Death of the Author

 

In many discussions about the character of certain creators, the term ‘Death of the Author’ is bandied about to justify continuing to consume their books or other media. Unfortunately, this is not what the expression means.

 

In 1967, French literary critic Roland Barthes published an essay titled ‘La Morte d’Auteur’, in English ‘The Death of the Author’. In the essay he demanded a change in the way texts (and other forms of media, such as paintings) were interpreted. This heavily relied on looking into the creator’s life and trying to connect characters, situations, or full plot lines with their life or the people they were close to in some way. Often, this went so far as to not interpret the content of the text at all, because the critic or literature professor got so caught up in all their hard-earned knowledge about the author. Instead, Barthes demanded to completely disconnect the author from the text and only seek answers to the intention of the text within it, not within the person who created it. The essay was published in English in the following year, which introduced a much bigger group of people to the concept.

 

This, however, is not a blog post about how the concept changed the perception of texts and other media. You can look into this video by Lindsay Ellis to learn more about that. This blog post is about people misusing the expression to justify their support of authors or other media creators who shouldn’t be supported - most recently J.K. Rowling. (There’s also a video by Lindsay Ellis about J.K. Rowling and death of the author in her case.)

 

First of all, there is a definite difference between consuming media by a dubious creator who is already dead (in the physical sense) and media by a dubious creator who is still alive.

The creator who is still alive can use both the money and the platform given to them by their fans to further their toxic opinions and support their causes. This means J.K. Rowling, for instance, has a platform through Twitter and other social media to peddle her trans-phobic ideas and she earns money through the Harry Potter franchise (and her other novels) which she can donate to groups fighting against trans people as well. If you consume her media for money, if you buy her books, watch her movies for a price (movie theatre, streaming services, DVD/Blue-Ray purchase), you help her support her cause. If you follow her on Twitter or other social media, share her tweets, and like them, you give her more of a platform through which to peddle her ideas. There is no separating the art from the artist in this case, because as soon as you consume the art or recommend it to others, you also support the author and, through them, their toxic cause. If you feel you can’t part with the Harry Potter franchise (which is, indeed, an important part in quite some people’s lives), you could consume second-hand media - buy books, DVDs, or Blue-Rays second-hand instead of immediately and don’t stream her movies, but you can watch them on TV, since in this case she doesn’t get money for everyone who watches, but a general sum. (I’m definitely not suggesting you should pirate anything, because pirating is wrong).

The dubious creator who is already dead can no longer use the money you pay for their work and doesn’t have a platform through which to peddle their ideas. H.P. Lovecraft, for instance, was horridly racist even compared to people in his time, but he’s long dead, his stories are in public domain (so no money for racist organisations in possession of the rights), and he will certainly not pop up on social media to rant about all those ‘not-WASP people with no breeding’. If he did, you could be sure it’s a comedy account and it might even be fun to follow. You should still be aware of the shortcomings of his stories, of the racist undertones especially, but you can consume the media without supporting his cause, no matter whether it’s first- or second-hand.

That’s the big difference between cases where the author is really dead and the cases where the author is alive and you’re only pretending they’re dead.

 

Now, there is a certain difference between media controlled by one dubious creator (such as novels) and media where one dubious creator is involved (such as TV series, for instance).

In the first case, the dubious creator gets quite a big share of the earnings, provided you consume the media. Some may stay with their publisher and agent, but they’re still going to get quite a bit of the earnings, which for popular media can be quite a bit of money.

In the second case, the dubious creator gets a much smaller share of the earnings, there’s a lot of different creators involved, and the media is more of a team effort. Here, there’s still money in it for the dubious creator, but it’s not quite as much.

Ideally, you’d not support anything by a dubious creator, but that can be quite difficult. There’s also the question whether or not the creator realizes they’ve supported a toxic cause. We all make mistakes, so when a dubious creator realizes the error of their ways and distances themselves from those errors, consuming their media again becomes acceptable, since the money you spend on it will not go to a toxic cause and they will no longer advocate for it on the platform you might be supporting.

 

Now, some people might say that every creator of media is free to do what they want - and they’re correct, of course. As the consumer of said media, however, you are also free to do what you want. That means that it’s your decision to support or not support those creators. You’re free to do so, but you must realize that you’re indirectly also supporting their toxic cause and that might not be what you want to do. You need to keep that in mind when you make the decision.