Review: SEMI-OPTICS: LOTMAN AND CINEMAAuthor(s): DAVID GROSSVOGEL and David I. GrossvogelSource: Journal of the University Film Association, Vol. 32, No. 1/2, CINEVIDEO ANDPSYCHOLOGY (Winter-Spring 1980), pp. 89-93Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687514 .Accessed: 10/02/2011 07:02

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DON FREDERICKSEN, Editor

SEMI-OPTICS: LOTMAN AND CINEMA

Yuri Lotman. Semiotics of Cinema, Trans. Mark E. Suino. University of Michigan Slavic Con tributions, No. 5. Ann Arbor. University of

Michigan, Graduate Slavic Studies, 1976.

Yuri Lotman, the foremost exponent of Soviet literary structuralism, is starting to gain acceptance in this

country thanks in part to the sustained translation of his works. Though he is a prolific writer, his reputa tion rests largely on his Lectures on Structural Poetics

(1964), The Structure of the Artistic Text (1970) and The Analysis of the Poetic Text (1972). These titles show that Lotman has drawn on semiotic and struc tural analysis primarily for an examination of poetic

writing. However, the poem demonstrates for him that art is a "language" as well as the evidence of a cultural

"system": the signs of a specific system (for example the words of a "natural" language?its everyday usage) can become "signifiers" of other and more complex ("signified") meanings within another system?every day words woven into the texture of a poem, for exam

ple, become something different. It is in this violation of "established" orders that Lotman locates the princi ple of "art."

A "system" supposes the idea of a structure?a com

plex of fundamental units susceptible of combinational variations. In analyzing the constructive elements of his text, Lotman isolates through* binary oppositions distinctive features of its constitutive elements. Among these, special note is made of the paradigmatic and

syntagmatic axes?analysis of the text according to structural sets (paradigmatic) or according to a

linking of diverse terms within the text (syntagmatic? the predominant functional aspect of lyric poetry, among others).

The systematic entity can be detected in a variety of structures: for the sake of comprehension and analysis, a reduction or "model" may be envisaged. In that sense, "natural" language would be what Lotman terms a

"primary" model of the world within which the natural

language develops, while poetic language would be a

"secondary" model reflecting a more specific cultural

system.

"Language," as Lotman uses the word (and as opposed to "natural" language), is derived from numerous and

complex systems evidencing forces that are historical, conventional, religious, artistic, etc. The more complex the "language," the more complex the "code" which

must be learned in order to understand it. As com

plexity increases (as in art), a multi-systemic code comes into play that carries ideational, cultural, esthetic

or other meanings on many levels: the "information" of the reader of a poetic text, for example, depends on

many more elucidations than simply the lexical

deciphering of "natural" language.

Film is such a multi-systemic complexity and may be used as a "model" for much more than the story it in tends. Considering the complex and multiple deter

minations that shape filmic "information," it is a re

markably popular form. Lotman's Semiotics of Cinema

suggests that not only can the system be learned but

that, indeed, it requires learning. Lotman applies a semiotic analysis to assist in this understanding while, at the same time, the film furnishes him with further il lustrations of the semiotic process.

Following Saussure, Lotman is able to settle on two

guiding principles: "everything boils down to dif ferences but also to groupings" (p. 31), and "every image on the screen is a sign, that is, it has meaning, it carries information" (p. 31). Determined by these con

siderations, he analyzes levels of cinematic language that have to do with types of shots or motion, montage (not surprisingly, the most extensive chapter for an es thetician working largely within the Russian tradition), plot, the actor, etc. He also borrows Jakobsonian func tions (in an abridged form) to analyze the nature of cinematic narration. And, as we have already noted, "differences" will account for the tension implicit in Lotman's definition of "art."

