For Public Consumption

I thought our discussion on what it means "to go public" was particularly interesting. There’s a fine balance between wanting to influence, inform, or inspire people and not wanting to be misunderstood or have your work bastardized. The most fascinating part of the public venue to me is no longer having control over context. From the Bible to the Constitution, and from famous works of literature to well known speeches, we constantly see lines and excerpts taken to mean something entirely different from its contextual significance. Take into account the perspective of who’s writing it, which of course often isn't, and the original idea can completely transformed in a short amount of time. If the work gets big enough, it can change and evolve multiple times over generations. I always tend to go back to thinking about high school English classes where everything has to be scrutinized, sometimes unnecessarily so. But there is a method to that reading of material. It is true that in certain time periods censorship was rampant, so having to suggest things through allusions and innuendo was necessary.

The separation, if any, between works for entertainment and works with more ideological significance further complicates these ideas. If an old work of fiction for entertainment alludes to something that at the time would have been scandalous to put into words, which was usually of a sexual nature, and it goes over a modern reader’s head, does that lessen the meaning of the story? What about if the work as a whole was a statement about the author’s current time and all the detail and allusion was part of that? Is it acceptable because, given the medium, the author should have known some people would never pick up on it? Compare that to the Constitution, which we quote so rigidly, yet is a document literally meant to evolve and change with the times. It's impossible to predict how the intent of your work will be changed, but the package it's put in has at least some influence.

While anxiety over an audience, the public, missing things exists because of what their negative reactions could be or because of the author’s meaning being lost, it’s also interesting to look at how that happens in a positive light. My cousin is obsessed with the song “Not Alone” by Darren Criss, which just a few years ago was just part of an EP by another artist trying to start on iTunes albeit with a small fan base from a YouTube project. But when he gained nationwide fame through the show Glee, an undeniably public audience, he became someone worthy of investigation by fans. When they discovered his work, that song became an anthem for the downtrodden, especially LGBT youth. We don’t often think of notoriety as misinterpretation, because no on cares once it’s famous. So many songs are enjoyed, yet so many people at one point are shocked when they hear the original meaning for a song.

So while it’s easier to overlook changes in meaning after songs and books are translated across audiences, I think it’s ultimately the most fascinating because it’s (usually) the most organic. Documents like the Constitution or the Bible will always have ideological meaning, so you have to expect that people will twist it to fit their agenda. Things that are entertainment can have deeper meaning that no one ever sees. Or it could have no meaning at all and become an anthem. While all the same pieces and parts are at play, seeing how things changed based so much on the box (genre) they’re put in is what I find intriguing.