Anita Cheung

Theater R1A
September 3, 2012
Response 1: Passage-Based Focused Freewrite
Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag heavily advocates for literal reflection of art, rejecting
the deep probing and lysing of interpretation. To disseminate this critical perspective of the interpretative
society, she draws upon the historical origin of dance, and impassioned and judicious diction.
First recounting the origins of art, Sontag asserts that art was initially a non-cognitive experience.
Art, she claims, in its historical form, was pristine, untainted by the modern minds that seek to destroy,
rather than absorb it (Sontag 3). However, through interpretation, one demonstrates dissatisfaction with
the original text. Sarcastically, Sontag states, the ancient texts were, [through interpretation] no longer
acceptable (3). Exemplifying this post-script erasure, modification, analysis, and supposed improvement
are the Stoics in perfecting Zeus, Philo of Alexandria in spiritualizing the Hebrew Bible, and the Rabbinic
and Christian amelioration of the Song of Songs (3-4), when, in fact, Zeus is flawed, the Hebrew Bible is
composed of factual, historical accounts, and the Song of Songs assumes a less than sacrosanct role.
However, as time progresses, interpretation grew rampant, likened to the fumes of the
automobile and of heavy industry (4). According to Sontag, interpretation excavates, destroys,
ravishes, runs rampant, is a philistine, merely decorative [] parody (4, 5, 7). The sharp diction
against interpretation discloses a cautionary if not severely disdainful attitude of the tool which Sontag
believes to be unraveling art. Especially poignant in revealing Sontags displeasure with interpretation is
her practice with sarcasm. Through Sontags simplification of interpretations of classical works, Franz
Kafkas writings are boiled down to fears and anxieties, Tennessee Williams Stanley Kowalski and
Blanche Du Bois from A Streetcar Named Desire are trapped into ridiculous symbolism, representing the
barbarism and delicacy of Western civilization, respectively (6). Interpretation is thus a reductive,
degenerative act.