Jennifer Talbott

Professor Josh Malitsky

C503 Intro to Media Theory and Aesthetics

16 December 2010

Final Take-Home Assignment

Many of the authors studied in the final section of this course seems to agree that textual

analysis, while important in the way it contributes scholarly interpretation of a text to the larger

body of readings, is not sufficient to understand all that a text encompasses. These authors

emphasize that no one text is an untouchable authority for all time, and that in fact there is no

one true meaning contained within any studied text. This being the case, broader cultural and

reception studies are necessary to pick up where textual analysis fails. Only by reviewing the

entire body of readings—created both by scholars/critics and the public readers—along with the

cultural, political and historical moment of reception can we begin to understand the full effects

of a text on spectators, on society, and its import in history.

Bennett, Tony. “Text and Social Process: the Case of James Bond.”

Tony Bennett argues that no text has one immutable meaning wrapped up in its essence,

available to anyone who has the correct tools to uncover it. Because there is no absolute meaning

in a text, there can be no “right” reading of a text and, by extension, no wrong reading. While

textual analysis and contextual criticism are important methods by which a text can be explored,

more is needed to understand the text and all that surrounds it. While analyzing the text, one

must take into account the historical, social and political moments of the text’s reception to gain

a fuller knowledge of what the text means to readers.

 Bennett points to an argument between Leavis and Bateson on contextual criticism to

begin his assertion that there is no such thing as a text, but only the texts. Leavis makes a

statement likely believed by many textual analysts, that a text (his example is a poem) “‘is a

determinate thing; it is there...’ And all that is necessary is to ‘read it…’ in the ‘serious sense of

the verb’” (Bennett, 4). Bateson’s opposition gets close to Bennett’s underlying argument from

the cultural studies mindset that “‘there is nothing there, nothing objectively apprehensible,

except a number of conventional black marks’” (Bennett, 4).

The idea that no text has an objective, incontrovertible meaning is further supported by

what the author terms the “iterability” of books—in each print of a book, choices are made that

influence the reading, choices such as cover design and typeface. In this sense, a book comes to

readers as “always-already-read,” borrowing from Jameson. Benjamin and Adorno are also

invoked to support this point, who both claimed that mass mechanical reproduction separates the

work of art from its aura, its authentic self. This gave each work a “radical iterability such that its

meaning could not be specified in advance of the contexts in which it might be inserted”

(Bennett, 14). The James Bond novels are a prime example of how printing choices, which may

changed over time, likely altered the meaning of the James Bond novel for readers: the books

originally were wrapped in cover art that connoted quality, high class, literature, and the spy

genre while the cover of later editions focused on the sexual, sensational aspects of the stories,

probably to be more in line with the films. This demonstrates that one novel by one author still

does not qualify as “a single text but an incredible heterogeneity of texts, each inscribed in

different social and ideological relations by different publishing apparatuses” (Bennett, 10).

With neither a text nor an absolute meaning to be found therein, textual analysis alone

cannot possibly explain the phenomenon of the texts and the varying reactions by different
readers. When considering the texts that make up the world of James Bond, for example, it is

necessary to take into account changing social and political ideologies from the time the first

novel was written in the 1950s to the most recent film in the late 2000s. While Bennett sees the

value in textual and contextual criticism, he finds both lacking, saying ‘that neither of these

approaches can come to terms with the equally real, equally material and perhaps more socially

consequential issues posed by what I have elsewhere called ‘the living life of the text’—the real

history of its activation” (Bennett, 13-14).

In order to uncover the real, material and socially consequential issues surrounding texts,

a cultural studies approach must be taken. Such an approach looks at the cultural and political

moments at the time of origination and of later readings, and considers all readings of the texts as

equally valid. For if there is no one right reading of the texts, there can be no wrong reading—

only different readings according to differences in the readers and their reception. This stance is

taken up by Leavis, whom Bennett agrees with in this instance, asserting that “no amount of

contextual information could provide the criteria whereby a specific interpretation of a text might

be finally validated as correct” (Bennett, 4). Therefore, the author claims that textual analysis

should not be pursued in order find the true meaning of a text, but rather a more productive

endeavor would be a historical and cultural study of all the “incrustations” attached to a work.

