Blog Post #5 for 2/17/20

Reading Summary

As pop culture begins to be a topic studied to find the real meaning of signs in higher education, there was a need to develop a method that would be able to separate personal opinions from real evidence to support a claim. Semiotics is a method developed to study pop culture signs and finding the underlying meaning rather than the direct meaning. In recent years we have seen a shift in the meaning of what a vampire represents in pop culture. Before, a vampire was a evil, horrific figure such as the story dracula (1897). Now it is considered to be a sexy, sympathetic, and cool young adult like in Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. To be able to find the connotative meaning of a sign involves both abduction and over determination. We also need to keep in mind cultural mythologies (the form each individual views the world) to know the values or beliefs of the builder.

Source: Maasik, S. & Solomon, J. (2012). “The semiotic method.” Excerpt from Signs of life in the USA., 17 pages.

Outside Example

Reading this chapter reminded me of Prometheus a 2012 film directed by Ridley Scott where a team of explorers follows a star map of several ancient civilizations seeking the origins of humanity. When they arrive they begin to find clues that an alien civilization once thrived on that planet but some crew members begin to worry about the reason the civilization went extinct. Soon after, the crew finds themselves fighting for their lives against unknown horrors. In the end, only one crew member and an android escaped and set a new voyage to meet with the creators of humans.

Reading Connection

In “Signs of Life in the USA” the authors talk about how signs have a denotative and a connotative meaning. This reminded me of the movie Prometheus which is a prequel to the Alien saga because it has an underlying meaning that might not be clear by watching the movie once. I was really into these movies a few years ago and read about the hidden meaning in Prometheus. Its denotative meaning is an alien movie where humans have to fight for their lives against aliens. However, if you look into the movie you find a lot of clues of how this movie is actually about sacrifice vs survival. We see the selfishness of various crew members which leads to them getting killed and the sacrifices made by a few members in hope of their friends surviving and escaping.