Authorship: How Green Was My Valley

I HAVE SAILED THE SHIP:

EXPLORING THE PAST AND PRESENT IN AUTHORSHIP

Barthes proclaims that meaning is only found through the death of the author. “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author”. Barthes explains that the author’s personal meaning or history must be removed in order for the reader to experience the full text. However, Foucault challenges the function of an author by determining the definition of authorship in relationship to meaning. Auteur theory gives authorship to a director; that his voice is heard beyond the confines of the script. However, when examining How Green Was My Valley, it appears that authorship cannot be completely disassembled or equated to a specific “author”. Rather, authorship translates across several different levels to create its own discourse. Authorship in this film is exemplified through four levels:

Novelist à Screenwriter à Director à Translation

I would like to argue that these four levels rely upon the expanse of the large conversation over time. To some extent, authorship ghosts through each medium to its destination. The destination is a collaborative authorship between the Novelist, Screenwriter, and Director. Most notably, I intend to suggest that all “authoring signatures” are reliant upon the destination (or translation). Quotes from the film will be followed by: (GV).

            The Novelist is the original work, How Green Was My Valley, written by Richard Llewellyn. Often, origins (or centers) of a work are sought for; i.e motivational prompting to pursue writing on this particular topic. In Llewellyn’s case, there were claims that he based the book on his own personal experiences. After his death, this was found to be false. It was apparent that research was a heavy component to the novel. We can never know what an author intended to express. However, any formulation of research, the author then becomes the “scriptor”; No longer the nucleus of creative thought, but merely a transcriber of the historical/cultural moment. This particular historical moment might reflect the UK Coal Miner’s Strike of 1926. The Strike lasted 10 days with an unsuccessful attempt to force the government to prevent wage reduction and worsening conditions for 800,000 locked-out coal miners. The author is no longer the focus of creative influence; the author is merely a "scriptor” and a vessel through which a script is born.

            The Screenwriter, Phillip Dunne, pulls the text from the Novelist and the historical moment. Yet, there must be some differences. The story structure (plot or character) frames a man looking back on his childhood reflecting on the past. Authorship can changed based on perspective. We don’t all see the same thing. Barthes explains that the essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator, "but in its destination," or its audience. The film tells of the Morgans, a close, hard-working Welsh mining family. The story highlights the destruction of the environment in the coalfields, and the loss of a way of life and its effects on the family. It must also be considered that there is a remarkable difference in mediums from novel to screenplay in its writing styles and structures. The intended audiences of both levels infer that authorship is not one dimensional but instead is ghosting stories, people, and ideas from many historical moments.

            In a film medium, it is important to recognize the authorship of the Director. The director, John Ford, also functions as an Auteur (as detailed by Auteur theory). Auteur theory implies that the directors is the primary author of a film, “as he is the only creative voice loud enough to be heard through studio interference over the collaborative process.” The structure of a screenplay is textual and the director’s role is to realize the story in whatever medium. Film was at such an early age during the 1941 release of How Green Was My Valley, was heavily influenced by the postmodern movement. One of the tenets of Postmodernism is to “emphasize a problem of the philosopher cleanly distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, and presence from absence”. Many of these ideological shifts prompted structural changes in cinematography. Most often, a script provides a vessel and the director provides the motivation to move the vessel. Directors fluctuate between many different duties, but most consider they are making art; the words on the page are the tools and marble, and the director completes the sculpture. “The way a film moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels.” Ford was a pioneer of location shooting and the long shot which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain.

            The last piece of this authorship puzzle is the most crucial aspect of the justification of authorship. Beckett states: “what matter who’s speaking, someone said what matter who’s speaking?” Though there may be a paradox between the real author and author-function, it is definitively inferred that someone is speaking. As art is a collaborative, therefore authorship is a combination of many voices. Voices of a Novelist, a Screenwriter, and a Director have value and “always with a purpose.” The translation of any cinematic feature details several sub-levels of authorship. For example, the film is dubbed over in English rather than in its original vernacular, Welsh. It’s possible that cultural differences and backgrounds change textual meaning. Another element of the film that might translate differently might be that the motion picture is in black and white compared to 21^st century colored, high-definition, and technologically advanced artistry. It’s possible that the film is received considerably differently based on its quality. In fact, the film was very popular after its release but holds no consideration now because of its low quality picture. Translation is the final level at which authorship can exist. For “a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination”.

The author provides and articulation of a moment of a large conversation over time. The Novelist, Screenwriter, Director combined methods of storytelling (music, singing, and narration) to “see things as they were.” (GV) “Who’s to say what is real and what is not … for my friend’s voices echo in my ears.” (GV) Authorship encompasses the ghosting memories that are articulated by so many people in so many ways. I am the destination, and I have translated the “authoring signatures” to see the multitude of influences not singular to one author, but is a vessel. I have sailed the ship built, constructed, and designed by the many others before me. For “who is there and cannot look back?” (GV)