NEO ANN NA's COMMENTS

Due to blogger problems i have decided to compile my responses for selected blogposts at which i was unable to comment on.

TEXT AND MEDIA :
Our brain subconsiously thinks for us and relates it to information already stored in our memory bank. It will conjure out images and words that it thinks is important or adjecent to the subject. Should we "input" the image incorrectly,it will need some correcting before realizing that the perception is incorrect.

WEEK 7 : EXAMINE A PHOTOGRAPH OR A PRODUCTION STILL:
In this piece i covered the effects it has on our values and I feel that we nowadays compromise our traditional pious values in favour of materialism and a pleasure seeking lifestyle, instead of humble, charitable beginnings and endings that were so drilled into us in moral classes in school. At this point, even death is perceived as a "cool" and acceptable. It is damaging to our morale but this is how the flow of growth and advancement goes.

WEEK 4: SEMIOTICS AND READING (FILM):
Bottomline, a big ship ain't all that grand. It was a huge, visual slap in the face targetting big guns who think money gives them power,but overlook the minor details that humility encompasses to ensure a more cushioned fall. This is because everyone will fall at one poitn or another, no one is invicible. We tend to get dragged into a conformist mentality or risk being shunned by the general public. The need to fit in overwhlems individual originality. Simple message enveloped in a high budget film roll.

Week 7- Examine a photograph or production still.

The intended audience is generally wealthy classy women. The intended message of the ad is the charm or beauty that these young rich women possess after wearing the perfume. The illusion of the skull created with the girl and the mirror in the ad gives a new perspective to the viewers of relating the perfume, Poison with skull and deadly, which suggests that the perfume gives off a deadly aura to women, or to have "looks to kill" so to say. From this ad, it also suggests that beauty is poisonous and can kill a man's heart. But the key point of the ad is that the perfume demands attention to any woman who wears it.

This poster most probably will be eye catching to teenagers and middle aged people. The first thing that the audience will see is a skull. Teenagers are always interested in this kind of subject. Besides that, the whole poster is showing an atmosphere of 80s vintage feeling. People who have been in those days will also get attracted into it. Therefore, middle aged people will be drawn to the poster. Furthermore, they were in their teens during that time. But mainly women will be attracted to this poster. Makeup and cosmetics are something that every woman will get attracted into.

People understand that the creator of this poster should know what a skull means and what it symbolizes. Hence, it is a commonly known sign which will influence the audience as a subliminal stimulus. Besides, death and poison can be related to mystery which can also lead to beauty at the same time. Even from before, society has always associated skulls with death, mortality or evil. However, in ancient society, skulls gave the meaning of life and honoring humanity in flesh. The meaning of skulls in modern society and ancient society are at polar ends. Therefore, in order to thoroughly understand the meaning of this poster, the audience must be educated in both modern society and ancient society’s cultures.

The creator of the ad attempts to relate beauty and death which could be cliché if not executed well. The original concept of the media composition was an illustration titled “All is Vanity” by Charles Allan Gilbert, a prominent American illustrator which we will get to later. The concept of the illustration was later reused by David Bertman to create the ads for Dior’s “Poison” perfume. This recreation of the Vanity illusion was a collaborative effort by his team at CLM/BBDO. David Bertman used the illusion of the skull shaped structure to enhance the characteristic of “Poison”, which is the title of the ad.

As this ad is based on an optical illusion and how it plays around with the idea of beauty being poisonous and it being able to kill a man’s heart; one will only be able to decipher it in such manner if and only if the audience seeing this ad is able to see the optical illusion itself. If the audience is not able to see the optical illusion of this ad, one would most probably conclude that the ad is set in the 80s, features a gorgeous lady looking in the mirror beautifying herself with a lot of perfumes in her table and is promoting the perfume 'Poison " by Dior.

This text has not been widely shown around the globe as this advertisement was mainly shown to their target audience in the West; mainly Europe.

