HECOL 201 - mediation - semiotics - Roland Barthe, D. hebdige, “The Century of the Self: Happiness Machines” video, “You're Soaking in it” video

what is structuralism?

• Structuralism isn’t only about language (words) it considers how we interpret the world based on contrasts, oppositions, hierarchies, etc. … these are all relationships that can be explored and debated. 

• Ex. traffic lights, red = stop, green = go, yellow = slow down, red always on the right, yellow middle and green left for colorblind people

what are signs?

• Buildings (ex. Eiffel tower = paris)

• Flags 

• Animals (beaver on the nickel)

• Signs used all over the place (ex. In children books)

• Sometimes not necessarily aimed as signs but can be read symbiotically

• Political contexts (ex. Canada won a hockey game against the US with a last min goal)

semiotics: what did roland barthes write about?

• Wrote post second world war period

• Turn his analytic vision on to popular culture and everyday objects

• Drag temporary art into academic attention (ex. Jazz, music etc)

what are the 3 levels of semiotic schema front according to roland barthe

• Primary = denotation; simple, surface level description

• Secondary = connotation: associated with, emerges from, and supports cultural ‘myths’ or codes; cultural context (social class, age, gender, ethnicity, educational background etc); bringing personal experience into how things are read and presented

• Tertiary = myth = the dominant ideologies of a culture; myth = not necessarily untrue but just a se of stories we subconsciously tell ourselves; beliefs that help us make sense of the world; taken for granted or goes without saying; what is cultural (i.e. what is created) is made to seem natural/inevitable)

what is ideologies?

Ideologies: Relatively coherent systems of ideas, values, beliefs, shared by a social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true;  

• Impacts peoples’ actions.   

• Explains how aspects of society “should” be.  (often linked to politics)

• Serves a particular group more than others

• Often illegitimate inequalities

• Ideologies as forms of knowledge tend to serve a particular group and legitimates unequal social power. 

how are judgements related to “myth”/ideological statements?

Judgements may point to “myths”/ ideological statements:

• People should pay low taxes and be free to spend their money as they like

• People should pay high taxes so that everyone in society is looked after

• University students should  receive practical training so they can compete successfully for high paying jobs that contributes to the nation's economy

• University students should learn to think critically and gain knowledge that will help them be thoughtful citizens who will understand and contributes to society

what is the aim of a bathesian semiotic analysis?

Aim of a (Barthesian) semiotic analysis: consider how certain values, attitudes and beliefs are supported whilst others are suppressed.  

true or false: words and images in a particular structure = meaning

true

ex. G20(group of 20 economic forum) protests 2009:   

Denotation = ‘factual’ & Connotation = what words suggest: 

- Terrorists attacked and destroyed the property of private citizens. 

- Anti-capitalist protesters demonstrate against corporate ownership & exploitation. 

Words are signs (attack and destruction; exploitation)

Denotation = ‘factual’/connotation = what is suggested/cultural ‘myth’ = ideology

how does the audience interpret the narrative

Audience looks for signs to help them interpret the narrative. These deeply rooted sings are based expectations the audience has due to their prior knowledge of old tales or myths

what is the purpose of advertising?

• Purpose of advertising: to encourage people to buy products 

• Advertisers use visual images = more memorable than what is heard or read

• Visual and textual (writing and/or speech) signs transferred onto product being sold

• Advertising signs (words and images) often connote

  • Good taste, luxury, beauty, fame, leisure, success, happiness (family, friends, sex, romance)

• Advertisements give information through people

• People in ads used to signify product qualities

• Connotative meanings: person– > product– > support “myths”

• Categorizations and judgements of signs help us discover cultural ‘myths’ … but ‘reality’?

• ex. Nike supports women through a campaign but actually doesn't support women when they get pregnant and just cancels the contract

what is the gestalt theory?

• Gestalt theory of perception in advertising: “whole is greater than sum of its parts”

how is greenwashing depicted in advertising?

• Corporations use signs to indicate their support for environmental issues but underneath they are not actually supporting and still contributing to greenhouse gases

how is semiotics related to modernity?

semiotics/modernity: individual/authentic;  progress (tech); success; optimism (happiness, sex)

what sells better in ads?

beauty

and relationship with person associated closely to products in ads

what makes up ads?

