Beyond Interpretation

There is one “occupational hazard” of being an academic: I have developed a propensity to interpret things, sometimes even before I have the chance to experience them. By interpretation, I mean finding an explanation or making a point when I come across something interesting. This habit of interpreting, which is an acquired taste after all, makes me feel comfortable, so much so that I am becoming more dubious about it.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to be anti-intellectual here. Interpretation itself is a beautiful experience that can offer readers tremendous joy. Students’ eyes glow when they first learn about things like film scholar Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory (which suggests that the heterosexual male viewpoint, rather than others, is often the default perspective in filmmaking). In teaching essay writing, I emphasize that a persuasive essay is delightful not just because it serves an immediate social purpose by conveying a point. A clever interpretation is pretty for being clever alone. I always want my students to be able to appreciate, and, hence, find joy in, the genius of deploying words and arranging evidence even in the most functional writing genres. This explains why I spend so much time in the shower, not singing or doing other things, but reading product labels!

By nature, interpretation breaks down any piece of creation (an essay, a film, a story, a dish, etc.) or phenomenon into consumable forms for the mind. Publishing and teaching are my main responsibilities, and on a daily basis, I am asked to answer two questions: 1) Why does it matter? Academic journal reviewers want to hear why a particular interpretation I craft in my manuscripts is worth the attention of scholars in the field; 2) What does it mean? Students often want me to break down difficult academic concepts with them, or, if not entirely for them. In both cases, I develop an interpretation, which is a carefully-crafted talking point between me (as an author or professor) and an audience (journal reviewers or students). This talking point, however brilliant it may sound, is a pre-digested viewpoint distilled from a richer experience of art or a social phenomenon.

Interpretation is wonderful only if it does not replace imagination. The current media landscape is nurturing an appetite for interpretation that demands less active imagination from consumers. Consider the interpretation of love in popular culture. Cantopop composer and producer Mark Lui recently made a brilliant commentary on the shift in pop song tastes from the 1990s to the 2000s. He witnessed a trend of Cantopop songs: in older songs, like Leon Lai’s 夏日傾情, fans are satisfied with lyrics that simply say, “I love you. Would you be able to hear me?” (“I Love you 你會否聽見嗎？”) But now, fans are craving very specific love stories in songs—saying love is not enough, tell us, what kind of love? One recent Cantopop song I quite like but find the content weirdly precise is Gareth T.’s 緊急聯絡人 (Emergency Contact). In less than four minutes, the song tells the story of a person struggling to put an ex-lover’s number down as his emergency contact. The lyrics contain many details of the complex emotions, almost like a TV drama episode synopsis.

Interpretation of things cannot replace one’s direct experience of them. When many of us can so conveniently pick a ready-made love interpretation from an “all you can listen to” music database nowadays, we are very tempted to learn about love through a collage of pop songs before we experience love itself. In extreme cases, as cultural critic Susan Sontag argues in her essay Against Interpretation, interpretation, like art theory, “tames the work of art,” making art too manageable and comfortable. Interpretation, in a way, gives us a little preview or a nice afterthought but also sets boundaries for how we understand things. No conceptual framework can exhaust the richness of things like love and art.

A truly curious mind would never pause at interpretation. I’ve found a trick that works for me: see before I think. Feel the form before I locate the meaning. A while ago, I was very fortunate to learn a little bit of figure drawing. My art teacher always says, “Feel the form. Feel the muscle, see how it twists.” One day, I compared my arm with my partner’s in front of the mirror. I said, without too much thinking: “It’s so nice we are of the same skin tone.” My partner jokingly accused me of fetishizing Asians, which I disagree with, for I am also an Asian person. I think I had been drawing too many Caucasian bodies that I started to adore the often taken-for-granted, understated beauty of Asian bodies. This is not something that I can come up with “thinking” alone. Life, literature, films, books, and social phenomena; I need to know how to see and feel the form of all of them.

Anyhow, next time I come across something interesting, I want to take a pause before I think about questions like: Why does it matter? What does it mean? Instead, I ask: What am I actually seeing here?