By using the example of James Bond, I can easily see Bennett’s point that a textual

analysis of the content of a text (be it a book, a film, graphic novel, or other medium) may not

touch on what it means to readers and—certainly in the case of Bond—to a society. While a

scholarly dissection of a text will bring to light certain aspects missed by the masses, I agree with

Bennett that

no use or inscription of a text… may be left out… because, from a particular critical
standpoint, it is regarded as ‘false’ or ‘untutored’. ‘Untutored’ readings are just as real
 and material in their effects as ‘tutored’ ones and may, indeed, be considerably more
influential. (Bennett, 9)

Hansen, Miriam. “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship.”

Although Miriam Hansen does not directly point out the faults of textual analysis in the

way Bennett does, it is clear that she does not believe textual analysis, and specifically

psychoanalytical textual criticisms, are adequate means of explaining the phenomenon that was

Valentino. While textual analyses are important to add to the field of opinions, Hansen seems to

prove Bennett’s point that there is no one correct reading of a text or works—she references at

least 11authors in her exploration of Valentino and female spectatorship.

One reason it may have been necessary to review so many other authors is the difference

of opinion among even the most “tutored” readings of women’s film or female spectator

pleasure. Agreeing with Bennett, Hansen notes that differences between theories of women’s

films (Doane, Willams and Modleski in this example) may be due to the films chosen for

analysis, “but it is also, and perhaps most important, a question of reading” (Hansen, 9).

Even Mulvey’s extensive work on spectatorship and pleasure in narrative cinema has its

shortcomings when applied to Valentino and his films. Hansen is not the first to point out the

challenge of applying Mulvey to female spectator pleasure, yet the “cult of Valentino” makes

this approach’s limitations quite obvious. Mulvey herself appended her original explanation of

female pleasure to try and accommodate more diverse spectators; illustrating Bennett’s assertion

that even for its author, no text can be an indisputable authority over time.

Beyond Mulvey, the widely-accepted psychoanalytical theory on the woman’s role in

narrative cinema (both on screen and in the audience) through a Lacanian take on Freud seems

strained when trying to fit with films directed at women. Valentino bent the gender roles of to-
be-looked-at-ness, challenging the rather mainstream ideas of scopophilia and the woman as the

object of the gaze. Hansen suggests that Freud may have some answers without Lacan’s help,

referring to Freud’s dual dichotomies in which “a voyeur is always to some degree an

exhibitionist and vice versa, just as the sadist shares the pleasures of masochism” (13). If this is

the case, then perhaps Valentino activated the less dominant half of female spectators (who

normally get scopophilic pleasure from being looked at by males), allowing them to take

pleasure in looking at the male object. This temporary reversal of roles may illustrate Freud’s

point that the desires to be looked at as an object and to subject another to the look are

simultaneously existent in the female spectator. Women may also take masochistic pleasure in

the sadistic signifiers laced throughout Valentino’s films, hoping, as one of his vamps did, “one

day to be beaten by these [Valentino’s] strong hands” (Hansen, 18).

Whatever the underlying psychological reasons, the mass enjoyment of Valentino and his

films by female audiences to the point of hysteria is undeniable. To gain a more complete picture

of what the star and his pictures meant, it is imperative to look beyond textual analysis to a

historical reception model—to research the political sentiment and societal issues at the time his

films were released. Hansen lists some of the changing concerns of the time, such as the

woman’s place in the workforce post-war, her shifting role in the home, and her sexual

liberalization. Reviewing the transformations occurring to women’s roles during this time, many

feminist critics have tried to incorporate complications outside of psychoanalysis, such as “class

and race, with cultural and historical specificity” (Hansen, 16). If part of Valentino’s appeal to

female spectators was his racial and sexual difference, then, Hansen states, “it is therefore all the

more important to reconsider the historical moment at which Valentino enters that discourse
[which ties pleasure to power], marking its conjunction with other discourses, in particular those

of social mobility and racial otherness” (23).

