The assignment that we've just completed was the essay about authorship in pop culture. I actually had fun researching for and writing this paper. It's been a very long time since I have been able to say that I had fun writing a paper for school. For some reason, this assignment didn't seem like work. I was very interested in relating what we have been learning in class to something more familiar to me. My paper focused on Barthes' idea of authorship from his article "The Death of the Author" in comparison to the movie 8 Mile. When I first thought of the two, I didn't see any connection, and thought, "This should be an interesting challenge..." But when I started watching the movie again, with Barthes in the back of my mind, so many similarities/oppositions stood out to me, that I began to see the movie in a whole new light. In addition to seeing the movie differently, I also understand Barthes' article much more than I did at first. I think this is an awesome way to increase interest in these philosophical texts--by relating them to what we know and are interested in.
While watching 8 Mile, I noticed many things that opposed what Barthes said in his article. The one that kept appearing in the movie was the idea that there is a relationship of "life" between the author and reader. Barthes' main idea was that when an author writes, s/he "dies" and essentially the reader is "born". However, in 8 Mile, it's more like the author (played by Eminem) is still "alive" when he raps and the audience is "born". He raps so much about himself (where he came from, his race, his life story etc.) that the audience has no choice but to hear him along with the language.
I couldn't get the video to upload on this blog for some reason, but if you have a few mins (~2), and you want to see this example of authorship from 8 Mile, check out this video of Jimmy (Eminem) rapping about himself in a battle.
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3 comments:
i was actually going to do my paper on 8 mile as well, but did not have a readily available copy of the movie on hand, but it was a good choice. i do agree with you that this movie represents Barthes article a lot.
nice video! you're lucky you could find one online with all the copyrighting frenzies going on these days...
8 Mile was a good choice! I agree with you that the movie opposes a lot of what Barthes said in his article. When Jimmy raps about his life the audience better relates to him because they know where he is coming from.
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