In Defense of Ambiguity

[alixtii]

Source Text: A text used by fans as a repositary for fictional facts about a fictional universe, such as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series or J.K.R.'s website. In general, fen will decide for themselves which texts they consider authoritative, although they may look to authorial intent for guidance. Also, not all elements consists of content which cannot be transformed into propositional "facts" about the fictional universe, e.g. the soundtrack of an episode or the tone of a book. These are ignored in constructing canon, although they may be considered relevant in interpreting it (see below).

Canon: A. The total set of fictional facts about a fictional universe; B. The condition of being a member of that set of facts.

The problem is, in visual media, there's a very small amount of facts that are actually canon. Basically, we just know what people say, and a little bit about what they do (what's shown on screen). We don't know if they are telling the truth, and we don't know if things are going on as they seem. We haven't seen Xander and Anya actually having sex (and personally I don't want to), although we're led to believe they have sex a lot: we see them in a variety positions from which we are led to infer that they are having sex, or have just had sex, or are going to have sex. My favorite example happens to be the this debate over whether Giles goes to the bathroom. There's not enough canonical evidence to say for sure.

We really need a word for near-canon, those things--like the presence of Giles' reproductive system--that we would never think to question unless we were being perverse (and perversity is perfectly legitimate when writing fanfiction!). Giles could be a robot without the story being an AU, but the writer would still need to explain that choice where s/he wouldn't if s/he made Giles human, and this is despite the fact that both options are equally canon.

You see, when we think about our universes, we assume that the canon--a set of propositional facts--applies to a fictional universe, a "possible world" to use analytic philosophy language. We play "How many children had Lady Macbeth?" And in general, we imagine the closest possible world (in "logical space") to our own in which canon holds true, so we imagine Giles as a human and not a robot. The possible world closest to our own in which canon is true I call the least-hypothesis interpretation of canon, because it involves the minimum injection of weird stuff like Giles being a robot.

Sometimes when we are speaking (or typing) loosely, we treat uncontroversial facts about the least-hypothesis interpretation as if they were canon. Everyone is perfectly willing to believe that Giles is a human being until given reason to think otherwise. No one is arguing that Xander and Anya didn't "really" have sex. Buffy is fourteen (or fifteen, depending on when in the school year you think season 1 starts) when the series starts; everyone isn't merely calling her that age because she is an undercover FBI agent. Part of the reason is that it'd simply to be too unwieldly to tentatively disclaim every statement about the Buffyverse that we made, just as we never say "I see the appearance of a man" in real life: we say, "There is a man."

Unfortunately, it's not always clear which possible world in which Buffy's canon is true is the closest to the actual world. Did Spike go to Africa to get his soul? (If not, I supposed he could have lied to Buffy in season 7, although I don't know why.) Was Andrew really working under Buffy's orders in "Damage"? What the hell is going on in "As You Were"? And so on. (This mirrors debates in analytic philosophy over possible worlds: is a universe which is like ours in all respects except characteristic A at time B, and has different laws of physics to allow for the change, closer or farther away than a possible world in which the entire causal history of the universe is rewritten to allow for characteristic A at time B within our laws of physics?)

An example: In "Checkpoint," I'm inclined to believe that the ultimate result of that episode--Buffy asserting her power over the Watcher's Council--is precisely what Quentin Travers intended from the beginning. When I watch the episode, this is pretty clear to me, so I consider this to be a least-hypothesis interpretation of the ep. A possible world in which Travers is simply an idiot is farther away than the one in which he is a mastermind manipulator. But not everyone would agree with me.

Also, it's not just logical extrapolation which guides our interpretation. If Faith shoots an arrow and Angel is hit by an arrow, we assume that Faith shot Angel, not only because inserting a new and different archer would rebel against the rule of parsimony, but also because we are conversant with a cinematic convention. The convention guides our interpretation of canon. We may privilege the reading of a character as villanous if her appearance is marked by a certain type of music, and so on.

Subtexty 'ships also fall here. There are those who argue that the indicators pointing to Simon/River, Kaylee/Inara, Giles/Ethan, Buffy/Faith, or [insert your ship here] are just so anvillicious that the 'ships are canon, or all-but-canon (i.e. they are the least-hypothesis interpration). And then there are the people who "don't see" the ships, who think that the least hypothesis is that Simon/River just relate to each other as siblings, Kaylee and Inara are platonic girlfriends, and Giles never lusted after Ethan. (Although even now I'm thinking that those who don't see Buffy/Faith must be blind, I am so caught up in what I think the least-hypothesis interpretation is.)

