First Writing Assignment : Due Week 4

Using the terms and tools of semiotics, you are to give a semiotic reading to a film in three to four pages.

What is a semiotic reading? Films, like all other visual media, use images to tell stories. Hidden within these images are the director’s, the screenwriter’s, and sometimes the studio’s ideas, and sometimes they can say things that none of the above intended. Inscribed in the series of images that make up a film are ideas about class, meaning, religion, history, and economics to name a few.

For example, a semiotic reading of “American Beauty would include a discussion of how the director chose to represent a suburban middle class family. In some ways, the film says that this life can be spiritually unfulfilling.

In “Sunset Boulevard,” which we have watched today, a semiotic reading would question all of the signs of Hollywood that film subverts. Hollywood rather than being a place that dreams are made is place of failure, both for those who manage to break into the system and those that are forgotten by it. How is Hollywood represented? What are the connotations of the images that the film shows us? Who “succeeds” in Hollywood? When Joe Gillis sees the old car in the garage it says something to him as a class signifier of a time passed. What does the movie say about the Hollywood star system and what it does to people? What conclusions can we come to in the director Billy Wilder’s use of signs?

The movie is a story, but the story and images it uses to tell that story have a wider reference and is in turn saying something aesthetically about the characters and situations it represents.

Art, unlike essays, uses images and characters with multiple connotations. The meaning is open, and I want you to acknowledge the multiple meanings inscribed in each of these moments in the film.

You are open to a film of your choice or if you’d like to use “Sunset Boulevard that is also acceptable.

Due next week. Typed 12 point font, Times New Roman, double spaced. Three to Four Pages.