As mentioned earlier, Dior’s Poison’s concept is heavily influenced by Charles Allen Gilbert’s ambiguous “All is Vanity” illustration as pictured above. Gilbert’s idea was to portray beauty and faintly reveal an illusion of a grinning skull when viewed from a distance. It implies that one should not be overly concern of one’s own beauty because ultimately, when we die, we will all look the same. This image, dated around 1892 was only seen in the mass public until 1902 when it was published in a magazine. It has then appeared in many prints and has become one of the most famous optical illusions today. Dior saw the connection and decided to recreate the illusion to suit its product, Poison.

However the meaning changes over time and of course, through clever association. Dior knew what “All is Vanity” is all about. It only takes a word, “poison” to mislead the entire meaning of the image. In modern sense, the ad is suggesting that Dior’s Poison can “to kill a man with beauty” or "Killer beauty" so to speak. It dismisses the meaning behind Gilbert’s illustration and made an entire new meaning of it.

This text is influential in a sense that the focus point of the entire image is the implication of a skull thanks to clever juxtaposition As aforementioned in modern day connotations, it is also used to indicate fatality and danger, which bring us to the main point of the usage of the skull, because as humans, we will mentally relate it to elements associated with death and causes of it, one of it being poison. The impact this has on reality has two forks down this path. One being those familiar with Poison the perfume will somehow, eventually mentally connect the image to the product, thus achieving the main agenda of the poster. The other path has the viewer connecting the dots between the image and the words which are "Dior" and "POISON", thus, having to relate these two components to get the bigger picture and the message. Humanity wise, we have come to associate the imagery of death with terms such as "drop dead gorgeous" or "killer looks", or "killer attention", all this being a great exaggeration of the literal term itself.

As humans, we try to relate it to what we already know in our minds or have been brought up to acknowledge. Those values instilled in us have made us associate skull-like symbols with negativity. A more conservative person with staunch, rigid upbringing would steer clear of anything to do with this poster, but seeing the target audience, it turns out to be a twisted sort of perception that places value in said symbol putting it on the pedestal of the thrilling sort of danger, for the adventurous, danger-inviting woman.

Unfortunately, that is the reality of today’s modern mind. It constructs one of the seven deadly sins, vanity, which at one point of history was a dark spot and looked down upon, even punishable by certain traditionalist societies today. But for the longest time, hedonism has been a prominent component of various cultures around the world. Women as well as men live for the vanity of life, valuing materialism over morality and will go to lengths to achieve it despite the consequences, in this case, possible death. Indirectly, hedonism is still a common practice although in more subtle manners without the actual need for brothels and the like. The Amish would have seen this as a great sin which would call for immeasurable punishment.

In a nutshell, this text encompasses the lifestyle of today's general public, throwing all the traditional upbringing and principles to the wind and embracing self-indulgence.

done by : galen lau, brenden undan, neo ann na, leong lai yee, son yang fook, mok meng hao

Week 4: Semiotics and Reading Film (Titanic)

So this week in class, we watched the famous 90's big blockbuster movie Titanic, directed by James Cameron. In relevance of the week's topic, we are supposed to "read" the film and to read a film actually has a lot to do with semiotics. (study of signs) Reading a film is different from reading words or books because film is simply not made up of words, instead, it is composed of images and sound. Since, we can't read sound as sound is heard, thus, we can only read the images. Reading images is actually a learned process. The results which based on cultural interpretation.