In general, the longer the logical sequence one takes to get from canon facts to facts about a proposed possible world, no matter how valid the steps may be, the less people will accept your conclusion as being an aspect of the least-hypothesis interpretation. It doesn't matter if you have an iron-clad proof that a logician couldn't find fault with drawing on facts in "Killed by Death," "Bear Bad," "Buffy vs. Dracula," and "Normal Again" to prove that this or that happened in "As You Were." It's going to seem too complicated, even if it is the least complicated way you can integrate those facts.(Theoretically, there is a single correct least-hypothesis interpretation, or a sequence of equally correct interpretations, regardless of whether anyone can agree on them. But I'm not all that interested in it, because it's mopre important that we have a shared world that we inhabit as a fannish-linguistic community.)

The nature of canon's relation to the universe it describes is inevitably going to create ambiguities. But I think we can better understand our own disagreements if we made clear the distinction between canon and the least-hypothesis interpretation, and understood the ways in which some extrapolations of the least-hypothesis interpretation become controversial and other's don't. Any extrapolation that requires a character to be lying (whether it is Xander in "Once More With Feeling", Riley in "As You Were," Spike in "Beneath You," or Andrew in "Damage") is going to encounter resistance, for example.

Okay, in the subject I said I was going to defend ambiguity here, and I am. As wisdomeagle has pointed out before, there really aren't that many people who look at a text as if it were a set of facts about a fictional universe, basically narrowed down to fundamentalist religionists and fanfic writers. (And if Biblical literalists realized that the canonical facts of the Bible could refer to any number of possible worlds, and the closest one isn't necessarily the right--since presumably fundamentalists have a concept of "right" which isn't equivalent to a fan's notion of "best"--one, I wonder what they'd do.) I love Buffy as a playground in which to play, but also as an aesthetic object. Indeed, my aesthetic appreciation of it leads to my fannish love. And part of what I like about it is that it plays with ambiguity.

Ambiguity in a text admits of different interpretations, which enriches it. The fact that the text can sustain a reading in which Giles and Ethan were lovers as well as one where they aren't makes the text multi-faceted, interesting, more complex--for me, more beautiful. If Giles' relationship with Ethan is confirmed, if River is shown actively lusting after Simon, if Faith's last name is revealed (it's not canon until it is on screen, damn it!), then something is lost. Where we once had a hundred possibilities, a Schrödinger's cat, now there is only one. Now something is gained, too, and in many cases it is worth it (different people can argue over whether when something is worth it or not). Also, new ambiguities would be created. But I'm grateful for the ambiguities in canon, and I'm grateful that I don't know Book's past or the populatio of Londinium.

A television show is like modern art: too much ambiguity and the mind cannot create patterns, and the art fails (subtext can't survive without text); too little ambiguity and the artwork is one-dimensional, uninteresting. And "too much" ambiguity in a painting is much more than "too much" in a mainstream television serial (think X-Files). In "The Girl in Question" (one of my favorite episodes), they never show the Immortal on screen, a decision I think was utter genius. (We wouldn't like him no matter who he was, due to the Riley syndrome, so why not play with that emotion?)

Part of the point of writing fanfic is to open Schrödinger's box: I want to see Buffy and Faith in love. The desire to explore the unexplored is what drives fanfic, and it is wonderful. I'm not knocking it: write all the Simon/River, Buffy/Faith, and Giles/Ethan that you want.

Especially Buffy/Faith.

Please.

But if we want our fanfic to succeed as works of art, I tend to think (feel free to disagree with me) that we should attempt to retain at least some of the ambiguity from canon, as well as throw in some of our own. Not all subtext needs to be made into text, because otherwise we're left without any subtext of our own. In Divine Interventions, I show a flashback between Giles and Ethan in which I try and play around with the pairing, keeping them slashy-but-not-slashed. I try and do the same with Simon/River in Permutations. I never physically describe the Immortal and try to keep him offstage as much as possible in my fic, as well as keeping him morally ambiguous.

All of the above has been written assuming a dead canon. New canon operates the same way as fanfic, destroying some abiguities while creating others, only with new canon the new information reorients the least-hypothesis interpretation, and suddenly the fen have a new set of ambiguities to play with it.

