Sontagian Interpretation of Graduation

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Sontagian Interpretation of Graduation

Interpreting and analyzing the artwork created by other people has always been a challenge for me. Who am I to say what the artist or author symbolically represents with their work? Previous English teachers would always try to explain what an author "really" meant in their work. Such claims frustrated me because I believe that no person has the right to critically analyze his work except himself. Susan Sontag's view of interpretation is very similar to mine. In her essay Against Interpretation, she explains the importance of experiencing art, rather than dissecting every detail.

I've always believed that art interpreters are bored people who excessively analyze artwork. Sontag agrees that, "Interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone" (Sontag 656). Today, almost anything can be considered artwork, which leads to the scrutiny of most works of art. Sontag believes that criticism should be "The aim of commentary on art now should be to make works of art- and, by analogy, our own experience- more, rather than less, real to us" (Sontag 660). I agree that people desensitize artwork by overanalyzing and picking it apart. She believes that it is artwork if it makes you actually feel some sort of sentiment. The Sontagian interpretation process is good because it bases the status of artwork on personal emotional experience that comes from art, rather than dissection of the piece of art.

My example of a Sontagian definition of art is a song that makes me smile and cry at the time. It brings out the joy of memories and the sadness of forgetting them as I grow up. The song is called Graduation by Vitamin C and is a work of art that anyone who has graduated from high school can relate to. It's about the struggles of moving on as time changes, and the friends lost along the way. I have shared many emotional moments with my best friends while listening to this song. Graduation holds a very special place in my heart because it helps me relive high school memories, and deal with the changes in my life.

The song begins, "So we talked all night about the rest of our lives." This brings back the anxious feeling that I had throughout my body on the night of high school graduation.

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