On the Dangers of Over-Analyzing
OK, so this has been building up for a while; and rather than lurking around all snippy and defensive in the Comments section, really I need to mount a more thoughtful, and measured, response to this whole topic. And the topic, of course, is the charge that I “over-analyze” things.
I’d like to begin by putting it all at an arm’s distance from myself, and from any of you: that is to say, I don’t particularly want to write about you accusing me of “over-analyzing things,” at least not at first. For I’m not interested in defending myself; I’m interested, rather, in defending the practice of cultural criticism writ large.
In discussions of a cultural text, replying that your interlocutor is “over-analyzing” isn’t a response; in argumentative terms, telling someone she’s “over-analyzing” is the equivalent of “yo mama.” A response requires presenting a different analysis, a different reading, and/or pointing out where the critic’s analysis has gone wrong. For there’s nothing wrong with analysis qua analysis, surely; on that much, at least, we need to agree—or else, I can’t imagine what you’re doing reading a blog like this one! But equally, we need to acknowledge that some analyses are better than others.
I’ve written about this before, especially in my mini-series rant against Michiko Kakutani (March 29–30, April 3–4), but analysis involves the process of constructing an appropriate context around a cultural item; and one simply can’t distinguish “analysis” from “over-analysis” before the fact. Besides, when it comes to analysis, the important axis isn’t quantity, but quality. “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” according to Blake; “Too much is not enough,” Bono sings on “Zooropa.” The sages are in agreement on this one.
Now, back to the personal examples: Cee-Lo and the Child Abuse slogan in South Carolina. Cee-Lo could very, very easily made his lyric sexually unambiguous. Watch how easy: “Fuck You! And fuck him too!” But he didn’t. Inquiring minds want to know why. I’m not confident I know why, and I thought I had been pretty honest on that point; and had I asserted some simple or fanciful solution—Cee-Lo is a closeted gay man, or whatever—in that instance, one would have every right, a responsibility even, to call that interpretation out. Though even then, I don’t think the problem would be “over-analysis,” but poor analysis, or a conclusion not supported by the argument.
With the “Kids. You Can’t Beat ‘Em” slogan, there are some other issues at play, I suppose; and reasonable and intelligent people might differ on the question of whether punning might be a useful rhetorical strategy in communicating this important information. In that argument, the calculus would seem to be: The risk of misinterpretation is high; is it worth it? What’s the payoff? But simply asking the question about the wisdom of a pun: surely that’s not wrong? Pointing out the various ways in which the ad contradicts, or muddies, its message (the graffiti motif, for instance): surely that’s not wrong? I paid attention not just to the slogan, but its context, the faux-cinderblocks, etc.; but surely the artist who put the sign together paid attention to those elements, too. I’m not just imagining them. I don’t think they work especially well.
As for “over-analysis”: well again, my testimony ought to be suspect, since criticism is what I do for a living. But I don’t really see how the aspects of the sign I pointed out constitute “over-analysis”?
I probably need to mention what wags like to call “paralysis by analysis,” which would, I suppose, be related to “over-analyzing.” But it’s a phenomenon much more memorable in its formulation than prevalent in practice: it’s a notion that’s caught hold of the public imagination, that is to say, because it’s a catchy phrase.
If I’m ranting—and I know I am—it’s because a cultural critic runs into this kind of resistance all the time, and it’s unspeakably wearisome. If there’s a fallacy in interpretation, it’s not that we “overdo” it: it’s that we do it poorly, or inadequately support our arguments, or jump to conclusions. We’ll be looking at a prime example this Friday, as our Mystery Science Auditorium: I don’t want to ruin it, but come back Friday, and you’ll see someone interpreting really badly. He’s not “over-analyzing”: if anything, he’s under-analyzing, or analyzing very poorly, and spinning out some completely fantastic conclusions.
T. S. Eliot declared, “Literary criticism is a distinctive activity of the civilised mind”; my only quibble with that—and regular fcrp readers can probably anticipate me—is Eliot’s unnecessary qualification, “literary.” Criticism is what civilized minds do; to the degree that our talking-heads political culture now encourages ad hominem (i.e., “yo mama”) attacks over reasoned argument, we’re less civilized as a result. Indeed, the anti-intellectualism characteristic of much of the cultural right consists precisely in trying to stop intellectuals from analyzing things.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that we never get analysis right: we always overdo it or underdo it. In fact, I think that’s probably the casee. Two options, then: “over-analyzing” or “under-analyzing.” Doesn’t it seem clear on which side we’d want to fall?
