Jay Havaldar | The death of the author

A Numbers Game | Do ghostwriters matter?

By Jay Havaldar 07/29/15 10:51pm

Does it matter if Drake doesn’t write his own lyrics? Does it matter if Shakespeare never really existed? Does it matter if Phil Spector, producer of the Beatles, was convicted of second-degree murder and is now serving out a life sentence?

It’s difficult to separate art from artist. In our culture, the artist is more than just a person — they are an institution, a myth, a force of nature. We see the artist as a vessel through which the creative force manifests. And so we arrive at ridiculous and irreconcilable paradoxes — how can John Lennon be both a champion of peace and a wife-beater? How can Ezra Pound be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and a fierce anti-Semite?

There are a couple problems with the underlying assumptions of these questions. First, we judge art based on some set of values like beauty, complexity and originality, which may be quite a bit different from the set of values with which we judge people: honesty, compassion and diligence. There is no reason why the kinds of qualities that make good people necessarily make good artists, but we instinctively feel that this should be the case. At least a little bit of this attitude can be attributed to our desire for justice — we believe, generally incorrectly, that good artists are good people because they deserve it.

The second, deeply related problem is that we assume that the meaning of art is solely the intention of the artist. If this were true, then in appreciating art we would have to begrudgingly admit the craftsmanship of whoever created it. And, for example, it is difficult for most people to accept that author Orson Scott Card, a proud homophobe, taught us a lesson about compassion. Luckily for us, this assumption doesn’t have to be true — you can accept themes of friendship and humanity in “Ender’s Game” without accepting any of the implicit endorsement of homophobia.

Many of us groaned in high school English classes — or the writing seminar — when overenthusiastic teachers, desperate to fill 40 minutes, read far too much into books to find meaning that wasn’t there. But in a way, they were teaching us a lesson about the wide world of literary theory. An English major will tell you that there are a hundred ways to read a book: through post-colonialism, feminism, Marxism to name a few. These are all systematic methods of understanding the meaning of art in a certain context, even if that context is not the one in which the art was created. Perhaps “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen” wasn’t technically meant to be a gay anthem. But I’ve heard it sung as one, and when you think about it for a minute or two, you can probably convince yourself that it works as one. You can choose to boycott R. Kelly’s music on moral grounds, but if you don’t at least appreciate its catchiness, I think you’ll be the one missing out the next time “Ignition (Remix)” comes on.

In Roland Barthes’ essay “Death of the Author,” he puts forth this very idea, claiming that we must give the audience the power to create meaning in art. I believe we can take this idea even further. There is plenty of music that one can say has no creator, entire genres like process music or ambient music. Is this art? What about fractal art, beautiful visuals created by algorithms in which the role of the artist is simply to write some code and let it run? I believe all this art has meaning and beauty, even at the point at which the border between art and artist begins to break down.

To some, art has only the meaning the creator intended. To others, art is the product of a historical moment. When we use the word art, we mean a method of discourse, a state of mind in which we appreciate the beauty and meaning of something in a way no other animal probably can. You can define for yourself what the rules of this space are. Perhaps to you, the possibility that Drake’s lyrics may be ghostwritten forever ruins your workout jam “The Motto.” As for me, I’ve always found truth in the words of French poet Stephen Mallarmé: “It is language which speaks.”

JAY HAVALDAR is a rising Engineering junior from Dix Hills, NY studying math and computer science. His email address is havaldar@seas.upenn.edu. 

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