Year 3 POMO Moving Images/Film
Peirce identified three kinds of basic signs:
Symbol
the signifier is purely arbitrary or conventional (dependent on social and cultural
conventions); it does not resemble the signified.
Examples: alphabetical letters, numbers, traffic signs.
Icon
the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified, or being similar
to it in some of its qualities. Examples: a portrait, a model airplane.
Index
the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or
causally) to the signified in a way that can be observed or inferred.
Examples: smoke (an index of fire), footprints (an index of a passing person),
photographs and films (the direct result of the imprint of light on a sensitized
surface).
Signs do not belong exclusively to one category: there is a great deal of overlap, and signs
often have characteristics of more than one of these types.
Example: A photographic portrait is both an index and an icon, because it is a direct trace of
the physical presence of the person (via light) and because it resembles that person.
Meaning arises from the differences between signifiers; these differences are of two
kinds: syntagmatic (concerning positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution).
These two dimensions are often presented as 'axes', where the horizontal axis is the
syntagmatic and the vertical axis is the paradigmatic.
The plane of the syntagm is that of the combination of 'this-and-this-and-this' (as in the
sentence, 'the man cried') The plane of the paradigm is that of the selection or
replacement of 'this-or-this-or-this.
Syntagmatic relations are possibilities of combination, paradigmatic relations are
functional contrasts - they involve differentiation.
Paradigm - a class of objects or
concepts
Syntagm - an element which follows
another in a particular sequence
Syntagms and paradigms provide a structural context within which signs make sense; they are
the structural forms through which signs are organized into codes.
In film and television, paradigms include ways of changing shot (such as cut, fade, dissolve
and wipe). The medium or genre are also paradigms, and particular media texts derive
meaning from the ways in which the medium and genre used differs from the alternatives.
Roland Barthes outlined the paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements of the 'garment system'
in similar terms. The paradigmatic elements are the items which cannot be worn at the same
time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes). The syntagmatic
dimension is the juxtaposition of different elements at the same time in a complete ensemble
from hat to shoes.
The photo is a sign.
Its signifier is ink on paper.
Its signified is what in your language or experience this
corresponds with (the ink dots look like a human figure, with
dark skin, holding his hand to his temple, wearing a hat.")
The sign is the two combined (A young, black French soldier
saluting).
Denotation
connotation mythology
mediation
The cover photograph of issue 326 of Paris-Match
naturalization
But Barthes says, “I see very well what it signifies to me:
that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without
any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag,
and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an
alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this African in
serving his so-called oppressors.
”This is the second-order signification.
Form: A young black soldier is saluting in French uniform.
Concept: France is a great Empire, that all her sons,
without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under
her flag.
Signification: There is no better answer to the detractors
of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this
African in serving his so-called oppressors.
Denotation – connotation – mythology – mediation - naturalization
The cover photograph of issue 326 of Paris-Match
An analogue is something that bears an analogy to something else.
An analogue is an analogan.
At first glance all analogical reproductions of reality; drawings, paintings, movies,
theatre performances seem to be a message without a code, a denotative message.
But each of these messages or utterances develops in an immediate or evident
fashion, beyond the analogical content itself, a supplementary message which is what
we commonly call the style of the reproduction.
Here we are concerned with a second meaning, whose signifier is a certain treatment
of the image as a result of the creator’s action, and whose signified, whether aesthetic
or ideological, refers to a certain "culture" of the society receiving the message.
In short, all these imitative "arts" comprise two messages: a denoted message, which
is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the way in which the society
represents, to a certain extent, what it thinks of the analogon.
Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms
intertextuality - any text depends on a host of prior
conventions, codes, other texts. The term is sometimes used
to refer to the unavoidable multiplicity of references in any text;
sometimes it is used to refer to deliberate references,
quotations or pastiches.
In the first of these senses, the intertext of Independence Day
includes all other films featuring alien attack, the Prince of BelAir, Hollywood blockbusters foregrounding special effects etc.
In the second sense, The Untouchables features a conscious
quotation from the Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein's
Battleship Potemkin, Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill features
a series of conscious references to Hitchcock's Psycho etc.
Intermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist
Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary
activities that occur between artistic genres or mediums prevalent in the
1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or
between painting and theater could be described as intermedia. With
repeated occurrences, these new genres between genres could develop
their own names (e.g. visual poetry or performance art.)
Higgins said that the term was first used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834) an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher.
Higgins described the tendency of new art to cross the boundaries of
recognized media or even to fuse the boundaries of art with media that
had not previously been considered art forms, including computers.
The term "Intermedia" has become the preferred term for
interdisciplinary practice.
The term ‘intermediality’ was coined in 1983 by German scholar Aage A. HansenLove.