ETA: I should add that I was thinking in part about this post and the ones which influenced it, as well as my own Canon, the Text, and the AU in which I first make the distinction between source text and canon.

ETA2: Some more thoughts on fanficcers vs. fundamentalists, authorial intent, and open vs. closed canons.

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Any extrapolation that requires a character to be lying (whether it is Xander in "Once More With Feeling", Riley in "As You Were," Spike in "Beneath You," or Andrew in "Damage") is going to encounter resistance, for example.


I'm not sure I agree with you here - you mentioned the conventions by which we interpret what we see on screen, and one of those is the means by which an actor signals "My character is lying". Spike in As You Were claiming he was looking after the demon eggs "for a friend" comes to mind. In fanfic this usually translates as "X is terrible at lying", though in fact when the lying is mislead that is subsequently cleared up as part of the plot, the character will usually prove to be a superb liar, because the actor isn't senfing those "I'm lying" signals. I suspect what you're leaving out here is that in interpreting what we see on screen, we take into account more information than what we see in any specific scene. For instance, I have no particular reason to think Andrew is lying in Damage (beyond, perhaps, a desire to believe that Buffy wouldn't leave her faith in Angel) but when he heads off with two pretty girls in The Girl in Question, I've every reason to suppose that he's just living out a James Bond fantasy and thus, despite his lecture on the importance of change, hasn't changed at all (I adore TGiQ as well :-)) Is Riley lying in As You Were? It allows a consistent interpretation of the episode, certainly, but equally we're not given any indication other than that this that he's lying - we have no reason to believe that he's a habitual liar, or has a pressing reason to lie this time. the actor certainly doesn't signal that the character is lying, and there's no plot twist in which it's explicitly revealed that he was lying. And I do think that kind of double-checking is one of the ways in which we assess the plausibility of competing interpretations.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I'm not 100% sure what is you're disagreeing with here.

I suspect what you're leaving out here is that in interpreting what we see on screen, we take into account more information than what we see in any specific scene.

Agreed. However, I think it's exactly when we rely on information from another scene--especially another episode--that our conclusions are most likely going to be controversial.

For instance, I have no particular reason to think Andrew is lying in Damage (beyond, perhaps, a desire to believe that Buffy wouldn't leave her faith in Angel)

Some people have not only the desire to believe but the belief itself, which they would argue is justified by information they've gotten from other scenes in other episodes.

And I do think that kind of double-checking is one of the ways in which we assess the plausibility of competing interpretations.

Sounds good to me. It's just that I don't hear so much "This is why my competing interpretation, while no more or less coherent than yours, is nonetheless more plausible" as "This is what really happened, and here's why" (which is itself admittedly better than "This is what happened and anyone who disagrees is an idiot").

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I think I was disagreeing with the claim that any extrapolation that relies on the assumption that a given character is lying is going to encounter resistance. I think it depends on how much back-up evidence there is for the lie being a lie.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Oh, in that case, of course. I don't think very many people are going to resist the claim that Xander was lying to Buffy in "Becoming," for example. I think that in general there is an impetus to take characters at their word, though, because doing otherwise leads to madness.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

In "Checkpoint," I'm inclined to believe that the ultimate result of that episode--Buffy asserting her power over the Watcher's Council--is precisely what Quentin Travers intended from the beginning. When I watch the episode, this is pretty clear to me, so I consider this to be a least-hypothesis interpretation of the ep. A possible world in which Travers is simply an idiot is farther away than the one in which he is a mastermind manipulator. But not everyone would agree with me.

Interesting. I haven't seen "Checkpoint" since it first aired, but I remember thinking that Quentin wanted to be in control and that Buffy's taking away of that control from him was very much not what he wanted -- especially since Joss is so anti-authority. I don't think he wants the Slayers to be the ones with all the power and control, but I wouldn't call him an idiot (though I'm not sure I would go so far as to call him a "mastermind manipulator").



I agree that the ambiguities in canon leave open the possibilities for fanfic (though there is always the AU option, but I know that often feels cheap). Examples from Firefly 'verse always make me a bit twitchy, though, because the lack of disambiguifying information is so intimately tied to the lack of source text (and the lack of source text makes me sad).

