Canon, Fanon & Authorial Intent

FLYING IN THE United States sucks. That's all I'm going to say.

This morning, better rested and all, I came across this interesting article on Firefox News.

Written by somebody with the delightful handle of Merlin Missy, Canon Versus Fanon Versus Authorial Intent explores three sides of how fans react to work, and order their understanding of a constructed Universe. If you've never dabbled or watched genre stuff, this might seem mindblowingly arcane to you, but it's actually sweet -- and her deconstruction of the point is very wise.

Author intent is the personal canon of the person (or people) who wrote the source. When J.K. Rowling said that Harry and Ron became Aurors as adults, that is author intent.

Author intent is not canon.

Let me repeat, because it's going to be important: author intent is not canon.

Most authors know what happens next to their characters, who they marry, how many kids they have, that the grandkids are called Vera, Chuck and Dave. Their favorite breakfast cereal. How they're going to die. Some authors end up giving out all this information, either via writing it in the text or including it as an appendix in the back ala J.R.R. Tolkien. Some writers can't, because the medium (TV, film) won't allow it, but that doesn't stop them from knowing what they want to do. In this day and age, message boards allow them to share with fans what they intended to do, had they time. It's lovely and helpful for fans who want to know more. It is not, however, canon.

The same thing can be said for authorial interpretation of the source material. Canon is what is in the source material. Reader/viewer interpretation is up to the individual, although the author may have intended something else entirely. For example, Ray Bradbury recently claimed that Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship, but instead warned against the perils of too much television. In an episode of Torchwood, a character utilizes the alien equivalent of Rohypnol in order to get lucky. Showrunner Russell T. Davies was called on the carpet for this by some female fans, who said these actiosn made the character a rapist; Davies said it was "just a joke" and did not. Authors don't always intend to show what appears in the text, but the text is the canon.

What's more, I completely agree with her about authorial intent -- when the work is over, I mean. The final word on interpretation can't be the author's, or why is it out there to read in the first place? Understandings change. Hemingway was once famously quoted when asked about the symbolism in his books: "I suppose there must be symbols, since people keep finding them."

One of the most famous cases for me of the limitations of "authorial intent" is actually an afterword to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. There's quite a tart essay at the back about how Eliza could not, ever, under any circumstances, ever wind up with Higgins. And I read it, and I saw what he was saying, and in the end, I thought, "I don't care."

That is the miracle of an art that demands to be interpreted.