Cinematographic "signs" can be those of real objects, cultural patterns or historical knowledge. Lotman's

emphasis determines a cinematic language largely based on "our visual perception of the world" (p. 42). That statement raises certain critical difficulties: it supposes that the problems analyzed by Lotman result only from the relation of spectator to film (as the Jakobsonian

models would suggest), while assuming that there is a "real" world comparison through which those

problems can be determined. The statement also ap pears to run counter to Lotman's belief in a human con

stancy that attempts to transform graphic signs into verbal ones (p. 8).

Our "interpretation" based on our "visual perception" depends on a comparison of the visual image/icon (image as imitation) to its correspondence in "real life," comparison with other similar images, comparison with itself in a different time unit. This latter accounts for one of the assets of cinema art: comparison/repetition "of one and the same object on the screen creates a cer tain rhythm, and the sign of the object begins to separate from its visual source. If the natural form has

JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXXII, 1 & 2 (Winter-Spring 1980) 89

some tendency, or is marked by such features as

'closedness/openness' or 'light/darkness/ then the

repetition muffles the material meanings and empha sizes abstract meanings?logical or associative" (p. 45). In moments such as these, Lotman's definition of art as

contradiction or violation of communicative norms comes close to a phenomenology (the art object is per ceived as object, rather than as reminder) that raises

further difficulties in following him through a

semiotics based perforce on notions of imitation and

recall. The argument is further confused if one con

siders that comparison/repetition compensates for what Lotman sees as a weakness in filmic art?the im

possibility for the iconic sign to become an ab

straction?as, for example, when language describing description becomes a metalanguage: "The iconic sign is primordially concrete, while it is impossible to see the

abstraction" (p. 44).

The orchestration of the language possibilities of the cinematic sequence depends on montage. Saussure had

already analyzed language as a system of structural re

lationships, while speech was the expression of those

relationships through language material. Montage establishes a purposeful system of structural relation

ships through the making of a pictorial or iconic sign (which supposes that a meaning has a single, inherent

expression) in contrast to an imposed (non-normal)

language, creating an artistic rhythm that must be

"decoded." The duality of Chaplin serves as an illus tration for these contrasts: evolving his filmic image at

the time when the comic Max Linder had built his own on elegance, Chaplin's mannerisms and parts of his

dress reminded his viewers of the Linder image, while the overall figure of the tramp parodied it: this "princi

ple of juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements" in

montage evolves, out of their conflict, the "higher unity" of art (p. 51).

Lotman finds another important function in montage: it is what allows cinematic narration to reproduce,

within an otherwise inimical medium, an equivalence of the greater-than-life freedom of the fictional hero. That "film hero as shown by moving celluloid" would be otherwise "fixed within the material by the automatism of the relation 'object-strip of film'" (p. 75).

The complexity of cinematic language derives, however, from more than merely montage. The syn

tagmatic structure of a film sequence adds to visual nar

ration verbal and audial narrations. This is an especially important consideration for Lotman whose esthetics as

we have noted already, emphasize the verbal structure

of any communicative act:

On this principle two types of narration are

founded. Our thought structure, our customary impressions, many of which seem to be inherent in the very nature of man, have been formed by verbal culture, a culture in which human speech acts as the basis of the communicative system.

Aggressively invading all spheres of semiosis, it

re-shapes them in its image and likeness. It is verbal and intended for communication with another individual. Systems which are non

verbal or intended for communication with

themselves are to some extent repressed by the dominant type of communication. Therefore, even when "shaping a story with the aid of pic

tures" we transfer onto it the pattern of verbal narration (p. 62).

The spectator contributes, of course, his own "reading" to the filmic message. His social, political, cultural and historical associations are an extra-textual constant that does not lie wholly within the control of the filmmaker.

Paradoxically, these same forces are at work at the other end of the process, before and while the film is being

made. "Semiotically speaking, the work of an actor in cinema is a message coded on three levels: 1. directorial; 2. everyday behavior; 3. actor's acting" (p. 85).

