Week 3-- Humanism vs. Structuralism?

It’s difficult to say where I fall on the spectrum of humanism vs. materialism, author and subject (etc.), because whereas the artist in me says that an artist’s/author’s work is valid no matter if she’s commissioned, subsidized, appreciated or ignored, the pragmatist in me says that many artists are motivated by the money offered them via corporate entities and must be driven by the rules in which they operate. Whenever corporate institutions are involved, the purity of the author’s voice is diminished and can even be silenced.

The optimist in me prefers to focus on the artist/author and the way her background influences the types of projects she‘ll take on. I’d like to believe most of the time, an author wouldn’t be involved in a project unless there was some sort of value in it—even if it’s a project they don’t agree with. Even if a friend of theirs asked for their participation… Or perhaps money was tight and they just plain needed the money.

I know that what influences me when I like a piece (usually musical), is a sense of the biography of the one who created it. If I like a piece, I often try to find out something of the creator’s background either in biographical information or if given the opportunity, in person. I really haven’t been surprised by their actual personalities when I’ve met them, as I’ve felt that the work did a good job of revealing the sort of personality behind it.

Because of my experience with artists/musicians, I do believe one’s biography is communicated through one’s work and doesn’t fully ever separate from the originator. To a good extent, I feel that trying to separate the author from the work is a futile and confusing activity. I can see where if when someone is first acquainting themselves with a work, and they don’t know the artist/author at all, then they have to fixate more on the mere text itself. However once the reader begins to assemble meaning out of the work, as sense of the artist begins to form as well.

If I don’t like a piece, I have no interest to find out more about the one who created it.

This week’s readings step slightly away from the complete death and disregard of the author in Foucault’s “What is an Author?” He may side to a degree with the audience as creating the meaning, but at least he posits that the by-line of a work does provide an “author-function” and that going back to the originator of a practice often means having to go back and look at the original author.

Kompare’s essay complicates matters when examining the author in the collaborative setting of television production, which by no means allows pure creation inside a bubble. Kompare definitely echoes Becker, and the necessity of standards and audience expectations.

Glass’ book discusses the somewhat new phenomenon of often introverted authors as mass media celebrities and the different ways in which the author becomes situated within the worlds of intellectual property, mass production, image, changing political and legal ideologies and so on.

In this day and age, it would appear that the author cannot entirely remain a mere faceless name on a book, as publishers have expectations of using the author as a co-promoter of his/her book. Another aspect points to the public, which cannot be told what to buy simply because a publisher puts a book out there or the author show up for a book-selling.