I dunno… Whenever I hear the charge of over-analysis (and you have reminded me of a class on Petrarch in which the prof dismissed comments with “You’re reading waaaaay too much into this” at least once per class meeting), the accuser seems to want no analysis at all, just Appreciation. I’d argue that this holds for the academics (all about the aesthetics and the transcendence) and non-academics (“Can’t you enjoy it without analyzing it to bits?”) alike — as if analysis is a form of destruction.
As for Eliot, if he were here, I’d suggest that he leave civilization out of it.
You make a number of very solid points and I have to agree with most of what you say. Let me suggest – and here I’m talking generally and not about anyone in particular – I believe that the issue is often not really “over-analysis” but of conclusions and inferences being overcomplicated. Falling back on a popular line, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Detailed analysis must sometimes detect mere cigars.
Going a step beyond, with works of popular culture in mind, I suggest that the sophistication, skill and complexity of meaning and execution is often somewhat short of what may be encountered in classical literature and in formal academic writing. If the reader/listener/viewer finds and embraces a higher result than the work’s creator ever intended, it is certainly valid and valuable, but caution is called for in attribution of that result.
Kevin, I agree with Meg.
Your job is to analyze, and you do it very well. Being an non-academic myself, I tend to analyze very little. It is easy, I LIKE or I DON’T LIKE, etc.
Over-analysis is the not problem for me. For me it is what, specifically, gets analyzed. Disecting things can take steal their magic. Critism can detroy. You are trying to steal my innocence, and as an American, the right to my Ignorance !
” To let it be or not to let it be” That is the question !
First of all, a note of appreciation to our long-suffering host. I suspect that he’s beginning to file this blog under “seemed like a good idea at the time” for understandable reasons. (My curmudgeonly posts being one of them.) But I really appreciate the effort that goes into sustaining the enterprise. I’m kind of starved for this sort of discussion, so I really appreciate having a place where I can spout off. So I hoist my cappuccino to you, Kevin Dettmar. Huzza!
As for the topic of the day:
I *completely* see and agree with your point about the necessity for analysis. I’m still enough of an academic to appreciate the strength of a good argument and to see the value of poking into the unexamined corners of things. But I do have reservations about some sorts of cultural criticism, which fall into two categories:
Forest/trees problems. It’s all very well to look at the less obvious aspects of a cultural artifact. But there’s a danger of losing sight of what the thing is at its core. Pop songs are pop songs. Mystery novels are mystery novels. Certainly, individual examples of these things can move beyond the boundaries of their genre, which is an entirely good thing. But sometimes in the effort to find new and interesting ways of looking at things, we tend to forget what the artifact actually *is*. A distinguished young literature scholar of my acquaintance (Susie) told me about one of her professors who emphasized that his students allow themselves a naive first reading of a text before moving on to more nuanced approaches. You read Jane Eyre and your first impression is that this is a gothic love story. There are other important aspects to be examined, of course, but that’s what the book is.
Jane Eyre is in some ways a bad example of what I’m talking about, because it’s obviously a very rich text that can be examined fruitfully from many angles. The problem arises more strongly with artifacts from popular culture, which brings me to my second point.
Pop songs, for example, exist primarily as articles of mass consumption meant to be enjoyed superficially. They are hamburgers, essentially. There’s nothing at all wrong with burgers, just as there is nothing wrong with genre fiction or popular movies. They can be understood and examined on their own terms. It would not be very fruitful for a food critic to examine a fast-food burger with all the sophisticated critical apparatus at his or her disposal. Fast-food burgers are just not that subtle. Likewise, most (and I emphasize most, not all)pop songs are just not that subtle either. They are what they are.
I think that’s where the “reading to much into it” complaint arises most often. Sometimes when I read a highbrow review of an album, it seems like the writer is struggling to find levels of meaning that just aren’t there. Well, I guess if the critic can find those meanings and can defend his position, then they do exist. But I wonder if the amount of juice you get is worth all the effort required to squeeze the lemon, if you follow my lame metaphor.
