Culture, the Media, and the Study of Signs

I. Introduction: Signs and Society

[e.g., "Mary had a little _____": we all have the same idea in our head. How? Our culture's shared sign systems. Popular lyric invokes a sign system]
Some Initial Principles: People are the symbol or sign-using animals. (Signs: smallest unit of meaning.) Signs are all around us, involved in the most trivial aspects of everyday life. We are like fish surrounded by water, we are surrounded by signs and symbols; they are so common to us we never notice them.

II. Semiotics: the Study of Signs, Symbols, and Signification





A. Principles





1. The study of how meaning is created, not what it is.





2. Signs are arbitrary, i.e., conventional

Signs are not just mirrors of things; they cannot be understood just in terms of the things they signify; signs have a life of their own, can be studied in their own right.

3. Signs are part of systems

e.g., language -- rule governed, patterned; all sign systems have a kind of grammar, a set of structuring rules.

4. Difference

Signs make meaning by way of their difference from other signs (the principle of difference); signs refer to, and are distinguished from, other signs; hence the importance of rules of relating signs

5. Signification is a process, not a static structure





B. Key Terms





1. Sign: the smallest unit of meaning





2. Signifier, signified (Sr/Sd)

"rose" -- the flower
(Pierce: sr=representament, sd=object, plus interpretant=the sign we use to interpret the first sign; in Saussure, the "system")

3. Symbolic (arbitrary), Iconic, and Indexical Signs

a) Symbolic: language, visual codes (pink vs blue for babies; white for good guys)
b) Iconic: resemblance. Photos, TV images are iconic. But there is much that is NOT iconic on TV that we think of as iconic ("seeing is believing": dangers of this; case of War of Worlds Broadcast) -- semiotics is the study of anything that can be used to tell a lie.
c) Indexical: smoke means fire

4. Denotation/connotation: the displacement from Sr to Sd

(aka "signifying signs")
a) "rose" -- passion
b) "pink" -- feminine
c) "black" -- mourning (except in Far East: white)
d) Cosby's sweater: domestic father figures in sit coms

5. Metonomy: part for the whole

a) "many sails" for many ships
b) Marlboro ads
c) eg. establishing shots

6. Paradigmatic relations

(Selective/associative; for written language, e.g., alphabets; for Cosby title sequence: different, close up/long shots, etc.;)

7. Syntagmatic relations

(for speech: words in sentences; for Cosby titles: Cosby and the others, father as unifying figure)

C. Three orders of signification





1. Denotation (iconic)





2. Connotations: Cultural meanings





a) connotations





b) myths





3. Codes

logical/aesthetic (distinction is a matter of degree)

III. Codes: maps of social meaning

General maps of meaning, which imply views and attitudes about how the world is and/or ought to be. Semiotically, a set of signs/paradigms which may be combined according to a horizontal set of rules/syntagms -- hence, a combination of semiotic systems, a supersystem. Hence, the connection between semiotics and social structure and values.

A. Examples

1. E.g., color black, people with "dark" skin
2. E.g.: Bond-Villain combined with Male ("correct") sexuality/nation - incorrect sexuality/others/foreigners
3. Horatio Alger
4. If you work at it, you can do anything you want . . .
5. crime does not pay (crime stories)
6. The cowboy (mythic figures as codes)
7. Abe Lincoln
8. Cosby
9. James Dean
10. Rock star

B. Codification as a Process

That this is a process; hence, white hat gradually codified, then over-codified to the point where it becomes a cliché.

C. Struggles over meanings: semiotic guerrila warfare.

from colored to Negro to "Black is beautiful."

IV. Codes of Gender: the case of James Bond films

The Bond "Girl"; Roger Moore, "Bond, like myself, is a male chauvinist pig." Women are not active, are there to be seduced and abandoned by Bond. But, there's always one who's a little more complicated:

A. Bond women vs the "Bond Girl": Bond regularly encounters a series of attractive women who throw themselves at him and who he enjoys casually. These are different from the basic "Bond Girl"





B. Basic formula: must look glamorous in a bikini; a pinup with "class", i.e., sophisticated, and like the villain vaguely foreign; but also a problem:





C. She differs from (some) norms and is generally two or more of the following:





1. challenging, aggressive





2. non-British -- foreign





3. often works for villain, or "the other side" (Russia, criminal organizations)





D. Her role in the plot:





1. she proves her active, aggressive qualities





2. The closer she becomes to Bond, the less those qualities show, & the more passive she becomes (signified both by her actions and by the fact that she generally wears less and more glamorous clothing as the film and her seduction progresses





3. She must be captured in order to be rescued by Bond





E. Bond functions to put her back into "normal" place in life, by possessing her & mastering her sexually (or if not, she dies, e.g. Grace Jones character); her "different" qualities make her a challenge, but then are overcome by his masculine sexuality





