I wonder how much cultural context contributes to the interpretation of a work upon reading it?
Rather a lot, I suspect. The idea for this project came when I was reading lots of HP fics and dojinshi for fun and started to wonder why the dojinshika did tons and tons of James/Snape, while that's a real rarepair in English-language HP fandom. Open work theory gets dragged in because it's useful as a framework for comparing two different media from two different cultures without bringing in my own cultural preconceptions right from the start, and because the kind of artwork it describes is amazingly similar to fanwork, and the theoretical implications interest me.
There's this set of books for Japanese speakers who want to read Harry Potter in English. They're full of explanations of uncommon words and British elements and customs in the books that would make no sense to Japanese readers. I suspect that if a Japanese reader isn't reading HP while cross-referencing one of those explanatory volumes, he or she reads something entirely different than a British reader does. Hell, I probably read something different too - I'm not a Brit.
Re: Ueda-sensei... That's the problem with assuming that authorial intent is all that matters, isn't it. You can stuff as much authorial intent into your work as you like, the people who end up reading or seeing it (and making fanwork about it) will happily interpret it from their own personal experiences. Those interpretations may or may not match your Authorial Intent, but it's totally pointless and pretty self-important to snipe about people who interrogate your stuff from the wrong perspective. (Thank you for that one, Anne Rice, I owe you so much.)
no subject
Rather a lot, I suspect. The idea for this project came when I was reading lots of HP fics and dojinshi for fun and started to wonder why the dojinshika did tons and tons of James/Snape, while that's a real rarepair in English-language HP fandom. Open work theory gets dragged in because it's useful as a framework for comparing two different media from two different cultures without bringing in my own cultural preconceptions right from the start, and because the kind of artwork it describes is amazingly similar to fanwork, and the theoretical implications interest me.
There's this set of books for Japanese speakers who want to read Harry Potter in English. They're full of explanations of uncommon words and British elements and customs in the books that would make no sense to Japanese readers. I suspect that if a Japanese reader isn't reading HP while cross-referencing one of those explanatory volumes, he or she reads something entirely different than a British reader does. Hell, I probably read something different too - I'm not a Brit.
Re: Ueda-sensei... That's the problem with assuming that authorial intent is all that matters, isn't it. You can stuff as much authorial intent into your work as you like, the people who end up reading or seeing it (and making fanwork about it) will happily interpret it from their own personal experiences. Those interpretations may or may not match your Authorial Intent, but it's totally pointless and pretty self-important to snipe about people who interrogate your stuff from the wrong perspective. (Thank you for that one, Anne Rice, I owe you so much.)