Re: Wk04 - Barthes' Rhetoric of the Image
Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:28 am
Trying to accomplish this homework, before everything I had to retrieve some notes of a previous course about semiotics, that I attended some time ago.
As I was informed at that time, I’ve noticed some differences between some American and European semiotics concepts. Indeed, it seems that current semiotics comes from 2 different theoretical traditions: one who comes from the theories of C. S. Peirce, and another one so called “semiology” who comes from European structuralism of 19th century, beginning from linguistic studies of Saussure, Hjiemslev, Greimas and Barthes (who actually belongs to this current).
For what I remember, following developments as lead to a convergence of these original theories into the “interpretative semiotic” conceptualized by Umberto Eco in the 60’s, whence all subsequent theories, like social or textual semiotics, come from.
At the state of the art researchers are facing applications of semiotic theories in many fields like artworks, music, audiovisual and multimedial contents, theatre, literature and whatever could be considered a “text” as an object who “means” or “signify” and that could be analyzed.
This introduction is just to clarify my background and to say that I have decided to work on a previous exercise where I had to analyze a commercial by Hugo Boss. I’ve re-analized it with the “tools” seen in class, and I’ve tryied to compare it with the previous analysis I did, that was a little bit different. The two images are for the fashion company “Hugo Boss", and particularly is a campaign for a line of perfumes for man and woman.
Linguistic
What is readable in both images is the headline “your fragrance, your rules”, and also there is a packshot in the right bottom corner with the logo printed on the bottle of perfume.
In the second image there is one more label, a baseline saying “for woman only”.
The text guide the attention on right side and is strictly connected with the movement of the card, also on the right, like a description of the action in the image.
The same happens in the second image where the text is in the top right, just next to the eyes of the girl and it seems illuminated by the light of the lamp.
Codec-Iconic
What is visible in the first image is a guy, sitted in a comfortable position (with open legs), dressed with
Blue jeans and a dark green monochromatic ordinary t-shirt , who throws a card against someone who is supposed to be in front of him, staring at him.
He has an easy casual style with a red bangle and a tattoo, cutted hair and well-groomed.
The bottle of perfume is out of the frame, that means that is not in physically in the scene.
In the second image there is a beautiful girl with an unbuttoned black shirt, a red belt and apparently no other clothes on legs (or just a short skin).
She has a light between her legs, red lipstick and red nails, the hairs not in a perfect shape and an aggressive and malicious gaze.
Non-coded iconic
In mine previous analsys this part was colled “plastic level” of the image and it is divided in 3 deeper levels:
- topological level = how the spaces are organized. The first picture is inside a frame who cut the scene, the card is inside (that could mean the guy is breaking the rules but staying in the limits), but the hands is bigger in perspective and it seems to go out of the 3d space, like an invitation for the watcher.
It’s interesting that the label is both inside and outside the frame.
- eidetic level = How the lines are organized. There are essentially straight lines and angles, but not hard edges, and there are some parallelism between the arm, the head and the card, and between the body and the bottle.
- Chromatic level = it’s evident the relevance of the saturated and bright red in the card, bangle, libs, the label of the bottle, and the text of headline.
The red has cultural connotation, it means passion and aggressivity (break rules, your rules) and contrast with the cold tones of the rest of the picture.
The second picture doesnpt have this contrast between red and cold tones, but has warm tones and connote a more erotic meaning.
Denotation
What is denoted in the first pic is the masculinity, with a guy who follows his own rules and not that ones of the society, but is not a rebellion, he is tidy and quiet.
In the second pic the girl is probably depicted as “ bad” and it is denoted that she strong and aggressive , and that she is “directing the game”.
Connotation
What is connoted is that you break the standard rules, with this product you can be cool and trasgressive and there is a general erotic and passional message
Differently to this, my previous work was focused on the interpretation of symbolism (association between colors, shapes, lines and signifier), and the structure of the enunciation (narrator, distance, who is speaking? Who is listening/waching? Etc.)
Linguistic
In the picture is possible to read on the top-left the logo of BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, that is s a multinational banking group), with the label Service-at that indicate the presence of an ATM, in the middle on the main entrance of a building there is another logo ARPI probably from a nearness shop (fotography and video shop I guess), and on the the top right another neon sign saying "ARTICLES DE VIATGE" and "CASA SANCHE(Z)".
It is possible to catch many informations from this image:
- BBVA is a spanish bank, so this pic could be made in Spain or in another hispanic countries (but is a multinational so, this is not so sure).
- ARPI is not so useful
- Casa sanchez, suggest again that we are in a place with spanish idiom, and for who knows, "articles de viatge" means travel's articles, (or travel's gift, souvenir) in catalan, so we can assume to be in catalunya (Spain).
The are also some graffiti on a rolling shutter, the reflection of a neon sign n the blue car, a newspaper in the hand of the subject. and a blurred plate on a car but is not possible to read anything else.
non-coded iconic
In this picture is possible to see a man dressed with a totally white tuxedo, white shirt, shoes, hat and gloves, and also his face and hairs are painted.
He is supposed to be close to a busy road, whit some shops on both sides (neon signs and reflections) ad many people walking around.
The presence of a three suggest that he could be in a sidewalk in the middle of a big street or in a pedonal pavement.
He stand on plinth, litterally sitted on a toilet with a fake flush drain on top of his head, and the throusers pulled down.
From this information is possible to denote that he's a street actor or a busker, and considering the previuous clues (spanish label, catalan, pavement in a large road) is maybe possibe to understand that we are in the Barcelona's rambla.
coded iconic
On coded iconic is possible to say that the man is acting or performing, or making a protest or a flash mob, from the experssion of the man si looking or teasing at someone near to him.
