What is Cinema? Semiotics

Lecture structure I. Film as a sign system II. Semiotics and structuralism III. Ferdinand de Saussure and Christian Metz IV. Peter Wollen and Charles Sanders Peirce V. Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le fou

Terms from the readings Circa 1920 - Semiotics: Ferdinand Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce (also Russian formalism concerned with analysing literary form systematically) Circa 1950-60s - Structuralism: Claude Lévi-Strauss, earlier work of Roland Barthes. These influence Christian Metz (1970s-80s) and Peter Wollen (1960s-70s) Circa 1980-90 – Poststructuralism: Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan.

I. Film as a sign system ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ – Martha Rosler, 1975, a structuralist parody of TV cooking shows

Eisenstein: interested in relationship between film and verbal language; emphasis on the dialectical production of meaning resonates with semiotic views of language as a system of differences.

Bazin: interested in the realist credentials of film Bazin: interested in the realist credentials of film. But ‘On the other hand, of course, cinema is also a language’ (‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’).

II. Semiotics and structuralism Hollis Frampton, ‘Zorn’s Lemma’ semiotics came to fore of critical theory with advent of structuralism – notable filmmakers include Hollis Frampton & Michael Snow focus on internal structures of film text

Roland Barthes, Mythologies “Language” = denotation “MYTH” = connotation

Claude Lévi-Strauss: drawing on Saussure, he argued that we need to study systems of signification such as languages, myths and folktales, and the differential elements of which they are composed, which enables the discovery of universal structures or patterns of thought.

In film studies, Lévi-Strauss’s work has influenced approaches such as auteur-structuralism and structuralist theories of genre, which look for ‘structuring oppositions’.

A structural analysis of the western focuses on oppositions: Culture v Nature Civilization v Indigenous life Man v Woman Frontier v Wilderness

III. Ferdinand de Saussure and Christian Metz Saussure: semiotics (or semiology) is a ‘science that studies the life of signs within society’ (terms derive from the Greek ‘semeion’, meaning ‘sign’). Film semioticians argue that the medium can be understood as a system of signs, or as a language; semiotics is linked to the 20thc ‘linguistic turn’.

Saussure ‘brackets’ the referent and divides the sign into two parts: the signifier and the signified. Saussure’s definition of a ‘sign’: sign = signifier + signified. Motivated vs unmotivated signs.

Saussure argues that the meaning of a sign is partly determined by its difference from other signs: ‘In language there are only differences’. By the Belgian Surrealist Magritte, The Treachery of Images, (1928-9)

Christian Metz, Film Language Drawing on Saussure, Metz asks how ‘film language’ relates to verbal language. Like verbal language, film seems to involve certain codes or conventions. But unlike verbal language, film has no pre-established grammar, does not allow for reciprocal communication, and signifier and signified are almost identical.

La grande syntagmatique, Christian Metz

Metz’s main conclusion: film is a form of language, but a language without a code.

IV. Peter Wollen and Charles Sanders Peirce Saussure’s unmotivated sign (the word ‘tree’ is an arbitrary term for the object it refers to) presents problems for film: images are motivated signs. Peter Friendship’s Death (1987)

Pioneer Plaque Pioneer 10, 1972 In search of a more thorough discussion of ‘natural’, or motivated signs, Wollen turns to the work of Peirce.

Peirce’s second trichotomy of signs Peirce notes that the three categories of index, icon and symbol frequently overlap in a single sign, but he is interested in the dominant dimension in any given sign.

Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema ‘The aesthetic richness of cinema springs from the fact that it comprises all three dimensions of the sign: indexical, iconic and symbolic. The great weakness of almost all those who have written about the cinema is that they have taken one of these dimensions, made it the ground of their aesthetic, the “essential” dimensions of the cinematic sign, and discarded the rest. […] It is only by considering the interaction of the three different dimensions of the cinema that we can understand its aesthetic effect.’

Is a photograph different from a film still? How is meaning deduced? Meaning may be anchored by a written text, as we see with journalism, but with film we are working with a larger system of meaning operating across a narrative.

Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

Marlene Dietrich in Morocco (Josef vornberg, 1930) Marlene Dietrich in Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

V. Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le fou

‘More than anybody else, Godard has realised the fantastic possibilities of the cinema as a medium of communication and expression. In his hands, as in Peirce’s perfect sign, the cinema has become an almost equal amalgam of the symbolic, the iconic and the indexical. His films have conceptual meaning, pictorial beauty and documentary truth.’ (Wollen)

Jean-Luc Godard “We at Cahiers [du Cinéma] always considered ourselves future directors. Going to cine-clubs and the cinematheque was already thinking the cinema and thinking about the cinema. Writing was already making cinema because between writing and filming there is only a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.”

Jean-Luc Godard “We are the children of the language of cinema. Our parents are Griffith, Hawks, Dreyer, and Bazin and Langlois, but not you. “Anyway, how can you address structures without sounds and images?” (1966)