“Verily,
this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose� Research journal
Laurens van den Broek 2541849 Literature Visualized Dr. R.V.J. van den Oever 23 October 2014
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Contents Week 1........................................................................................................
2
Week 2........................................................................................................
5
Week 3........................................................................................................
8
Week 4........................................................................................................
10
Week 5........................................................................................................
12
Week 6........................................................................................................
14
Week 7........................................................................................................
16
Cover image: detail from V for Vendetta movie poster
1
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Silverman discusses the work of Saussure, Peirce, Barthes, Derrida, and Benveniste. Pick one of these five thinkers and explain the theoretical concepts mentioned by Silverman. Bring in (i) quotes from the Silverman text, (ii) examples of your own, (iii) additional sources, and (iv) Mitchell’s essay. In short, Silverman explains how semiotics came to be by discussing the work of five thinkers. One of the discussed thinkers, who has been labelled ‘the jester of modern philosophy [own translation]’ (Wouters 136) but remains nonetheless respected among his peers, is the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In this essay his unconventional thinking regarding linguistics and semiotics will be demonstrated using an example from the graphic novel V for Vendetta. Finally, Mitchell shows that the semiotic distinction of nature-convention should not be just a matter of taking sides as tradition has often prompted, but instead invites a dialectical approach. It is the penultimate chapter of his book Writing and Difference (1967) in which Derrida claims our Western metaphysical thinking has always revolved around what he calls ‘universal signifieds’, e.g. God in Christianity and rational consciousness in Romanticism (Silverman 32). All of these central signifieds cannot exist outside of their own system and are the subject of constant change. Our notion of meaning is abstracted from liquidly changing signifying systems of supposedly transcendent concepts, ‘games of signification’ in which relationships between signifiers and signifieds are continuously influenced by each other (Silverman 32), reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s language-games. For example, the Dutch word ‘paard,’ as an assembly of five separate signs, constitutes the concept of a horse, but the actual transcendent concept of a horse (or ‘Horse’ as Plato would say, if he were to speak English) in itself solely exists because it is uttered within the confines of the Dutch linguistic system, or indeed in any linguistic system. In emphasizing the liquidity of signifying systems, Derrida distances himself from a rigid, rather Cartesian distinction between the signifier and signified, as stated decades earlier by Saussure. Instead, Derrida clarifies in the spirit of Barthes that every (denotative) signified functions as a (connotative) signifier itself too, in the infinite play of signification that constitutes language (35). As such, no sound distinction between them should be made: all signifying terms are equal, because they all interconnect with other signifying elements in one way or the other, mainly through cultural agreement. I would like to use an example, one that I will be using frequently throughout these essays, starting with its cover. In Fig. 1 the mask that main character V wears in Moore and Lloyd’s graphic novel “V for Vendetta” (1990) can be seen.
Fig. 1: The Guy Fawkes mask V wears during the novel
2
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Without any prior knowledge of the storyline and disregarding the title for a moment, the first one can notice is the smile, and what an ominous smile it is. By recognizing this facial expression as a “smile”, we perform a, as Barthes would call it, “denotative” commutation: we correspond a graphic notation to a concept. This denotative commutation quickly yields to a barrage of connotative transactions, which are heavily influenced by cultural agreement. Laughing, so we are taught, is experienced as “pleasant,” as opposed to crying and sadness, and also is a phenomenon usually performed out of sincere happiness. But with one glance at the smile on the cover of V for Vendetta, we can tell that this smile is a bitter one, and not sincere – the squinting of the eyes, the shadow cast by the hat and the altogether gloomy atmosphere of the composition tells us this. By juxtaposing happiness with sadness and honesty with dishonesty, we obtain an intriguing friction. We have established a laugh denotatively (the picture of the laugh as signifier, the concept of a laugh as signified) and gave it a connotative context (a new signified could be “happiness”) to create a new sign (“smiling is a sign of happiness”). But the portrayed smile does not correspond to the new sign; instead, it became a signifier for something else, for darker motives. Voilà, this is the result of what Derrida refers to as “supplementarity”. Mitchell, in his “Nature and Convention” (1986), discusses another traditional distinction in the field of semiotics, namely that of ‘natural’ and ‘conventional’ signs, i.e. images and words. Mitchell states that, referencing to Gombrich’s more recent work, images are by common sense considered to be natural, because they imitate what we call reality (77). Words, on the other hand, are a convention of humans, and are therefore ‘conventional’ signs. For instance, paintings depicting the same subject by different people can look similar, whereas poems differ wildly per language, even if they attend the same topic. Thus, in the comparative tradition of paragone, painting has historically been considered a higher form of art than poetry. Much like Derrida did what he could to eradicate Saussure’s supposed idealism, Mitchell fights this distinction by citing Plato’s Socrates, who stated “all signs, whether words or images, work by custom and convention, and all are imperfect, riddled with error” (92). It would seem that the utterance of language is as much of a (un)natural translation of conceived signs as the creation of images is. But, Mitchell continues, “[t]he apprehension of beauty and goodness is, of course, only possible in an image […]” (94), and “since images are all we have to work with [hailing from our sensory perception], we have to learn to work with them dialectically, acknowledging and identifying their imperfections, using them as a starting point for a dialogue or conversation” (94). Mitchell ultimately confides in Plato, stating that “the knowledge of ‘nature,’ the deep truth […] is not to be found by a renunciation of […] convention, nor by a trust in a special class of ‘natural’ signs that eludes convention, but by a dialogue within the world of convention that leads us to its limits” (94). Works cited: Mitchell, W.J.T. “Nature and Convention: Gombrich’s Illusions.” Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. 75-94. Moore, Alan and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005.
