Wow. normally I hate that sort of stuff (think Fred Astaire and a vacuum cleaner or MLK for cingular), but for some reason, I was just mesmerized by this one.
I don't know, maybe it's because I have an affinity for VW, so when they exploit dead entertainers, it doesn't bother me as much?
That was awesome. Although it kind of reminded me of the old Pontiac girl in the car video (the dancing shite), I thought that it was a creative use of something everyone recognizes in a way that supported the commercial. Thinking about it, it's so different from the original that it's "whoa, cool", and not, "bastards!"
I just thought at first that it was something someone had done for fun. When I realized that it was an expensively-produced commercial, I was kinda disappointed.
Come on b, even the slow readers have figured out that I'm never joking. Once again, you say you were disappointed that it's an ad. But why? One could just as easily think that someone did it for fun, and believe that that makes it less surprising, and assume that, given enough time, lots of folks could have made something similarly inventive. And one could go on to be impressed that an ad agency not only had a good idea, but carried it off with elegance and good taste.
It is neat. It would just be neater if it was something that some geek had spent hours and hours and hours perfecting in his bedroom, vs. a whole host of geeks doing it 9-5 (or probably more like 9-10:30 pm, but still). I mean, it's cool that an ad agency thought of it, but not as cool as if it was the dedicated effort of a single, created, driven individual.
Go ahead, accuse me of the intentional fallacy. But how can you accuse me, the whore and shoe-lover, of being anti-capitalist? Now, really.
I'm gonna go ahead and be the lone dissenter and say, "blah, whateva"
As someone entrenched in anti-capitalist philosophy, I agree that the fact that it's an add makes it worse than it already was. Why? Because it's an attempt to appeal to people's aesthetic sensibilities in an effort to hook an unrelated emotion onto their product. It's inauthentic and deceptive. Sell your product as your product, not as something else.
I can't think of any examples off the top of my head - because I don't watch tv much anymore, and when I do I change the channels a lot when the commercials come on - but haven't advertisers been doing this kind of thing for a few years now?
This is a lot more sophisticated, especially since it's a dance number, but I seem to remember seeing this kind of re-use of an old star's image and style before.
So I guess my response isn't really reflexive anti-capitalism, it's more: whatever.
Of course, were I a fan of Fred Astaire or of musicals, I'd probably think differently.
Your car never makes you feel like dancing, Michael? Maybe you need a new car. I love my car. I love my stuff. I love it when people sell me stuff. I especially love it when people try to sell me stuff in clever ways. Go stuff!
aj: Gene Kelly, and I'm no fan of musicals. What we're digging is the execution, not the fact that this has never been done before.
Just goes to show I really don't know musicals at all - I assumed Fred Astaire from the first comment in the thread. I probably should have clicked on the other link you provided.
But just in terms of execution, I have to agree - extremely impressive.
Hey, typo-boy, the 'e' comes before the 'i'. Also, I'm not quite sure whether there's a sophisticated intellectual joke in the notion of construing it differently, given that we're talking about the intentional fallacy. If so, please explain it. As Prof. Kunz knows, that just makes it more funnier.
So: As I understand it, the 'intentional fallacy' (from a famous article by some guy) means taking the meaning of an artwork to be whatever the author intended the artwork to say. When you said you didn't think it was fallacious, I took it that you meant that the meaning of the artwork really is whatever the author means it to be. I think that MFTA also thinks that--the goal of interpreting an artwork is to figure out what the author meant by it--and I gather (possibly wrongly) that this is sort of a consensus among contemporary analytic aestheticians. MFTA used it to criticize this argument.
I don't like this position myself--I think that once an artwork has been produced it carries its meaning within it. (In some sense--in some cases its environment must determine meaning. In some ways this will be analogous to the points made by the only philosopher who has been called a sexxxy bitch on this site--the meaning of words depends partly on the way that other people use them [though I think this hurts the intentional view, since his examples prove that the speaker's intention narrowly construed is not enough to determine meaning, even of an ordinary word like "sofa"]. In the aesthetic case: the meaning of say, Animal Farm, is determined partly by the history of the USSR, which is hors-texte.) However, I'm not an aesthetician, so my views here should be taken with a grain of salt. Nor am I qualified to use the term 'hors-texte'.
