SEMIOTICS

This so called "science" of symbols and signs began respectably enough with the
Saussaurean "signifier" and "signified". Since that time, however, it has spawned a
thousand university media and communication courses, eventually reaching such
a point of absurdity that one wit was moved to remark: "Semiotics tells us things
we already know in a language that nobody will ever understand." In other words,
modern semiotics is filled with incomprehensible jargon--a situation made even
more confusing by the fact that Americans mostly follow the model of their coun-
tryman Charles Sanders Pierce,while most Europeans follow the Saussaurean
model. Stricly speaking, the American branch speaks of "Semiology" while the
European term is "Semiotics"--and many of the concepts, though fundamentally
different, are customarily mixed up together into a semiotic mash. Furthermore,
some of the jargon is odd and pretentious. For example, "a text" in semiotics is
not just a literary work, but any encoded message which uses "signs". Many
teachers of "communication studies" from the eighties will remember searching
the newspapers and magazines for interesting photos to be deconstructed for bias
and attitude. As every discourse that uses signs is a "text", then unsurprisingly,
the receiver of the message is "the reader"--even if the message is encoded in a
picture or on film. Film studies has become popular in the last twenty years, as
semiotic theorists have tried to demonstrate that "denotation" and "connotation"
exist in movies as in literature. The denoted is that which is shown--but nothing is
ever shown without connotations. In a movie, the connotations are provided by
the camera angles, what is included and excluded, the narrative structure, etc.

So is there anything in semiotics, or is it just an aging modernist or post-

modernist philosophy past its prime? Roland Barthes is famous for his semiotic de-
construction of Balzac, but it has been said that if you strip away the jargon,
what Barthes does is not actually very different from the practices of traditional
literary criticism. Certainly, semiotics is full of various kinds of pretentiousness--
and yet some very fine theorists of language still hold to it even in the modern
age. Umberto Eco is probably the best known contemporary semiotician, having
written at least two influential books on the subject. His popular novel, "The
Name of the Rose" is also said to contain a conscious semiotic structure. It is cer-
tainly true that any writer, will appreciate that what he does for most of the
time, is combine very conventional words into very conventional sentences. It is
only by embedding meaning through images and signs in a work, at crucial points,
that what is written comes to possess a particular character--and the better able
a writer is to do this, the more interesting his work will be (though no doubt the
actual process is mostly unconscious). Perhaps what we need now is for someone
to construct a dictionary of the most influential "signs" in western civilization. Af-
ter we are clear about that, it might be easier to assess the "science" of semiotics
itself.

Semiotic Analysis

I thought I'd try out a semiotic analysis and see what kind of results would be
generated. Susan Hayward (no, not the movie star!) has done something similar
with the above photo of Marilyn Monroe. She claimed that on the denotative level
this is clearly a photo/picture of the actress, Marilyn Monroe. On a connotative
level, it makes us think of her glamour, beauty and sexuality. Finally, on a mytho-
logical; level, it invokes the Hollywood dream machine that is both creative and
destructive. Let me now try something similar with an image which advertises the
movie I saw yesterday, "American Gangster".

On a denotative level we are dealing with superimposition and montage. There is

a picture of Manhattan with a large superimposed picture of a well-dressed black
man holding a gun over the top. The words "American Gangster" appear in white
on a black background. The picture has many single signifiers which combine into
more sophisticated signifying patterns. Firstly, it is the picture of the man that
dominates and makes us think that he must have Manhattan in the palm of his
hand: in some way he is dominant and controls the city. This is emphasized by the
gun and the good clothes: the gun, together with the size of the image, speaks of
the man's power; the beautiful clothes show that his control is secure and that he
has the time to enjoy the good things of life. The fact that everything seems to
be black speaks of what is hidden and unknown, dangerous and "evil". All this is
juxtaposed with the words, "American Gangster". This suggests that the figure of
the man holding the gun is in some way archetypal: he is American and also a
dangerous criminal.

On what Barthes described as the "mythological level", the picture makes a

statement to people who share the cultural values of America. "American Gang-
ster" makes us think of other movies and ideals that begin with the same word:
"American Beauty", "American Lives", etc. It also connects with the most powerful
American image of all: the "American Dream". "The American Dream" is always of
success in whatever field one chooses--even if it's crime! The subliminal mytho-
logical level of operation conveys what members of the same culture and mind
set might approve of even in a gangster: he has chosen his own path and suc-
ceeded at it, thus living and justifying the American dream. Thus, on this mytho-
logical level, the image in its totality conveys the meaning that in this society--
the society that uses such images--the most important thing is to succeed: this is
to say that on the deepest level American society approves of crime as long as it
is successful (a conclusion that could never be stated by any member of the cul-
ture directly, but which is manifested in images such as this).