Collective Authorship in Film

Abstract

Authorship is a problem in film studies that simply will not go away. Despite all sorts of arguments reducing authors to abstract entities such as author‐functions, fictional surrogates, and implied authors, and eventually abandoning them under the mantra of “the death of the author,” we have not been able in our critical and historical discourses to shrug off talking about films as if they are the products of real individuals. In this article I explain why I feel that we are right to continue to do so. Arguments eschewing empirical authors share an anti‐intentionalist core that locates meaning at the point of reception. Despite a reasonable level of coherency to these views, they nevertheless cannot satisfy various practical objections. When engaging a text, we aim to understand what someone intended to convey by producing that text in the way that they did and not simply what the text means, either textually or intertextually. There is a fundamental issue of accountability. For instance, I am led to believe that Hitler's Mein Kampf forwards an anti‐Semitic and confrontational thesis. Is this offensive thesis the product of the act of reading or the intention of its author? The former view indemnifies the man behind the text, whereas the latter holds him responsible for the views expressed. Similarly, because the politics of Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1934) are troubling, understanding Riefenstahl's intentions in making the film has motivated historical and critical interest. Neither the death of the author nor any author‐surrogate theories will allow us to consider Riefenstahl's accountability because meaning on these views rests with the reader and is disconnected from her intentions. Others complain that poststructural authorship theories abandoned authors just as they became politically necessary. How can one assert any sort of identity, be this racial, sexual, gendered, political, cultural, or even personal, when it is argued that meaning is to be found between language (or cultural representation in general) and reception?

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