Yet even historical reception has its drawbacks: when imagining the reception of a

historical or theoretical spectator, it is impossible to keep the subjectivity of the analyst from

influencing the anticipated reading. Hansen might also have called up Jameson’s term “always-

already-read” when she says that “the textually constructed spectator/subject does not have any

objective existence apart from our reading of the film, which is always partial and, if we choose,

partisan” (9). Further, when researching historical reactions to Valentino and his films, it is

impossible to know what the true level of his impact was and what was exacerbated by the mass

media. But despite these limitations, Hansen seems to agree with Bennett that a wider analysis

than textual/psychoanalytical is needed in order to best understand the influence of a work or, in

this case, an author/star.

I have often struggled to understand how psychoanalytical reception theory would apply

to the female spectator who enjoys a mainstream film or to films targeted to women. Hansen

clearly delineated where Mulvey, other feminist critics and Lacan can be applied to the female

spectator and where there are complications in their theories. I would agree, then, that textual

analysis is not enough to explain the spectacle of Valentino and that a historical reception

approach is the best method of investigation to discover what impact he and his films truly had

on his contemporary audience.

Jenkins, Henry. “Searching for the Origami Unicorn.”

In Henry Jenkins’s chapter on transmedia storytelling, the author is focused much more

on understanding what a transmedia narrative is and how it is received by various audiences than
what the meaning is behind a particular text. However, the author finds that for those spectators

and analysts who take as their subject for critique only a few texts out of the multitude that make

up a transmedia story, incomplete and often negative conclusions may be drawn. In the dispersed

world of The Matrix, for example, relying on one text’s or a set of texts’ authority will ignore a

large portion of what the producers have created. This thinking lines up well with Bennett’s

theory that there are only the (plural) texts and that no text has an inherent authority over others.

For Jenkins, transmedia storytelling is a natural progression for narrative works in

today’s convergence culture, yet it is not a new occurrence—he points to Homer’s The Odyssey,

which drew on other stories and myths as well as societal and political signifiers to tell

Odysseus’s epic tale. A reader who has the single text of The Odyssey to consume and analyze

(Jenkins refers to the confused high schooler) would be missing a large part of what made this

story understandable and likely enjoyable for the historical audience. In more recent history, yet

still before video games and the Internet were added to the storyteller’s grab bag of tools, films

based on books or books written within the world of a film continued Homer’s extra-textual

storytelling—in each case the longer medium tends to fill in gaps left by its counterpart, while

creating a more full and meaningful world for those who take the time to explore both. (The first

example which came to my mind was The Princess Bride, which as legend would have it started

in novel form hundreds of years before the film was created in 1986, but which actually was

written by the screenwriter, likely at the same time or after the screenplay was completed.

Regardless of the order, the book fills in back stories on many of the main characters and colors

the political sentiments and social issues at play in the fictional country of Florin).

Without taking a multi-textual approach to The Matrix, many critics and spectators were

disappointed and confused by the second and third films. One critic flatly refused to look
anywhere outside of the traditional set of movie texts, saying “‘…what matters to me is the film

and only the film. I don’t want to have to “enhance” the cinematic experience by overloading on

souped-up flimflam’” (Morrow via Jenkins, 106). For example, Jenkins points out that some

critics were confused by a number of the production choices made in the films which appear to

highlight seemingly minor characters (Niobe upstaging Morpheus in screen time in the third

film), including dialogue that has no context and seems completely out of place (between Neo

and the Kid, also in the third film), and leaving apparently large holes in the plot that are never

addressed. For spectators who were willing to go beyond a one-text analysis, who are willing to

accept that the authors did not make these decisions lightly, part of the pleasure of this narrative

is in seeking out the answers to questions the films raised. Jenkins describes fans racing, “dazed

and confused, from the theaters to plug into Internet discussion lists, where every detail would be

dissected and every possible interpretation debated” (96).