Your idea about maintaining ambiguity in fanfic made me think of this entry which posits fanfiction as a whole as like unto Schroedinger's Cat because we can hold contradictory stories in our head without any of them trumping each other the way canon would (obviously we privilege some stories which we like better or find more compelling or whatever).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I used the "Checkpoint" example on purpose because I know it is a minority opinion. To me it's the obvious logical extension of what we see on the screen, but I know that most fen would disagree with me.

I don't think we would ever have recieved disambiguifying on Simon & River's relationship, or at least I hope not, but I agree that if the show lasted longer a lot of ambiguities would have been filled in, e.g. Inara's famous secret or Book's mysterious past.

I'm not fond of arguments that argue that fanfic as a whole creates the necessary ambiguity, because as much as I love intertextuality I prefer for each fannish text to be able to stand on its own (unless it's part of a series, of course) and to have its own nuances and complexity.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

But if we want our fanfic to succeed as works of art, I tend to think (feel free to disagree with me) that we should attempt to retain at least some of the ambiguity from canon, as well as throw in some of our own. Not all subtext needs to be made into text, because otherwise we're left without any subtext of our own.

Nice argument! I know that a lot of the things people comment on in my fic and say they have enjoyed the most are things I barely included. I think, given our readership especially - a large proportion of fellow fic writers, i.e. people who enjoy filling in the gaps in a story - reader satisfaction will indeed follow on from leaving things ambiguous.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

A possible world in which Travers is simply an idiot is farther away than the one in which he is a mastermind manipulator.

This would be the Quentin Travers who got himself and all his coleagues blown up, would it? ;)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I think Machiavelli himself would admit--and probably did, if only I had my copy with me--that there's only so much manipulation that can be done in the face of a couple tons of dynamite.

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Oh, very interesting! I think one reason that the Whedonverse continues to be so fascinating, although there has been no new canon since May 2004 and/or September 2005, depending on whether one is referencing BtVS/AtS or Firefly/Serenity, is due to the canon ambiguities built into the shows. For example, Xander has been seen on screen to be attracted to women (and demon/women, bug/women, mummy/women, et cetera) yet has made many remarks on screen that lead one to question the complete heterosexualness of his sexuality. Upon seeing the Iniative for the first time in Goodbye, Iowa, his remark of "I totally get it now. Can I have sex with Riley, too?" is not a remark that any exclusively straight man that I know would even think of making - it just wouldn't occur to them. So, the people who see Xander as canonically straight and those who see him as bisexual (or at least, bi-curious) can both find jumping off points in actual canon to support their position.

Yay for ambiguities!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

But at the same time, ambiguities in the text don't always seem ambiguous to those interpretating, and that's where the conflicts begin. After all, presumably you find the logic you give above persuasive, and if so you would be perfectly justified to consider your conclusions normativer--after all, it's canon. I'm not sure I buy it, though, and so I have a competing interpretation which I consider normative. And so, while it'd be lunacy for us to assume that we are wrong, we need to be cognizant that reasonable people won't come to the same normative conclusions as us, and decide if its really worth getting into a debate over. It's possible to allow for the possible that one is wrong while still moving forward with the force of one's convictions behind one.

And I'm just thinking out loud, but I can ramble in my own journal if I want to.

[mgsmurf.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom.

Nicely said. The fact that eveyone sees something different about characters, ships and what happened off-screen is something I truly love about fandom. It's cool to see if I can see what others see, to broaden my own view through their interpretations.

People do the same with written fiction, although you may be correct that interpreting via the visual means the actors display one can come away with a broader range of interpretation than written character thoughts or written actions. Because even more so than dialogue I see acting and how the actors relate, and what chemistry the actors portray between each other as important for fandom interpretation. A viewer's take on what they mean is often more important to what the viewer takes home as subtext (and even possibly canon when an visual expression is almost universal) than the words said.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Our interpretation of canon is negotiated through so many mechanisms (the dialogue, the acting, visuals, etc.) which act in so complex relations sometimes it seems a miracle that we can agree on anything at all!

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

You just reminded me of one of the most exasperating discussions of my life. :-)

This was a very interesting post, and I think you're right that we need a new word to account for those omissions/short cuts in canon that allows the director to skip to the most vital bits of the story and the fans to become all tangled up in kerfluffles...

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can see how they would be exasperating. Still, I'm very grateful to you for having them, because they helped to put things in a very stark relief for me and clarify my thoughts. I know I'll still be thinking about those discussions for as long as I make meta posts about the nature of canonicity.

I'm glad you found what I had to say interesting.