In philosophy of language, a field I know more about, I encounter a similar problem. There's a famous example (from David Kaplan's "Demonstratives") of the guy who points over his shoulder, where his picture of Carnap usually hangs, and says "That is a picture of a great philosopher." But some jokester has replaced it with a picture of Spiro Agnew. Jerry Fodor and Ernie LePore, for instance, argue (IIRC and being unfair) that the context of the utterance (like, what it is that the speaker is pointing at) doesn't help determine what is said--all that contributes is the meaning of the words and the speaker's intention. So here the speaker really has said of the picture of Carnap that it's a picture of a great philosopher, since that's what he intended to say--it's just impossible for the normal hearer to tell that that's what was meant, since the speaker is in fact pointing at a picture of Agnew.
I think this position is wrong. In fact, I'm tempted by the position that the speaker's intention itself makes no contribution to the content expressed; the work is all done by what a reasonable hearer could infer about the intention, in such a context. But everyone thinks that's loony (and they come up with good arguments sometimes, too).
You're going to think twice before asking me to expand on something again, aren't you?
I'm awaiting the production of French toast at the moment so all I'll say right now is that there was no typo; the spelling was intentional. But never you fear! There will be more forthcoming.
OK, I'll say this one thing about intentions: How someone says his name is spelled is how his name is spelled, period. (Also, my name is pronounced to rhyme with "meaner," so it may have the connotation you want to convey even when spelled the way it is. If I'm not overinterpreting you.)
You must be possessed of exceptionally strong character by now. As a kid, I went by Rusty rather than Russ, and the name Rusty Barnes provoked much more mirth than that terribly weak pun deserved (<beavis>should've painted it heh-heh-a-huh-huh-a-heh</beavis>).
Well, if it were pronounced "whiner" I wouldn't have been much better off, especially considering my methods of voice production and general attitude toward life (at least in elementary school). A lose-lose situation.
Note also that my name is an anagram of "meaner twit"--something I figured out only in college. That was also when someone asked me, "Has anyone ever called you Pick-a-Weiner?" "A new one! A new one!" I shouted. "I haven't heard a new one in fifteen years!"
Wait, what? Really? I seem to remember timestamps (which for instance would show how lightning-quick your response was: Unfogged Customer Service, Quicker'n a Refresh Button
(SM)), but I could be hallucinating. But then the winky-face makes me think that you're telling me that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Or are you just winking about what a dumb complaint it is? I want answers!
makes it worse than it already was. Why? Because it's an attempt to appeal to people's aesthetic sensibilities in an effort to hook an unrelated emotion onto their product. It's inauthentic and deceptive.
Oh no, there goes centuries of renaissance art. All just deceptive propoganda for the church. Keep applying that standard, and you're going to have some pretty thin gruel left in your museums. Agit art, gone. Pop art, out of here.
As far as "unrelated", I think the reason this worked as an ad for so many people is it had a very clean analogy between the video and volkswagen's message. A classic, updated. Too often, cool stuff is shoehorned into an ad with little connection.
Finally, on the lone-geek theory, I'm not sure this could be pulled off without a well financed team. Some of those images were created digitally, but I think others (like the last sequence) were shot new in a set that recreated the original.
I know I said I would respond to Matt's expansion above, and I even wrote a response which I deleted, but I do want to ask a question: You, Matt, speak of a singular meaning for an artwork ("its meaning"). Do you consider the title to be part of the artwork, part of the context, or what? Because, IIRC, there's no way to tell, in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, that the boy in the lake is Icarus. That's an identification that's probably going to be pretty important in interpreting the painting. But a crafty prankster could go into a museum and replace the little placard giving the title and date and whatnot, and give it a new title that would completely change the interpretation, even though the painting itself remains the same. (There's a painting by Veronese that was originally supposed to be of the Last Supper, but his patron or whoever thought it was too upbeat, so he retitled it "Dinner at the House of Levi". Problem solved!)
I would also like to know how you can be so certain that Animal Farm has anything to do with the USSR. I will grant that an interpretation of it as allegorizing the USSR in some way is pretty fruitful, but what if it had, you know, been typed by a monkey who wasn't quite up to Hamlet? (I suppose a less ridiculous example would be: there are a lot of interpretive consequences of identifying a sculpture as being, or referring to, a pieta. But the primary means by which you might identify a sculpture as being a pieta—a woman and man in a certain pose—is not that unusual, and could easily be produced by sculptor who knew absolutely nothing about Christianity or Christian art. I think that an interpretation of the work that employed its resemblance to the pieta-type would be illegitimate.)
I wasn't making the French toast. I didn't get home on Sunday until around 6, and then I wrote and deleted a response, and now I have better things to do at work than actually, you know, work.