Reading images depends on reading signs and symbols. In film, there are three types of signs namely iconic, indexical and symbolic. These are perfectly portrayed in Titanic. For example, the character Rose DeWitt Bukater, a daughter from a wealthy family was seen wearing beautiful dresses, clothes and hats which depicts she is an upperclass, while Jack Dawson on the other hand, is poor. Another one would be that Rose DeWitt Bukater stays in a luxurious cabin with maids and beautiful decorations while Jack Dawson stays few floors below in cabins that are small and shared among a few other people. This shows the difference of their social status in the movie. Besides that, a symbolic example is when the movie portrays the differences of the way of living of the two different social classes. Jack Dawson was invited to have dinner with the upperclassmen, where he had to wear formal and groom himself, and was confused of not knowing how to use the cutlery, and drinks wine like the rich people do. Then, he brings Rose to the lowerclass side, and here we can see a total different ambiance. The people from the lowerclass were loud and play loud upbeat music, dance around the room, drink beer and have fights.

There is this scene in the movie where it shows the Titanic ship, sailed pass by a small boat. This is actually a clever way of showing how big and grand is the ship and it could also mean that the ship is something to marvel upon, for building such a big ship back then is not easy and is a great achievement.

Reading film signs occurs at different levels where on one level, most of the audience would have captured and understand the basic aspects of the plot. Other than that is often overlooked as it is not obvious. This is because the cultural messages within the movie are very subtle and ubiquitous. In conclusion, watching a film is easy but to read and understand one is difficult as it requires critical thinking.

Week 2: Symbol, Index & Icon

Symbol, index and icon are created by an American polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). The symbol, index and icon triad remains as a tool of analysis at the core of semiotics. This typology emphasizes the different ways in which the sign refers to its object. A sign can be a symbol, an icon, an index and also any combination of them.

An icon is directly related to what it represents, the meaning is immediately evident and it can be smaller part that represents the whole. Icons have the qualities that resemble the object they magnify. Icons are influenced by the cultural conventions of the place that they originated. As an example, we will all understand what the icon means if we are from that place that the icon originated. If we did not know or understand that place/society's culture, we might not know what the icon means.

An index is a sign that directly points to the message or instruction. An index is connected with an object in a very real way. It is like a fragment from the object that we wanted to bring out. As an example, when we see an "EXIT" signboard, it leads us to the exit. The board is directly indicates us that the exit is there.

A symbol does not directly represents the meaning. Association is needed in order to get the meaning of the symbol.Therefore, the audience will need to have the knowledge to lead the symbol to it's meaning. As an example, when you see Wolverine, people who do not know anything about X-Men will think that it is just a some kind of Superhero character. Only people who know about it will associate it with X-Men and Wolverine.

Week 6 :Film Appreciation – Assumptions and contributions of semiotics

For this week, "The Thin Red Line" by director Terrence Malik was screened. In accordance to the title of assumptions and contributions of semiotics, this movie is a rich "source",so to speak, of said content. In the many things that happen in the short span of the intro, we are allowed to absorb and soak up the ambiance Private Witt is in.As far as signifiers go, crocodiles or any reptiles of that sort are usually sign of danger and usually used to denote impending danger or a negative event. But as we understand, all filmmakers have their own takes on the script and direction of the movie. For all we know he could have just intended for the scene of the crocodile to indicate the literal danger lurking in nature itself, it being such a wild environment,not to mention primitive. And yet in the following scenes we see children freely playing, throwing caution to the wind . A simple act of trying to crack open a nut and swimming in the open waters serves to prove that dangers aforementioned are a norm to the aborigines. It's a clear indicator of the difference in cultures between Private Witt and the locals there. In a way, it's also easy to see why he was willing to go AWOL. As primitive as it seems, the element of nature in its naked form makes it seem like a rebirth, like going back to the start,to the simple things in life. It is safe to assume

he marvels at their naivety and child-like trust even towards a foreign man like himself.

In those moments lies the subtlety of a man questioning the ugliness of war and the ideals he has been brought up to embrace. There is a vast difference between the way he communicates with the locals and the way the other privates and their superiors interact with each other. Where he is in that one moment is a picture of serenity,of a simple paradise without the harshness of modern day life,what more in a discipline and rigid military regime.

oddly enough,despite trying to hide among the locals, he does not go to the extent of dressing like they do, further emphasizing the fact he isn't one of them. This indicates his outward interest towards the lifestyle and nature of their people, but not to the point of practicing it for himself. It's relevant to remember he still wears his army fatigues instead of dressing down. It's not hard to believe that as much as he admires and in a way, longs for the simplicity, he is not ready to fully give up his current lifestyle and everything else he's ever known.

