coolbeans, 1/24

Last class we discussed tmesis and the class before that we discussed the signified versus the signifier. Both of these concepts involve what we take from what we see. It was interesting to see everyone’s different reactions to the “a short story” exercise and how at first most people had the same or a similar reading of the words but as more and more changes were made each person had a different reading of the words. It was also interesting that once a famous author was referenced at the end of the words everyone automatically changed their reading of the words to be something that was written by the author. Maybe this can even be seen as an example of cultural hegemony in that we changed our readings of the words because a higher authority (Dr. Casey) said that a prominent author (Ernest Hemingway) had written the words, without even knowing for sure if they truly were written by Hemingway.

Tmesis is an interesting concept to me because I never realized how differently people can read a certain text. The fact that after reading a couple words strung together and everyone having all of the different reactions to it seems crazy because it is strange to think that every time we read a text there will be other people who may have completely different readings from us. Even though the author/creator of a text may have certain intentions in creating the text, he/she cannot fully control how people are going to read it. So while they can steer the readers of the text in a certain direction with their readings of it, maybe the authors choose to leave some gaps in their texts in order to allow their readers to personalize it a little bit, making the story/movie/etc… feel more like a life experience for the audience.