Roland Barthes's Cold-War Cinema

Watts, Philip

doi:10.1353/sub.2005.0049

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…The method used to deconstruct these images is influenced by the work of Barthes (1957Barthes ( /1972 and previously by de Saussure (1972), who is regarded as one of the founders of 20th-century semiotic theory (Rose, 2016). Through a system of denotation and connotation, Barthes demystifies the use of images where natural, unquestioned attitudes to everyday objects are revealed (Watts, 2005). Denotation is the relationship between the sign and its referent, i.e., what is present in the image, and connotation occurs when denotation is interpreted through meanings and discourses that exist within contemporary culture.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The restricted reimaging of a contemporary suburb at the turn of the 21st century

Marvell

2020

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Two tables are shown. Table one describes the denotation and connotation of the images presented on the front cover of the Priory Vale brochure. These include a white female gazing at the reader, blue sky with fluffy clouds, a brown leaf, a white boy throwing leaves into the air and an image of an orchid. Table two reveals the main themes and corresponding frequencies and percentages that emerge from an analysis of suburban imagery. These themes are community, environment and landscape, family and gender, heritage, incentives and affordability, lifestyle, location and connectivity, suburban design and interior design.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The restricted reimaging of a contemporary suburb at the turn of the 21st century

Marvell

2020

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Sur les quais des brumes

Smith

2008

French Cultural Studies

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The French reception of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) constitutes a revealing case study in cultural relations between France and the United States during the Cold War, demonstrating how procedures of demystification may remystify the ideological object they critique. In an American context, On the Waterfront is widely regarded as a particularly overdetermined film, combining a literal politics of labour relations with an allegorical apologia for McCarthyism. French reactions to the film set out to decode its multiple subtexts from an outsider perspective but sometimes end up reproducing the film's mystifications at another level. Thus the French reception demonstrates both an assimilation and distancing of the film in political terms, an aesthetic rejection of the film from the different quarters of Brechtian dramaturgy and auteur theory, a popular embrace of the film through its insertion into a changing celebrity culture, and a misunderstanding or disavowal of its gendered subtext.

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The Surrealism of the Photographic Image: Bazin, Barthes, and the Digital Sweet Hereafter

Lowenstein¹

2007

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This essay analyzes the influence of surrealism on Bazin and Barthes to argue that their commitment to photographic realism is more accurately described as an investment in surrealism. This revised take on the work of Bazin and Barthes is tested against notions of cinema in the age of new media by examining The Sweet Hereafter within an "intermediated" context. In "The Myth of Total Cinema" (1946), film theorist André Bazin writes, "Every new development added to the cinema must, paradoxically, take it nearer and nearer to its origins. In short, cinema has not yet been invented!" 1 In "The Third Meaning" (1970), cultural semiotician Roland Barthes states, "Forced to develop in a civilization of the signified, it is not surprising that (despite the incalculable number of films in the world) the filmic should still be rare. .. so much so that it could be said that as yet the film does not exist." 2 Although Bazin's "cinema" and Barthes's "filmic" are not equivalent terms, the similarities between these declarations suggest a neglected trajectory in film theory this essay seeks to trace: pursuing surrealism's influence on Bazin and Barthes in order to illuminate how their shared commitment to the realism of the photographic image, so often misunderstood as a naïvely literalist stance, is much more accurately described as an investment in surrealism. In the essay's second half, this revised take on Bazin and Barthes will be tested against our current desire to understand cinema's role in the digital age of new media. By examining The Sweet Hereafter as an intermediated text characterized by modes of spectatorship brought to the fore in the new media erathat is, as a text that exists for spectators between the media forms of Russell Banks's 1991 source novel, Atom Egoyan's 1997 film adaptation, and New Line Home Video's 1998 DVD-I will demonstrate how today's possibilities for intermediated spectatorship demand that we revisit yesterday's surrealist visions of "enlarged" cinematic spectatorship.

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Roland Barthes's Cold-War Cinema

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

The restricted reimaging of a contemporary suburb at the turn of the 21st century

The restricted reimaging of a contemporary suburb at the turn of the 21st century

Sur les quais des brumes

The Surrealism of the Photographic Image: Bazin, Barthes, and the Digital Sweet Hereafter

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