This kind of pleasure is foreign to more traditional textual analysts, and even Roger Ebert

mocks this kind of devotion to finding answers outside of the film texts, saying “these speeches

[Internet discussions about the meaning behind The Matrix] provide not meaning, but the effect

of meaning” (Jenkins, 126). And while acknowledging that “part of the fun is becoming an

expert in the deep meaning of shallow pop mythology,” Ebert still negates the merit of such

endeavors by referring to the contributors as “fanboys” and the subject of discussion as “the

transient extrusions of mass culture” (Jenkins, 126). In striking contrast to the cultural studies

approach taken by Bennett and Jenkins, it seems the contextual critics (at least the ones quoted

here) see no value in including the “untutored readings” of spectators in their textual analysis.

Where textual analysts may lament the death of the narrative based on the seemingly

haphazard storytelling of such film as The Matrix trilogy and disregard the input of the
spectatorial masses, cultural and reception studies empower the masses to contribute to and

complete the narrative. Jenkins references Janet Murray in support of the healthy life of narrative

texts, saying that digital media has allowed the storage of huge volumes of information, an

“encyclopedic capacity” which will “lead to new narrative forms as audiences seek information

beyond the limits of the individual story” (118).

If transmedia storytelling is in fact a positive reaction to the convergence mindset, taking

advantage of the diverse tools available to create a rich world that will engage readers, then only

cultural and reception studies can adequately examine texts and the effects they have on readers.

Agreeing again with Bennett, Jenkins believes that no text is more or less important than any

other text, including those created by the audience. In the age of convergence, an author can

create a world in a text that encourages participation, for “the world is bigger than the film,

bigger even than the franchise—since fan speculations and elaborations also expand the world in

a variety of directions” (Jenkins, 116). Somewhat similar to the dichotomy proposed by Freud

that in every person there is both a desire to look and to be looked at, Jenkins suggests that in this

new world of narrative production each spectator is a producer and vice versa. It would make no

sense to evaluate such a universe based on one set of texts, even those professionally-produced

originators. Indeed, although “criticism may once have been a meeting of two minds—the critic

and the author—…now there are multiple authors and multiple critics” (Jenkins, 132).

While I accept Jenkins’s argument that a textual analysis based on a limited set of works

may not suffice for such transmedia narratives as The Matrix, I do think it’s important for each

media text to stand on its own, at least for the professionally-produced pieces. Jenkins makes this

assertion as well, noting that it is because The Matrix did not meet this requirement that so many

critics and spectators were lost after the first film. Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine how a
‘good’ transmedia narrative would function for all spectators, as no examples are given or seem

to exist yet. It is also somewhat difficult for me to accept that all contributions to a story are

equally legitimate, for surely some texts are better produced and more aligned with the

intricacies of the story-world than others—although I’m not sure if this is what Jenkins is saying

exactly, or if he rather wants to ensure that no fan-created ‘incrustations’ are dismissed outright.

In any case, it is clear that cultural and reception studies are better suited to explore such

multimedia narratives than textual analysis.

Personal research methods

Since I am not pursuing a research-based degree, it is not likely that I will have much

opportunity to continue analyzing media in the intense, structured way we have been in this

course. However, as a producer of media content, I can imagine that issues of specificity may

come up: for instance, if I come across a narrative idea that has not yet been assigned to a

particular medium, I may endeavor to evaluate what medium would best tell the story. Whether

it’s through the extended, scopophilic gaze of the cinema or through the live, interruptible

viewing of television, or perhaps in an interactive and collaborative digital format or even a

transmedia world that uses the best of each medium.

More likely, however, I can envision taking a reception studies approach to understand

how spectators react to and interact with a text. Whether as a producer or as a member of the

marketing team for a media product, it is imperative to attempt to understand how an audience

will engage with the text, especially in cases like Survivor, where the spectator participation is a

driving force in continuing the momentum of a show, or The Matrix, where fans expand the

created world in a productive way. This will be especially important if I find myself working in
television (which is my current goal)—for in television, the continuation of a series is entirely

dependent on how the audience reacts and how many spectators are compelled to keep watching

week after week.

In the school of Telecommunications, I believe the cultural and reception studies are the

main approaches taken by those researching media, so my desire to pursue such methods in

preparing for my career will be supported by the department. As far as I know, the media

specificity and textual analysis methodologies have a much less defined place within the

discipline, so I am grateful for the opportunity to take advantage of alternative schools of thought

throughout the university to gain as many analysis tools as possible.