The actor as "sacred monster" carries with him a myth ological aura: "Such concepts as 'Charlie Chaplin,' 'Jean Gabin,' 'Mastroianni,' 'Anthony Quinn' (...) are a reality for the audience and are much more influ ential on audience perception of the role than is the case in the theater. The cinema audience deliberately and

consistently connects films having a common central actor into one series and views them as a text" (pp. 90

91). However, because of the cultural tradition within which he writes, Lotman does not emphasize this semiotic force as much as might, for example, someone

examining Hollywood films between both World Wars.

Instead, Lotman emphasizes the extent to which the

image of the actor breaks down as the camera

"analyzes" him for scrutiny, magnifying, intensifying or deemphasizing segments of his body, his "voice," his gestures.

? ? ?

Confirmed by non-formalist antecedents, Lotman is able to take for granted what other esthetics might find to be problematic. He opens his first chapter with the statement "Every art is concerned, to some extent, that a feeling of reality be conveyed to its audience" (p. 10). In a footnote, he refers to further studies by Christian

Metz on the nature of "reality" (Essais sur la significa tion au cin?ma, 1968), but is not himself deterred by its nature:

Later on we will consider the role played by the

fantastic, starting with the films of M?li?s, in

transforming cinematography into art. But the

"feeling of reality" now under discussion con

sists in something else: no matter how fantastic an event taking place on the screen might be, the audience is a witness to it and, in a sense, a par

ticipant in it. Therefore, although the audience is

conscious of the irreal nature of the event, it reacts emotionally as it would to a genuine event. As we shall see later, there are specific dif ficulties connected with the transmission by cinematographic means of the past and future

tenses, as well as the subjunctive and other irreal moods in cinematic narration. The cinema, because of the nature of its material, knows only the present tense just as, we might add, do other arts employing depictive signs (p. 10).

M?li?s was an illusionist and a prestidigitator: the cinema extended but did not change his purpose. The illusionist depends for his effects on a recognition of the familiar in an unfamiliar situation?he does not alter the recognizable properties of his objects. Voyage to

the Moon may not have been possible in 1902, but

M?li?s', with its smiling planet as well as its mock

spaceships, was drawn from familiar lore: in that sense,

90 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXXII, 1 & 2 (Winter-Spring 1980)

it subverted?and did not subvert?a familiar "reality."

(What was indeed subverting reality in those very earliest years of cinematography was very likely the un

canny nature of "motion" on the screen.) But even

though the "fantastic" of M?li?s (and his very pur

pose) required him to rely on familiar signs (allowing the spectator to react twice as to a genuine effect

through the feeling of participation described by Lot man and by the condoning of that feeling through specific reminiscences), there are more drastic ways to sever the spectator's link to those reminiscences.

Nor is the ascription of "tense" necessarily detrimental or germane to a relation of "art" to "reality." "Present

ness" may be a deficiency when its object intends the

recall of something else beyond the screen. But

"presentness" is no more than a self-evidence when it is

the ph?nom?nologie al given of a screen object that in

tends to state only its own manifest presence. Lotman's

reference to an "information" that is largely imitative

neglects the thingness of the art object?the possibility for any artifact to be at any given moment its own

phenomenological reality without reference?a pos

sibility emphasized in the cinema by the medium's

necessary "presentness."

Similarly, when Lotman analyzes "myth vs.

history" ("poetry vs. document") and sees the camera

as the climactic expression of a nineteenth-century desire for "truth," he once again assumes that "truth"

somehow resides ultimately beyond the camera and views as "art" primarily the camera's departure from an

"automatic representation" (p. 14) to one in which "ar

tistic" control makes the image a "carrier of meaning" (p. 14). So doing, Lotman still slights another kind of

"authenticity"?that, for example, of the non-objective image. In citing the example from Ballad of a Soldier in

which Chukhrai inverts his camera shot of a tank com

ing at the hero, Lotman does not furnish the instance of an image that has been sprung free from its represen tational bondage, but simply one in which the "automatic" reminder has been momentarily (but no

more than momentarily) complicated.