I guess in the end, I’m agreeing with you but using different a different frame of reference. What I might call reading too much into a text you would call poor criticism. What I call losing the forest for the trees, maybe that’s just poor criticism too?
Sorry for going on at Proustian length! Let me thank you again for providing this opportunity for me to put off doing what I am actually paid to do.
I heartily agree with Ken’s first paragraph – OK, some of the other stuff too – absent the cappacucino.
Instead, I’ll raise a cold Natty Light – rough economic times – and be happy that there are things like FCRP out there worth being opinionated about.
As a littérateur myself, I’m prepared to go on record as disputing *is*. Well, I’m okay with the word, but the implied single state of existence runs counter to everything I know and teach. A cigar is just a cigar *sometimes*, depending on how it’s used and who’s using it (and apologies to anyone who is having unpleasant flashbacks to the impeachment hearings of 1998).
Likewise, a pop song is just a pop song sometimes, and Whole Lot More at other times. When I’m channel-surfing on the couch with a beer, an old Destiny’s Child video is mindless fun. When I show “Bills, Bills, Bills” to my class in juxtaposition with ‘N Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” I’m still dealing with what’s been there all along.
It’s a floor wax AND a tasty dessert topping!
I have take a tremendous amount of issue with what Ken A is saying. Pop songs are hardly *just* pop songs, and by this, I assume you’re using the word “pop” as shorthand for “popular” and not to describe the genre of “pop” music (which is of course a subset of “popular” music).
Craig Finn, lead singer of the Hold Steady, sings in their song “Stay Positive”: “The singalong songs will be our scriptures.” Even “dumb” songs like “Don’t Stop Believin” or “Since U Been Gone” are unifying cultural texts – probably to a greater extent than anything else that exists. More people know the Beatles’ catalogue than the work of any author or filmmaker. The brief nature of pop songs allows them to be consumed easily and in wide distribution. A song like “Free Fallin” runs across generations, races, religions and politics, and allows people to find common cultural ground.
In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby explores how pop songs construct the world around us in an even more active way. They teach what it means to be young or old, how to fall in love, and how to sustain love. They help us overcome our shortcomings and disappointments, and come to terms with the crazy world in which we find ourselves. I would say that the song that is *just* a pop song is the rare one indeed. At its most basic, it builds on our common cultural thread. At its best it reveals something about ourselves as individuals and a collective society.
Thus, a critical reading of popular songs is integral to understanding the culture in which we operate. Critical readings of other cultures’ popular songs can teach us about the societies from which those arise. When a song like Cee Lo’s “Fuck You” garners 1.5 million views on YouTube in 72 hours, I think that qualifies it as a significant text, having an impact on our culture and probably revealing something about it. To write it off as nothing more than a pop song is a truly anti-intellectual act.
So, Kevin, keep right on doing what you’re doing and bring us closer to an understanding of ourselves.
I’m hanging back — not because I don’t care, and not because I’m not hanging on every word! But I don’t want to queer the pitch the way I did yesterday. Y’all keep at it. And if you’re on social media (Twitter, Facebook), consider pushing the URL out to get some of your smart friends involved?
This may be the only time I’ve ever been accused of being anti-intellectual! I’ll take it as a compliment
I think pop songs *are* important. (And I do mean pop as in popular–it encompasses any number of genres.) And I agree with much of what Carter says about why they’re important.
Saying that “a pop song is a pop song” is just a way of saying that they should be appreciated for what they are. They don’t need to be regarded or analyzed as cultural artifacts on the same plane as Shakespeare or Beethoven or Borges or whoever. Pop songs are trying to accomplish an entirely different thing and should be evaluated on that basis.
Now, I didn’t listen to the Cee Lo track or read Kevin’s posts about it. I don’t know a lot about hip-hop, so my opinion is pretty much worthless. I’ll take it as a given that it’s a quality track. But the fact that x million people saw the You Tube clip doesn’t say much about its importance as a piece of art. I mean, millions of people watch kitten videos and clips of kids babbling after a visit to the dentist. These things are interesting sociological phenomena–why the hell are kitten videos so fascinating to so many people? But that doesn’t mean that any particular kitten video is anything other than a kitten video.
