The Interpretation Effect
I'm a huge fan of Isaac Asimov, which is why it's rather ironic that I couldn't remember
the name of my favorite short story of his for years.1 It was given to me as part of a
complimentary booklet in a hotel room, of all places. It was a tale about a drunk physics
professor bragging about the time machine he invented to an English professor. He went
on and on about all the geniuses from history he brought to the modern era, but none of
them could acclimatize to our own bizarre culture; they had to be sent home. Finally, the
professor decided to bring in a universal mind, one that could recognize humanity for
what it was no matter what the cultural differences. And thus, William Shakespeare
came to the present day. Long story short (or short story short, I suppose), Shakespeare
discovers that he is still famous, is shocked to learn how much people read into his works
now, ends up taking a Shakespeare class from the aforementioned English professor...
and flunks it.
I had just finished eighth grade at the time, which was the first time I'd ever read
Shakespeare ("Macbeth," specifically). At the time, then, I found this little number quite
humorous.
Then high school happened.
Don't get me wrong, I loved my high school and had a great time there, but it does have a
tendency to beat the shit out of you (and yet, now that I'm in college, it seems so easy in
hindsight...). I read more bad books that were considered "classics" during this time than
should even be physically possible. I didn't even know there WERE that many books.
Hell, in my Senior year I took a class on "Hamlet." Not on Shakespeare: on "Hamlet."
Great course, but dear god...
"God ha' mercy! What cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring,
methinks, a flood from a damp clout!"2
After literally years of trying to find it again, I finally rediscovered the title to Asimov's
brilliant work, which only now could I fully appreciate the genius of: "The Immortal
Bard." During my endless search for this piece, however, I stumbled across a minor
morsel of information, a trivium, if you will. Asimov didn't come up with this story out
of the blue, it was inspired by an event in his own life. During an academic sciencefiction convention, somebody got up to speak and waxed lyical on a piece old Isaac had
written, unaware that he was in the audience. Only naturally, he got it dead wrong, and
Asimov, being awesome, approached him after his speech and told him so.
At this point, the dear man responded: "Just because you wrote a story, why does that
make you think you know anything about it?"
1
2
And no, it's not "The Last Question," for all you (fellow) Asimov ubergeeks.
Shakespeare, as quoted in "The Immortal Bard."
An ordinary human would have responded by punching the douchebag in the face; Isaac
responded by writing "The Immortal Bard," which is reason #582 why he's the coolest
person... ever.
It raises an interesting point, though, one which I think every high school student has
asked him- or herself at some point or other: "Did they really mean that?" In other
words, how much of any of what we are taught a work "means" was actually, carefully
thought out by the author as a deep and profound statement, and how much of it is just
bullshit thought up by somebody reading way the fuck too much into this stuff? People
have been reading Shakespeare for 500 years now, and in that time, it has been
interpreted every which way past Sunday. Basically, that means if you want to be an
English major and write a paper on good ol' William, you have to come up with an
interpretation so bizarre that no one else has dared think of it yet.
That's been going on for 500 years. Imagine what Homeric scholars do. We've all read
or heard some interpretation of something that makes no sense whatever, whether it be of
Shakespeare, Homer, or Uwe Boll (the finest filmmaker of our time). If a text is rich
enough, you can spin it any way you want and there will be some way to support it with
textual evidence, and thus receive a big fat 'A' on your English essay, which is really all
we care about anyway, right?3
Once upon a time there was a man named Herman Melville, and he wrote a story called
"Benito Cerino." A few years later, I was in high school and I read this story, and my
teacher lectured at us for some time on how some people interpreted it as merely an
adventure story, others interpreted as a racist tale, others as an indictment of racism, et
cetera, so on and so forth, gesundheit. And I remember thinking, "Well, why didn't
somebody just ask him?"
It's a deceptively simple question. For one, I know several authors who claim that you
should "never believe an author, they always lie." So, there's that caveat, though I can't
believe it's universally true. Regardless, let's say the late Mr. Melville had said, "Yeah,
it's just an adventure story. Now go buy all my books."
"Ah-hah!" we might say. "NOW we know what that book was about."
Just because you wrote a story, why does that make you think you know anything about
it?
As I said above, if a text is rich enough, it can be interpreted however you want and you'll
be able to support your idea somehow. So at what point do the author's own statements
become authoritative,4 and at what point does it not matter at all? In other words, if
Shakespeare actually were to come into the modern day and say, "What the fuck?" (or
equivalent), does that necessarily mean that every interpretation of "Hamlet" is wrong?
3
4
Quick: what did you argue in your last Shakespeare essay? Yeah, didn't think so.
Get it? Get it? God, I'm good-looking.
Works of art are inherently subjective. I don’t know if you knew that, but now you do.
