The analysis of coding, decoding, and recoding processes and practices.
Concern with the systematic classification of types of codes used in cinema?
Giannetti, 481
The study of how movies signify?
The manner in which information is signified is linked with what’s being signified?
Language of cinema, like all discourse (verbal and nonverbal) is symbolic, a complex network of signs that viewers decipher instinctively while experiencing a movie.
Rejection of shot as basic unit of construction and adoption of the sign as minimal unit of signification
A single shot contains dozens of signs-hierarchy of counterpoised meanings
Classification of signs
It allows flexibility, complexity and depth in analysis; they are tools of analysis
They do not tell us about the value of signed codes within film
Polysemy: A particular signifier always has more than one meaning.
Meanings are produced not referentially (by pointing to specific objects), but by one sign’s difference from another.
One sign may have different, even contradictory connotations (smoking)
One sign can enter a sequence of other signs (the syntagmatic relation).
One sign can always be replaced by another (in what is called paradigmatic relation).
How different individuals and different groups (in terms of class, status or power) develop their own readings and uses for cultural products
Marboro Man
The tobacco industry uses it to sell cigarettes
The medical profession uses it to promote health issues
The feminists reject it as “insensitive mode of masculinity.”
Individual men may use it as role model, or fashion icon
Over the past several decades, there has been a shift from the signified of film to the process and practice of signification.
A shift from what film “means” to how the film produces “meaning for various viewers at various times.
The operation of ideology in every and any film (even the most popular and commercial ones) has led to the decline of auteurism as dominant perspective.
Cigars/Cigarettes in Film
In many films, when one male offers to light up another man’s cigar or cigarette, it signifies intimate camaraderie and male bonding.
Examples:
Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity: Throughout the relationship between Edward G. Robinson and Fred MacMurray, especially in the last scene.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
Paul Newman’ Brick, the estranged but favorite son, lights up the cigar of his father, the dying Big Daddy (Burl Ives).
Sharp Objecs
Whenever a sharp object is hinted at on the screen, someone will be impaled on it:
Film Theory: Semiotics-Signification (Cigars, Clocks, Sharp Objects)
Research in progress, Dec 25, 2023
Film Theory: Semiotics
Film as a signifier/signified system
The analysis of coding, decoding, and recoding processes and practices.
Concern with the systematic classification of types of codes used in cinema?
Giannetti, 481
The study of how movies signify?
The manner in which information is signified is linked with what’s being signified?
Language of cinema, like all discourse (verbal and nonverbal) is symbolic, a complex network of signs that viewers decipher instinctively while experiencing a movie.
Rejection of shot as basic unit of construction and adoption of the sign as minimal unit of signification
A single shot contains dozens of signs-hierarchy of counterpoised meanings
Classification of signs
It allows flexibility, complexity and depth in analysis; they are tools of analysis
They do not tell us about the value of signed codes within film
Polysemy: A particular signifier always has more than one meaning.
Meanings are produced not referentially (by pointing to specific objects), but by one sign’s difference from another.
One sign may have different, even contradictory connotations (smoking)
One sign can enter a sequence of other signs (the syntagmatic relation).
One sign can always be replaced by another (in what is called paradigmatic relation).
How different individuals and different groups (in terms of class, status or power) develop their own readings and uses for cultural products
Marboro Man
The tobacco industry uses it to sell cigarettes
The medical profession uses it to promote health issues
The feminists reject it as “insensitive mode of masculinity.”
Individual men may use it as role model, or fashion icon
Over the past several decades, there has been a shift from the signified of film to the process and practice of signification.
A shift from what film “means” to how the film produces “meaning for various viewers at various times.
The operation of ideology in every and any film (even the most popular and commercial ones) has led to the decline of auteurism as dominant perspective.
Cigars/Cigarettes in Film
In many films, when one male offers to light up another man’s cigar or cigarette, it signifies intimate camaraderie and male bonding.
Examples:
Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity: Throughout the relationship between Edward G. Robinson and Fred MacMurray, especially in the last scene.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
Paul Newman’ Brick, the estranged but favorite son, lights up the cigar of his father, the dying Big Daddy (Burl Ives).
Sharp Objecs
Whenever a sharp object is hinted at on the screen, someone will be impaled on it:
Ricochet
Red Rock West
Dead Again