In fact I could plausibly claim that no one was making French toast at all, and I was just waiting until such time as I had French toast, though I had no reasonable expectation that it would be any time soon, to respond.
There aren't a lot of people who could plausibly claim that, but I think I'm one of them.
In fact I could plausibly claim that no one was making French toast at all
Seems like an extraordinarily strong claim to me.
Anyway, given all these things that you claim, what was the original relevance of the "French toast" comment? Unfortunately I am unable to use your arrival home at Sunday at 6 in interpreting it myself, because I don't remember when this original exchange took place and the comments aren't timestamped. Grrrr.
The original relevance was that, at the time I wrote it (Sunday morning), I didn't want to devote a lot of, or even any, time to writing a response, since I had good cause to believe that I would shortly be called on to eat French toast.
Ah, so it's just that you wouldn't have been making the French toast, had the French toast been made. Got it (I think).
In response to the other points: I'm pretty sure I consider the title to be part of the artwork. The crafty prankster wouldn't have actually given the artwork a new title, but would have given the spectators misleading evidence about the title of the work. I'm not committed to the idea that the spectators can't be given a misleading impression about the meaning of the work (perhaps because I'm not committed to any of this)--for instance, a later civilization that was in possession of some bad information about the genealogy of the Romanian royal family might believe that Dorothy Parker's "Comment" was meant to be taken straight, and that Parker was claiming to be Marie of Romania. But that wouldn't make it so.
And, I guess I think that the fact that the sculptor was in complete ignorance of the tradition would be part of the context of the work. But the fact that a sculptor, producing in that tradition, said (truthfully) "Oh, I didn't mean it to be a Pieta--it's just a woman holding a dead guy with a beard"--that would cut no ice with me.
According to Metafilter, the guy ("Elsewhere") I linked to above (comment six) is the one doing the dancing in the commercial.
Why does the context in which the sculpture was sculpted trump the context in which it's encountered? (Also, it sounds odd to me to say something like "it was created in a context of the artist not knowing such-and-such". That doesn't seem all that far from "it was created in a context of the artist intending such-and-such".)
That's a good question, to which I have no immediate answer. I was thinking of something along these lines: When I speak a sentence in English, its meaning is its meaning in English and not any meaning it may have in any language that the hearer may reasonably think I'm speaking. ---> to art. But here languages are objective and interpersonal, and traditions in art are less so. So it's easier to take that line about language than about art without going intentionalist.
If it really is reasonable that a listener might think you're speaking in another language, and you're not speaking nonsense, why isn't the meaning of what you say whatever that hearer thinks it is, in that non-English language? After all, "the work is all done by what a reasonable hearer could infer about the intention, in such a context.". (Itself an odd statement, I think, since [a bunch of stuff deleted] you're still adverting to intention.)
Well, I may be OK with inferences about intention doing some of the work, instead of them doing all the work, as some advocates of the intentional "fallacy" (shudder quotes so as not to beg the question) seem to think. You're right that I have to modify the statement you've quoted to avoid that consequence, I think--but "reasonable hearer (of the language being spoken)" might do the work. After all, languages are interpersonal and so aren't entirely at the mercy of the speaker's intentions.
Anyway, I'm just proud that we put so many more comments on this one than on the shit thread.
Wow. normally I hate that sort of stuff (think Fred Astaire and a vacuum cleaner or MLK for cingular), but for some reason, I was just mesmerized by this one.
I don't know, maybe it's because I have an affinity for VW, so when they exploit dead entertainers, it doesn't bother me as much?
Posted by sam | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 12:33 PM
That was awesome. Although it kind of reminded me of the old Pontiac girl in the car video (the dancing shite), I thought that it was a creative use of something everyone recognizes in a way that supported the commercial. Thinking about it, it's so different from the original that it's "whoa, cool", and not, "bastards!"
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 1:46 PM
That is cool. But when I realized it was a VW ad, I was kind of disappointed.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 2:59 PM
Your reflexive anti-capitalism is showing. I was more impressed when I realized it was an ad; and that it worked.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 3:03 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 3:18 PM
Check this video out. David from Santa Ana. He was in a Slurpee commercial.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 3:24 PM
Wow, that's awesome Ben. Thanks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 3:46 PM
My reflexive what?!?! You must be joking.
I just thought at first that it was something someone had done for fun. When I realized that it was an expensively-produced commercial, I was kinda disappointed.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 4:07 PM
Come on b, even the slow readers have figured out that I'm never joking. Once again, you say you were disappointed that it's an ad. But why? One could just as easily think that someone did it for fun, and believe that that makes it less surprising, and assume that, given enough time, lots of folks could have made something similarly inventive. And one could go on to be impressed that an ad agency not only had a good idea, but carried it off with elegance and good taste.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 4:13 PM
I'm a purist, then. Depeche Mode songs should be left as they are, dammit!