3
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Silverman, Kaja. “From Sign to Subject, a Short History.” The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. 3-53. Wouters, Paul. “7. De werkende mens (deconstructie)”, Denkgereedschap 2.0: Een filosofische onderhoudsbeurt. Amsterdam: Lemniscaat, 2010.
4
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Bal writes: “In order to step outside of [dominant] ideology, we must […] look at the image, including its problematic details as a text, composed of sign[s]: take it literally.” (“Reading Bathsheba” 137). Explain this statement in your own words (bring in quotes from Bal, Barthes, and additional literature) and expand on it by presenting an example of your own. Bal’s statement on “reading” images as if they were texts has to been seen as a sociocultural recommendation: one should not only marvel at them on a basic level of visual consumption, but one has to, as Bal argues, transcend the visual boundaries and tap into the constellation of textual signs to understand the actual narratives on display. Rather than only gazing upon them, in essence reducing the viewing of artistic imagery to just a visually pleasing experience for the sake of aesthetic enjoyment or otherwise, one should “read” them and thus come to a greater and more profound understanding of an art piece. How does one accomplish this transcendence? According to Bal, an accurate reading of a painting such as Rembrandt’s “Bathsheba at her Bath” can be accomplished through the use of genres that function as mastercodes, guidelines that allow the viewer to approach an artwork with a predetermined set of methodological tools to attribute meaning to it (119). Bal states that the ‘Bathsheba’ is visually read as a realistic painting, an erotic nude or even a historical painting, depending on the ideological angle from which it is approached, but she wishes to move beyond this practice by focusing on remarkable details (120). The sign that stands out most for Bal is the letter Bathsheba is holding in her hand. This is what Barthes would consider a ‘punctum’, a phrase he coined in his Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. A photograph, or in the case of Bal the Bathsheba, will summon a certain general impression in the viewer. Barthes calls this the ‘studium’. A ‘punctum’ of a photograph (or any given work of visual art) punctures this general view, captures the attention and stirs the emotions. “A photograph’s punctum is what pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me),” he explains (Barthes 27). The letter that Bathsheba holds is what pricks Bal and can therefore be considered her punctum. The presence of the letter, as Bal continues to explain, becomes the starting point for Bal’s research, with which she demonstrates three modes of meaning production: genre labels, signs, and the iconographic precedent (120). All three of these modes operate within the mastercodes through which we read a work of art. The different readings compared may produce ‘distortion’: readings of particular details can differ heavily or even conflict each other. These readings may generate what Bal refers to in her “Dis-semination: “Rembrandt” and the Navel of the Text” as ‘misfits’: signs of incoherence that lead us to new narrative insights “irreducibly alien to [previous insights, LB], void of the deceptive meaning the pre-text brought along” (147). Moore and Lloyd’s V for Vendetta gives ample amounts of details to pick an example from, which should suffice to illustrate Barthes’ definition of punctum, as well as Bal’s distortion and what it entails. In Fig. 2 we witness a scene that takes place in a dark alley in downtown London.
5
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Fig. 2: A menacing shadow cast upon the regime?