As I was informed at that time, I’ve noticed some differences between some American and European semiotics concepts. Indeed, it seems that current semiotics comes from 2 different theoretical traditions: one who comes from the theories of C. S. Peirce, and another one so called “semiology” who comes from European structuralism of 19th century, beginning from linguistic studies of Saussure, Hjiemslev, Greimas and Barthes (who actually belongs to this current).
For what I remember, following developments as lead to a convergence of these original theories into the “interpretative semiotic” conceptualized by Umberto Eco in the 60’s, whence all subsequent theories, like social or textual semiotics, come from.
At the state of the art researchers are facing applications of semiotic theories in many fields like artworks, music, audiovisual and multimedial contents, theatre, literature and whatever could be considered a “text” as an object who “means” or “signify” and that could be analyzed.
This introduction is just to clarify my background and to say that I have decided to work on a previous exercise where I had to analyze a commercial by Hugo Boss. I’ve re-analized it with the “tools” seen in class, and I’ve tryied to compare it with the previous analysis I did, that was a little bit different. The two images are for the fashion company “Hugo Boss", and particularly is a campaign for a line of perfumes for man and woman.
Linguistic
What is readable in both images is the headline “your fragrance, your rules”, and also there is a packshot in the right bottom corner with the logo printed on the bottle of perfume.
In the second image there is one more label, a baseline saying “for woman only”.
The text guide the attention on right side and is strictly connected with the movement of the card, also on the right, like a description of the action in the image.
The same happens in the second image where the text is in the top right, just next to the eyes of the girl and it seems illuminated by the light of the lamp.
Codec-Iconic
What is visible in the first image is a guy, sitted in a comfortable position (with open legs), dressed with
Blue jeans and a dark green monochromatic ordinary t-shirt , who throws a card against someone who is supposed to be in front of him, staring at him.
He has an easy casual style with a red bangle and a tattoo, cutted hair and well-groomed.
The bottle of perfume is out of the frame, that means that is not in physically in the scene.
In the second image there is a beautiful girl with an unbuttoned black shirt, a red belt and apparently no other clothes on legs (or just a short skin).
She has a light between her legs, red lipstick and red nails, the hairs not in a perfect shape and an aggressive and malicious gaze.
Non-coded iconic
In mine previous analsys this part was colled “plastic level” of the image and it is divided in 3 deeper levels:
- topological level = how the spaces are organized. The first picture is inside a frame who cut the scene, the card is inside (that could mean the guy is breaking the rules but staying in the limits), but the hands is bigger in perspective and it seems to go out of the 3d space, like an invitation for the watcher.
It’s interesting that the label is both inside and outside the frame.
- eidetic level = How the lines are organized. There are essentially straight lines and angles, but not hard edges, and there are some parallelism between the arm, the head and the card, and between the body and the bottle.
- Chromatic level = it’s evident the relevance of the saturated and bright red in the card, bangle, libs, the label of the bottle, and the text of headline.
The red has cultural connotation, it means passion and aggressivity (break rules, your rules) and contrast with the cold tones of the rest of the picture.
The second picture doesnpt have this contrast between red and cold tones, but has warm tones and connote a more erotic meaning.
Denotation
What is denoted in the first pic is the masculinity, with a guy who follows his own rules and not that ones of the society, but is not a rebellion, he is tidy and quiet.
In the second pic the girl is probably depicted as “ bad” and it is denoted that she strong and aggressive , and that she is “directing the game”.
Connotation
What is connoted is that you break the standard rules, with this product you can be cool and trasgressive and there is a general erotic and passional message
Differently to this, my previous work was focused on the interpretation of symbolism (association between colors, shapes, lines and signifier), and the structure of the enunciation (narrator, distance, who is speaking? Who is listening/waching? Etc.)
Linguistic
In the picture is possible to read on the top-left the logo of BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, that is s a multinational banking group), with the label Service-at that indicate the presence of an ATM, in the middle on the main entrance of a building there is another logo ARPI probably from a nearness shop (fotography and video shop I guess), and on the the top right another neon sign saying "ARTICLES DE VIATGE" and "CASA SANCHE(Z)".
It is possible to catch many informations from this image:
- BBVA is a spanish bank, so this pic could be made in Spain or in another hispanic countries (but is a multinational so, this is not so sure).
- ARPI is not so useful
- Casa sanchez, suggest again that we are in a place with spanish idiom, and for who knows, "articles de viatge" means travel's articles, (or travel's gift, souvenir) in catalan, so we can assume to be in catalunya (Spain).
The are also some graffiti on a rolling shutter, the reflection of a neon sign n the blue car, a newspaper in the hand of the subject. and a blurred plate on a car but is not possible to read anything else.
non-coded iconic
In this picture is possible to see a man dressed with a totally white tuxedo, white shirt, shoes, hat and gloves, and also his face and hairs are painted.
He is supposed to be close to a busy road, whit some shops on both sides (neon signs and reflections) ad many people walking around.
The presence of a three suggest that he could be in a sidewalk in the middle of a big street or in a pedonal pavement.
He stand on plinth, litterally sitted on a toilet with a fake flush drain on top of his head, and the throusers pulled down.
From this information is possible to denote that he's a street actor or a busker, and considering the previuous clues (spanish label, catalan, pavement in a large road) is maybe possibe to understand that we are in the Barcelona's rambla.
coded iconic
On coded iconic is possible to say that the man is acting or performing, or making a protest or a flash mob, from the experssion of the man si looking or teasing at someone near to him.