Reading Summary
The study of pop culture is finally starting to become more common. The study of pop culture grows as we move away from entertainment being available to only the upper class. A sign is something that carries meaning. Anything in pop culture or entertainment is a sign because of this Shows and movies can carry meaning just like a book or short story could. Words that carry meaning are called signs or text.
The semiotics method is a method that allows you to look at text and signs and determine the actual meaning of what you are seeing. Semiotics determines how the meaning of things are more than just what you can visually see. Meanings change over time and also have political dimensions to them. Political dimensions means it has a group interest behind its meaning. Denotation is what you visually see and connotation is what meaning there is beyond what you see. When determining the reason behind a sign abduction is when there is a claim of one meaning behind it. Overdetermination is when more than one reason is behind a meaning of a sign.
Vampires today are not portrayed the same as they always have been. They now carry the context of being young, cool, and sexy. They used to be immortal recluses who were terrified. Now we have Twilight. This change came because of a change in portrayals over time. The portrayals shifted to reflect the wants of people in modern society. People don’t want fear, they want vampires to reflect the foil of their life. This is where semiotics play a part in taking pop culture and using it to understand the serious issues of the world we live in.
Source: Maasik, S. & Solomon, J. (2012). “The semiotic method.” Excerpt from Signs of life in the USA., 17 pages.
Outside Example
Star Wars: A New Hope is known for having influences from current political events during its creation in the 70’s. The closest comparison it has had is to the vietnam war and how the american democracy had turned into a power hungry empire that tried to take over other countries and cause war for no other reason than greed. The empire is led by Palpatine, aka the president, who sends out his army and Darth Vadar, aka his general, to take over these other planets. George Lucas has admitted that the script was based on the American philosophy when it comes to war. He was fascinated by the idea of how “how democracies get turned into dictatorships”.
Reading ConnectionThe way that Maasik and Solomon talk about signs is interesting.When it comes to Star Wars: a New Hope, the denotation is the movie is a space opera about good versus evil. When it comes to connotation, you can identify the parallels of how the movie matches with the serious issues of society. Despite the fact George Lucas said it explicitly, the movie itself can be interpreted to have that meaning. Had the movie been created before the Vietnam war, the meaning of the movie might be completely different from what it was originally for. The political dimension to the movie existed from Lucas’s agenda behind creating the movie.
Comm 2302 Spring 20 
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