In the near future a totalitarian regime has risen to power after a series of epidemic outbreaks and world wars. England has separated itself from the rest of the world and is one of few countries that still functions properly as a God-fearing society, shown by the poster’s propaganda: Strength through Purity, Purity through Faith. Corrupt Fingermen, special police forces of the government, tyrannize the citizens, though, especially after curfew when they have a license to do just about what they want. In this case, a young girl has proposed to have intercourse with a man in said alley in exchange for money, which is illegal. Little did she know he was a Fingerman. He calls forth his colleagues and they are about to have their way with her, until… The punctum for me is the shadow on the right side of the frame, which immediately captures the attention. If you look at this frame quickly, you might even miss it, or attribute its shape to a lamppost. What is that unusual shape? We know by foreshadowing that it is the hat of the masked man codenamed “V”. Looking closely, we can see the shadow is moving; it lunges towards the propaganda on the wall, towards the unsuspecting Fingermen. V, though at that point of the story not yet identified as a man, is witnessing a (hetero)sexual harassment – the male gaze within the image is thus constructed. The sexual assault is unfolding before the reader and the reader is lured into voyeurism. The subject position offered to the reader is that of voyeur – one could say the reader cannot help but want to see more of the pretty girl. As such, the male gaze is also constructed vis-à-vis the reader. V chooses to act against this voyeurism, and in doing so V acts on behalf of the reader. It’s a straightforward assault on the sexual – “natural” – male dominance over the lone female, and thus can be read as a deconstruction of ideological stances taken by both the narrative as well as the reader who let oneself be positioned by the narrative. The pre-text (V versus the regime) and the feminist angle (unknown force eliminates the vulgar display of male power over females) together produce “a new narrative, reducible to neither – the work’s textuality”, to put it in Bal’s own words (Dis-semination 147). V generously allows us voyeurs to witness his impending swift demolition of male dominance and in doing so, stops the reader from fully embracing his or her own voyeurism. Though he sets about to bring anarchy to dominant balances of power, he aims to restore a new, justifiable power balance to the scales of society on multiple levels, and ushers the viewer to join his movement. Voyeurism, here, is used as a tool to enforce justice as well.
6
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Works cited: Bal, Mieke. “Dis-semination: “Rembrandt” and the Navel of the Text.” Literature, Interpretation, Theory 2 (1990): 145-66. Bal, Mieke. “Reading Bathsheba: From Mastercodes to Misfits.” Rembrandt’s ‘Bathsheba Reading King David’s Letter.’ New York and Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 119-46. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. 3-60. Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005.
7
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Following Damisch, van Alphen states that “art ‘thinks’” (xiv). Select one artwork (either of your own choosing or discussed by Mitchell or van Alphen) and show how it thinks. Compare and contrast your demonstration of “art thinking” to Mitchell and van Alphen: how does your approach overlap and differ from theirs? In essence, which coincidentally is one of van Alphen’s central topics during his contemplations on the pictorial genre of the portrait, van Alphen advocates Damisch’ claim that art ‘thinks’ – or as Mitchell puts it in his essay “Metapictures”, “art is selfanalytical” (36) – by giving a range of supporting examples. First, though, van Alphen explains what Damisch exactly meant by his claim. In van Alphen’s eyes, the performative function of art’s aesthetics remains widely underwritten in the academic world, and puts it as “one of the most striking paradoxes of the cultural disciplines” (xiii). Art, embedded as it is in cultural and historical discourse, has the power “to transform ways in which cultural issues are being conceived” (van Alphen xiii). But how? By, first of all, effectively “hailing” us, reeling the beholder in (Mitchell 75). In doing so, the beholder must question him- of herself why this happened. Stage two ensues by paving the way for new connections between signifier and signifieds to be made, through the deconstruction of established signifying connections. In short, art allows the beholder for it to be read along the existing, culturally dominant chains of signification, but at the same time actively tries to intervene by sledgehammering these chains. “The crucial function of aesthetic disruptions of understanding consists precisely in triggering efforts to form new signifiers,” van Alphen clarifies (xvi). It is in this agency that art “functions, […], as a frame for cultural thought” (xvi). Let us look at another example from Moore and Lloyd’s graphic novel “V for Vendetta”. After explaining the process of resignification, as I shall call it from here on, in the given example, I shall clarify in how this approach overlaps and differs from Mitchell’s and van Alphen’s examples. In Fig. 3 one can see the pained and starved body of Evey Hammond, the leading female role in the “Vendetta” storyline.