That guy, though? With all the dancing? Super cool. :)
Posted by girl27 | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 4:49 PM
It is neat. It would just be neater if it was something that some geek had spent hours and hours and hours perfecting in his bedroom, vs. a whole host of geeks doing it 9-5 (or probably more like 9-10:30 pm, but still). I mean, it's cool that an ad agency thought of it, but not as cool as if it was the dedicated effort of a single, created, driven individual.
Go ahead, accuse me of the intentional fallacy. But how can you accuse me, the whore and shoe-lover, of being anti-capitalist? Now, really.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 4:52 PM
I've decided that I'm not sure I believe in the fallaciousness of the intentional fallacy.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 5:19 PM
I'm gonna go ahead and be the lone dissenter and say, "blah, whateva"
As someone entrenched in anti-capitalist philosophy, I agree that the fact that it's an add makes it worse than it already was. Why? Because it's an attempt to appeal to people's aesthetic sensibilities in an effort to hook an unrelated emotion onto their product. It's inauthentic and deceptive. Sell your product as your product, not as something else.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 6:30 PM
I can't think of any examples off the top of my head - because I don't watch tv much anymore, and when I do I change the channels a lot when the commercials come on - but haven't advertisers been doing this kind of thing for a few years now?
This is a lot more sophisticated, especially since it's a dance number, but I seem to remember seeing this kind of re-use of an old star's image and style before.
So I guess my response isn't really reflexive anti-capitalism, it's more: whatever.
Of course, were I a fan of Fred Astaire or of musicals, I'd probably think differently.
Posted by aj | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 6:53 PM
Your car never makes you feel like dancing, Michael? Maybe you need a new car. I love my car. I love my stuff. I love it when people sell me stuff. I especially love it when people try to sell me stuff in clever ways. Go stuff!
aj: Gene Kelly, and I'm no fan of musicals. What we're digging is the execution, not the fact that this has never been done before.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 8:26 PM
Just goes to show I really don't know musicals at all - I assumed Fred Astaire from the first comment in the thread. I probably should have clicked on the other link you provided.
But just in terms of execution, I have to agree - extremely impressive.
Posted by aj | Link to this comment | 01-28-05 9:15 PM
BW--My friend the aesthetician agrees with you, and I gather that most other analytic aestheticians agree with him. Unfortunately.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 9:42 AM
Care to expand on that, wiener face? Is it possible you're just construing it differently?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 11:08 AM
Hey, typo-boy, the 'e' comes before the 'i'. Also, I'm not quite sure whether there's a sophisticated intellectual joke in the notion of construing it differently, given that we're talking about the intentional fallacy. If so, please explain it. As Prof. Kunz knows, that just makes it more funnier.
So: As I understand it, the 'intentional fallacy' (from a famous article by some guy) means taking the meaning of an artwork to be whatever the author intended the artwork to say. When you said you didn't think it was fallacious, I took it that you meant that the meaning of the artwork really is whatever the author means it to be. I think that MFTA also thinks that--the goal of interpreting an artwork is to figure out what the author meant by it--and I gather (possibly wrongly) that this is sort of a consensus among contemporary analytic aestheticians. MFTA used it to criticize this argument.
I don't like this position myself--I think that once an artwork has been produced it carries its meaning within it. (In some sense--in some cases its environment must determine meaning. In some ways this will be analogous to the points made by the only philosopher who has been called a sexxxy bitch on this site--the meaning of words depends partly on the way that other people use them [though I think this hurts the intentional view, since his examples prove that the speaker's intention narrowly construed is not enough to determine meaning, even of an ordinary word like "sofa"]. In the aesthetic case: the meaning of say, Animal Farm, is determined partly by the history of the USSR, which is hors-texte.) However, I'm not an aesthetician, so my views here should be taken with a grain of salt. Nor am I qualified to use the term 'hors-texte'.
In philosophy of language, a field I know more about, I encounter a similar problem. There's a famous example (from David Kaplan's "Demonstratives") of the guy who points over his shoulder, where his picture of Carnap usually hangs, and says "That is a picture of a great philosopher." But some jokester has replaced it with a picture of Spiro Agnew. Jerry Fodor and Ernie LePore, for instance, argue (IIRC and being unfair) that the context of the utterance (like, what it is that the speaker is pointing at) doesn't help determine what is said--all that contributes is the meaning of the words and the speaker's intention. So here the speaker really has said of the picture of Carnap that it's a picture of a great philosopher, since that's what he intended to say--it's just impossible for the normal hearer to tell that that's what was meant, since the speaker is in fact pointing at a picture of Agnew.
