Against Interpretation

Content is innately related to Sontag’s definition of interpretation. The essay states that content is central to the contemporary style of interpretation, though Sontag claims that “the idea of content is today mainly a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism” (96). Content, instead of being experienced within the art piece as a whole, is instead a feature of the work that is only acknowledged in a viewer’s plight to interpret it. It has been wrongly separated from the form of the art, in Sontag’s mind, when the two should act in tandem with each other and be experienced as a singular entity. She also implies that it does not truly exist and that it is only invented through the process of interpreting a work of art or literature (97). Content, like interpretation, plays an important role in Sontag’s essay by virtue of its interrelationship with interpretation itself. Sontag stresses that content is antithetical to the ideal purpose of artistic and literary criticism.

Sontag contrasts content with form, the latter of which refers to what has been relegated as “accessory” while content has been considered “essential” (96). She emphasizes the general need for greater attention to form (102), and she definitionally relates the term to the experience of art in its purest form, as it pertains to reality, as opposed to the meaning invented through content-based interpretation. Form, in the sense that Sontag uses throughout the essay, is an ideal basis of artistic and literary criticism that counteracts the negative effects of content-based interpretation, which has exercised control over modern and contemporary criticism as a whole.

The author explicitly defines this as a term that “means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are” (103), and she also states that it “is the highest, most liberating value in art—and in criticism—today” (103). Interpretation muddies a work of art or literature by adding layers of subtext and personal meaning; allowing a work to be transparent, easily experienced by any viewer, is a freeing approach. Sontag cites certain films by Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu, and Jean Renoir as examples of transparence’s greatness in art. Though this term is not as thoroughly discussed in “Against Interpretation” as the preceding terms, it is important nonetheless because it serves as a summation of one of Sontag’s core arguments, particularly the prescriptivist command to experience art as it is. In this sense, transparence becomes an essential goal to achieve in our experience of art.