Introduction by Nicholas MirzoeffIn his analysis of the rhetoric of the image reprinted here, the French literary critic Roland Barthes had added a third term to the debate over representation (Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 1977). In his earlier structuralist work, Barthes had concentrated on dividing signs into two halves – the signifier, that which is seen, and the signified, that which is meant. In this essay he refined his analysis to look at the different ways in which meaning can be derived from a sign. Looking at an advertisement for pasta sauce, Barthes shows that the name of the sauce "Panzani gives not simply the name of the firm but also, but its assonance, an additional signified, that of Italianicity". The first meaning is referential, the second more allusive. Barthes called them 'denotational' and 'connotational' respectively. Beyond these linguistic messages that the advertiser hopes to convey, Barthes notes that there is still the element that he called 'pure image' in the scene. This element is neither connotational nor denotational but is in fact a 'message without a code', that is to say, at one level the objects simply are what they are and cannot be reduced any further. Barthes's semiology – the science of signs – offered a practical means to analyse the complex ways in which visual representation both creates meaning and has emotional impact.
RHETORIC OF THE IMAGE
According to an ancient etymology, the word image should be linked to the root imitari. Thus we find ourselves immediately at
the heart of the most important problem facing the semiology of images: can
analogical representation (the 'copy') produce true systems of signs and not
merely simple agglutinations of symbols? Is it possible to conceive of an
analogical 'code' (as opposed to a digital one)? We know that linguists refuse
the status of language to all communication by analogy — from the 'language' of
bees to the 'language' of gesture — the moment such communications are not
doubly articulated, are not founded on a combinatory system of digital units as
phonemes are. Nor are linguists the only ones to be suspicious as to the linguistic
nature of the image; general opinion too has a vague conception of the image as
an area of resistance to meaning — this in the name of a certain mythical idea
of Life: the image is re-presentation, which is to say ultimately resurrection,
and, as we know, the intelligible is reputed antipathetic to lived experience.
Thus from both sides the image is felt to be weak in respect of meaning: there
are those who think that the image is an extremely rudimentary system in
comparison with language and those who think that signification cannot exhaust
the image's ineffable richness. Now even — and above all if — the image is in a
certain manner the limit
of meaning, it
permits the consideration of a veritable ontology of the process of
signification. How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if
it ends, what is there beyond?
Such are the
questions that I wish to raise by submitting the image to a spectral analysis
of the messages it may contain. We will start by making it considerably easier
for ourselves: we will only study the advertising image. Why? Because in advertising
the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional; the signifieds of the
advertising message are formed a priori by
certain attributes of the products and these signifieds have to be transmitted
as clearly as possible. If the image contains signs, we can be sure that in
advertising these signs are full, formed with a view to the optimum reading:
the advertising image is
frank, or at least
emphatic.
The three messages
Here we have a Panzani advertisement: some
packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet, some tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom,
all emerging from a half-open string bag, in yellows and greens on a red
background.[1] Let us try to 'skim off' the different messages it contains.
The
image immediately yields a first message whose substance is linguistic; its supports
are the caption, which is marginal, and the labels, these being inserted into
the natural disposition of the scene, 'en abyme'. The
code from which this message has been taken is none other than that of the
French language; the only knowledge required to decipher it is a knowledge of
writing and French. In fact, this message can itself be further broken down, for
the sign Panzani gives not simply the name of the firm
but also, by its assonance, an additional signified, that of 'Italianicity'.
The linguistic message is thus twofold (at least in this particular image):
denotational and connotational. Since, however, we have here only a single typical
sign,[2] namely that of articulated (written) language, it will be counted as one
message.
Putting aside the linguistic message, we are left with the pure image
(even if the labels are part of it, anecdotally). This image straightaway
provides a series of discontinuous signs. First (the order is unimportant as
these signs are not linear), the idea that what we have in the scene
represented is a return from the market. A signified which itself implies two
euphoric values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the
essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined. Its signifier is
the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over die table,
'unpacked'. To read this first sign requires only a knowledge which is in some
sort implanted as part of the habits of a very widespread culture where 'shopping
around for oneself is opposed to the hasty stocking up (preserves,
refrigerators) of a more 'mechanical' civilization. A second sign is more or
less equally evident; its signifier is the bringing together of the tomato, the
pepper and the tricoloured hues (yellow, green, red) of the poster; its
signified is Italy or rather Italianicity.
