Stuart Hall and Law and Order

Law and Order is a television show that encodes a message about the American criminal justice system to its viewers.  When viewers watch the program, they decode a particular message. 

            If one were to watch an episode of Law and Order: SVU, Stuart Hall would say the message encoded into the show is that the crimes committed by sexual offenders are especially heinous.  In fact, in the opening of the show, this message is specifically narrated.  However, the ideology perceived by the audience (the message they decode) may be different intended by the minds behind the show.

            Hall would say that some people would have a dominant reading of the show, meaning that these people would fully accept the ideology about sex offenders the show is trying to relay.  Others would have a negotiated reading, in which the accept some of the basic tenets of the encoded message but modify the message to reflect their own point of view.  In the case of Law and Order, a negotiated reading might be that sex offenders do commit heinous crimes, but sex offenders can’t just be anybody; they all fit into one demographic composed of minorities from low socio-economic backgrounds.  Hall would say that others, still, would have a oppositional reading in which they disagree entirely with the dominant reading.  An oppositional reading of Law and Order might be that sex crimes should not be punishable under the law (absurd as that may sound).

            Hall would say that the ideology accepted by the audience would be diverse.  He would also say that social factors would affect one’s reading.  For example, a person who has done time in prison and interacted with convicted sex offenders may have a different reading than a mother whose child has been a victim of a sex offender.  Factors such as race, gender, socio-economic background, etc. would all affect how a viewer would perceive an episode of Law and Order.  

Jameson and Postmodernism

   Jameson would say that the image is an example of postmodernism.  The image is a “Simpsonized” version of the Mona Lisa.  It’s fairly strange and a definite deviation from the original painting that is so well know.  Jameson notes:

“What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the fantic economic urgency of producting fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to aeroplanes), at ever greater rates of innovation and experimentation.”

The image is an example of this “experimentation” as well as an attempt to create a new commodity.  The artist is trying to be funny and creative and to juxtapose two well-know visual images to create something visually innovative.  This is the image’s pastiche.  It is imitating Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting and creating from it something new and different.  Pastiche, according to Jameson, is a fundamental tenet of postmodernism.           

            Jameson would also classify this as postmodern because its very light and meant to be perceived as a joke.  Jameson says this “essential triviality” differs from the “Utopian high seriousness of the great modernisms.” 

Freud and Jack Bauer

Freud would say that in all people, including Jack Bauer, there is a level of innate bisexuality, meaning that all people are born with both male and female traits.  However, through psychosexual development, people become monosexual and assume more of the traits of one gender than the other.  Freud assigned traits to the different genders: males are active while females are passive; males have phalluses while women are castrated.  Freud would argue that a trait of males is the Oedipal complex in which men in which men desire for the destruction of one parent and are sexually attracted to the other.

In the case of Jack Bauer, I’m not positive that we see evidence of an Oedipal complex, but he is an example of Freud’s theories of sexuality and masculinity.  He is very active and certainly not passive.  When his daughter goes missing, he actively tries to find her and doesn’t passively wait by the phone like his wife (a female) does.  Jack Bauer is an example of male dominance; he’s in charge of other people and he does only what he wants to do, breaking the rules and defying authority to accomplish his goals.  He also seems to be motivated by sexual impulses, another tenet of Freudian theory.  Jack is desperate to find his daughter to improve the sexual relationship he has with his wife.  At work, he has a flirtatious relationship with one of his female coworkers.  He jeopardizes his job and uses his relationship with this woman for personal gain, demonstrating how he acts, once again, of sexual impulses.  Freud would argue that much of Jack Bauer’s masculinity is derived from the unconscious, including repressed memories from his past.  Having only watched the pilot and being unfamiliar with the remaining episodes of the series, I don’t know if Bauer’s past is discussed, but his masculine behavior would be largely derived from his past, according to Freud.

Habermas and Ghosts of Rwanda

In regards to Ghosts of Rwanda, Habermas would say that in some ways, the documentary is an example of the public sphere.  “Newspapers and magazine, radio and television are the media of the public sphere,” he says.  Because the documentary appeared as part of Frontline on PBS, the documentary meets this qualification of the public sphere.  However, public broadcasting is owned by the government, and “although state authority is so to speak the executor of the political public sphere, it is not part of it.”  The documentary does have a very political subject matter and a political opinion within it.  Ghosts of Rwanda seems to criticize the United Nations and the American government for not taking more appropriate actions when the genocide began.  While it does provide a lot of information about the genocide in Rwanda, it doesn’t do so without a political bias.  Habermas would argue that political control is not being subordinated to the public’s demand for information, therefore limiting its classification as part of the public sphere.  However, Habermas also notes that “public discussions about the exercise of political power” are critical to the public sphere, therefore making Ghosts of Rwanda an example of the public sphere.  I’m not quite sure how Habermas would classify the documentary, because there seem to be some aspects of the film that support its classification as part of the public sphere and some aspects that do not.  