Fig. 3: What has happened to Evey Hammond?
Without proper context given, this frame becomes in my opinion a clear example of a metapicture. We are looking at a picture in which the person depicted is, in turn, looking at the reader. We cannot see who the person in the picture – from this frame alone one cannot even specify a gender – is looking at. Like Velasquez’ Las Meninas, it
8
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
is constructed around the reader. The phrase “You did this” hails and accuses the reader immediately, even though she is in fact speaking to V. The image invokes a discourse that produces a specific subject-position for the spectator. What did “I” do exactly? Is he or she implying the reader pushed her into starving him- or herself? Is it thus a critique of contemporary modelling, of the skinniness that so many girls aspire to obtain? Her whole appearance raises even more questions. The bold head, the starved body with ribs showing, the garments, the hands open and arms spread out… It all oddly reminds the reader of the biblical Jesus (or a Buddhist monk, if one stays in the area of religious connotations). Perhaps this person portrayed is a mistreated prisoner, a victim of the Holocaust, or perhaps he/she reminds the reader of the shaved Nazi ‘whores’ after World War II. It is indeed a rather ambiguous image, one that leaves the spectator with more questions unanswered than answered. Even within the given context (V as a torturer) this ambiguity remains. Is it to be seen as a sexist act of abuse, used to illustrate, or justify even, the physical and/or mental dominance of men over women? Quite clearly the image can be read in a multitude of directions, and each new reading imposes new questions on the reader. It is my safe assumption that van Alphen would agree on this being a ‘thoughtful’ work indeed. Works cited: Mitchell, W.J.T. “Metapictures” Picture Theory: Essays on Visual & Verbal Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 35-82. Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005. Van Alphen, Ernst. Introduction and Chapter 2 of Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xiii-xxi, 21-47.
9
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Barthes writes: “Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author […] beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’ – victory to the critic” (147). Rephrase and explain this statement in your own words. Compare and contrast Barthes’ claim to Price’s understanding of it. Perhaps bring in a cultural artifact that can be said to “think” about the notion of authorship. Barthes’ (and Foucault would agree) ultimate message in “The Death of the Author” is: the Author should have no influence in a reader’s interpretation of a novel, or ‘work’, because the author’s influence restricts the reader, pushing him of her to one interpretative outcome of what could be many different ones. The text belongs to the reader, not the author. This is why Barthes boldly states that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (148), effectively ending the era of the Author and heralding, instead, the era of the Reader (148). So when the voice of the author is successfully removed altogether from a text, it becomes pointless to search for it: there is none and there should be none. Critics, on the other hand, like to look for the author in the text and confer this conquest a great deal of importance, and unrightfully so, according to Barthes (147). Because when it is allegedly found, the critic will claim to have ‘explained’ the text, to have found the deeper meaning the author tyrannically bestowed upon its reader. The critic has tamed the beast, so to say. Which in Barthes’ eyes is nonsensical, for a text can have many interpretations. He says “a text is made of multiple writings, […] but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author” (148). A text, in short, “[…] is to be disentangled, not[…] deciphered” (147). Price, though never really concretely voicing his opinion (other than proposing that screenplay is or should be an eligible object for scholarly research), corresponds to Barthes’ statement that texts are made up of multiple writings, and includes the genre of screenplays to demonstrate. The notion of screenplays having a single author is an urban myth stemming from Romantic ideology, Price notes while discussing the work of Corliss (8). Screenplays are nearly always part of large studio collaborations, in which notions of authorship “tend to be displaced by legal and contractual relationships and, often, by notions of collective, evolving, and even anonymous authorship” (9). Not to mention that screenplays themselves are often adaptations from books or other texts. As such, the end result that is the screenplay is an amalgam of many voices and opinions. On could say this is why any interpretation of the Text should be left to the reader – the ‘Author’ is a mixed bag and is not to be trusted. Another genre, which will be discussed at length in the next essay, is that of comics and graphic novels. Once again I will address Moore and Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, in this case to illustrate where in the Vendetta storyline Barthes’ death of the Author would be desirable, if not needed. In a 2007 interview with BBC 4, Alan Moore states that he thinks that “[A]narchy is, and always has been, a romance. It is clearly the best way and the only morally sensible way to run the world” (02:14-02:29). This message is portrayed quite clearly in V for Vendetta. The voice of the author quite
10
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
strongly resonates in V’s speeches on anarchy. In Fig. 4 one of those speeches can (partly) be seen.