To me, the artifacts of pop culture are more important collectively than they are individually. They are an expression of how a culture sees itself at a given time–its fears and preoccupations. It’s no accident that there were a whole bunch of nuclear war thrillers in the late fifties and early sixties. That’s important. But individually, those novels are not particularly interesting. I doubt anyone is teaching “Fail Safe” in a literature class. Maybe in a history class or a political science class, but not literature.
I’m old enough to remember Top 40 radio, which I came to abhor as I became a music geek/snob. Looking back on it, however, I am struck by what a strong unifying force it was. In Sacramento, where I grew up, essentially all the teenagers listened to one of two radio stations, which had pretty much identical playlists. So we had very much the same musical “inputs.” That’s an interesting and important sociological/cultural/historical point. But how many of the songs in the Top 40 from back then are really interesting? “Rockin’ Robin?” “The Night Chicago Died?” “Havin’ My Baby?” “Free Bird,” for fuck’s sake?
My point in saying that a mystery novel is a mystery novel or a pop song is a pop song is not to dismiss them. Me, I watch Law and Order reruns. I read a lot of crime novels. I went to see “Knight and Day!” I like those things. I think they can be creative and interesting and engaging. But I also think they are best understood and appreciated on their own terms. They ask to be regarded as items of mass consumption, which is precisely what they are.
Kevin writes: “And if you’re on social media (Twitter, Facebook), consider pushing the URL out to get some of your smart friends involved?”
What, we’re not smart enough for ya?
Yeah, that’s right: I mean, some of y’all must have some smart friends, right?
Kevin, as usual, you’ve made me think. Unforgivable! Unforgivable, I say! When the revolution comes, this sort of thing will not be tolerated.
I absolutely agree with the similarity you’re drawing between “over-analysis” and “poorly-executed analysis.” In the end, what’s at issue is whether you can make a convincing case for whatever it is you’ve found in the text, song, or object in question.
That said, I do think it’s worth taking some time to stop and think about how we as cultural critics can keep our feet planted on the ground, casting a watchful eye on both forest and tree.
A personal anecdote, if you’ll permit, from a recently hatched lit major. Wee Susie A., now in her senior year and even contemplating grad school, turns in a paper, and meets with her professor to talk about it. Prof likes it, says I’ve made a good point about the book, that I’ve argued the point well, and that she agrees with it. However. Prof’s only feedback is that she wished I had “complicated my claim.” Prof didn’t think I had said something stupid or wrong or hadn’t made my case. Prof just wished my case was more…complicated.
(A side note to Kevin, who probably has to deal with whiny undergrads all the time: as a general rule, I really did try not to grouse about paper feedback. Honest! I just disagreed with this one prof about this one paper.)
But…complication just to make it more complicated? This is where I think we need to be careful. By the end of my undergraduate career, I had a pretty well-stocked analytic toolbox. I could find evidence to support lots of different claims, simple and complicated. I felt like a lawyer who could argue both sides of the case.
And it scared me a little, this power to argue convincingly for things that I knew were clever but I wasn’t sure were true. Give me Tristram Shandy and I could close read that puppy six ways ‘til Sunday and develop 5 contradictory claims about it.
(Your tuition dollars at work, Ken A.!)
This, I think, is why it’s important to ground critical work in a naïve reading or a naïve listening. This is why we need to remember that a pop song is a pop song: it helps us not to lose sight of our gut feelings about what we’re reading or hearing. It keeps us from losing sight of the truth (as we see it) in the midst of our own cleverness.
As I embark on my brilliant reading of the orientalist themes in “Baby One More Time,” or something, the naïve reading reminds me “But does this feel right? Is there a better way to go?” Because good criticism is more than analysis; it’s an affective judgment, too.
I had the great fortune to take classes with a prof who taught primarily late undergrads and early grad students. We were at the point in our education when I think we were all little drunk off the power of our own analysis. But this prof always reminded us that it was sometimes okay to keep it simple. I remember him once standing in front of the class and saying in his Romanian accent and doing a little gallic shrug, “They always teach you now to say these counter-intuitive things, but you know, sometimes it’s okay to say the intuitive thing about the book. Sometimes it’s okay.”
