Death of the author

Death of the animator

Animation, Especially in the last few decades has always swiftly adapted to new and emerging technologies. Death of author talks about how the “author” is not creating but re-appropriating the medium. The quote “For him, for us too, it is language which speaks, not the author.” can very much apply to many fields of animation which use all different kinds of technology. It is really the technology that is supposedly doing all the work in the same way a writer is only putting existing words and using predetermined rules (e.g Grammar and syntax) to create there body of writing. 

Death of the author was published in 1977 but was written quite a few years prior to this, this is long before the digital revolution. Technology has completely changed the way the “reader” takes in an “author’s” material. “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author” is Barthe’s call for revolution for the empowerment of the reader. This revolution has already begun to take place as technology has given the reader a new means to challenge and become the author through means such as online reviewing. 

Many people are involved in creating animation there are some many aspects that change the final narrative of the the piece. The quote “a texts unity lies not i its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal” refers to the life experiences of a singular author writing   a text directly informing and giving validity to a piece of work. With animation there is no “author” like there is a book, because it is a collaborative effort to create an lengthy animation no one person can be used to represent the animation.This gives a more even field of judging the work as its artistic merit is not measured against the life experiences of an individual. 

The problem with this argument is the introduction of auteur theory in which the director can be seen as the author of a film or animation. This once again gives power to the individual allowing the work to be measured up with that individual rather than the collaborative that created it. Auteur theory however was created for live action film although this quote can apply to film it is far more relevant to the animation process “most design is done in a collaborative setting, either within a client relationship or in the context of a studio that utilises the talents of numerous creative people, with the result that the origin of any particular idea is uncertain”. Animation although is written like a book/film also has every detail designed by large numbers of different artists although this may be under an individuals vision it is still an extremely collaborative medium. 

1 Barthes, R (1968) “Death of the Author” in Image Music Text, (1977), London Fontana Press

2 Barthes, R (1968) “Death of the Author” in Image Music Text, (1977), London Fontana Press

3 Barthes, R (1968) “Death of the Author” in Image Music Text, (1977), London Fontana Press

4  Rock, M. (1996) 'The Designer as Author', Eye no. 20 vol. 5 1996.