My point is that art is meant to be something that people bring their own experiences and
opinions to, and leave with their own opinions. Obviously, certain works do have a
specific message to get across (1984, "Communism is bad"), but even then the way we
take that message, and whether or not we buy it, or to what extent we buy it, is dependent
on ourselves. Any artist, or at least any good artist, knows that. Beyond this, oftentimes
artists will do something that specifically does not have a message, or even does not have
a distinct meaning. This is most blatant, perhaps, in poetry, where many lines are written
on a whim that somehow, somehow, fit the piece perfectly, even if the poet him- or
herself cannot say why. It just works; it's just right. So they put it in. What does it
mean? The poet isn't always sure. That’s why we have English teachers.
Then there's that whole 'reality' thing, which always just fucks stuff up. Is Patton an
assault on Patton, or a defense of him? Anyone who worked on the film will tell you that
it's neither: it just tried to be true to the man. Obviously historians can debate how well
they achieved this task, but nevertheless the artistic point here is not to tell you anything,
but to show you a fascinating character (however fictionalized) and let the audience draw
their own conclusions about him. Interpretation and subjectivity, then, are sometimes the
very point of a work of art.
In "The Immortal Bard," Shakespeare flunks a course on Shakespeare, presumably
because he refused to overanalyze his own work. What was the role of the clown? I
needed a clown in the play, dammit! But while this makes for an amusing tale
(something Asimov happens to be good at), would Shakespeare really have responded
this way? Or would he have embraced all these enumerable interpretations of his text?
For if the good artist can recognize that audience interpretation is part of the experience,
and especially for artists who leave certain themes or characters up for consideration
without clearly defining what the audience 'should' think, then isn't any interpretation
acceptable? Maybe Shakespeare would have flunked his own course, but that doesn't
mean he would disagree with what everybody else wrote.
Obviously this has its limitations. Again, we've all heard interpretations that make no
sense. But my main point here is what I like to call the Interpretation Effect5: any
interpretation of any work, no matter what the intention of the author was, is as equally
valid as any other, including that of the author himself. That is, there is no "real"
meaning behind a work, even if the author intended there to be one. Indeed, oftentimes a
work will be intentionally vague, making the Interpretation Effect not only a convenient
way to get good grades, but also the fundamental core of any artwork (especially any
narrative artwork).
In other words, Isaac Asimov really did have no idea what his own story was about
because it was open to more interpretations than just what its author thought. And
Asimov, even though he wrote it, could not say that this contrary interpretation was
wrong. That's the Interpretation Effect. From the author's perspective, then, the
Interpretation Effect is the capacity to accept a reading of your work that you did not
5
Surprise! It's the title.
intend, indeed did not even expect. Again, many authors will embrace this and create
something specifically for this effect; Donnie Darko is a good recent example,
considering nobody has ever read it the same way twice.
In many cases, the author will simply write something because it makes sense to them
intuitively, not really thinking about it. If it becomes popular, and stays popular, theorists
go back and read into it all the things that made it so accessible, even if that author had no
clue about any of it. Superman is a good example here: two boys in Ohio came up with a
cool idea for a comic book, and the result was one of the great American icons. Why is
he such a great icon for this country? He's the ultimate alien -- he's actually
extraterrestrial -- and thus, he's the ultimate immigrant. He's at once a foreigner
(Kryptonian); a salt-of-the-earth farmboy (Smallville Clark Kent); a bumbling, but honest
and earnest, intrepid reporter of the American urban world (Metropolis Clark Kent); and,
of course, the physical embodiment of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.6
I will bet you 35¢ that the Ohio boys didn't think about any of that. It was more along the
lines of, "You know what would be awesome?!" As such, we might think that the
Superman theorists (they exist) are totally bonkers and are simply abusing the
Interpretation Effect to come up with some ridiculous idea to look cool.7 This does not
mean that the theorists are insane; rather, it's more like the Ohio boys were just writing
what moved them, and the reason it moved them was because it was so fundamentally
American. And because it was so fundamentally American, it moved everybody else,
too. As such, while the Interpretation Effect might seem like it's taking the power out of
the author and putting it into the hands of the reader, in a way it also allows the reader to
reverse engineer, if you will, what the hell was going on in the author's head when he
wrote it.
So Shakespeare has been interpreted up, down, left, right, sideways, slightly diagonal,
and also in French, just for the hell of it. And if he were to come here today, he probably
would say that he didn't "mean" a lot of it. But then again, maybe he was just writing
what moved him, and all those crazy scholars are just figuring out what it was that he was
tapping in to, even if he didn't know he was doing that. And, of course, a lot of
Shakespearean scholars are full of crap. But you can't say they're wrong. Well, okay,
you can, and probably will, but you know what I mean. If there is some line in "Hamlet"
that moves you to tears every time you read it, because it says something to you
personally, it doesn't matter what ol' William was thinking when he wrote it, or what
anyone else tells you it means: all that matters is what it means to you. That's the
Interpretation Effect.
Or at least, that's how I interpret it.
6
7
A more detailed exploration of ol' Clark will come in time. Be patient.
Because, you know, concocting theories about Superman makes you cool.