My position on the "intentional fallacy" is this. The "content" of
anything -- anything that has content or "meaning" in the first place -- is
a matter of *interpretation*. Interpretation is a complicated and
context-sensitive business, and the factors that have to be taken into
account are many and various. Among these factors, usually, are the
intentions of the author(s). So while the intentions of the author(s) are
certainly not the *final word* on interpretation, they are hardly ever
*wholly irrelevant* either.

I accept that even when intentions are an important constraint on
interpretation, they are never the only constraint on interpretation, and
even if they were, it would never be possible to avoid interpretation. The
only way of telling what an author's intentions are is by examining what he
says and does and creates, and that entails interpretation too. The author's
intentions are themselves a sort of secondary "text". If we think an author'
s "other works" are relevant to the interpretation of "this work", that's
usually because the "other works" reveal aspects of the author's intentions
that may not be obvious when we consider "this work" in isolation.

When I referred to the intentions of the authors of _Shane_ in a previous
e-mail, I was not "basing" my interpretation of the film on the supposedly
rock-solid "ground" of the authors' intentions. Rather, I was bringing in
some relevant information. For example, in some scenes of _Shane_, the boy
wears what might appear (to 20th century eyes) to be a dress. It is in fact
a night-shirt of the sort worn by male children in late 19th century Wyoming
log cabins. Or at least, that is what it is *intended* to be. Surely that is
relevant to the question whether the boy is "wonderfully androgynous"?

One of the many constraints on interpretation is consistency, and I think
that Sitton's suggestion that the boy's interest in Shane is "homophilic" is
inconsistent with some of the other things he says. He says "it is clear who
the father-figure really is", and if Shane were to stay, Joey would have the
"real dad he wants". If Joey sees Shane so unambiguously as a father-figure,
then how can he have a "homophilic" interest in him? Surely there is some
tension between these two ways of seeing him?

(None of which is to deny that most of the rest of Sitton's review is
interesting and true and important.)

By the way, I think the question whether Shane can be Joey's "substitute
father" hangs over the whole film like a thundercloud. Shane's arrival marks
the beginning of the end of the threat from without (Ryker and his men) but
the beginning of the threat from within (Shane the lover of Marian and
"father" to Joey).

Jeremy

----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Sitton <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2000 08:20
Subject: Re: Sitton on Shane


>
> "The Intentional Fallacy" was a signal article in the field of aesthetics
> written by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in the Sewanee Review in
> 1946.  Is that what we're talking about?
>
> Re. Sex and "Shane".  I quite agree that Stevens' point-of-view, and that
> of the U.S. in 1953, was one of avoiding the topic entirely.  I agree that
> my "reading" of homophilic overtones in the relationship between the boy
> and Shane is a matter of contemporary hindsight.  However, I do not think
> that makes it any the less valid.
>
>
> Bob Sitton
>
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