Barthes and the CNN Image

Barthes would understand and attempt to analyze this photo of an American soldier in Iraq by discussing the different codes found within the image.

There are no words found within the image, except for the Arabic writing that appears on the Iraqi flag.  But since that language is unintelligible to me, the viewer, the image appears to be devoid of a linguistic code.

Denotatively, the image features a man operating a gun.  The setting seems to be one where there is a lot of concrete.  It appears that other men are present in the far off distance.  On a concrete slab beside the man is a painted replica of the Iraqi flag.  The man is framed in the center of the image in the lower half of the frame.

On a connotative level, the image conveys more than just the denotative code.  The gun is a symbol of violence and destruction.  The pile of rubble in the background also symbolizes the presence of destruction.  The juxtaposition of an American soldier against an Iraqi flag sends a strong message to viewers.  Is America fighting for Iraq or against Iraq?  The colors within the image also contribute to the connotative code.  The neutral color of the concrete and the soldier’s camouflage blend into the overall picture, but the bright red of the Iraqi flag bring attention to the flag and may be what the photographer is trying to emphasize.  The focus and intense gaze of the man suggests that the soldier has a specific purpose and is not merely present in the space for no reason. 

Three Quotes from Rhetoric of the Image

1. We are still, and more than ever, a civilization of writing, writing and speech continuing to be the full terms of the informational structure.  In fact, it is simply the presence of the linguistic message that counts, for neither its position nor its length seem to be pertinent.

In the advertisement, there is a linguistic message.  And as Barthes believes, it is the most pertinent message to relaying information.  While the images in the ad allow viewers to formulate ideas on what the show may be about, the words on the ad relay information.  HBO realizes the importance of the linguistic message and utilizes it here to share information about the date and time of the series finale.

2. The type of consciousness the photograph involves is indeed truly unprecedented, since it establishes not a consciousness of the being-there of the thing (which any copy could provoke) but an awareness of its having-been-there.

The image of James Gandolfini in this advertisement is a photograph.  While it may easily have been photoshopped, it creates the idea in viewers’ minds that Gandolfini was actually there in front of the Statue of Liberty at some point in time.  Because we now have “proof” that he was once there, the message that the advertisement is trying to relay is not more credible.

3. The variations in readings is not, however, anarchic; it depends on the different kinds of knowledge—practical, national, cultural, aesthetic—invested in the image and these can be classified, brought into a typology.   

This ad relies on this type of knowledge that Barthes describes.  We can use national knowledge to understand the Statue of Liberty symbolizes things such as freedom and New York City.  We can use aesthetic knowledge to understand that red color of “Made in America” may be symbolizing bloodshed and predicting an especially violent series finale.  Practical knowledge can be used to interpret Gandolfini’s facial expressions.  One can look at the ad and see that he looks like he’s suspicious of someone or something and that he may be plotting some kind of revenge.

Aura and Reality in The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project gets its “scariness” from its ability to portray reality and to depict horror, not in a stylized and dramatized way, but in a way which seems highly believable possible in real life.  The film tries to recreate the aura of horror, and it does so through bare-bones production techniques and realistic acting instead of through visual effects and dramatization which greatly detract from the reality of horror and reassure audiences that the “horror” on the screen isn’t real. 

The first quote affirms Walter Benjamin’s belief that aura disappears in film because the audience is not physically there.  Benjamin is correct in that The Blair Witch Project cannot perfectly recreate the aura of physically being present during the characters’ time in the woods.  But the second quotes says that film presents a better depiction of reality than visual art because it “penetrates deeply into [reality’s] web.”  The Blair Witch Project, through its very medium of film, gets closer to reality than any other form of mechanical reproduction because of this “penetration.” 

The Blair Witch Project does try to recapture the aura, especially through its marketing as real home videos that were “found” in the woods (instead of a highly produced, directed, edited, etc. piece of entertainment).  But it also attempts to cut into reality.  Instead of highly stylized camera shots, the film employs a shaky camera technique and the actors break the fourth wall and talk to the camera/audience.  By both recreating aura and cutting into reality, The Blair Witch Project creates a new and highly effective kind of horror film.