Lotman refers to the 1928 program of Soviet film makers (Eisenstein, Alexandrov, Pudovkin) stating as a

"thesis that the combination of visual and auditory images must be, not automatic, but artistically

motivated, and that the motivation is revealed by the use of displacement" (p. 15). Displacement, as a

strategy, does indeed set up the contradiction of "established orders" that Lotman deems fundamental to the creation of "art," but it should be noted that it

does so while maintaining the discrete autonomy, each within its own realm, of both stimuli. Displacement neither intends nor envisages the creation of an

autonomous object out of image, sound, motion, or a

combination/displacement of these.

It is not that Lotman is unable to grant the object of

phenomenological status; he notes, for example, that "a

photograph, in contrast to a drawing, is not taken as an

iconic sign of a thing, but as the thing itself, its visible

aspect" (p. 74). But even in such moments of apper

ception, Lotman is still haunted by the presence of an

external model. This bias causes him to see "framing" in a specific way?as a closure that establishes an

"isomorphism between all the spatial forms of reality and the flat surface of the screen which is limited on

four sides" (p. 81). Thus, the "leaping-out" effect "of

the screen is effective because it is impossible" (p. 81). What would seem to be more fundamentally "impos sible" (in Lotman's sense of the word) is not so much a

"leaping out" (which depends for its effect on specific reminders, as "a train speeding toward the audience," p. 81), as the very "motion" itself. Here, once more, at tention is drawn to what happens in the frame even

though the imitative part of the "motion" is spurious; what is real is the expectation of the frame's closure which is constantly subverted, not within the frame, but from frame to frame.

? ? ?

Lotman ends his short semiotic study of cinema with an

analysis of Antonioni's Blow-up. He correctly sees the

movie as a study in which photography functions both as document (reproduction) and text (specific system). The real-ness of what Antonioni has shown us in the text of his movie (the scenes we see in the park through the eyes of the photographer) will be contrasted to the analysis of the photographer when we see the scene

through his stills. His analysis causes the "message" of that scene to be "taken out of its context" (p. 99), and

makes it, therefore, "less comprehensible." In this new

analysis, we move, according to Lotman, from a

woman-photographer relationship to a woman-bushes

relationship (the photographer now being absent): this will enable us to see the (now unambiguous) gun in the

bushes, "and we are shaken by the fact that we have

been able to see both these versions!" (p. 100).

True to his premise that "art" requires the image to be a

carrier of "meaning," Lotman views Antonioni's suc

cess in that "The director has convinced the audience that life must be deciphered" (p. 100). That deciphering follows the following model:

1. The spatial continuum of the scene in the

park is replaced by the two-dimensional

plane of the photograph.

2. The continuity of the scene is segmented into

discrete units?frames of the film which sub

sequently undergo further dissection during enlargement of individual parts of one shot or

another.

3. The discrete units thus obtained are seen as

signs which must be deciphered. For this pur pose they are arranged along two structural axes:

a) Paradigmatic. Two operations should be noted here: removal of some element from the context (severing the context) and multi

ple enlargement.

b) Syntagmatic. Also realized in two ways? as a combination of elements synchroni

cally co-existing and also following one

after the other in temporal sequence (p. 101).

And Lotman concludes, "Only when organized in this

way do the data reveal their secrets."

Lotman's analysis requires him to very nearly remove

Thomas (the photographer) from his considerations, in order to deal primarily with two perceptual modes, rather than with a story that comments on, and il

JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXXII, 1 & 2 (Winter-Spring 1980) 91

lustr?tes, those modes. Lotman also desires to separate out the character in order not to be like "those critics (...) who saw in (Blow-up) a sermon on rela

tivism and illusionism,"?an error which frequently re

sults from "equating the author to the hero and ascrib

ing to the former the traits and ideas of the latter" (p. 103). One wonders why Lotman uses the invidious word "sermon" when his whole analysis suggests that

reality and illusion are indeed being discussed in this film. But removal of the character removes also an im

portant way in which that "sermon" proceeds?the spectator is not being told about the nature of il

lusionism; instead he is forced to become the hero up to a point, to see (or mis-see) through the eyes of Thomas.

It is, paradoxically, Lotman's belief that all art acts as

the reminder of an external reality that prevents him

from locating that reality (as parafiction) within the

film: it is not a question of equating (critically) the author and his character but of noting that at times the author (and the spectator) are that character.

For Lotman, the hero is merely a chronicler, "not sup

ported by a construction of ideas" (p. 103), a photog rapher who desires to show London as it is and who, to

that end, is able to "merge" with what he photographs (p. 101). When Thomas buys, for no apparent reason, a

propeller, Lotman feels he is able to draw a clear dis tinction between character and author by introducing (critically) the author at the expense of the character: the propeller, "tossed up from a different world re

minds us that such a world existed and that the author, unlike the hero, has not forgotten about it" (p. 104).

Having once dismissed the hero, Lotman will not be able to make sense of his other actions later: e.g., it is

again "without knowing why" (p. 102) that Thomas will "fight" for the Yardbirds' broken guitar and then toss it away. Etc. This dismissal blurs Lotman's con

clusion with its sudden resurrection of the hero:

Two clowns run onto the court and begin to play tennis with an invisible ball and invisible rackets. The remainder follow the flight of the fictitious ball. At this moment the ball fictitious

ly sails over the fence and one of the players, with a gesture, asks the photographer to throw it back. At first he looks perplexedly at the bare

ground and then, going along with the game, he

pretends to throw the ball. The game continues. Then the photographer, terrified, distinctly hears the rackets striking the ball. The circle of the illusion has closed (pp. 102-103).

There can be little doubt that Thomas is contained

within, and projects, a part of Antonioni's vision, and

that, inasmuch as the film also describes a fictional

Bildung, Thomas must be brought to understand the

partialness of that vision and, in the process, to enlarge it.

The part of Thomas that sees with the eyes of An

tonioni is esthetic: his studio is hung with the brilliant

hues of Antonioni's set; Thomas walks through a

London of repainted fa?ades and lavish colors?a world

of rich and interesting surfaces. Thomas, the fasion

photographer, sees objects (and people) only as does his camera?at face value. The propeller which he buys is an objet trouv?: for Thomas, it is no longer functional; it is an object reduced to the harmonious lines of a helix.

(For the same reason, Thomas spends much of his time

in antique stores in search of that whose form has out

lasted its function.)

The book that Thomas is putting together about

London is to be a step in his fictional growth: the

fashion photographer intends to move beyond what

clothes and hides to a more naked truth. But at this mo

ment, as the film begins, Thomas still is drawn to the

picturesque aspect of the transients whom he photo graphs at the Camberwell Reception Center: he, and the spectator who is afforded only his eye, see sur

faces. The distance between those surfaces and An

tonioni's knowledge of what underlies them will locate the explorative trajectory of the film and will mark also the trajectory of Thomas' development.

Dissatisfaction begins for Thomas when the Jane he has photographed in the park fails to come alive for him. Wanting to know her better (his only intercourse so far has been, quite literally, with studio models,

through the lens of his camera?and his single bed room encounter with Jane has failed), he begins a fren zied series of blow-ups of Jane as she appears on his stills. As the surfaces are progressively enlarged, their statement dissolves into grainy ambiguities: Thomas

moves beyond the clear, external statement into a world of questioning. As he enlarges more and more, the grain reveals less and less that is unambiguously deci

pherable. It reveals ultimately only what he reads into

it; at this point, still seeking an unambiguous state

ment, he reads too hastily.

In fact, there is no longer sufficient evidence for any af firmation by either Thomas or the spectator. The spec tator, along with Thomas (who doesn't yet know it), has been freed from a world of unequivocal, superficial and simple truths. The picture may require interpreta tion, as Lotman suggests, but interpretation will now

reveal that it has become mystery?that it can no longer be securely interpreted: whether there is a gun, a

corpse, a murder, will remain speculative.

