I just finished reading from the links on Roland Barthes and Tom Streeter and found semiotics to be really interesting and something I could understand in my own way. I remember as a kid in elementary school learning about the teqniques advertisers use to sell their products, of course I can't think of one right now...but they had to do with the association products can have with socialization, such as choosing a brand of alcohol because the people on the tv drinking it seem to be having such a good time. Third grade and I was being taught to think critically about what I was being presented on a daily basis in the form of advertising. Barthes example with the Panzini brand of pasta fixings was a good one. Although I associated the fishnet grocery bag as being more like a half-hung hammock and therefore read into it as having the connotation of the food comma that would proceed my carbo-heavy pasta dinner (because who eats pasta for breakfast?) Being it was half-hung, it gave a secondary connotation of motion, like I can't lay down on a half-hung hammock, I better get to making this dinner! All that was left would be a pair of disembodied, wine encrusted, lips, chapping and smiling in the background while a disembowled cow drags it's remains along a spiral in the shape of a meatball of which a pig, a turkey, and a chicken stand on the periphery. Joking and fun aside, semiotics does play a role in the desicions we make as consumers and when related to ideologies it has larger social implications. Both Barthes and Streeter talk about the social aspects of semiotics. Barnes young man saluting is no different than Streeters Kuwaiti kissing the flag. They're both pushing a point of view that I don't think I completely understand. Although, possibly the most sinister form of semiotics is it's use in propaganda to rally a people during war time. The connotation of "weapons of mass destruction" after 911 comes to mind...not to mention Bush jr's photo opportunity in combat gear with the banner behind him that read "Mission Accomplished". It makes me start to wonder if what Streeter was getting at was history told through the victors; how the semiotics of a photo can relate an idea, which left unchallenged or ignorant to other perspectives forms our opinions and ultimately how we look back on history. Of course in all hopefulness Bush jrs portrayal of success in the war against "evil", or one leg of the tri-pod of evil, won't factor in the same way archeologists piece together the lives of neanderthal man from cave paintings. I guess an example of what I'm trying to say is evident in an issue of "Life" magazine that I saw the other day from 1953. (Amazing printing in those magazines). "Life" seems to sum up the 50s, through it's adds targeted at the nuclear family: suited dad, two kids and smiling, slim-waisted mom. On the cover was a woman in an evening gown, open back, title reading "Bare Backs In Fashion"... while in the upper right hand corner are the article captions, two: "The Dangerous Luxury Of Hating America" and "Our Powerful Red Nieghbors In Guatemala". I just looked it up...in 1954 the CIA lead a covert operation to overthrow the then leader of Guatemala...who was democratically elected. Sure this was a publication in the height of the McCarthy era, but "Turn Your Back On Our Red (communist) America Hating Neighbors?". That's how I read it. It's silly, political rhetoric embodied in a woman's lovely back. And creepy, pairing the semiotics with reality. I guess the bottom line is what do you do with this information? I'd just take a wild guess to say that the forming of opinion through media is partially at the heart of the "spin" wars that politics in America has seen in recent years, making semiotics a point of discussion. But who's really listening anyway?
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