The Curtains are Never Just Blue · 2:01am Jul 28th, 2015
Let's do this whole "actually publishing a Monday blog post" thing again!
So, a while ago Jake R made a video about the above picture, explaining why it was dumb, and basically arguing Death of the Author: that analysis of art doesn’t begin or end with authorial intent, which is a perfectly valid point.
However, I’d like to explain why this would be a dumb thing to say if you are an author working on a book or story, and very much alive. Basically, if an author writing “The curtains are blue,” and the only thing you mean by that is that the curtains are blue, they’re wasting my time.
...but the good news is that even if they think that’s what they were writing, it’s probably not.
First, let’s mention that the English teacher interpretation is probably ridiculous. Not necessarily, if the story is called “The Blue Curtains,” and this is a line repeated throughout the story, and it’s about depression, then there’s a good case to be made. Generally speaking, the more important a detail is to the story, or the more it’s emphasized, the more it means in terms of subtext. If nothing else, it’s developing subtext just based on how the author keeps using it.
To pull an example from the show, the star from Twilight’s cutie mark pops up a lot: It’s in her cutie mark, it’s on the tree of harmony, it’s on the floor of her throne room, and it’s on Shining Armor’s cutie mark. Whatever it might mean in Equestria, it’s a fair reading to say that the writers use it to show things that are connected to Twilight, and often to show Twilight’s connection to her friends. Because we’ve seen it a lot, and in important places, and seen what happens to those things, we can put together some specific associations. If the star showed up on a towel in the Apple’s bathroom without explanation, it would be confusing. (I mean, to people who don’t know about AJ and Twilight’s burning passion for each other.)
But that’s usually intentional on the part of any author. We’re talking about a situation where an author mentions some detail in passing, like they’re just describing a room and say the curtains are blue.
They’re still saying more than “the curtains are blue.” Even if they never thought about it.
(Rarity Approved 
)
Any time an author is describing something, they’re trying to give you a mental image. But along with that, they’d conveying the purpose of the scene or character or object, and the tone associated with it. Each detail is a piece of the puzzle that tells us not only what we would see, but how we should feel about it. Even if the author isn’t thinking about it, they’re using our common knowledge of the world to play on associations we have with specific things and the language used to talk about them.
“The curtains were blue.” suggests a scene that’s very different from “There were no curtains hanging in the windows.” or “The curtains were zebra print.” or “The curtains were a deep royal blue.” or “The curtains were blue, but had faded to gray.”
And that’s only a piece of the puzzle:
“The curtains were blue. The bedspread was blue. The carpet was a neutral beige.”
“The curtains were blue. The bedspread was neon green zebra print. The carpet was red with giant yellow flowers.”
“The curtains were blue, and a crib sat in the corner.”
I think we can agree that these rooms are going to play different parts in a story. But none of them just mean “the curtains were blue.”
Then on top of that, in first person or third person limited POV, were also getting information about the character just noticing the blue curtains. The word “blue” means we aren’t dealing with Rarity, for one thing; we’re dealing with a character who thinks in basic colors. And being told this might mean that the character is noticing the colors of the room for some reason. Are they bored? Looking for clues about the person who decorated it? Making a judgement about it? What did they decide?
What did you, as the reader decide this means about the room? Usually it’s something, and hopefully it’s what the author intended. There are implications to everything in a story, and usually you don’t even notice because they’re just the way the story or the world is, and the author probably feels the same. But there’s a good chance you’d notice if you read a story where all the implications were random and didn’t fit together, because it would be a godawful story.
So, in short, the dichotomy presented in the image at the top is false; those aren’t the only two options. But while the English teacher will be wrong some of the time, anyone who thinks all the author was saying is “the curtains were fucking blue” is wrong nearly all of the time.
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Given the, ah, time lapse between this and Jake's blog, I'm curious as to what brought this on.
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Finally having time to write it up, and needing something to write about. I actually wrote a shorter version of this as a comment on Jake's blog, but Jake is a loser and accidentally deleted the post. (Love ya' Jake!)
