ar too
>many self-congratulatory hack critics have pretty much redefined it as
>"the foolish author has no idea what he's really doing, only we
>enlightened elite do".No argument here. The way I tend to approach it is that the final authority on the work is the work itself; authorial intent is informative but not definitive. There are good reasons for this; intending to communicate or portray one thing and ending up with something far more horrible happens quite a bit, and it bites especially hard when it's part of a larger cultural trend.
The above examples are rather extreme, but they're there to establish why "death of the author" is a thing. It means that, although Zack Snyder was trying to create a female empowerment fantasy and also make geek males feel guilty for male gaze and reduction of women to eye candy, what came out was a misogynistic, exploitative mess that commits the same sins Snyder said he was trying to skewer.
All of which rounds back to why the Corwin/Utena relationship (and the Corwin/Utena/Anthy triad) ultimately killed my ability to enjoy Symphony of the Sword. I get that Gryphon intended otherwise, but intention alone doesn't stop me from reading that progression in a far more unsettling fashion. It starts with this bit from Interlude at Bancroft Tower No. 1 in D Minor:
"Is that all you're going to say?" Corwin persisted. "What I
mean is... aren't you going to give me the usual speech about how I'm
a really great guy, and you like me a lot, and you hope we can still
be friends?"
That line of his? It reminds me of how Internet "Nice Guys" tend to view rejection. His subsequent behavior towards her -- going out to spend time with just her, including extended trips with just of the two of them, behavior that's dating in all but name -- reads an awful lot like he's put her in the girlfriend zone, and he's taking advantage of her being in an emotionally vulnerable and isolated state (consciously or otherwise) to level up from "friend" to "love interest."
Alternatively, she's aware of what's going on with their not-dating, and that ... really doesn't let Corwin off the hook (much), and it also means that, by poly standards, she's cheating on Anthy.
Either way, it skeeves me the fuck out when their relationship goes from friendship to romance, because it reads to me as validating the Nice Guy victim complex at the very least, and perhaps also tacitly endorsing cheating.
"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding