/B/ for Bendetta

I have chosen to do a semiotic analysis of a short thread from the image board of 4chan. I will mainly be focusing on the first post of the thread since that is the most interesting of the bunch, from a semiotic point of view.

In the first thread we have three important signs all of which are signifiers rather than signified. All the signs are in other word representative rather than what the actually seem to be. The three important signs are the text, the Guy Fawkes mask and the eyes and mouth of the mask itself.

All the three signs are connotations which mean they are hard for people not of the community to understand, that you need inside knowledge of the current codes in order to decipher the message as a whole.

The first sign, the text, is an allusion to the film V for Vendetta. The text is a rewritten monologue from the film in which the protagonist gives a fiery introduction of himself using alliteration. In the film the alliteration is based on the letter V but here, as you can see, the author has chosen to use the letter B which alludes to the name of the image board in which the thread was made.

The second sign, the Guy Fawkes mask, is also alluding to the film in which an anonymous horde, all clad in masks, rises up to protest against their totalitarian government. Much like the members of 4chan are all an anonymous horde. This is also an allusion to a meme that has arisen on the boards. Members often proclaim while they are posting anonymously that “We are anonymous! We are legion!” meaning that you can not stop the invisible, anonymous army of 4chan, or something to that end.

The last sign is the eyes and mouth that have been photoshoped onto the mask. This sign signifies one of the oldest memes of 4chan, “cock mongler” or the newer and less provocative name “grin man”. The meme is simply an image of a man, wearing a t-shirt with a dinosaur on it, who is grinning like a madman. The image, and especially the face, is popular to photoshop into other images often with a comic result. The sign signifies the community of 4chan and especially the image board of /b/.

The most important of the signifiers are the eyes and the text. Removing the mask would probably not change the message by a lot. However the mask works to increase the allusion of the text.

The codes needed to understand the signs are: knowledge of 4chan community memes, knowledge of English and knowledge of either the film V for Vendetta or the comic bearing the same name.

Considering what you need to know in order to fully understand the post I would say that the post itself is not open to much interpretation. The connotations to a frequent visitor fo the boards are quite clear and are not really open for interpretation. I guess one could argue that the signs are denotations rather than connotations but if you remove them from the post most of their meaning would change. The signs, although not open for interpretations, are in deed very bound by context hence making them connotations.

The poster is using the signs to create a paradigm that appeals to the anonymous user of the image board itself. And I would say he is quite successful judging by the first couple of answering posts he got.

6 credit course Question 1: B

1. Answer one of the following, using 1200-1400 words.

a) Compare and contrast Sethe in Morrison’s Beloved and Jack in DeLillo’s White Noise in terms of how they function as types, representative of a certain social group in a particular time and place, and characterized according to certain novelistic literary conventions (such as style and genre).

b) Compare and contrast Beloved and White Noise in terms of how they express a vision of human agency that may be termed tragic. Consider also the limits of the tragic vision in each, in terms of contrasting or alternative visions/conventions such as romance and the absurd.

If Sethe in Toni Morrison’s book Beloved is an agent of tragedy, from a general human perspective, then she is so on a much more down to earth manner than Jack from White Noise. The tragic events that shape the destiny of Sethe and those around her can be clearly related to and obviously identified as traumatic. I am, of course, speaking of the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her former owners but also about the more general theme of the book, the long lasting effects of slavery. Tremors of which could argued to be felt up until our current day and age. The rape of Sethe works as catalyst for the tragedy that is soon to be the rest of her life. The event works as a justification of the murder of her own child, Beloved, and that act later leads to Sethe becoming an outcast in the black community in which she resides. Incarcerated in her own house with her only daughter, Denver, until the ghosts, not literary, of her past comes back to haunt her and driving her off the edge of sanity in a true Shakespearian manner. Although she finds temporary happiness and comfort with Beloved it is but temporary and soon leads Sethe to darker times.

I say it is more down to earth due to the fact that the tragic events that take place are almost the universal definition, if there is one, of what the man in the street would call tragic. Rape, loss of sanity, excommunication, incarceration and of course the loss of one's own child, albeit at her own hand. That being said, the tragedy is not something that looms over the book itself but it is rather small events that happen and then have dire consequences.

In comparison to the more satirical or almost absurd tragedy that occurs in Don DeLillo’s White Noise you will find that the characters in Beloved have very down to earth reasons for their strife. The White Noise tragedy lies not in things that happen in the book, you do not get any concrete event which explains their weird obsessions with death. In fact it is the obsession and fear that is the tragedy itself. Every part of their life, both Jack’s and Babette’s, is tainted by the revelation that they indeed are going to die. This looming doom naturally leads to several events which could be labelled as tragedies which later culminates in the shooting of the lord of Dylar, Dr. Mink.

To sum up the first half of the answer: In Beloved events beyond the characters control forces them into a pattern of actions which leads them to tragedy while in White Noise the fear of their own demise makes them create tragedy, tragedy which could have been avoided had they not been so occupied by their own mortality.

