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The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies Author(S): Stephen Prince Source: Film Quarterly, Vol

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The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies Author(S): Stephen Prince Source: Film Quarterly, Vol The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies Author(s): Stephen Prince Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 16-28 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1213106 . Accessed: 18/02/2014 15:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.173.125.76 on Tue, 18 Feb 2014 15:36:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Stephen Prince The Discourse of Pictures Iconicity and Film Studies I n its analysis of images, film theorysince studies as a discipline has tended to frame questions the 1970s has been deeply indebtedto structuralistand about visual meaningand communication. Saussurean-derivedlinguistic models. Indeed, it would Our purpose here is to examine some of these be difficult to overstate the depth and importanceof consequencesand to see how well they squarewith the thisrelationship. As RobertStam has noted, "Semiotics observableevidence about how viewers perceive and in general, and film semiotics in particular,must be comprehendcinematic sequences. We will see that seen.., as local manifestationsof a more widespread currentfilm theory, tracingits lineage from Saussure, linguistic turn."' To speak, for example, about "read- Althusser,and Lacan,has constructedaccounts of the ing" a film, as many film analystsnow do, irrespective ways in which film transmits meaning that are, in of the critical methodology employed to generatethe certain importantrespects, counter to the observable reading, is to index and emphasize this lineage. Like skills, abilities, and reactions of real-worldviewers. books, films are regarded as texts for reading by The viewer, as theorized in these accounts, differs viewers or critics, with the concomitant implication substantiallyfrom his/her real-worldcounterpart. We thatsuch reading activates similar processes of semiotic shallemphasize some of these discrepanciesin orderto decoding. suggest a reorientationof theoreticalfocus. In short,a But does it? To what extent are linguistic models renewed attention to the iconic, mimetic nature of appropriatefor an understandingof how images com- pictorialsigns is warranted,so thatour theoriesmight municate?Film theory since the 1970s has tended to become more sensitive to the unique, constitutive place great emphasis upon what is regarded as the featuresof pictorial-as opposedto linguistic-modes arbitrarynature of the signifier-signifiedrelationship, of communication.(It is importantto note that other that is, upon the purely conventional and symbolic currentsexist in contemporaryfilm theory.Pier Paolo aspect of signs. Whatthis focus has tendedto displace Pasolini and PeterWollen, for example, have offered is an appreciationof the iconic and mimetic aspect of analyses of cinematic signs that are inflected rather certain categories of signs, namely pictorial signs, differentlythan the Saussurean-inspiredaccounts that those most relevantto an understandingof the cinema. this essay examines.2More than20 years ago, Wollen This stressupon the arbitrarynature of semioticcoding stressed the importance of paying attention to the has had enormous consequences for the way film iconic aspectof pictorialsigns. Borrowingfrom Charles 16 This content downloaded from 128.173.125.76 on Tue, 18 Feb 2014 15:36:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Peirce's triadic model of the sign, he argued that in images was to open the way for a utilizationof the ideal cinema, iconic and indexical aspects are more power- of differencein cinematicsignification."3 Stressing the ful thansymbolic, andhe pointedout thatsemiologists signifier as a differential construction enabled film have neglectedthe subjectof iconic signs becausethey theoryto emphasizecommunication as discourse,as a are biased in favor of conceptionsof signs as arbitrary culture-boundactivity, relative to and differentially and symbolic.) patternedby the uniquesocial worldsof diversegroups Let me state very clearly at the outset that this of interactants.Signs, whetherlinguistic or cinematic, suggested reorientationis not intendedas a substitute were viewed as culturallyinstantiated: "Sign systems for the very real and necessary work on the role that don't producemeaning outside of the social and cul- cultureplays in film spectatorshipand interpretation. turalcontext from which they have developed."' Culture-boundattitudes do indeed inflect the content This conceptof the sign enabledtheorists to expli- of film narratives,along with their stylistic visualiza- cate many aspects of cinematic coding, from discrete tion, at the point of productionand, again, throughthe optical devices like dissolves or wipes to more com- inferences viewers draw from those narratives.The plex structuressuch as shot/reverse-shotcutting, sub- position this essay takes is not intended as a replace- jective images, and other aspects of point-of-view menteither for the criticalwork of ideological analysis editing. Viewing these devices as symbolic codes and interpretation,or for inquiries into how viewers' permittedtheorists to emphasize the constructionof judgementsabout the natureof a social worlddepicted cinematicdiscourse, that is, the deploymentin film of in film may be shapedby elements of cinematicstruc- an elaboratesemiotic system whose address, and ef- ture. But, in the interest of conducting this kind of fects, could be comprehensible in Althusserian- interpretivework, it is importantto have a clear sense Lacanianterms as the interpellationof subjects.Using of wherecultural variables do and do not enterinto the a symbol system like language, in this view, entails productionof meaning by the cinematic image. Only being positioned-socially, ideologically-in and by when we have a good understandingof those aspectsof the categories which that system has helped create. visual significationwhere culture plays a less determi- Thus film, like language,could be comprehensibleas native role are we likely to be able to constructa clear discourse, as the creationof apparentmeaning where portraitof where it does play a role. Thus, this essay only true relations of difference prevail (due to the certainly does not argue against the role of cultural arbitrarynature of the sign andthe consequentneed for analysis in film interpretation,but it does attemptto it to receive definitiononly in relationto whatit is not, suggest some reasons for caution when employing i.e., to all othersigns). As Althusserand Lacan (and the linguistic categories and models of culturalrelativism film theory they inspired) emphasized, these decep- in film analysis.It is not thatthere are no cases in which tively real constellationsof apparentlyfixed meaning they might profitablybe applied, but ratherthat there could be an excellent site for ideology and for imagi- are some significantaspects of visual communication nary conceptions of the self to take root. Viewed as to which they probablyshould not be applied. discourse, cinema assumed a symbiotic relationship with ideology, becoming an effective vehicle for its transmission.The workof film theorybecame increas- The Linguistic Turn ingly focused on deciphering the ideology at work in Contemporary inside the cinema's deceptive and transparentappear- ance of reality.That appearance of realitywas, further- Film Studies more, suspect for having ideological effects (e.g., naturalizingthat which is historical or cultural,etc.) To it will to trace begin, help briefly the andfor creating ideal andfalse subjectunities.5 Viewed linguisticinfluence on contemporaryfilm theory,after in these terms,film historyis the historyof discourse, which we may questionwhether it suppliesan adequate and the relationbetween film and the worldis a matter accountof images or even, in certaincrucial respects, of representationalconvention. As StephenHeath has of language itself. It is well known that Saussure's written,"That reality, the match of film and world, is account of the sign as having an arbitrary and a matterof representation,and representation is in turn unmotivatedconnection between its structuralcompo- a matterof discourse.... [I]n this sense at least, film is nents has been directlytaken over by many film theo- a series of languages, a history of rists. As codes."'6 Philip Rosen has pointed out, "One effect of Furthermore,an emphasis upon differential and the argumentfor the basic conventionalityof cinematic relationalsignifiers has entailed a denial, or, at best a 17 This content downloaded from 128.173.125.76 on Tue, 18 Feb 2014 15:36:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions suspicion,of reference.If signs arearbitrarily related to trary and, taken in isolation, meaningless unit has what they represent,then meaning is at best provi- allowed currenttheory to constructan extended anal- sional, at worst illusory or ideological. Representation ogy withlanguage. Although no one anylonger searches which is non-arbitrarytends
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