Fig. 4: Anarchists as destroyers and creators
Though admittedly convincing, I personally feel the author pushes his reading of anarchism too much. Examples of successful anarchistic societies or nations are scarce and usually small-scale, so for it to be the ‘best way’ or even ‘the only morally sensible way’ to run the world remains doubtful. V states that anarchy wears two faces at once, like one of the oldest Roman gods, Janus. Here the anarchist is portrayed as a bringer of transition, by destroying the ‘old’ world, so other anarchists, creators, can build a new one on top of the rubbles. But what greater knowledge should this destroying individual possess for him to determine that this transition is exactly what the world needs? Is it the creator that decides whether the destroyers should act, or just the destroyers themselves? In this extreme case of totalitarian tyranny it is clear that action is required, because the anarchist destroyer (V) is very well informed and thus is in the perfect position to judge and execute (an analogy with Judge Dredd is inevitable here). So yes, in this particular case the anarchist in the form of V is capable of passing fair judgment, but this level of intelligence is exceptional and not necessarily representative of other anarchists. That is why it is my impression that Moore is pushing his anarchistic zealotry a bit too much and why readers should have their pitchforks at the ready at all times. Works cited: Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author” and “From Work to Text,” 1967/1971. ImageMusic-Text. Ed. and Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana P, 1977. 142-48, 155-64. Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005. Moore, Alan. “X-Rated: Anarchy in the UK.” Comics Britannia, Ep. 3. Dir. Paul Gravett. Pres. Armando Ianucci. BBC 4, 24 September 2007. 21 September 2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7ehbE1vc0>. Price, Stephen. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 1-62.
11
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Post a response on the Discussion Board in which you link Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to one of the previous assigned readings. The approach that I have chosen for this assignment is: symbols versus icons (McCloud and Peirce). “There, did you think to kill me? There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There’s only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell.” – V (Moore 236).
McCloud’s theory on amplification through simplification, and specifically the explanation of thinking of one’s face as a mask (34), immediately reminds one of the mask codename ‘V’ wears in V for Vendetta. The deviously smiling mask could be a vivid replacement of McCloud’s smiley face on a stick (37), sans the stick… or perhaps not quite. The smiley face that McCloud uses to demonstrate this theory is an icon of a real human face. Because of the stark simplification, the reader (who is but one of thousands of readers) can identify him- or herself with it. One does not see the face of another, but the face of oneself – one ‘becomes’ the smiley face. Through these “simplified conceptualized images of our biological selves” (39), we are able to shift into the smiley face (or in a more broader sense, a cartoon character) and back again. V uses his mask in much the same way as McCloud uses the smiley face. All of the suppressed people in near future England, be it young, old, male, female, are to identify themselves with this mask. But as said, the Guy Fawkes mask – this is a perfect example of McCloud’s amplification through simplification: only the hat, facial hair and grin remain of Fawkes’ human face, the grin probably being fictitious – is not just an icon: it is a symbol for a greater idea. McCloud explains that symbols are a category of icons “we use to represent concepts, ideas and philosophies” (27). The smiley face here is used as a signifier, the signified being oneself. The mask of V, however, is more than that. American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) made a clear distinction in his work between three kinds of signs: icons, indices and symbols (Silverman 19). Iconic signs resemble their conceptual object in certain ways. The indexical sign, as Silverman explains, “is understood to be connected to the real object [it depicts], it is capable of making that object conceptually present” (19,20). Peirce illustrates this existential bond between the indexical sign and its object with several examples, most notably the weathervane (the vane producing in the mind of the beholder concepts of “wind” and “direction”). The third category is the symbol, which designates a sign whose relation to its conceptual object is entirely arbitrary (Silverman 20). Taking Peirce’s division of signs into account, the mask V is wearing is an icon, indexical sign and symbol all in one. It is an icon depicting (the effigy of) Guy Fawkes. It is an indexical sign of intentional anonymity, of a vigilante status, and the smile an indexical sign of sarcasm. Lastly, the mask is a symbol of grander ideas such as revolution, anarchy (both inside the graphic novel and outside) and myriad other arbitrary signifieds. Notwithstanding, McCloud comes with his own triad of sign divisions – McCloud confusingly uses ‘icons’ as his overarching term, though. McCloud makes the distinction between non-pictorial icons, pictures and words. Non-pictorial icons have a “fixed and absolute” meaning, whose appearance “doesn’t affect their meaning, because they represent invisible ideas” (28). Pictures’ meanings, however, are “fluid and variable according to their appearance” (28). Finally, “words are totally
12
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