This sign stands in a
relation of redundancy with the connoted sign of die linguistic message (the
Italian assonance of the name Panzani)
and the knowledge it
draws upon is already more particular; it is a specifically 'French' knowledge (an
Italian would barely perceive the connotation of the name, no more probably dian
he would the Italianicity of tomato and pepper), based on a familiarity with certain
tourist stereotypes. Continuing to explore the image (which is not to say mat
it is not entirely clear at the first glance), there is no difficulty in
discovering at least two other signs: in the first, the serried collection of
different objects transmits the idea of a total culinary service, on the one
hand as though Panzani furnished everything necessary for a carefully balanced
dish and on the other as though the concentrate in the tin were equivalent to
the natural produce surrounding it; in the other sign, the composition of the
image, evoking the memory of innumerable alimentary paintings, sends us to an
aesthetic signified: the 'nature
morte' or; as it is
better expressed in other languages, the 'still life';[3] the knowledge on which
this sign depends is heavily cultural. It might be suggested that, in addition
to these four signs, there is a further information pointer, that which tells us
diat this is an advertisement and which arises both from the place of the image
in the magazine and from the emphasis of the labels (not to mention the
caption). This last information, however, is co-extensive with the scene; it
eludes signification in so far as the advertising nature of the image is
essentially functional; to utter something is not necessarily to declare I am speaking, except in a deliberately reflexive
system such as literature.
Thus there are four signs for this image and we will
assume that they form a coherent whole (for they are all discontinuous),
require a generally cultural knowledge, and refer back to signifieds each of
which is global (for example, Italianicity), imbued with euphoric values. After
the linguistic message, then, we can see a second, iconic message. Is that the
end? If all these signs are removed from the image, we are still left with a
certain informational matter; deprived of all knowledge, I continue to 'read'
the image, to 'understand' that it assembles in a common space a number of
identifiable (nameable) objects, not merely shapes and colours. The signifieds
of this third message are constituted by the real objects in the scene, the
signifiers by these same objects photographed, for, given that the relation between
thing signified and image signifying in analogical representation is not 'arbitrary'
(as it is in language), it is no longer necessary to dose the relay with a third
term in the guise of the psychic image of the object. What defines the third message
is precisely that the relation between signified and signifier is
quasitautological; no doubt the photograph involves a certain arrangement of
the scene (framing, reduction, flattening) but this transition is not a transformation (in the way a coding can be); we have
here a loss of the equivalence characteristic of true sign systems and a
statement of quasi-identity. In other words, the sign of this message is not
drawn from an institutional stock, is not coded, and we are brought up against
the paradox (to which we will return) of a message without a code. This peculiarity can be seen again at the level of the knowledge
invested in the reading of the message; in order to 'read' this last (or first)
level of the image, all that is needed is the knowledge bound up with our
perception. That knowledge is not nil, for we need to know what an image is
(children only learn this at about the age of four) and what a tomato, a
string-bag, a packet of pasta are, but it is a matter of an almost
anthropological knowledge. This message corresponds, as it were, to the letter
of the image and we can agree to call it the literal message, as opposed to the
previous symbolic message.
If our reading is satisfactory, the photograph
analysed offers us three messages: a linguistic message, a coded iconic
message, and a non-coded iconic message. The linguistic message can be readily
separated from the other two, but since the latter share the same (iconic) substance,
to what extent have we the right to separate them? It is certain that the
distinction between the two iconic messages is not made spontaneously in
ordinary reading: the viewer of the image receives at one and the same time the perceptual message and the
cultural message, and it will be seen later that this confusion in reading
corresponds to the function of the mass image (our concern here). The
distinction, however, has an operational validity, analogous to that which
allows the distinction in the linguistic sign of a signifier and a signified
(even though in reality no one is able to separate the 'word' from its meaning
except by recourse to the metalanguage of a definition). If the distinction permits
us to describe the structure of the image in a simple and coherent fashion and
if this description paves the way for an explanation of the role of the image
in society, we will take it to be justified. The task now is thus to reconsider
each type of message so as to explore it in its generality, without losing
sight of our aim of understanding the overall structure of the image, the final
interrelationship of the three messages. Given that what is in question is not
a 'naive' analysis but a structural description,[4] the order of the messages
will be modified a little by the inversion of the cultural message and the
literal message; of the two iconic messages, the first is in some sort
imprinted on the second: the literal message appears as the support of the 'symbolic' message. Hence,
knowing that a system which takes over the signs of another system in order to
make them its signifiers is a system of connotation,[5] we may say immediately
that the literal image is denoted
and the symbolic
image connoted.
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NOTES
(Source: The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff, 1998 – available online in PDF, or by emailing me a request for a free copy)
2. By typical sign is meant the sign of a system in so far as it is adequately defined by its substance: the verbal sign, the iconic sign, the gestural sign are so many typical signs.
3. In French, the expression nature morte refers to the original presence of funereal objects, such as a skull, in certain pictures.
4. 'Naive' analysis is an enumeration of elements, structural description aims to grasp the relation of these elements by virtue of the principle of the solidarity holding between the terms of a structure: if one term changes, so also do the others.
5. Cf. R. Barthes, Elements de semiologie, Communications 4, 1964, p. 130 [trans. Elements of Semiology, London 1967 & New York 1968, pp. 89-92].