• Ads -> text + image (denotative) + language assessing/judging (negative or positive?)

• Eg. pregnant women (discriminated in workplaces) and rihanna flaunts baby bump

what is not shown in advertisements as much?

• diverse ages, ex. >40s,50s (especially fun ads)

• disabilities

how to culture and signs change over time

• Non gender ads

• Camp ad (coffee)

-older ones suggest colonialism (soldier and servant)

-newer ones are contemporary showing that both are equals

-gradually, the colonialist narrative is removed

-culture changed

what examples of people as cultural signs, even when not advertising?

• Celebrities

• People in films

• The beatles (people obsessed with their hair rather than their music ar first, hair is too feminine at the time)

what is a polysemous word?

• A polymeous word = different meanings in different contexts:

  • Ex. plaid pattern symbolizes the burberry luxury brand, wealth, prosperity, upper class but also the disruptive people who starts fights adopted the pattern

what is the process of creating signs?

• Process of creating signs is universal but the meanings generated are culturally specific and based on context (eg. a subculture within a larger culture)

  • Eg. cybertruck: criticized quickly for shape and aesthetic, sometimes things that people say is ugly becomes things people like later on, elon musks “nazi salute” had people wanting to drop the truck after buying it, 26% decrease in tesla stock

what is cultural jamming?

• Cultural jamming: protests that disrupts/ subvert media culture and its institutions to expose the “methods of domination” ideologies of mass society. Effective or futile?

• Eg. fatimas next job could in cybertech as shown her in a ballet outfit had people arguing that is deconstructed the arts and deemed ballet as expendable 

• Sometimes People view cultural jamming as a waste of time

what are recent issues in semiotics?

• Recent issues in semiotics: “misinformation”

• Use of AI (eg. gemini): trying to be too inclusive (henry ford search = black women)

what are the 4 values of semiotics?

1) can help us not to take 'reality' for granted;  

2) can help us to recognize the complex ‘codes’ and relationships between those codes that we use to construct and interpret the world; 

3) can help us recognize that conditions are not inevitable, they are the result of forms of power; by extension, can help us consider ways in which social difference is created and therefore results from forms of power; 

4) advocates reflexivity of perception (perceiver strives to be aware of his or her own social position). 

Barthes and Hedbige readings introduction

• Not explicitly semiotic but both writers are doing semiotic analysis

• Roland barthes is talking about the vehicle

• Hedbdige is talking about the italian scooter

• Semiotics = study/analysis of signs

how does Barthe talk about his object?

R. Barthes: the New citroen (1957) - 1955

• The car is a monumental change from the kind of cars seen in post modern france

• Signifying the skill of production

• Barthes

  •  signifying the mania for new, progress, change and difference

  • Consumed in image, if not the in usage of the person

  • the car being the new novelist and how science fiction it is

  • the speed in this car

  • talks about the inside of the car and the dematerialization (taking parts of it away so it is lighter and science fiction like rather than big heavy massive vehicles)

  • Prosaic: originates from the heaven of the tropolist

  • Noting how a consumer product is moved into the idea of people wanting this as a self aggrandizement (power, wealth etc)

how does D. Hebdige write about?

• Writes against barthes view on vehicles and objects

• He comments on how you write on material objects (language/writing and/versus objects/materiality

• Hebdige says The two main sciences we have is language and the visual world can not be made the same and they consist of different ways they make meaning

• Don't Just discuss objects as isolated pneumonia or in a literary ways ( barthe does)

• Discuss the “practices that shape [objects]... their uses, their meaning and values” AND the “larger networks of relationships into which objects and practices are inserted.”

• He is asking how are objects created, used and ade meaningful though use AND as signs?

what are 3 moments described by hebdige?

• design/production

• consumption/use

• advertising/mediation

what does he acknowledge the problems of analysis if prominence give to any one of these?

• Production focus reduces consumers to simplistic automans

• Mediation focus overemphasized importance of advertising

• Consumption focus gives too much credit to people as ‘authentic’

• Consider all 3 moments = stress the sign qualities AND an objects “solidity/materiality” (79)

what else does hedbige ask?

• How can we reconstruct the full cultural significance of a product?

• How can we talk simultaneously about objects and the practices that shape them? (P,M,C)

• No one object but many objects at different ‘moments’. the scooter “cycle”

what is a chapter considered?