The White Noise notion of fear having tragic consequences in the lives of people is indeed an up-to-date and contemporary theme highly relevant when one tries to understand contemporary society, even though it was written more than twenty years ago. Back then the cold war was still going on and the main enemy causing the most fear out of people around the world, but mostly in the United States and western countries, was the Soviet Union and communism. Today the antagonist and the agent of fear in our lives, and the lives of people living under the banner of American culture, is the silent and invisible threat of terrorism. The fear of dying due to old age, car crashes and smoking has been put in hold in favour for the horrible thought of being the victim of a sudden death at the hands of an ungodly Muslim terrorist. Most Americans seem to have a hard time understanding why not all countries share the same values or why they do not simply emulate the American society in order to increase their chances of leaving the poor house and joining the exclusive club that is western industrialized countries. The American society is, after all, to many Americans a universal model for success (Campbell & Kean, 2006: s267-270). In Jack’s and Babette’s case it is a question of not understanding why they have to die. In what way is that fair? Realizing that they can not escape their ultimate fate they try to cope with their fears. Babette’s hunt for a cure can easily be compared with people shuffling into stores buying radiation suits and gasmask in order to at least stand a fighting chance when the silent killer comes to town. Dr. Mink is in reality a symbol representing all opportunists who thrive on the irrational fears of others, allthough I guess a fear of death ultimately is not irrational but you get my point.

If one extrapolates what I have already said about Beloved and try to focus on what may be the ultimate catalyst to the tragic events that unfold in the book, which I estimate to be slavery. Toni Morrison tries, in Beloved, to give a black narrative to a dark chapter in American history which traditionally only had been commented on by well educated men, hence mostly white men in the middle to upper classes of society. She tries, as stated earlier, to give a glimpse of how slavery has worked to cripple the chances of black Americans to move up in both social and monetary status. And this confirmed by Campbell and Kean: “[…] through the reconstruction process of telling African-American history to remind her audience, both black and white, of the restrictions imposed on the opportunities of young blacks [...] (Campbell & Kean, 2006: s89). Although the quote was talking about The Bluest Eye, also written by Morrison, I do feel that also applies to Beloved, at least in regards to the perspective from which I have chosen to analyze the tragedies contained within the cover of the novel. Toni Morrison does not only let you see the long term effects of slavery, or what could potentially happen, but in the book she also forces the reader, as she is forcing the characters, to deal with the past no matter if you are black or white. Like Beloved comes to haunt Sethe and Denver in the book, you as a reader, is haunted by the reminder of a not so glorious past no matter what colour your skin is. This is also mentioned in American cultural studies on pages 89 to 90.

To summarize once again I think the main differences between the two books are perhaps what the authors chose as a focal point for what they deem as tragic. White Noise warns us not to dwell on the future and the coming of the inevitable darkness that is destined to be our grave, but to live your life to its fullest. There is folly to live in constant fear of potentials because you tend to miss out on all the good things that might happen.

This, of course, stands in stark contrast to Morrison’s word of warning. Morrison urges us not to forget from whence we came lest it come back to haunt us. For what we are today clearly is the product of a continually increasing pile of events which belongs to the past. History exists so that we may learn from our mistakes. Or as Konrad Adenauer would put it: “History is the sum of total things that could have been avoided.”

6 credit course Question 2: B

2. Answer one of the following, using 600-800 words.

a) Discuss the extent to which Dances with Wolves succeeds in relativizing the Euro-American perspective, taking a genuine Native American point of view .

b) Discuss the representation of masculinity in Fight Club.

Although I do feel that the theme of masculinity within Fight Club is secondary to the theme of consumerism I will try to give a thorough examination of the masculinity within the film.

With the rise of feminism at the beginning of the twentieth century and with its gained momentum within all branches of society and culture as we entered the twenty-first century one can ask the question: What happened to masculinity? With our culture now geared towards defining what feminism is and what proper male conduct should be a lot of men probably find themselves in a sudden state of emasculation. In today’s pro feminist society it is no longer okay for a man to be a man. To be a man is to be an oppressor of women and gender equality.

The film Fight Club we get to see a confused Tyler Durden living his life and not really knowing who he is. In his search for himself and his role in society he joins different crisis groups. One of which is for people with testicular cancer, people who have lost their manhood and are struggling to convince themselves that they are indeed men. Bob which later will join the fight club even has large breasts to further the image of these men as emasculated in a society dominated by a feminist agenda.

The fight clubs themselves, the amateur boxing clubs, work as a way for the members to express their chained up primitive urges. In fight club all men are equal and it is ok to give in to primitive, and traditionally male, urges which are no longer sought after by the rest of society. In the fight club they get a clear cut definition of who they are, they are members of fight club. No one asks any questions about them or about fight club, members are defined not by their gender but by their actions.

The masculinity in Fight Club is indeed portrayed from a more romantic and classical view. The definition is perhaps taken from a time where men were men, they worked hard, fought for their women and did other manly things. I think that this portrayal of masculinity is not without a hint of satire. It works more towards the mean of combating the dominant feministic view rather than as a dogmatic manual of manly etiquette. Although after the film premiered a bunch of real fight clubs were started, probably by people who did not understand that getting punched in the face hurts, a lot. But it is this reaction to film that gets me thinking that there is perhaps something missing in modern society in regards to masculinity. We live in a society where women can wear anything they want while men are limited to what is socially acceptable, hence no skirts for men. Besides the traditional taboos which men have in western culture we now also have a lot of added musts and don’ts which we did not have before. Being a man ends up being someone who is incarcerated in his own gender and not really understanding what his gender really is. Perhaps this is why Tyler Durden urges his members to go back to basics and perhaps this is why the members feel liberated by doing so.