I think this position is wrong. In fact, I'm tempted by the position that the speaker's intention itself makes no contribution to the content expressed; the work is all done by what a reasonable hearer could infer about the intention, in such a context. But everyone thinks that's loony (and they come up with good arguments sometimes, too).
You're going to think twice before asking me to expand on something again, aren't you?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 11:38 AM
I'm awaiting the production of French toast at the moment so all I'll say right now is that there was no typo; the spelling was intentional. But never you fear! There will be more forthcoming.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 12:45 PM
OK, I'll say this one thing about intentions: How someone says his name is spelled is how his name is spelled, period. (Also, my name is pronounced to rhyme with "meaner," so it may have the connotation you want to convey even when spelled the way it is. If I'm not overinterpreting you.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 1:10 PM
pronounced to rhyme with "meaner,"
You must be possessed of exceptionally strong character by now. As a kid, I went by Rusty rather than Russ, and the name Rusty Barnes provoked much more mirth than that terribly weak pun deserved (<beavis>should've painted it heh-heh-a-huh-huh-a-heh</beavis>).
At least you weren't Rusty Weiner.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 3:14 PM
And speaking of Rusty, I'm sure 99% of y'all have seen this already but for the one percent who haven't, this is totally worth your time.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-30-05 3:17 PM
Well, if it were pronounced "whiner" I wouldn't have been much better off, especially considering my methods of voice production and general attitude toward life (at least in elementary school). A lose-lose situation.
Note also that my name is an anagram of "meaner twit"--something I figured out only in college. That was also when someone asked me, "Has anyone ever called you Pick-a-Weiner?" "A new one! A new one!" I shouted. "I haven't heard a new one in fifteen years!"
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:41 AM
ps What happened to timestamps on comments? I liked them.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:42 AM
We've never had timestamps on comments here. People complain about it regularly. ;)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:44 AM
Wait, what? Really? I seem to remember timestamps (which for instance would show how lightning-quick your response was: Unfogged Customer Service, Quicker'n a Refresh Button
(SM)), but I could be hallucinating. But then the winky-face makes me think that you're telling me that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Or are you just winking about what a dumb complaint it is? I want answers!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:49 AM
Comments have been timeless for as long as I've been visiting.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:56 AM
We've really never had timestamps. The winky face is to acknowledge that people have asked for them before, and I've ignored them...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:58 AM
makes it worse than it already was. Why? Because it's an attempt to appeal to people's aesthetic sensibilities in an effort to hook an unrelated emotion onto their product. It's inauthentic and deceptive.
Oh no, there goes centuries of renaissance art. All just deceptive propoganda for the church. Keep applying that standard, and you're going to have some pretty thin gruel left in your museums. Agit art, gone. Pop art, out of here.
As far as "unrelated", I think the reason this worked as an ad for so many people is it had a very clean analogy between the video and volkswagen's message. A classic, updated. Too often, cool stuff is shoehorned into an ad with little connection.
Finally, on the lone-geek theory, I'm not sure this could be pulled off without a well financed team. Some of those images were created digitally, but I think others (like the last sequence) were shot new in a set that recreated the original.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 8:58 AM
my name is an anagram of "meaner twit"
Mine rearranges to "ass burners."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:05 AM
So I am hallucinating. Whoopee. It's some consolation that other people actually have asked for them.
Somebody who takes a long time to make French toast's name anagrams to "flown bones."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:19 AM
There's a famous example (from David Kaplan's "Demonstratives")
I just noticed that I use the word "famous" in an unusual way.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:22 AM
I know I said I would respond to Matt's expansion above, and I even wrote a response which I deleted, but I do want to ask a question: You, Matt, speak of a singular meaning for an artwork ("its meaning"). Do you consider the title to be part of the artwork, part of the context, or what? Because, IIRC, there's no way to tell, in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, that the boy in the lake is Icarus. That's an identification that's probably going to be pretty important in interpreting the painting. But a crafty prankster could go into a museum and replace the little placard giving the title and date and whatnot, and give it a new title that would completely change the interpretation, even though the painting itself remains the same. (There's a painting by Veronese that was originally supposed to be of the Last Supper, but his patron or whoever thought it was too upbeat, so he retitled it "Dinner at the House of Levi". Problem solved!)