Intermediality applies to any transgression of boundaries between media and thus is
concerned with ‘heteromedial' relations between different semiotic complexes or
between different parts of a semiotic complex.
Intermediality deals with media as conventionally distinct means of communicating
cultural contents.
Media in this sense are specified principally by the nature of their underlying semiotic
systems (involving verbal language, pictorial signs, music/sound, etc., or, in cases of
‘Composite media' such as film, a combination of several semiotic systems), and
only in the second place by technical or institutional channels.
"Transmedial phenomena are phenomena that are non-specific to lndividual media.
Since they appear in more than one medium, they point to palpable similarities
between heteromedial semiotic entities.
Transmediality appears, for instance, as repetition of motifs and thematic variation,
and narrativity.
Definition: SIMULACRUM
The more common use of the term derives from the work of French postmodern
theorist Jean Baudrillard (1983) who argued that the sign and what it refers to had
collapsed into one another in such a way that it had become impossible to distinguish
between the real and the sign. According to Baudrillard, simulacra are signs that can
no longer be exchanged with 'real' elements, but only with other signs within the
system. For Baudrillard reality under the conditions of postmodernism has become
hyperreality, disappearing into a network of simulation.
This is understood as a shift from the practice of 'imitation' (or 'mimesis', the attempt
at an accurate imitation or representation of some real thing that lies outside of the
image or picture) to that of 'simulation' (where a 'reality' is experienced that does not
correspond to any actually existing thing). A simulation can be experienced as if it
were real, even when no corresponding thing exists outside of the simulation itself.
The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media that create
perceived reality; Baudrillard believed that society has become so reliant on simulacra
that it has lost contact with the real world on which the simulacra are based.
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a
historical period:
First order, associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an
artificial placemarker for the real item.
Second order, associated with the industrial Revolution, where distinctions between
image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The
item's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version.
The first and second orders are simulation.
Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the
original and the distinction between reality and representation breaks down. There is
only the simulacrum.
The third order is hypereality.
The first thing that any media text, indeed any act of communication, must do is to
produce or reproduce meanings.
Macao
Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
Disneyland, California
1960
Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
Disneyland, Paris
D.W. Griffith
Intolerance
1916
Hollywood backlot
Intolorence set
c. 1915-16
Allegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than
the literal.
An allegory is a device that can be presented in literary form, such as a poem or
novel, or in visual form, such as in painting or sculpture.
As a literary device, an allegory in its most general sense is an extended
metaphor.
As an artistic device, an allegory is a visual symbolic representation.
An example of a simple visual allegory is the image of the grim reaper. Viewers
understand that the image of the grim reaper is a symbolic representation of
death.
Since meaningful narratives are nearly always applicable to larger issues,
allegories may be read into many stories, sometimes distorting their author's overt
meaning.
Twin Towers
Time Magazine
Lyle Owerko
11/9/01
Tower of Babel
Pieter Bruegal the Elder
Dutch
1565
Orphée, (1949) French film directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Jean Marais. This film is the central
part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orphée (1949) and
Testament of Orpheus (1960).
Godzilla,(Gojira) is a 1954 Japanese Kaiju science fiction film directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects by Eiji
Tsuburaya, distributed by Toho Company Ltd. “Godzilla is pop culture's grandest symbol of nuclear apocalypse,
but he is also the primordial spirit of Japanese aggression turned against itself."
District 9 is a 2009 science fiction thriller film directed by Neill Blomkamp.
In fiction, revisionism is the retelling of a story or type of story with
substantial alterations in character or environment, to "revise" the view shown
in the original work. Unlike most usages of the term revisionism, this is not
generally considered negative.
Visual and artistic rhetoric, therefore, refers to the way in which images, both
small and large, subtle and obvious, are distributed throughout any number of
visible modes of communication (television, magazines, internet, film, etc).
The art of composing writing is called rhetoric, so when we apply these
concepts to pictures, it is called visual rhetoric. It is how images impact an
audience for the persuasive purpose of the image-maker's intent.
Visual rhetoric also examines the relationship between images and writing.
Visual rhetoric is pervasive, in part, because it is powerful. Visual messages
are volatile, eliciting positive and negative responses simultaneously.
E.J. Bellocq
Storyville Photographs
c.1912
After his death in 1949, most of his negatives and prints were destroyed. However, the Storyville negatives were later
found concealed in a sofa. In 1971, a selection of the photographs were published in a book entitled Storyville
Portraits.
E.J. Bellocq
Storyville Photographs
c.1912
E.J. Bellocq was an odd, indrawn, misshapen man, hydrocephalic, a dwarf photographing ordinary women.
Pretty Baby, (1978) is an historical fiction drama film directed by Louis Malle.
A Motif is
1. a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., esp. in a literary, artistic, or musical work.