WEEEEE! I forgot you had a Patreon, but now I'm patronizing you! :D
Don't worry AJ, there is no star on your towel in your bathroom we swear.
3275179 Ah, I see. I do recall his being a bit more heated, to put it nicely. I'll admit, I can see a bit of both sides of the argument, though I trend more toward the "sometimes, it doesn't have to be a metaphor for anything, it can just be the author crafting a setting". I'm hardly one to say "this has no meaning other than X" because that's bullshit. At the same time, there is a point of over analyzing stuff like this, but it depends on the context in the story—certainly the color of the curtains could just be a part of crafting the scene, but they could also accentuate or contrast the character's mood.
Either way, there's my two cents that no one asked for. :P
You, uh, might need to update your followed users at the end. Noble Thought hasn't been Lambent Dream for many months, and your link doesn't go to any page either.
But this was very interesting. Made me think.
Thank you.
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I appreciate this!
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Thanks for pointing that out! I knew they switched at some point, but for some reason I thought it was too Lambent Dream. Shows how observant I am.
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My point is that even crafting a scene is a symbol of something. You're crafting it to convey the taste level and personality of the person who decorated it or lives there, or the type of business and how it's conducted, or the way the POV character is viewing it. It doesn't have to be a metaphor, but the author picked these details because he was trying to make these words feel like something to the reader.
There's no point to setting a scene that doesn't mean anything at all about the story or characters or plot or world. At that point they might as well be in a white box. That's bad writing.
3275253 I would wholeheartedly agree with that.
I've always interpreted Twilight's star as referring to great magic. I mean, do a quick tally of specialized magic users and their cutie marks (and this is off the top of my head, so I could very well miss a few):
Shining Armor: star over shield, with three stars above (immensely powerful shield spell that neither of the Princesses can pull off)
The Great and Powerful Trixie: Star-topped wand over moon-shaped mass of stars (as stage magician, most likely specializing in illusions and similar ephemeral enchantments)
Twilight Sparkle: A star on top of a star surrounded by stars (Element of Magic)
Star Swirl the Bearded [assuming the symbol on his book in Magical Mystery Cure is his cutie mark]: Four grey stars arranged on a spiral (the dude's kind of the first and last word in unicorn magic)
Celestia: the sun [which is totally a star] (governs the movements of the sun itself)
Sunset Shimmer: another sun, but equal parts red and gold (she was powerful enough to be a student of Celestia)
Starlight Glimmer: A purple star on a white star and magic flamey swirly bits (can steal your special talent)
_________________________-
In other news, I love this post, and wish there was a system in place to catalog our favorite posts. This is the sort of thing that should be taught at seminars.
My personal favorite is "Death Sentence of the Author," in which one takes offense at their own interpretation of an author's work and then blames them for it.
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I have had that one happen to me. It's both frustrating and hilarious.
Oh come on!
That image is clearly meant as a criticism of a certain type of literary teacher. You're both misinterpreting the context so you can grind your axes about the every-popular death-of-the-author discussion. Even just acknowledging that the sentence "The curtains were blue." can have multiple meanings puts you miles ahead of anyone the image was aimed at.
thisistwitchy.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/irony-alert-ironic.jpg
Clearly what the author meant by "the curtains were fucking blue", was that the curtains were getting intimate with the dog.
vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/thebluescluesencyclopedia/images/6/6b/Blue_Wagging_Her_Tail.gif
I think you can make a better version of the "just fucking blue" school of literary criticism[1]: Stories don't mean, they are. The color of the curtains has implications: whoever decorated the room likes conventional decor, whoever described the room has a basic eye for color, &c &c &c, but in themselves the curtains don't mean anything. There are curtains in a room. The narrator has described them as 'blue.' That's the end of it. You can choose to ascribe meaning to it, certainly, but that's entirely your own affair.
The school of thought justfuckingblueism argues against is treating books as ciphers that need decoding in which everything must have a hidden meaning usually decoded through the use of very dubious reasoning[2]. And, yeah, that is annoying.