I would also like to know how you can be so certain that Animal Farm has anything to do with the USSR. I will grant that an interpretation of it as allegorizing the USSR in some way is pretty fruitful, but what if it had, you know, been typed by a monkey who wasn't quite up to Hamlet? (I suppose a less ridiculous example would be: there are a lot of interpretive consequences of identifying a sculpture as being, or referring to, a pieta. But the primary means by which you might identify a sculpture as being a pieta—a woman and man in a certain pose—is not that unusual, and could easily be produced by sculptor who knew absolutely nothing about Christianity or Christian art. I think that an interpretation of the work that employed its resemblance to the pieta-type would be illegitimate.)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:49 AM
I wasn't making the French toast. I didn't get home on Sunday until around 6, and then I wrote and deleted a response, and now I have better things to do at work than actually, you know, work.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:51 AM
In fact I could plausibly claim that no one was making French toast at all, and I was just waiting until such time as I had French toast, though I had no reasonable expectation that it would be any time soon, to respond.
There aren't a lot of people who could plausibly claim that, but I think I'm one of them.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:57 AM
And Matt, your name also anagrams to "er, mein twat".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 9:58 AM
In fact I could plausibly claim that no one was making French toast at all
Seems like an extraordinarily strong claim to me.
Anyway, given all these things that you claim, what was the original relevance of the "French toast" comment? Unfortunately I am unable to use your arrival home at Sunday at 6 in interpreting it myself, because I don't remember when this original exchange took place and the comments aren't timestamped. Grrrr.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 12:15 PM
The original relevance was that, at the time I wrote it (Sunday morning), I didn't want to devote a lot of, or even any, time to writing a response, since I had good cause to believe that I would shortly be called on to eat French toast.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 12:52 PM
Ah, so it's just that you wouldn't have been making the French toast, had the French toast been made. Got it (I think).
In response to the other points: I'm pretty sure I consider the title to be part of the artwork. The crafty prankster wouldn't have actually given the artwork a new title, but would have given the spectators misleading evidence about the title of the work. I'm not committed to the idea that the spectators can't be given a misleading impression about the meaning of the work (perhaps because I'm not committed to any of this)--for instance, a later civilization that was in possession of some bad information about the genealogy of the Romanian royal family might believe that Dorothy Parker's "Comment" was meant to be taken straight, and that Parker was claiming to be Marie of Romania. But that wouldn't make it so.
And, I guess I think that the fact that the sculptor was in complete ignorance of the tradition would be part of the context of the work. But the fact that a sculptor, producing in that tradition, said (truthfully) "Oh, I didn't mean it to be a Pieta--it's just a woman holding a dead guy with a beard"--that would cut no ice with me.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-31-05 2:58 PM
According to Metafilter, the guy ("Elsewhere") I linked to above (comment six) is the one doing the dancing in the commercial.
Why does the context in which the sculpture was sculpted trump the context in which it's encountered? (Also, it sounds odd to me to say something like "it was created in a context of the artist not knowing such-and-such". That doesn't seem all that far from "it was created in a context of the artist intending such-and-such".)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 1-05 9:10 AM
That's a good question, to which I have no immediate answer. I was thinking of something along these lines: When I speak a sentence in English, its meaning is its meaning in English and not any meaning it may have in any language that the hearer may reasonably think I'm speaking. ---> to art. But here languages are objective and interpersonal, and traditions in art are less so. So it's easier to take that line about language than about art without going intentionalist.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 1-05 2:20 PM
If it really is reasonable that a listener might think you're speaking in another language, and you're not speaking nonsense, why isn't the meaning of what you say whatever that hearer thinks it is, in that non-English language? After all, "the work is all done by what a reasonable hearer could infer about the intention, in such a context.". (Itself an odd statement, I think, since [a bunch of stuff deleted] you're still adverting to intention.)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 1-05 5:21 PM
Well, I may be OK with inferences about intention doing some of the work, instead of them doing all the work, as some advocates of the intentional "fallacy" (shudder quotes so as not to beg the question) seem to think. You're right that I have to modify the statement you've quoted to avoid that consequence, I think--but "reasonable hearer (of the language being spoken)" might do the work. After all, languages are interpersonal and so aren't entirely at the mercy of the speaker's intentions.
Anyway, I'm just proud that we put so many more comments on this one than on the shit thread.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-05 8:54 AM
Around here, all the threads are shit threads.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 2-05 9:26 AM