2. a distinctive and recurring form, shape, figure, etc., in a design, as in a painting or on wallpaper.
3. a dominant idea or feature.
As a trope a motif is something symbolic that keeps turning up in order to reinforce the main theme of
the work.
Usually, this is a physical item, although a motif may show itself in other ways such as through
dialogue.
It may even be a double motif: a pattern on somebody's sofa, an emblem on the heroine's shirt or a
bumper sticker on the hero's car.
Motifs are employed in three different ways:
A single object, or a collection of extremely similar objects, that appear(s) many times throughout the
course of the play/film/book.
A collection of related objects or symbols that appear over and over again. Generally the most
popular option, as it marks the motifs as significant, but puts the emphasis firmly on the theme.
An assortment of objects that don't seem to be related, but on closer inspection have an underlying
resemblance that serve the theme. For example, a black cat, spilled salt and an umbrella left open
indoors all point to the theme of bad luck
A motif differs from a theme in that a theme is an idea set forth by a text, where a motif is a recurring
element which symbolizes that idea.
Sandro Botticelli
The Birth of Venus
1482
Andy Warhol
Details of Renaissance Paintings; (Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1482)
1984
Directed by Terry Gilliam
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
1988)
Roland Barthes said that 'no sooner is a form seen than it must resemble something: humanity seems
doomed to analogy'
The ubiquity of tropes in visual as well as verbal forms can be seen as reflecting our fundamentally
relational understanding of reality. Reality is framed within systems of analogy.
Figures of speech enable us to see one thing in terms of another. As with paradigm and syntagm, tropes
'orchestrate the interactions of signifiers and signifieds' in discourse.
A trope such as metaphor can be regarded as new sign formed from the signifier of one sign and the
signified of another. The signifier thus stands for a different signified; the new signified replaces the usual
one. As I will illustrate, the tropes differ in the nature of these substitutions.
Tropes generate 'imagery' with connotations over and above any 'literal' meaning. Once we employ a
trope, our utterance becomes part of a much larger system of associations which is beyond our control.
In linguistics, trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e., using a word in a
way other than what is considered its literal or normal form. The other major category of figures of speech
is the scheme, which involves changing the pattern of words in a sentence.
Some type of tropes are;
metaphor — an explanation of an object or idea through juxtaposition of disparate things with a similar
characteristic, such as describing a courageous person as having a "heart of a lion”.
metonymy — a trope through proximity or correspondence, for example referring to actions of the U.S.
President as "actions of the White House".
irony — creating a trope through implying the opposite of the standard meaning, such as describing a
bad situation as "good times".
synecdoche — related to metonymy and metaphor, creates a play on words by referring to something
with a related concept: for example, referring to the whole with the name of a part, such as "hired hands"
for workers; a part with the name of the whole, such as "the law" for police officers; the general with the
specific, such as "bread" for food; the specific with the general, such as "cat" for a lion; or an object with
the material it is made from, such as "bricks and mortar" for a building.
allegory - A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse.
Metaphors need not be verbal. Advertisers frequently use visual metaphors, as in this ad for Smirnoff
vodka.
In this example from a men's magazine, the metaphor suggests that (Smirnoff enables you to see that)
women (or perhaps some women) are nutcrackers (the code of related Smirnoff ads marks this as
humour).
Visual metaphor can also involve a function of 'transference', transferring certain qualities from one sign
to another. In the Chanel advertisement, two key signifiers are juxtaposed. The image of Catherine
Deneuve signifies French chic, sophistication, and glamour. The image of the bottle simply signifies
Chanel No. 5 perfume. At the bottom of the ad, in large letters, the name of the perfume is repeated in its
distinctive typographical style, making a link between the two key signifiers. The aim, of course, is for the
viewer to transfer the qualities signified by the actress to the perfume, thus substituting one signified for
another, and creating a new metaphorical sign.
Metonyms may be visual as well as verbal.
Metonymy can be applied to an object that
is visibly present but which represents
another object or subject to which it is
related but which is absent.
This ad for pensions in a women's
magazine asked the reader to arrange four
images in order of importance: each image
was metonymic, standing for related
activities (such as shopping bags for
material goods).
A metaphorical term is connected with that
for which it is substituted on the basis of
similarity, metonymy is based on contiguity
or closeness.
Metonymy does not require transposition
(an imaginative leap) from one domain to
another as metaphor does.
In film, a pair of consecutive shots is metaphorical when there is an implied
comparison of the two shots. For instance, a shot of an aeroplane followed by a shot of
a bird flying would be metaphorical, implying that the aeroplane is (or is like) a bird.
Metaphor is based on apparent unrelatedness, metonymy is a function which involves
using one signified to stand for another signified which is directly related to it or closely
associated with it in some way. Metonyms are based on various indexical relationships
between signifieds, notably the substitution of effect for cause.