While Thomas still tries to find an incontrovertible

reading in his blow-ups, he is no longer sure?he has

begun to be (healthfully) anxious about them. And

here, too, the spectator separates himself from Thomas

(or should): once the esthetic moving picture has been

replaced by the analysis of the overenlarged stills

(genuine objects that are identical for Thomas' or the

spectator's vision), the very ambiguity of that object, allows the spectator to see (to see, e.g., that he is unable to see) and therefore to measure the extent to which

Thomas is still deluding himself.

Thomas, whose eye had previously been his camera, and whose camera had been his shield, must likewise

separate himself from his instrument. Its failure to dis

close a precise truth returns Thomas to the park without his camera, in order to question an unme

diated world. The extent to which Thomas has departed from his former self will soon be emphasized with force

by Antonioni: his blow-ups having disappeared from his studio, Thomas sets out in search of Jane herself. Antonioni allows him to be briefly drawn back into his

former world to show the extent of his present alien ation from it: Thomas enters a rock hall where the

Yardbirds are performing; when one of the performers smashes his guitar and throws the pieces out to the

crowd, the cultists scramble for the pieces. A large piece

92 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXXII, 1 & 2 (Winter-Spring 1980)

of the broken instrument falls within reach of Thomas, who picks it up. But objets trouv?s, and the world from which this one comes, no longer hold him. He throws

away the piece of the guitar. And to emphasize his

point, Antonioni has it picked up, once again, by a

passer-by: he too belongs to a different world and, un able to read any meaning into the broken object, he too throws it away?that symbol is now discarded once and for all.

The Rag Week students (whom Lotman calls clowns) represent a different kind of illusion and bring the

morality/experience to a close. The Rag Week students are made up and play games, but they are responsible even within the illusion which they create and control

(they have been seen, previously, mingling with a

group of anti-war demonstrators). When they cast an

intentionally imaginary tennis ball at Thomas, his

returning it may be read as a participatory gesture towards their world?an acceptance of the contrivance of illusion, since Thomas no longer abides within the

security of shallowly esthetic surfaces, nor within other

equally facile truths. He has moved from the assurance

of the fashion photographer to the questioning of the artist.

Thus, when Thomas walks away from the tennis

courts, one may well wonder whether the sound of the balls being struck by tennis rackets is not meant for the

spectator to likewise question?in order to determine whether they belong to a reality that he informs or an

image which he must now approach with caution.

? ? ?

Lotman ends his comments on Blow-up, and his book,

with the following:

In a scientific text the presence of a meta

language (the unique and correctly constructed

terminology of a given branch of science) is suf ficient to guarantee that the investigator will be

positioned outside the object of study. In order to achieve this position in art it is also necessary for the artist to possess great ideological and

moral virtue, since he often combines, in his

person, both the describer and the described, the doctor and the patient. In Antonioni's film the

photographer, in all aspects of his conscious

ness, belongs to the latter category and therefore cannot occupy the position of the describee or

doctor. In order to be a doctor, a judge or an in

vestigator of life a completely different hero is

required, and Antonioni's film convincingly demonstrates this point (p. 105).

It is interesting that Lotman's need to posit an actual referent outside the film is what causes him to down

grade the hero since, with regard to specific referents, that hero is poor indeed. It is only when that hero, as

hollow shell or as eyepiece, is informed with the para fictional reality of the spectator and/or the filmmaker?

when, for example, his effort to see becomes the

viewer's, or his photographic but sensual sense of sur

faces evidences Antonioni's photographing?it is only then that he is able to acquire, beyond fiction of the film his functional plenitude.

DAVID GROSSVOGEL Cornell University

9th Annual DANCE VIDEO/FILM FESTIVAL 18-19 April 1980 New York City

Contact: Dance Films Assn., Inc.

250 West 57 Street, Room 2201 New York, NY 10019

JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXXII, 1 & 2 (Winter-Spring 1980) 93