So: long live the forest, and long live the tree. May the one always keep the other in check.
(Sheesh. You’d think I got paid by the word for this comment. Apologies, all!)
I’m very grateful for this, Susie. I hope–I wasn’t there, so don’t know, etc.–but I hope that when your prof encouraged you to “complicate” you claim, that might have been code for solid, but not surprising? That is to say, I’ll often keep pushing a student who has a thesis that’s plausible, but almost too plausible. We’re looking for cultural criticism to tell us not just things that are true, but truths we hadn’t initially expected. It’s a tricky balance, though, and can devolve into arcana for arcana’s sake. I hope I’m not in favor of that.
I love what you’ve said about grounding one’s criticism in one’s experience as an audience member, if that’s a fair summary. It’s as important to keep the fan talking to the critic, as it is to keep the critic talking to the fan. Even when they’re the same person.
I was wary of telling that anecdote for exactly the reason you’ve described: I’m assuming for the purposes of the anecdote that I was right and the prof was wrong. This is a dangerous proposition indeed when you consider that I was just some punk undergrad at the time! (Also, that was the quarter I thought it might be a good idea to take Henry James and Virginia Woolf at the same time–spoiler alert: it wasn’t!–so I was borderline mentally unstable by the time I wrote my final papers.) Anyway, there’s plenty more I could say about this particular prof/course that might help justify my audacity, but there’s no point getting into it here.
NOT THAT I’M BITTER ABOUT THE A-, OR ANYTHING. (Only kidding…mostly.)
But the larger point of that anecdote was that the culture of the academy tends to privilege a certain kind of dazzling, intricate, counter-intuitive reading. Often this is a very good thing, but other times it can become “arcana for arcana’s sake,” as you so nicely put it.
Ah, bright college days!
<>
I’ve been continuing to ponder all this in a diffuse way and I think I’ve hit on something that helps explain the two divergent schools of thought that Susie so admirably tries to bridge.
Actually, I should qualify that. My explanation is about how *I* feel about the subject. My point of view is admittedly quite idiosyncratic. I’m in sort of a “both sides now” position with regards academic analysis. I’m neither fish nor fowl: my academic training and experience certainly left its mark on the way I think. (Some might say it left scars!) But at the same time, I’ve been outside that world for so long that a lot of academic analysis has an “angels on the head of a pin” quality for me. I’ve come to believe that what is good about academic thinking (having a certain analytic distance so as to be able to look at things from eccentric angles) is also what’s bad about it (losing touch with reality; getting caught in infinite analytical regressions that lead you down the rabbit hole). There’s much more to be said about all that, of course, but I don’t have the time to write it and you certainly don’t want to read it!
My main point:
Some people are drawn to finding deeper meanings or hidden truths. To be grandiose about it, they try to find the infinite through the lens of the finite. It’s a bit like looking at a fractal. You can zoom in forever and ever and still find new levels of detail. So when someone predisposed toward this view looks at a cultural artifact, they tend to look for the telling details, for the non-obvious, for the larger meanings.
I think this is an entirely legitimate thing to do, actually. I believe that some sorts of “texts” reward that kind of close reading more than others, but I’m basically all for it.
It’s definitely not my approach, however. I think this is a pretty basic psychological fact about me, at least. Kevin, I remember a while back that you used the word “transcendent” when describing a Radiohead track. I was struck by this because that is a word that I would *never* use to describe a rock song. I don’t find transcendence in much of anything; I certainly don’t look for it in pop culture.
I am interested in the real and the actual: real people doing real things in a real historical, cultural, and social context. So when I listen to music, I never lose sight of the fact that it is a product of human labor and creativity. At its best, pop music can provide a human-to-human connection. You understand that you are not the only lovelorn person on the planet, that others have felt these same banal but nevertheless profound emotions, that some people are even more messed up than you are. But for me, it’s always at that relatively simple human level. When Bonnie Prince Billy sings about his minor place, he’s an actual dude with actual problems that may or may not be similar to mine. So, from my point of view, there’s no need to complicate things with sophisticated analysis.
