VPs and Schools of Criticism

I think what I got from class today was a lot of generalizations pertaining to criticism. Prof. Sexton summed up Frye by saying that "All literature is displaced myth." He also said that critic is an arbiter of taste, much like in Ratatouille. I take this to mean that on the whole, literary criticism is so multifaceted that it's going to take a team of a dozen diamond miners a dozen weeks to finally exhume the true essence, the perfect diamond truth of lit crit. Meaning very much that it's going to take a lot of persistence and patience to really get at what lit crit is, that it's going to take many approaches and attempts to understand.

In lit crit, rather than a being a question of taste or a popularity contest, Frye is calling for a system of analysis. What he calls "literary chit-chat" and "casual value judgments" should be far less weighted than identifying and appreciating archetypes, themes, use of language and relationships between an author, a work and the audience.

The example that came to my mind during class was the Everlasting Battlestar Galactica Debate at home. My mom is a fan of the 1978 series and I'm a bigger fan of the 2004 reimagining. Our argument is centered around her insistence that Starbuck is a man, Boomer is not an Asian female and the new one is too dark, while I focus much more on the intelligence and social commentary of the latter. None of these characteristics of the shows actually matter in reference to the actual shows. They are casual value judgments that aren't engaging true criticism. While the characters and tone are part of what makes them good or bad, this kind of viewer response isn't addressing archetypes, themes, or intentions on the part of the producers, actors, networks in order to understand why the shows are important or what meaning is contained therein.

Also, as a side note about the lipstick pig comment:
(Original reference here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/obama-says-mc-1.html, as mentioned in class)






Links to the original webcomic (NSFW Language, but only minor):

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2918
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2923
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2924