abstract icons. That is, they bare no resemblance to the real McCoy” (28). Relating McCloud’s terminology to Peirce’s, one could they that words (and language in general) are symbolic: they don’t resemble their concepts in the slightest (with an exception, perhaps, of the word ‘bed’, which actually resembles the form of a bed). Iconic signs resemble the objects they depict the most and are therefore comparable to McCloud’s ‘pictures’. Unfortunately, the remaining comparison is lopsided, for indexical signs are not the same as non-pictorial icons. Ultimately, the difference between McCloud’s and Peirce’s subdivisions is one of hierarchical nature: icons and symbols are both categories of signs according to Peirce; signs which McCloud in turn refers to as icons and symbols form an iconic category of. Words aside, the iconic examples that McCloud provides to illustrate his categorization are problematic. The ubiquitous ‘Peace’ sign is not exactly a nonpictorial sign whose meaning is ‘fixed and absolute’. Its meaning has changed quite a lot over the years, seeing as it was initially designed as a symbol for the British nuclear disarmament movement in 1958. It seems McCloud himself is not quite sure in what way ‘non-pictorial’ should be taken, seeing as the term in itself is problematic. Once a non-pictorial icon is depicted, the icon becomes pictorial after all. As such, could one say McCloud, in his rigour of applying distinctions, unconsciously masks his flawed understanding of semiotics? Works cited: McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005. Silverman, Kaja. “From Sign to Subject, a Short History.” The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. 3-53.
13
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Perform a close reading of an ekphrastic poem by another poet (textual analysis) that additionally functions as a “theoretical object” that helps you think about ekphrasis in general (doing theory). Incorporate citations from this week’s assigned readings, make connections to the themes and texts discussed in previous weeks, and bring in additional literature. Klimt was a painter of extraordinary calibre, but can an ekphrastic poem capture and invoke his visual extravagance in words? A reading of the poem The “Moving Waters” of Gustav Klimt of beat-poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ekphrasis, according to Mitchell in his essay “Ekphrasis and the Other”, can be explained as the “verbal representation of visual representation” (152). This explanation promptly reminds one of Barthes’s “From Work to Text”, where an ekphrastic poem can be seen as a different (verbal, instead of visual) approach to the same Text. More accurately, perhaps, the approach towards the Text should be seen as verbal through the visual, and as such, it is a special genre in using two different media (a work of a work) to display a (Barthesian) text – a ‘reading of a reading’ so to say. It is the genre “in which texts counter their own semiotic ‘others,’ those rival, alien modes of representation called the visual, graphic, plastic, or ‘spatial’ arts”, Mitchell explains (156). Reminiscent of souls that have fallen into the river Styx, Klimt’s painting seems melancholic and somewhat distressful. Ferlinghetti immediately delves into this gloominess, pondering on who these women might have been. Models Klimt slept with, or perhaps Klimt’s lovers of old? With vivid descriptions Ferlinghetti tries to verbally represent the atmosphere of Klimt’s painting. The repeated use of starting the lines of the poem with the same words (‘dreamt’ in line 9, 31, 32, or ‘in’ in line 14, 28, 30, 36, 37) can be seen as a “verbal ‘equivalent’” of Klimt’s patchwork-like style (Smith 167). Quickly dismissing Mitchell’s “ekphrastic indifference” (152), Ferlinghetti tries “to make us see” instead by using language (152). That is not all, however. Ferlinghetti here not only “giv[es] voice to a mute object” (153), but moves beyond the painting’s overt reading. His language embodies a deeper interpretation, one of ethereal and short-lived promiscuity, providing an alternative reading of Klimt’s Text in Moving Waters – Mitchell calls this a fulfilling of “ekphrastic hope” (152). It, then, inherently becomes necessary to discuss Ferlinghetti’s role in ekphrasis, because, according to Mitchell, “[t]he ekphrastic poet typically stands in a middle position between the object described or addressed and a listening subject who (if ekphrastic hope is fulfilled) will be made to ‘see’ the object through the medium of the poet’s voice” (164). Has Ferlinghetti made us, the readers, ‘see’ the object? One could say so. But even though Ferlinghetti tries his hardest to convey whatever message Klimt was trying to convey through his painting, the two arguably never quite align. Ferlinghetti’s speaker, who by his admiring descriptions of the women depicted can be seen as a gazing male, first questions himself who these painted women are, describing what can be seen on the painting. In line 33 the speaker merges with the universe of the painting portrayed in words by Ferlinghetti, speaking of the women “[s]till [being] strangers to us/yet not/strangers/in that first night/in which we lose ourselves/And know each other” (Ferlinghetti 53). The women become subject to male voyeurism, and Ferlinghetti’s speaker wants to immerse himself in their seemingly shameless offering, dragging the reader along by referring to them as “us” and “we”. Ferlinghetti’s first-person plural “allows […] a guarded identification
14
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
