Tuesdays with Media: Artist vs. Audience

I've been thinking about my movie reviews from earlier this year and how much fun it was to play film critic.  After some thought, I've decided to add an extra day to this blog and review some kind of media once a week.  I may review a movie, a TV show, a book, a song, a painting, a website, or some other kind of art.  I would enjoy feedback on these reviews, so any thoughts, critiques, or disagreements left in the comments are welcomed.

I decided to start by talking about art in general and how a piece's message can vary from person to person.  One of the reasons that Shakespeare is the continual subject of analysis and criticism is because his plays and poems have many layers to them.  That means that two people can read the same piece and come away with different messages and themes.  For example, while I was taking a course on Shakespearean literature to finish up my BA, I watched a couple of different versions of Richard III.  One was much more traditional, playing up the despicable nature of Richard and setting up his downfall as his own doing.  The other, however, was pretty funny; it still dealt with Richard's downfall, but it didn't take itself as seriously.  The lines were the same, but the performances interpreted the material very differently.

Just as the directors of those different performances saw the material differently, we as audience members can see a work of art differently from what the artist intended.  I felt that my farcical short story was obviously satirizing how standards of beauty for both men and women have changed over the years, but not everybody got that: one person couldn't get over how ugly the character's names were, but that was kind of the point.  That doesn't mean that that person's interpretation was wrong, just different from what I intended.

That's one of the great things about art: just as the artist brings certain notions and ideals to the table, the viewer brings different notions and ideals.  Both are right in their interpretation because art truly is in the eye of the beholder.  So for the foreseeable future, I will show you what I see in a particular piece of media once a week.  Please join me.