[1] ...is a sentence nobody has ever said in the history of the English language.
[2] Fr'instance: Blue is the color of sadness. Anyone with the initials J.C. is secretly a Jesus-figure &c.
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I agree with not treating books as ciphers, but I still disagree with treating them as some kind of thing which just exists, in a situation where the goal is to study it.
Look at it this way: if someone wants to study Whom the Princesses Would Destroy and asks "Why is Dotted Line grey?"
Well, it's probably not because it symbolizes that he's one of the alien ponies who are secretly running Equestria (whatever the more creative tabloids might say.)
However, it's also untrue that he's grey because he is. (Or because his parents are. Besides, we don't know what color his parents were, and you don't get to help us because you're metaphorically dead, and too busy doing other things to metaphorically haunt our hypothetical English class.)
If we are studying Whom the Princesses Would Destroy, we should probably note that Dotted Line is grey because it helps to establish his character, which is something you famously did well, and because it works with him also being shaggy to present a contrast to the clean, bright Canterlot, and that contrasts are often used in humor.
You may not have put any thought into what color Dotted is, or you might have known what colors his parents were and worked out the genetic probability, but if you had decided he really ought to be lime green it wouldn't have worked as well, and Whom the Princesses Would Destroy would have been a little less good, and we might not be metaphorically killing you in my hypothetical English class.
Justfuckingblueism is fine, maybe even superior, if you want to read a story, but it's no help to anyone who wants to study a story (which is what one ought to be doing in an English class, in theory at least.) A more useful school of thought, in that case, is what I've just now decided to call Toolboxism-- The blue curtains are a tool. They could be a big lynch pin holding everything together, they could be a nail that's helping to attach this fiddly bit, but it's unlikely that someone just slapped an extra part on the story or randomly hit it with a hammer. That would be inelegant at best, and get in the way of it working at worst. But saying "the curtains are just blue." is like trying to understand how or why someone built an attractive table and saying "That's just a nail. Now how did they build this table?"
If you want to argue with an English teacher, Toolboxism is a superior place to argue from than Justfuckingblueism.
Why was this not a sentence used in high school English classes more often?
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I'm not advocating it, mind. I'm just offering a slightly more nuanced form of the 'just fucking blue' school of thought. If I had to argue the point with a literature professor, I'd probably resort to what Emily calls 'toolboxism' or actual physical violence.
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As I said to Antsan, I'm not advocating this approach. I'm merely reformulating it so it is more interesting.
And, yes, I agree: The study of literature should be about the bits that make up the story and how they interact with each other and the reader in both the general and specific case. In the case of Dotted Line he's, in-story, grey because his parents are[1], certainly, but I made him grey for just the reasons I did. He's meant to be muted to contrast the place he's in. Grey is, of course, also halfway between light and dark, and the color of ambiguity. Grey is also a sort of stereotypically bureaucratic[3] color, of course, which helps.
[1] His mother is brownish grey. His father is slate grey. His sister is slate grey, like his dad, while he's a sort of muddy mixture between his parents. Incidentally: Mr. Graded Tarquin Measure (father), Dr. Silver Genevieve Caduceus, M.D. (mother), Maj. Gleaming Daisy Arrow (sister), and Dotted Hieronymus Line, PhD (a cabinet secretary much in the need of sleep). Or as they are known to each other Dad/Grady, Mum/Silver, Daisy, and Mussy/My Clod of a Brother[2].
[2] Though that's not technically a name.
[3] The British make jokes about MiGs in government: the Men in Grey suits.
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Note: I would not actually punch a literature professor. Though I might throw a pastry at them if they tried to defend Gertrude Stein.
I'm definitely glad to see this. Symbology in writing is nice to see because it puts more depth into the story. I will admit i am far fromgood in actually thinking about it, but i am always haopy when i do because it gives me something to think about.
