The Ever Spinning Carousel - My 10th Post

After some very, very formal blog posts over this past week, I thought it may be useful to reintroduce the fact that YES...an ordinary person does sit behind and posts these blogs. It's been quite a hard struggle this, but the light is finally at the end of the tunnel. But what of this light? As I know it, in terms of the denoted signifier, light is what it is. The lightbulbs, the glare of UV rays etc. Conversely, in terms of our own myth that light is really something that shines for the benefit of good and a sure sign that things will and can only get better.

Here is an example of what a real light looks like (in case you may have forgotten):

NOW...It's buisness as usual!

The facts of this theory of the light can be narrowed to down one philosopher, that of Roland Barthes (yes, French). In his book Mythologies we can imply that things like the lightbulb will be what is referred as a First Order of Meaning. In order to engage a sign, a lightbulb is in actual fact what remains in terms of what it stands for and at the same time can be branched out into the Second Order Semiological System. And now the lightbulb stands for relief, a flash of an idea and even a cure for signs of depression (referring to SAD here). At the same time Strinati takes his word like this:

"Myth thus becomes a metalanguage because it can refer to other languages, and so necessitates the use of new if comparable concepts."

With that, we have our carousel, with shifts and changes the idioms and social concepts of communication relentlessly. Language changes. Media and popular culture changes. However, I will refrain from going further into this, because if you have been following the reading, as soon as political terminology such as "bourgeois" start cropping up, I will leave the Marxist theories to somebody else thank you very much. On a much less controversial note, another phrase which might be addressed is that of Paradigms as signs which we follow our communication processes and divert them into individual groups which are referred as Syntagams. Here is the list gathered from this:

• Age
• Nationality
• Expression
• Place

However, I am desperate now to avoid those grotesque perfume posters (which I can't stand anyway, even before the lecture/seminar had taken place). And being forced to stare at that uncomfortable and somewhat repelling  Dolce & Gabbana advert for over 20 minutes of my life, I have chosen a more refined, if perhaps a somewhat not better example of what this advert from John Lews tries to sell:

Well, it's approaching Christmas again anyway...

Immediately, as you may tell this brand is not trying to sell to cash-strapped university students. But, I'll leave it for the rest of you to decide. Oh and don't forget what seems to be evryone's favourite advert of the last year, also from John Lewis. An A-Level Media Studies favourite from what I've gathered here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHcm1ec7CcY.

Now moving swiftly onto Barthes other favourite past time. Wrestling admittedly is not one of my favourite sports. Never has and never will be. However for the sake of the exercise which semiotics comes into this, I will make a comment. To try and summarise it's significance to what is above, Barthes made this comment:

"Wrestling, on the contrary, offers ecessive gestures, exploited to the limit of their meaning."

All the more that myth itself is stirred up by Barthes as he establishes comparrisons to that of Itallian Archytipes such as Harlequin and the Doctor, which wrestlers identify with many of these theatrical characteristics. It is dominated by the epitaph of "Suffering, Defeat and Justice" and in terms of semiology, any form of suffering is made to look spectacular (even if it is fake). It's all about playing fair and if a man is gallantry, an audience will pick up on that and if you're not...well an audience loves a villian and still for a villian to get their ture comeuppance. So besides that of a brutish spectacle, wrestling has a triumphant significance where good can come over any form of evil and a ood wrestler knows those myths and symbols just to provoke a reaction. "All's fair in love and war" I suppose and it will remain so.

And on that note, it's probably only fair that I wrap up the blog for this week. Just as a mind teaser, if adverts can have a target audience and certain appeal, what can you say to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DrFY3H-u8w