But Billy has married a boy.
The girls he had tried on every side,
But none he could get to agree;
All was in vain, he went home again,
And since that he's married to Natty."
-Excerpt of poem authored by Abraham Lincoln
Our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, had a friend named Joshua Fry Speed. The two were very close friends, even sharing a bed for four years, though this wasn't a social taboo like it might be today. There are many historians that point to evidence that Abraham Lincoln was actually homosexual. The Log-Cabin Republicans, a group of gay republicans, take their name from the belief that Lincoln was gay. There are many historians that disagree though. They point to the obvious fact that Lincoln had children with wife Mary Todd Lincoln, though Lincoln certainly wouldn't be the first gay man to reproduce with a woman. Additionally, the poem quoted above has allusions to a man marrying another man instead of a woman.
What could this possibly have to do with disregarding authorial intent? When we discuss historical context and the life of the author, we pretend that we are quite sure of what actually occurred and what was actually meant by the piece. However, we have a historical figure in Lincoln that has likely been examined by scholars far more than any of the authors we come across in an American literature class, and there is still much we aren't sure about. If we can't figure out things about a famous President, what makes us so sure that Dunbar didn't recognize that women also wear masks, and wrote his poem to befit women and african-americans?
Even if we could resurrect one of these authors and ask them very specific questions about their work, that doesn't mean we have the final answer on that work. We learned about psychoanalytic critical theory in Professor Cassel's class, a critical lens where we consider the effect sub-conscious thoughts have on a piece of literature. The fact remains that these authors themselves might not even know what the piece is about!
Batman, of all things, is a great example of this. When Bob Kane created Batman in the late 1930s, did he realize the psychologically disturbed themes present in Bruce Wayne/The Batman? The Jungian duality (Hey, Batman Wears The Mask!) of a leisure class slacker by day, and a serious "Dark Knight" by evening? Likely not. We can now look at Batman and see that he is a bit of a fascist. He is a vigilante that takes the justice system out of the people's hands and places it in his own. He, being a wealthy billionaire, uses his wealth to enforce justice as he sees fit. He's a plutocrat. This is very much like Plato's ideal Republic, which is hierarchial, and very much not a democracy. Bob Kane wasn't thinking that deeply when he put the cowl and cape on Master Bruce, but these themes of vigilantism and corrupt bureaucracy existed in the sub-conscious of society, and I believe Bob Kane tapped into it unbeknownst to himself.
The beauty of this lens to me is that it can turn almost anything into something exciting. Keeping with Batman, when I was a young boy I found the movies and cartoon and comics to be wonderful. I just liked the action and the courageous hero fighting evil. Then, when I grew up a bit and discovered that life is far more complicated than good versus evil and heroes swooping in to save the day, I dismissed Batman as childish and boring. Now, I can reexamine it in the context of not just Bob Kane's desire for an action hero with a limitless bank account, but in the context of culture and society and politics and psychology. It breathes new life into spent pages.
