Get out of my head, originalism.

[elwen]

So recently there's been a bunch of stuff about Code Geass in this magazine called Continue, including author interviews (?), a bio of Lelouch, and a list of all the people who died. So everyone is like, "Lelouch is on list, plus the bio has a timeline of his life, so he must really be dead!"

The third time this was posted on code_geass, I responded that I was not going to accept any beyond-the-episodes evidence as conclusive. If the author wants him to be dead, then he should show us him dead, not give us a cryptic ending where C.C. is talking to him and says she's not alone. I don't care what it says in some official guide or interview. What you broadcast is what you've got -- don't go telling the fans different stories after the fact. It's basically the same as saying, "Oh, I had this beautiful vision of how the story would go . . . but then the producers cut the number of episodes in half." Sucks to be you, but it doesn't change my opinion of the final product. I would have loved to see the other version, but if I can't, I'm going to ignore it entirely.

Anyhow, a few minutes later, I thought, "OMG, did I just apply original public meaning to Code Geass? @_@" Justice Scalia would be proud. Down with legislative history and authorial intent! D:

Con Law 101: Originalism is basically a theory about interpreting the U.S. Constitution that says you should look to the world of 1789 (or thereabouts) to figure out what the document means. Original public meaning is the form that says the meaning is what the public of that time would have understood the Constitution to mean. Other forms are framer's intent (what the framers intended it to mean when they wrote it) and ratifiers understanding (what the ratifiers understood it to mean when they ratified it). Compare reading a poem and thinking about what thoughts it inspires in your mind, versus trying to figure out what the poet was trying to say.

Comments

[ling84.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that I was thinking about this before falling asleep yesterday? XD

I'd argue in this case that while it's still wrong for the series authors to put their canon ending for Lelouch in some secondary publication instead of the actual anime, originalism might not be the right argument.

From what I understood of your explanation (ie framer's intent) there's got to be some sort of mostly cultural shift between what the authors intended and what we got out of it. The way I saw Geass, since nothing was keeping Sunrise from wrapping up the ending more tightly, leaving it open to interpretation must've been intentional. We're not misreading their intent any more than they wanted us to; it's only been around a month since Geass ended, so it's too soon to argue cultural shift. :) I'd say they're just contradicting themselves, but it's not the first time they've done that (character relation chart...).

Of course if you were considering the anime as the "original" source and the magazine stuff as a reinterpretation, the originalism argument applies. I'm just hoping/assuming both came from the same source...

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

There doesn't need to be a cultural shift. Arguments rejecting authorial intent apply equally to legislation that has just passed as to the Constitution. It could be a drafting mistake, a technical use of language, or simply an inability to capture an idea in words. Part of the argument has to do with the problem of multiple authors: sometimes there is no single intent, and the text is the only evidence of what did receive a majority, so it's not fair to then listen to a legislator who says, "Well, what I really voted for and wanted was this." Part of it has to do with public notice: the text of the Constitution or a statute is what the public reads and relies on, it is not fair to impose on them some secret meaning the Framers may have attributed to the words. Of course, these are arguments that are more relevant when you are talking about laws that bind people, and not so much about a series.

But still, I think people should regard an anime as its own finished product standing alone, and not have to supplement it with all this other stuff. And if they couldn't be bothered to spell something out in the anime, then too bad for them.