i. you can now (“now”) go out and buy versions of a film w.people talking right through it! when did we sign up for this brilliant development — if i have one full-on objection to the 19th-century model of art it is the “keep quiet and absorb what’s good for you” angle
ii. i do not believe that you turn primarily to the AUTHOR to disocver the meaning of the work (their job is in fact to PRODUCE the work; meaning for them no more than a pretext or quaint device to help them finish and shape it — and for us it arrives, evolves, takes root and blooms once we are persuaded we wish to start discussing it)
iii. films based on books have A MULTIPLE COLLECTIVITY OF AUTHORS by NO MEANS IN SYNC w.ONE ANOTHER: “Peter Jackson’s” LotR collective, notwithstanding executive decision auteur-shaped power at the top, numbers HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS
iv. the thing that made me think abt all of this is the HEATED ARGUMENT that actors (and close friends) elijah wood and sean astin (ie frodo and sam, once they put their accents back on) have, during the commentary to the TWO TOWERS, abt the precise WAY in which LotR is anti-war, given the time of its making and etc etc. No need to claim either of their views are deeply worked through or logical: the point is, the finished (haha “finished”) object contains both, even if it’s only at the level of actorly body-language decisions responding to the polylogue of speeches and language-modes in the novel.
v. ok yeah so all this is so much hohum bahktinian (and/or brechtian) blah, except it’s happening anyway… it didn’t need knowledge of B&B to kick it off in the first place, and it doesn’t need citation of B&B to validate or curate or steer it.
vi. “And anyway is a traditional final rock criterion. Etc. So. So. So my whole summation does whatever iot does and does anyway too, but watch the anyway level.” R.Meltzer, Aesthetics of Rock, not TWO PAGES IN! (i never quite understood that bit TILL I WROTE THIS POST!)
vii. The LotR special extended DVD edition plays the entire 12-hour film, plus ditto w.four full-length commentaries from difft technical teams; plus 43 (!) documentaries about the design, making, storytelling etc; plus interactive maps and picture galleries — even if the “work” itself is the distilled commodity fetish form, which selected permutation of these remixes constitutes the “work” itself?
viii. i’d better stop here i think as per worried reader request