I owe Sean a response to his email. As I remember his feedback, and it would behoove me to check that again, he mentioned that he was entertained, complimented some of the points, and posed the question of value.
What do I want my response to accomplish? I want to thank him; I want him to chuckle; and I do want to observe that I differ with him a little on the problem of value. It's not that I don't think, say, Lear is better than A King and No King--it's that I recognize 1) a vast number of people preferred the latter to the former, particularly on the stage and 2) evaluation itself is a phony enterprise and I don't want to be a part of it.
That second bit's the big bit for me--I fundamentally don't think Godzilla is all that great, but I don't want to evaluate it. I want to write about what I want to write about. I have the same problem with Renaissance texts.
Sean's point is that the literary critical texts I was relying upon base themselves on an immense amount of close thought about high literary texts. I simply have no evidence that their methodology or results hold up when applied to a set of texts that even I would agree is systematically different. And I don't try to justify that it might work.
If I were to take on the problem of value, it would be to praise the Godzilla's so that they could merit discussion in the same article as the Shakespeares. Which is a silly enterprise and one that might tack too close to earnestness.
If I'm interested, though, in how words work--how images make meaning or how plot turns into reaction--I get to study all words, don't I? If not necessarily on the exalted level of interpretation. Do I have to go towards psychology? Is it possible for me to go towards psychology?
I can't be that interested in the stuff--I've never read a non-pop psych book. But, then, I'd never read a book of criticism, either.
What interests me, I suppose, is how meanings develop out of conventions, and how conventions relate to economic and social situations. What /happens/ when you have the best playwrights in the world competing to produce plays for you? What happens when your sonneteers all turn into satirists?
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