with the work of art” (Glavey 792), and has thus brought his nonverbal desires into the symbolic order. Unlike the example given of V for Vendetta in the second essay of this essay collection, there seems to be no counterargument present, leaving the reader no choice but to fully embrace one’s own voyeurism. There is no V, no daft saviour; it is just the reader at the mercy of the poet’s voice here. Right? Not quite – the painting does fight back in a way. The woman in the foreground gleefully stares back at the beholder, turning the spectator “into an image” (Mitchell 172). She looks back, returning the favour happily and allowing the spectator to become aware of one’s voyeurism, much like Mieke Bal’s reading through the navel of the Bathsheba. This feminist context (the spectator becoming the subject of the female gaze instead) is not touched upon by Ferlinghetti in his poem, other than objectively pointing out that their “eyes [are] wide open” in line 11 (53). There is a lot to be found in Ferlinghetti’s poem, just as there is a lot to be found in Klimt’s painting. The depth and mystery of Klimt’s painting, as well as his visual style, are well translated in Ferlinghetti’s poem. I never, however, experienced what Mitchell refers to as “ekphrastic fear”, that being “the moment in aesthetics when the difference between verbal and visual mediation becomes a moral, aesthetic imperative rather than […] a natural fact that can be relied on” (154). Fearing a collapse of the difference between the verbal and visual representation of Klimt’s Moving Waters never occurred in my head, and thus the interplay between these three stages of ekphrastic fascination has failed for me, probably explaining why this particular essay was the most difficult one to write so far. Works cited: Bal, Mieke. “Dis-semination: “Rembrandt” and the Navel of the Text.” Literature, Interpretation, Theory 2 (1990): 145-66. Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text”, 1971. Image-Music-Text. Ed. and Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana P, 1977. 155-64. Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. Who Are We Now? New York: New Directions, 1974. 53. Glavey, Brian. “Frank O’Hara Nude with Boots: Queer Ekphrasis and the Statuesque Poet.” American Literature 79, 4 (2007): 781-806. Mitchell, W.J.T. “Ekphrasis and the Other”, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. 151-81. Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005. Smith, Hazel. “Why I Am Not a Painter: Visual Art, Semiotic Exchange, Collaboration”, Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O’Hara: Difference/Homosexuality/Topography. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000. 166-94.
15
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Foucault discusses “the repressive hypothesis” and “the incitement to discourse”. Explain both concepts, bring in quotes from Foucault and additional literature, and connect your discussion to Meyer’s text. The ‘repressive hypothesis’, as Foucault names it in the first volume of The History of Sexuality, describes the idea of a “discourse of [our] modern sexual repression” (5) that has originated in the Victorian regime (3). Our contemporary and persistent hypocritical prudishness when it comes to sexuality finds its origins in the seventeenth century, so Foucault claims (5). This development of increasing repression gained flight due to its incompatibility with the (rise of the) capitalist work ethos: “how could this [labour] capacity be allowed to dissipate itself in pleasurable pursuits […] ?” (6). Foucault argues that sexual repression is an instrument of exercising power, and that by defying this established repression, the “appearance of deliberate transgression” (6), the speaker begets a sense of subversive empowerment, of rebellion. This feeling of defying the established powers that sustain sexual repression calls to life the promise of a new and better future, liberated from all ensuing constraints (6). But is this sketched sexual discourse historically correct? Foucault suspects that it is not, stating that “when one looks back over these last three centuries […], things appear in a very different light: around and apropos of sex, one sees an veritable discursive explosion” (17). Instead of placing sexuality in a fictitious, all-encompassing discourse of censorship, Foucault explains that sexuality gradually has become integrated in a dispersion of discourses through cultural stimulation. Sex became incorporated in daily life, as discourses concerned with sex proliferated steadily (18). For instance, as the Catholic Church began to attribute more and more “importance in penance […] to all the insinuations of the flesh” (19), confessions became increasingly focused on rigorous self-examination: “everything had to be told” (19). Society slowly became used to indulge in sexual conversations, and so sex became (a part of) discourse. The same development happened on other cultural planes, as Foucault elaborates, for “[i]n the course of recent centuries [there came to be] an explosion of distinct discursivities which took form in demography, biology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, ethics, pedagogy, and political criticism” (33). Thus Foucault perceived: “A censor of sex? There was installed rather an apparatus for producing an ever greater quantity of discourse about sex” (23), hence Foucault naming it ‘the incitement to discourse’. One exceptionally clear and violent example of Foucault’s repressive hypothesis to be found in V for Vendetta is the fascist purge of all ‘undesirable’ citizens sweeping through near-future England, including homosexuals (28), the story of Valerie remaining the most touching and vivid case of all. In Fig. 5 a small excerpt can be seen from the depressive story of the gay woman Valerie told to the reader by Evey, whilst she is being tortured to give up the identity of codename V but refuses to do so.
