Ways to Read a Work

There are three ways to examine a work:

·         Narrative Interpretation

·         Technical Analysis

·         Context of Creation

Narrative Interpretation

Narrative interpretation is studying the narrative elements within a work such as themes, metaphors or ideas the author wanted to express through their work. Every person can interpret a work differently, for example, someone can say that the play Romeo and Juliet is about the foolishness of young lovers but another person can say it’s is actually about the thoughtlessness of the old generation, technically neither is wrong, it’s up to personal interpretation.

Interpretation can lead to the discovery of things like hidden symbolism. For example, some people believe that the film Inception is actually metaphor for filmmaking; each character in the main cast represents different members of a film crew:

However, narrative interpretation can sometimes lead people to find meaning in things the author did not intend to have; an example would when some people interpreted that the ring from The Lord of the Rings series was an allegory for the nuclear bomb during World War 2, J.R.R. Tolkien however denied this:

Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is about observing the technics used to create a work, this can range from practical effects used in films to the craftsmanship of a pot.

These techniques aren't limited to visual imagery; they can also be seen in written works. For example, an author can express a character’s personality through their dialogue such as having a character talking for a whole paragraph about various trivia topics to show that the character is chatty and absent-minded without directly stated it to the audience.

Certain technics can be seen as the creator’s signature, for example, Stanley Kubrick’s films feature one-point perspective shots. Kubrick would use this technique to draw attention a subject positioned at the vanishing point.

Context of Creation

Context of creation revolves around looking into a work’s origin: who made it, why was it made, when and where it was make, etc. Understanding these area would shed new light on certain aspects of a work, for example in India there is a taboo against public kissing hence why there are lots of “kissing discretion shot” in Bollywood movies.

A more detailed example would be Derek Jarman’s 1993 film Blue which is made up of a single shot of the colour blue filling the screen with narration. The film was released four months before his AIDS-related death; complications from the disease had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film's release. Before making the film, Jarman wrote a book called Chroma which was about what different colours meant to him, this in turn severed as the bases for the film.