In today's lecture we learnt the meaning of ‘auteurship’ and what an auteur actually is. An Auteur is basically an author or creator of something. We studied the article ‘Death of the Author’ and this is my summary. The writer of the article is cynical of the idea of the author and argues the point that once something has been created it is then somewhat owned by the person who has read or ingested whatever the author has created. For example, once a director has directed a film and released it to the public, it is then no longer there’s to posses, it now belongs to the audience of the film. Furthermore, the writer of Death of the Author Roland Barthes states that “for him, for us too, it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality (not at all to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realist novelist), to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’ and not ‘me’. What this means is that when the reader reads a book for example it is not the writer that is speaking to them, it is in fact the language used to tell the story that is speaking to them.
This article is just as relevant to today's culture as it was in it’s time of publication because one could argue that the author is becoming less and less a dominant figure. There is an ever expanding input of audiences on works that are proving that audiences are a vital part of literature and the creative arts. For example a television series cannot sustain itself with just the auteur alone. If no one is watching it, it will be cancelled. Furthermore, it is imperatively important that the audience connects with a television show otherwise it will still be cancelled as people will no longer want to watch it. Television networks are reliant on audience testing, positive reviews and positive word of mouth to survive. With a television series comes reviews and in the internet age everyone can be a critic. There is becoming less and less say of who should be classed as an auteur of reviewing because with websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB anyone can do it. Everyone can have they’re say, people can comment on auteurs and people can comment on the people who comment on auteurs.
‘The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the past of his own book: book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a before and after. The author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child.
In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing’.
What Roland Barthes is saying here is that the author is often thought to be like this father like figure to a work they have created. When in actuality he ceases to exist after the works publication and that to think that the author is just as relevant to the work after it has been absorbed by the public is ignorant. In fact the author cannot stay as important as the book itself because how audiences interpret a work such as a book changes over time.
For example with the film ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, Walt Disney was the auteur but in the case of the film, he is no where near as important part of the film’s existence as the film itself. How the film continues to exist after more than half a decade is due to the film itself and the audiences that continue to watch it. Walt Disney himself does not show every single person that’s seen it his work, not only due to him not being around anymore but also he didn't individually show everyone the film when he was alive. After he released the film, it took on it’s own life and it’s meaning has changed over time. People look at it in a different way than they did fifty years ago. For example, Snow White is more commonly seen as as a negative female stereotype as she does all the house cleaning and waits around for the prince to rescue her. Therefore the films meaning has changed, Walt Disney played no part in that change, that is entirely due to the audience and audiences ever changing perception of the film.
