explained
them somewhere? And they are relevant because?

 In the case of Jaws, the big shark is
> essentially a  
> blank screen, on which you can choose to attribute
> an allegorical  
> meaning (if you are desperate to come up with
> something to write  
> about) despite an absence of allegorical clues in
> the film itself,   
> but you don't necessarily have to -- you can simply
> see it as a big  
> scary shark and enjoy being scared by it.

And this may not have been Spielberg's intention, if
that is relevant? You know this how?  And the
difference is?

> 
> "It's quite possible to read Birth of a Nation as a
> condemnation of  
> the Klan," but few would, and few did when it
> mattered.  Sometimes,  
> propaganda films can backfire, with the audience
> reading them against  
> their grain or making fun of them altogether, but
> there is no  
> historical evidence for that in this case.

"HIstorical evidence" meaning, I guess, that Griffith
did not intend the film to be anything but celebratory
of the Klan (he said so) and it wasn't taken ina ny
other way at the time. But I said: watch it now, and
see if you can read it as anything but a condemnation
of the KKK. Will explain if necessary.

> 
> Really, works of art don't have to be ambiguous to
> be excellent.   
> Potemkin is a good example of that.

So, there are unambiguous works of art. Very
interesting. But if there are, I never said that
ambiguity was a criterion of artistic excellence.

jks

> 
> 
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> 
> 
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>
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> 


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