Metonymy is the evocation of the whole by a connection.
The idea of narrative prose and film being essentially metonymic has encountered a
large following, among literary scholars, and film semioticians. The classical Hollywood
clichés are often described as metonymic (e.g. the falling calendar pages, the driving
wheels of the railroad engine) or synecdochic (e.g. close shots of marching feet to
represent an army).
True metonymies are secondary indexical signs: they relate two pre-existing signs by
means of their respective contents, which means that a sign present in the syntagmatic
chain serves to invoke another sign which is absent from it.
Attention clips will not play ! North by Northwest
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1959
Strike (Stachka) is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein.
Attention clips will not play !
Attention clips will not play ! Strangers on a Train
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1951
Strangers on a Train
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1951
Extended Metaphor
An extended metaphor sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary
subjects or comparisons.
Essentially the subject is developed at great length, occurring frequently in
or throughout a work.
Citizen Kane (1941), directed by and starring Orson Welles. The motif of
Rosebud as metonymy.
Citizen Kane (1941), directed by and starring Orson Welles.
In photographic and filmic media a close-up is a
simple synecdoche - a part representing the whole.
Indeed, the formal frame of any visual image (painting,
drawing, photograph, film or television frame)
functions as a synecdoche in that it suggests that what
is being offered is a 'slice-of-life', and that the world
outside the frame is carrying on in the same manner
as the world depicted within it.
Synecdoche invites or expects the viewer to 'fill in
the gaps' and advertisements frequently employ
this trope.
The Nissan ad shown here was part of a campaign
targeting a new model of car primarily at women
drivers (the Micra). The ad is synecdoche in
several ways: it is a close-up and we can mentally
expand the frame; it is a 'cover-up' and the
magazine's readers can use their imaginations; it
is also a frozen moment and we can infer the
preceding events.
Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is
relative to the (usually) extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as;
who is speaking
the time or place of speaking
the gestures of the speaker, or
the current location in the discourse.
Deixis contextualizes enunciations.
I am here.
He is going over there.
She is walking across the room.
Diegesis, is the telling of the story by a narrator; the author narrates
action indirectly and describes what is in the characters' minds and
emotions. The narrator may speak as a particular character or may be
the invisible narrator or even the all-knowing narrator who speaks from
above in the form of commenting on the action or the characters.
Diegesis is the reporting or narration of events, contrasted with mimesis,
which is the imitative representation of them: so a character in a play
who performs a certain action is engaged in mimesis, but if she recounts
some earlier action, she is practising diegesis.
Mimesis shows, rather than tells, by means of directly represented
action that is enacted.
The distinct is often cast as that between ‘showing’ (mimises) and ‘telling
(diegesis)’.
In “The Responsibility of Forms”, Roland Barthes reintroduces the word Diegesis
to us in an adjectival form, Diegetic, in order to distinguish between ideas, images
or thoughts that are “shown” as opposed to those which are “told”.
In photography, a diegetic horizon would be a background that speaks
volumes to the viewer according to his own interpretation rather than
one that conveys an unmistakable message to anyone who sees it.
This could just as easily be “diegetic landscape”, “diegetic seascape” or
diegetic structures”.
In cinema, a “diegetic world” is the state of mind that a viewer might be mentally
transported to as he watches and becomes lost in a particularly
interesting or intriguing film.
A “diegetic break” is the point where a film allows the viewer to reflexively return to
reality, as in the moments immediately following a horror scene or a love scene.
"Diegetic" typically refers to the internal world created by the story that the characters
themselves experience and encounter: the narrative "space" that includes all the parts
of the story, both those that are and those that are not actually shown on the screen
(such as events that have led up to the present action; people who are being talked
about; or events that are presumed to have happened elsewhere).
The elements of a film can be "diegetic" or "non-diegetic.”
These terms are most commonly used in reference to sound in a film, but can apply to
other elements. For example, an insert shot that depicts something that is neither
taking place in the world of the film, nor is seen, imagined, or thought by a character, is
a non-diegetic insert.
Titles, subtitles, and voice-over narration (with some exceptions) are also non-diegetic.
The concept of gaze (often also called ‘the gaze’ or, in French, le regard), in
analyzing visual culture, is one that deals with how an audience views other people
presented.
1 - the spectator's gaze: the spectator who is viewing the text.
This is often us, the audience of a certain text.
2 - intra-diegetic gaze, where one person depicted in the text who is looking at
another person or object in the text, such as oner character looking at another.
3 - extra-diegetic gaze, where the person depicted in the text looks at the
spectator.
4 - the camera's gaze, which is the gaze of the camera,
and is often equated to the author’s, photographer’s, artist’s, director's gaze.