16
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
Fig. 5: A regime’s ruthless desire to control all of society
Even though the torture of Evey was fictitious – it was an elaborately constructed scheme by V to rid Evey of all her fears – V acknowledged later on that Valerie did exist and her story was actually true. The portrayed willingness to dismiss any moral code in exchange for (preserving) absolute power is vulgar to say the least, and unfortunately based on true historical events. Evey did not give in. She defiantly stayed mute until the very end, censoring herself when the censors for once demanded her to talk. The irony could not be clearer. Meyer argues in his book Outlaw Representations that “censorship’s visibility cannot necessarily be taken as a sign of effectiveness. To the contrary, censorship may be most powerful when it is least palpable, when virtually no one knows that it has even occurred” (xi). What a totalitarian regime like Adam James Susan’s does is kidnapping people and letting them disappear without a trace, and they are never heard from again. This censorship is powerful in direct terms (the censorship is immediate and absolute), but unavoidably will be perceived by others close to the individual, eventually sparking a nation-wide civilian anger. Susan’s regime (or ‘Sutler’ as his name is in the film, obviously referencing to ‘Hitler’) would have lasted much longer if it had applied its censorship, excuse the pun, subtler. Perhaps a valuable lesson drawn from said censorship is this: it is a tool that can be used for both good and bad. In the case of V for Vendetta censorship is incriminated, but it can also be used to protect national safety and social stability, economic interests, personal privacy and security, and so on. Artists (whatever the medium) can choose to stay within set boundaries or move across and question them. In doing so, they can (though not in all cases) be seen as moral vanguards, critically analysing the power balance between state and the people and bestowing upon them the choice to act on a statement or leave it be. Power, which expresses itself in social constraints like censorship, “produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge produces discourse” (Power/Knowledge 119). According to Foucault these enabling constraints are productive and therefore never wholly limiting. The way in which power is exerted and maintained is a fragile process, for its correlation with corruption is historically evident. I would like to use a metaphor for describing the distribution of power in institutions. The analogy is not true to reality, for sure, but perhaps it offers an interesting insight. The distribution of power can be seen as liquid water in a landscape, where it constantly finds its way to lower and more needy places, our notion of justice and sense of righteousness pulling its molecules downwards like gravity. Slopes naturally allow gravity to move the water from a higher place to one situated lower, much like corruption allows power to flow
17
Laurens van den Broek (Design Cultures) – st. nr. 2541849 – Literature Visualized – dr. R.V.J. van den Oever
from one place to the other. Totalitarian regimes attempt to freeze bodies of power so they cannot be redistributed or naturally evaporate by the sunlight (time being the Sun), but sooner or later water will seep away slowly and power fades. Is this how power manifests? One can only guess, but it suffices to say that power is elusive and can vanish as quickly as it establishes itself, like water held in the hand. Works cited: Foucault, Michel. Part One and Two and Part Four, Chapter 2: “Method” of The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. 1967. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 2-35. Foucault, Michel. “Truth and power” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–77 (ed. C. Gordon). New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. 109–133. Meyer, Richard. Preface, Chapter One & Two of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art. Boston: Beacon P, 2002. xi-xii, 1-31, 158-223. Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 2005.
18