1. Major Amasava/Agent Triple X; introduced (The Spy Who Loved Me)





2. Triple X encounters Bond





3. The seduction begins ("you're very sensitive, Mr. Bond")





4. Triple X & Bond escape from Jaws; the relationship grows





5. They team up; visit villain; she poses as his wife (& resents it) (best to skip)





6. They are captured, & then separated (to set up rescue)





7. Rescue scene





8. Rescue continued (too long; talk over; illustrates her increasing helplessness)





9. Obligatory denouement





V. Social struggle in the realm of the sign: semiotic guerilla warfare and the action-adventure genre





A. Basic structure -- hero on quest; encounters villians; succeeds; 188





1. plot: episodic, allowing for many different locations, moments of spectacle, "generally involving fights, explosions" & other violence 185; all variations deal with some sort of social crisis of values and attitudes. 189





a) quest for hidden or lost object (property theme; treasure hunt plotline, third world iconography -- intellectually simple people who don't understand the value of the objects around them)





b) capture and return of a woman popular sub-plot; she is sometimes the hero's buddy and sometimes the villain's captive





c) invasion scenarios: flip side of adventure narratives, with the shoe on the other foot;





d) search for captives; again, justified invasion of 3rd world





2. characterization: private adventurer (private eye, mercenary, treasure hunter); generally male (sometimes with 'buddies');





3. Mythic images: decaying temples, deserts, mountains, exotic cities, guns, knives, etc.





4. Codes or themes: rights and possession of property; definition of "national, ethnic, racial self as opposed to 'other'; the propriety of intervening in other nations' or cultures' affairs; the moral consequences of violence; and the meaning of masculinity and male prerogatives." 188





B. Gender roles: women still play passive captive to be rescued, but also allowed to be heroe's "buddy," especially early in the plot. But basically a male-defined genre: weapons tied to masculine strength; male bodies prominently displayed, etc. Female's bodies still dealt with in terms of their sexual allure.





C. Villains Heroes and Buddies





1. Villains

Villains are explained, but exist as a simple force; enable audience to explore the boundary between permitted and the forbidden

a) usually villain represents the dark side of the American dream; realization of ambition through criminal means; exploration of the boundary between "success" and "exploitation" 192





b) also: villains are outside the norm; allow for the negative definition of that norm -- everything the villain is not is normal and positive 193





c) attractiveness of villain; safe exploration of the forbidden [e.g., L Hagman as JR]





2. Heroes: differs from middle class norms: outsider, drifter, no real attachment to home; often a "domesticated alien" e.g., Rambo's German-Native American mix; often identified with the working class and the poor. "Hero enjoys a peculiar ability to mediate between the domain of the villain and the everyday world of the ordinary person." 194 Emodies ambivalence of American individualist mythos; loneliness, rootlessness, etc. [Shane story]





3. Buddies: "allow the text to compensate a bit for the ideological univocality a single white, male hero may dictate. Therefore, if the hero himself is white, male, and mainstream, the buddy generally is non-white, occasionally female, and marginal. The ethnic, racial, or gender difference the buddy represents allows a space to open up in the text for a non-white, female, ethnic viewer to identify with someone other than the villain. [Lone Ranger and Tonto]" 195





D. Summary: "The ideological sphere is filled with contradictions. Those outside of power have difficulty accepting the dominant ideology without question. . . . Although this resistance may be only whispered, wherever power is exerted a struggle against oppression usually finds expression. . . . fantasy can offer a 'safe' expression of ideological tenssions so keenly felt by those outside of power and so often denied any real validity." "action-adventure stories . . . allow a place for resistance . . . grudgingly . . . "; "any moments in these texts which may point toward a more direct type of resistance against the status quo are usually brief and marginalized within the fantasy. Instead, action-adventure stories feature a dual operation to eliminate the threat that the villain represents -- i.e., the threat of national, cultural, racial otherness. On the one hand, these narratives assimilate or domesticate this threat through the figure of the buddy . . . On the other hand, difference is also eliminated through the violent death of the villain." 197

3/4 Busch Ad, Western theme
1/2 Marines ad

Note: differences, but both connote strength and action, and do not connote, say, good domestic skills, like washing dishes.

But now look at a couple of the symbol systems for portraying women:

3/4 Short shorts
1/2 Gold women/Almaden 5230




4060 1/2 Merc Cougar
970 1/2 Finesse?

Here's one with a woman viewing, not being viewed. But it's still ideological some people say. What do you think about this one? What does the ad say about women's role in society, about how women are to interpret their own role in relation to men, and to their families.

3/4 Kodak, memories