I don’t think my approach is anti-intellectual. For one thing, I’m talking about how one reacts to cultural or artistic products, especially those of an ephemeral nature. To me, the point of art is to evoke emotion. Certainly, there’s room for analyzing how it does that, but for me the main pleasure to be derived from art is simply to experience the emotions it produces in us.
Other spheres of human activity are different. I would certainly never advocate simply “experiencing” politics or economics. (I am, or was, a historian, after all.) A different set of rules apply in the non-artistic realm.
Well, that’s my spew for the day. Probably I’m the one who’s reading too much into things now!
Huh. In the preview at least, an attempt at humor in the first lines of my mega-post is not displayed. I enclosed it in double angle brackets, which presumably is some sort of “hide” tag in this context.
It wasn’t that funny anyway.
Dad (er…Ken A.—this gets so confusing!), you’ve mentioned above that you feel that, say, spy novels, taken en masse are an interesting sociological and historical phenomenon, worthy of analysis and study. Here, I think you and Kevin agree.
The crux of the issue, as I see it, is granularity. Dad, you’ve touched on this with your metaphor of the fractal. As a literary critic, my own feeling (and Kevin’s too, I’m guessing, though I hesitate to put words into his mouth) is that the same forces that make spy novels interesting as a group may also be present in individual spy novels, even if they aren’t necessarily “high art.” So as a literary critic, I feel it’s fair to apply “sophisticated” analytic tools to relatively “unsophisticated” cultural objects.
As a historian, I think Dad/Ken A. might be coming at the problem from another angle entirely—you find meaning in the larger category of mass culture, but it sounds like you are hesitant to believe that meaning always “scales down” into an individual cultural object.
Part of what I’m reading in your responses is that, while you like and enjoy various cultural objects on their own terms, that’s not where you’re interested in looking for Meaning with a capital “M.” I think you are more interested in looking for meaning in the culture that produced the objects. Personally, I’m more zoomed in to the object itself. To me this really feels like a historian/literary critic difference of approach and interest.
As a side note: You write, “To me, the point of art is to evoke emotion. Certainly, there’s room for analyzing how it does that, but for me the main pleasure to be derived from art is simply to experience the emotions it produces in us.”
In response, my inner critic can’t help but throw out a little Henry James, as food for thought: “In the arts, feeling is always meaning.”
(Once again, apologies for going on at such length!)
Cigar… Thanks alot, meg. Now I have to go wash out my brain. *shudder*
I appreciate criticism that goes somewhere. A skillful dissection as opposed to a hatchet job. I want to have my Cro Magnon brain crowbarred open to look at something a different way.
I remember that particular anti-child abuse campaign and I immediately disliked it. Because they used too many font faces. Sure there was the inappropriate cutesiness and the odd juxtaposition of the NO slash item and the very weird tack-on of the organization name below and the fact that the people who most need to see this message won’t get it anyhow.
But mostly the fonts pissed me off. It’s alright. I know I’m a lowbrow (my dear husband reaffirms this almost daily) and I’m comfortable with that. However, I do appreciate having my eyes opened to new angles of observation. Carry on, good doctor!
Kathy – Married, as I am to someone who previously worked and lectured in the field of child abuse (prevention), I feel obligated to call you out on “the fact that the people who most need to see this message won’t get it anyhow.”
Particularly amongst FCRP readers, who I assume to be generally of more than average intelligence and education, it’s nice to think that child abusers are, in those particular ways, different from us. Actually everybody wants to think of evildoers as being different in ways by which we define ourselves. Unfortunately, child abuse and child abusers don’t neatly fit into any profile(s) and we sure don’t want to start any discussion of profiling anyway. Reports that link abuse and abusers to particular profiles tend to be associated with groups who also have an agenda with respect to elements of that profile.
I apologize if I’m overreacting or coming on a little strong here, but I didn’t observe anything to suggest that a tongue was pressed to the cheek. On the other hand, there was nothing to suggest that it was anything other than a flip response either. As a matter of confession and as the “King of Flippant,” I was pleased to see that my own swipe at Southerners in the original thread of comments was probably/hopefully not left open to being interpreted as anything but attempted humour.