• a “dossier” (collection of documents) on one genre of commodity

what is the semiotics of materiality *scooter as,’sign’ considered?

• ‘Scooter as sexed(gendered) object’

• ‘Gender of machinery’

what gender is the production and consumption considered and what is the problem of this?

• Production = ‘male’(male perspective) (positive)

• Consumption = ‘female’ (negative) (female activity which is a frivolous things to do, materialism)

• The problem with this is because it is neglecting the connection between production and consumption

how were scooters vs. motor cycles seen in advertising?

• Scooters were often shown with a women using it, even today

• Motorcycles are often shown with a man advertising it and the idea of individualism, not always shown with a person using it

• Motor cycles = male, scooters = female

• Supported by movies

what is totemism?

• mystical relationship with a non-human entity (often animal) (semiotics link)

• Ex. eagle = pride

• Ex. beaver = hardworking, industriousness

• Hebdige argues that objects like scooters can becomes totems

• Objects as emblems within symbolic systems (eg. gender, scooter = female)

what is bricolage?

• create from a range of things that happen to be available

what is want formation?

• advertising helps create consumers (‘production of consumers’)

  • How scooters develop desire of consumers

  • How a market is developed, how does a market for an object emerge

additional mediation/advertising and intercession of the image for scooter?

• mediation/advertising - “Before looking at what the scooter came to mean in use, it is necessary to consider how it was made to appear before the market”

• *intercession of the image between the consumer and the act of consumption

advertising linked with tourism and internationalism

• Scooters presented on course lines and mannequins, north america, italy and all around the world

• Ad - traveling from london to milan on a scooter

• Wide places scooters are found, mountain, seaside etc

• Idea of freedom and able to travel anywhere and go anywhere

true or false: scooters were expensive

false

• Scooter were inexpensive, people could afford them and comfortable to ride (women with dresses)

how were scooter in use: consumption (in UK) and what subculture groups were it linked to?

• Production, engineering vs design (UK import)

• “Mods” (clean suits) = scooters oppositional “sign” versus “Rockers” (leather jackets etc)= motor cycles

• UK riots: scooters connote violence and subcultural style

• Still connotations of subcultural style, popular with collectors, mod revivals = scooter style

how is “the century of the self: Happiness machines” linked to psychology of consumerism?

• The manipulation of the cultural “myth” of freedom within modern culture and it relationship to the rational and/or irrational aspects of human behaviour

• Human behaviors drawn upon by politicians

“the century of self: happiness machines” - a central contradiction of modern culture

• Rationality and irrationality (reason/emotion): in politics and economics/business

“the century of self: happiness machines” video explores how rationality and irrationality relate to:

• Ideas and ideals of personal freedom

• The advertising and consuming of material goods

• Ideas and activities of democratic citizenship

*semiotics and “happiness machines”

• Denotation, connotation, cultural myths

• Ex. bernays: torches of freedom: GM’s parade of progress (lighting up the cigarette which is associated with freedom)

“the century of self: happiness machines” - democracy as consumption or as public judgement?

• “We must shift America from a needs-to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed… man's desires must overshadow his needs.”

• This happens in the west, more broadly in the 20th century, and particularly after the world war

what are the two types of advertising in the “you’re soaking in it” video?

1. Traditional: campaigns seen by whoever looks at magazines, newspapers billboards, subways, signs, tv, movies

• Seen by everybody

• You tend to remember those songs and sing those jingles from advertising even years later

2. Targeted: campaigns/images directed to individuals via data collected through tracking (digital device), like a cellphone

• More related to data

• Not concerned with what kind of person you are but rather how long you spend on different sites etc

• You tend to get ads on your phone that your friends might not

what is ‘you’re soaking in it’ video advertising considered?

• advertising may be considered irrational (traditional) or rational (targeted) in relation to how the customer is perceived 

traditional vs targeted experiences, similarities and differences

• Traditional = shared, cultural experience

• Targeted = individual experience

• Society as collective or individuated?

• Both share cultural ‘myth’ of the marketplace as the centre of society

  • Marketplace = main place in society people should engage with

• Traditional: denotation, connotation, images/texts = myth shared marketplace

• Targeted: you as data point, you movements and interests = myth of primacy of self

• Consider how this perspective on society be manipulated, eg. politically