I really love that clip you linked to. It's like some observer watching DARPA scientists arguing over similar military technologies to invest in, and the observer thinks such fancy tech has nothing to do with them.... while they play on their smartphone.
This is fabulous! There was always at least one student during placements that griped about close-reading and studying stories, (and one who even quoted the blue curtain thing) and I think I'm going to refer to your "Toolboxism" explanation next time it comes up.
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To you and me both. I don't think I've ever raised a hand in anger to any living thing bigger than a housefly.
I throw a mean pastry, though.
3275900 The idea that a story simply is, and should be interpreted without reference to its meaning (which relates it to the real world), or to its author, or to the reader, is called objective criticism, and was invented by (surprise) the early modernists.
This is a thing people can conceptualize only because they don't understand how language works. You can't use words without referring to the outside world, or to the reader's experience. The people who invented objective criticism were aware that that's how words work, but from what I've heard, they thought that was a bug rather than a feature, and that the task of modern poetry was to disconnect words from their meanings so they could be free and literature could be pure.
I may be totally misrepresenting them. It would take years to figure them out, and I'm not all that motivated to.
3278651 3277678 That's why it's so hard to corrupt this guy.
But I have found his weakness: modern literary theory. It seems to be the only thing that can make him angry. Why do you think I keep posting about it?
Soon, Ghost. Soon.
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Ideally. Nice writeup!
(Though I'm often guilty of writing curtains that are just blue.
As far as I know, anyway.)
Ironically, if an author in fact says that "the curtains were fucking blue," it certainly doesn't just mean that the curtains are blue.
Interesting question: What ought one to be doing in an English class?
The ancients believed that the purpose of literary theory was to help writers write better. That's what Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus said in their treatises on writing.
That's the purpose of theory in all other disciplines. Physics theories are for use by physicists. Mathematical theories are for use by mathematicians. Economic theories are for use by economists. When you study physics and math in high school, it isn't meant to help you appreciate physics and math, it's to help you do physics and math. Heck, even if you study painting or photography, the curriculum is pretty well-geared toward helping you paint or photograph things.
It seems to be only in literature that we've somehow got the idea that the theory is for consumers rather than producers.
Maybe readers need their own theories. I'm not convinced that they do. But we ought to have a body of literary theory that is specifically meant for writers.
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That's very interesting[1] but not quite what I had in mind when I imagined Justfuckingblueism. What I imagined is more like 'believing' that the universe of the story is real and the curtains are blue because somebody dyed them that color and then somebody picked them &c &c &c. And they can tell you a lot, but they do not relate to the outside world except through you, the reader. Blue may mean something to you. It may mean something different to the author. But that's neither here nor there. What they 'truly' mean is only ever what they mean to the characters in-story. "The writer made them that way" is, then, never an acceptable answer in this highly Watsonist take on literature.
I'm not advocating the idea, I'm just saying it is a more stable perch from which to say "The curtains are just fucking blue!"
[1] Though seems based on a conception of language as damn near explicitly magic. What precisely language does if not relating to the outside world[2] is a bit of a poser.
[2] Which includes the inside of your head, mind.
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Gertrude Stein does make me distinctly... tetchy. :)
I'm not hard to anger, actually. I'm a grumpy sort with hardly any fuse to my temper at all. However, it is very, very difficult to get me to stay angry. Especially if it is a real person and not, say, an alleged poet whose existence, while real, is utterly abstract to me.
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I've a copy of How To Read a Page by I. A. Richards which sounds like it should be the right thing, but from a skim-read it seems to be focused more on critical reading, not so much for literature.
Excellent blog post. I did chuckle at the image, as it reminded me of the more dull English lectures I had in school, but you're right - if the curtains are blue, there's a reason behind it. It's not always as grandiose as some people (*cough*aforementioned lecturers) make it out to be. It's the subtle implications of the sentence and its context that make it interesting and relevant to the story.
^ Like this! It's awesome to how the narrative voice can subtly (or drastically) differ depending on the POV character. Two different characters walking into the same room will describe a very different scene, notice and comment on different things, etc.