In the end, all these little incidents create a conclusion that many viewers fail to realize that many subtle elements are an expression of the director's perception towards questioning various issues that plague humanity. It also how he projects his opinions through a character that has been there and done that.

Effect of Semiotic System on Human Behaviour

A quick recap on two things important in semiotic studies is the

Signifier
(an object/gesture/signs in general)

and

Signified
(an idea/concept/a connotative suggestion).

We conceive an idea based on our experience, our environment, norms, lifestyle, and the way we perceive things. Thus, it's highly dependent on one's idea of a signifier to be able to interpret its meaning. In other words, the way we perceive things are influence by culture and may vary in many other places with different culture.

In most adverts, we are forced (mostly curiosity) to determine its connotative values by evaluating its relations between words, graphics and gestures on the ad. Some works well while some not so much.

Say Marlboro for instance, it depicts a western cowboy and associates it with freedom and the sort of lifestyle of the wild wild west. While it may be effective to a certain group of people, it may also be the complete opposite. It all comes down to how people view such lifestyle and relate them to their own.

In design sense, certain symbols or elements incorporated in the design embeds connotative values which are appropriate to its theme. Take this for example



It depicts a stylize version of a bun. It stimulates the idea that the place is a bakery and sells buns. The point is, semiotic has its job of hinting as well as nudging a person to come into a conclusion of what signs meant. After all, signs are so much simpler and delivers the message without clogging too much information.

Text and Media

Text is a coherent set of symbols that transmits some kind of informative message. It is one of the signs of semiotics which understood as a discrete unit of meaning in semiotics. Text can be presented in several forms, written and spoken, verbal and non-verbal. Base on the variable usage and composition of text, it can be used to define "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity." Heinrich Plett pointed out that, as a linguistic sign, the text has an arbitrary nature and is based on social conventions.( Text Science and Text Analysis/ Stiinta textului si analiza de text, 1975 )In 1966, the Poststructuralist Julia Kristeva coined the term “Intertextuality” No text has its meaning alone; all texts have their meaning in relation to other texts. Intertextuality refers to far more than the 'influences' of writers on each other. For example, the word, “Chicken”, as a semiotic sign, may refer to bird chicks, chicken meat, or coward for some culture. The meaning of the text is defined the other text it is with, or the way it represented to the audience but att the same time, the signification of the text will also be affected by the acknowledgement of the audience, if the audience have never seen or heard of chicken, or knowing chicken and another verb, or do not know English language, the text “chicken” can be meaningless arrangement of alphabets to them.

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived which contemporary semioticians refer to the creation and interpretation of media as 'encoding' and 'decoding' respectively. The use of these terms is of course intended to emphasize the importance of the semiotic codes involved, and thus to highlight social factors. The process of communicate via media is the process of encoding our own memory which we received from our sensory information into a medium or linguistic form which can be received by the audience via sensory system and decode the information according to the memory they had. For example, we know lemons, the sour taste of it, the physical appearance of it, the texture, and the texts which form the name of it, LEMON. so, when we want to transfer the message of it, triggering the related memory of the other people, we use media to present, such as, spoken language, "lemon", painting, the media will only works when both presenter and audience have the similar understanding of lemon. When the audience receive the message of "lemon", such as looking at the picture or painting of a lemon, if the person know "Lemon" in English, the word "Lemon" will come to his mind and if he tried the taste of lemon before, his brain will start to remind him of the sour taste and his mouth will start to secret saliva. In other hand, for a person who had never seen lemon, the media presented can be meaningless.