[lbo-talk] "Ambiguities"

[Miles Jackson]

On Sat, 4 Feb 2006, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Or you can compare Jaws with Poltergeist (co-written by Spielberg), again, 
> both commercial.  Unlike Jaws, Poltergeist includes an explicit cue to 
> criticize unchecked real estate development that stops at nothing and even 
> the history of dispossession of American Indian lands (see 
> <http://www.filmsite.org/polt2.html>).

Yes, I can see how a Marxist could easily interpret the film that way, and
I like the interpretation.  However, that meaning (or significance) is
a product of interpretation; it is not literally "in" the film.  If you're
skeptical, talk to 100 random people in our society who've seen the film;
only some will mention the "explicit" cues about the dispossession of
Indian land.  You're granting too much power to the artist here:
even if an artist want to say X, and even if you think
your interpretation is
based on explicit cues about X, the significance of the art is socially
produced.  It is not and cannot be the individual product of an
artistic genius.

This is another good example of individualist ideology in a capitalist
society: when artists produce work, dammit, it's theirs, and it means
what they want it to mean, because they "own" it!  This is just about
as ludricious as Cheney claiming he's a "self-made man", but it's
equally effective at reinforcing the idea we're autonomous individuals
in control of our own lives and our own "property".

Miles