Some Thoughts on Intentionality and Interpretation

Our discussion on Tuesday about Spivak's idea that the author is often the worst reader of their own work has me thinking about "The Help."  I'm not sure if many of you have read it, but it was on the bestseller list over the summer, and was also adapted into a film.  "The Help" is, in short, the story of a rich white woman who breaks into the publishing world by teling the stories of the black household workers of her southern town.  At first it reads, as it was intended, as a sweet tale a inter-racial connection and understanding which is heartwarming and inpiring to all.  However, a close reading reveas that the story is actually a sort of standard llne revision of US history, in which a white person risks nothing while the black characters risk everything and, at the end, the white woman is left in a better position, while the black women are exactly where they are when they started.  The book contains scant reference to the civil rights movement, and the movie, from what I understand, contains even less.  

Once I finished reading the book, I commented on it on Facebook, and was met with several comments about how I had misread the book, and how the author intended to highlight the racism of the 50's.  Though I never did have time to research the author's statements regarding her intention, I did end up engaging in several debates regarding the story, and those debates eventually led to me gaining a greater understanding of the people with whom I was debating.  

I know that "The Help" is pretty far from "The Breast Giver" in terms of impact and density, but I think that my involvement in the debate over the first, and my opposition's insistence that authororial intention was important is a sort of reader's digest version of Spivak's case.  At the end of the day, the author's intention and own reading of a piece has little consequence when others are reading it, but that is not a bad thing.  If every text came with a mini-author to tell us what they meant, reading would fairly useless, and conversations like the one I'vee described above would never happen.  

I think this is the point I was trying, clumsily to make in class yesterday.