Bohemian Oversights

We're often convinced that compositions rich with imagery -- works of fiction, certain musical pieces, poetry, and so on -- possess deeper meanings than what we can glean from surface-level interaction with them. But who or what endows each composition with a deeper meaning? There are at least two potential solutions to this question (and perhaps they're just long-standing arguments that don't really get at any solutions at all): 1) The creator of the composition is the one who provides its deeper meaning. 2) The societal (dis)placement circulates the composition and thus provides its deeper meaning.

By societal (dis)placement, I mean two separate things. First, let's neglect the parenthetical "dis." When we turn our attention to these compositions, we can't help but think that there are a number of contextual or societal side issues that demand our focus in addition to the primary compositions in question. Things like time period of production, or whether the composition's advent was in reaction to something separate from it, or the political climate surrounding the composition's initial presence. The other meaning of (dis)placement I hope to make clear, the one for which "dis" is not optional, is the possibility that the composition might be ripped entirely out of the clutches of the author's initial intention and reformed by societal influences -- in this case, the composition's significance would be replaced.

Let's dive into these potential solutions with regard to a musical composition rather than the broader "compositions rich with imagery." We'll use some philosophical concepts too, but only as guides for insight. I am inspired by the words of our own Dr. Trott, who stated in a previous blogpost that it is better that we not enter into discourse with our standing beliefs and understanding of philosophical systems as weapons for justification, but rather that we be open to real conversation that doesn't rely on our particular biases.

-- "Sometimes I Wish I'd Never Been Born at All" --

A deeper meaning embedded in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"is claimed to exist. Not only do fans who obsess over the composition debate this deeper meaning, but the band itself asserts that there is one. But here's the catch: they won't disclose it.

"Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret."

So how do we reconcile these two issues? The first solution mentioned earlier, concerning authorial intention, doesn't seem completely adequate: we find hints of the second solution seeping in. Freddie Mercury, the creator, refused to explain the lyrical meaning, which shows us that Mercury probably had one in mind. But because it has been kept secret still by the living members of the band, societal (dis)placement has had to take over.

Jacques Derrida weighs in on this when he considers code in an essay entitled "Signature Event Context." His overarching claim is that in order for something to be considered writing, it must be able to function in the absence of both the writer and whom the writer addresses. For Derrida, codes can never be secret, because each coded message is capable of being deciphered, "iterable for a third party," and so capable of being decoded over and over again even if the writer and the intended recipient cease to exist.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" stands as a code, then, and it seems that Derrida would say that, even if Queen's members all passed away, because there is an encoded meaning, we can still consider "Bohemian Rhapsody" a work of writing -- someday, somewhere, even if everybody who knew of Queen and their meaning-filled song had passed away, the coded contents, indeed the meaning, could be repeated.

But is that a satisfying answer? Derrida seems to suggest that writing necessitates absence, and not just metaphorical absence. Writing is divorced from the author the moment it is written; writing has no need for readers in order to be what it is, but it only needs to retain the possibility of being repeated, cited, whether on purpose or on accident. 

Derrida's stance appears to align almost completely with the second of the two solutions above, that of societal (dis)placement, and even further than that, his seems to align with the second of the two interpretations of (dis)placement provided earlier -- if citation and repeatability determine that something is writing, then society is responsible for endowing a composition with meaning and pulling the textual offspring from the clutches of the parental author. Society is responsible for the divorce of text and author; it couldn't be any other way.

I wonder if it is enough that somebody might someday happen upon what Mercury meant by his lyrics. After all, if Queen keeps good on the promise (threat?), there will be no way to corroborate societal interpretation with authorial intention. Unless, of course, if in instances like this, when the composer refuses to disclose the meaning of a composition, that is the intention.

E. D. Hirsch, a scholar of a different mind than what we've seen in Derrida, argues in an essay entitled "Validity in Interpretation" that authorial intention ought not to be banished when the aim is understanding a text's meaning. He blames poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound for the onset of the era in which it became "sensible" to ignore the author -- but this can't be fair, can it? Perhaps Hirsch is partially right. Eliot and Pound may have claimed that, for their particular compositions, it would be better for their readers to be kept in the dark about their poems' meanings. Here again, just as we found in our analysis of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," it might very well be the case that the two poets intended for this darkness.

Musical, poetic, perhaps even fictional compositions do not receive their import from the existences of every other musical, poetic, or fictional composition. A stone foundation does not become made of sticks merely because the house atop the foundation is made of sticks. Every composition is not divorced from the meaning that its author imparted just because some composers have intended to keep their intentions hidden. Even when the intention is concealed, we cannot ignore authorial intention.

Writing doesn't exist if there is no writer, a fact inverted in the writing of Derrida, who claimed that writing necessitates its author's absence. And a foundation's nature doesn't change just because something else is stacked on top of it, a fact inverted in the analysis of Hirsch, who claimed that the plague of ignoring authorial intent could have been started by the intentions of a couple of poets.