Swedile in the Classroom #4 - Colour as a Semiotic Mode

Gosh, I wish I had saved my Synesthesia discussion from my last Swedile in the Classroom for this blog posting.

Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen bring up the concept of color ‘grammar’ in their essay “Colour as a semiotic mode: note for a grammar on colour”; the idea that colors, as a mode of imparting information, can be structured and have set rules. And I don’t know if I can buy that. Color is so arbitrary and so personalized; it’s nearly impossible to have a set meaning for any one of them. Even in the essay itself, the authors give contradictory emotive descriptions of just about all, if not every, color they mention. I myself was put off almost initially when they suggested that “red is for danger, green for hope.” While I can agree with the assessment of red, I’ve never once associated green with hope. I’ve associated it with everything from the placidness of nature, due to the environmental conditioning that green goes with nature, to the awesome, exciting action of giant robots, due to the mechas in the series Gurren Lagann being powered with the green effervescence known as “Spiral Power.”

VS.

To assume any one thing about any one color being understood universally, even things that would seem pretty obvious, isn’t feasible, since everyone experiences the world differently. Plus, the social meanings of color changes with the zeitgeist. Take for example the story of Lucky Strike cigarettes.

In the years before World War II, the Lucky Strike cigarette company felt that women were not buying their product, and decided to hire Edward Bernays as a consultant. He told them that the reason women were not buying their cigarettes was because women did not like the color green. At the time, the green was their signature color, and they refused to change it. So instead, Bernays orchestrated an ingenious media campaign, buying up space in newspapers and having fake articles run saying “green is in.” And what happened is he changed the entire fashion world that year, and what’s more, he totally changed the perception of a color.

Colors change meanings in society all the time. Right now, pink denotes “Breast cancer awareness.” For me, it always used to denote girls, specifically children. Growing up, pink was a girl’s color. Now it means something else. And there’s the anti-bullying movement now, too. It denotes that. I just think colors are too personal and arbitrary to be able to come up with any set rules for them.

However, I do agree with the last point in the article, specifically the differences in organization between the ad and the brochure’s color palette (although I wish I could have seen the colors themselves). The colors themselves, I think, were not as important as the way they were contrasted with each other. If you take a sampling of colors and present them one way, people will perceive the message of the colors differently than if they’re organized in another way. I think this is really the only true form of color “grammar” we can hope to reach; not in the colors themselves, as they are too volatile to have a universally agreed-upon meaning, but in the organization of those colors, and how it can steer the reader to reading a text or understanding a message the way the designer wants it to be understood.


- Chris Muise

P.S. – Readers, you should look up Edward Bernays. This is the man responsible for advertising as it is today, and also for things like women smoking and a coup in Guatemala. It’s well worth your time.

Swedile at the Movies: Quantum of Solace

Hello, reader. This is your movie review of Quantum of Solace, should you choose to accept it.

(Okay, I promise I won’t do that a lot)

The buzz about this movie has been pretty polarized; people like Harry Knowles from Ain’t It Cool News loved the hell out of this movie, whereas people like Roger Ebert (EBERT!!!) thought it was dribble. There seems to be no middle ground on this one. Well, having seen it, I’ll see if I become a militant hater, an exuberant lover, or if I can discover mediocrity once again!

As always, my Batman & Robin Gradation Scale is applied here.


Story

Quantum picks up shortly after the previous movie left off. We’re treated right away to a car chase, which is good I guess. Bond, M and MI6 learn from Mr. White of the existence of some shadow company that’s got their fingers in many sinister pies. Bond follows the trail, all the while hoping to find the ones responsible for Vesper’s death in the previous film. He kills some people, M gets mad, and together with Camille, a Bolivian secret agent, work to take down the evil Dominic Greene, the leader of Quantum.

Well, it’s not exactly a bad story, but I’ll admit, it’s not quite as original as Casino Royale. The whole movie seems sort of like the second part of Casino Royale, actually; like the original movie was, like, 4 hours long, and they had to divide it. Which is fine, I guess. More to the point, though, this movie plays more like your more traditional 007 film. That’s not to say it’s campy, or that James Bond has unbelievable gadgets, or that he’s not any less of a badass than Daniel Craig has played him. But the structure tends to act more like a traditional James Bond plot; the plot revolves around Bond working up the ladder to fight Greene, the head of a large, evil corporation that has some sinister plan in the works, and Bond and Camille (his Bond Girl) reach his hidden lair and the film culminates in a final fight to the death. Still, even this they pull off in the new, awesome style of the Bond films. And I must say, the reference to Goldfinger with the dead, naked woman covered in oil on the bed? Excellent.


Acting

Nothing spectacular, to be honest. But then again, I didn’t find the acting terribly good in Casino Royale either. I mean, Daniel Craig plays an excellent Bond; he’s cold, analytical, somewhat brash, and above all, confident. He actually seems like the type of person who might actually kill people for a living. But there’s not a whole realm of emotional depth to anyone here. Bond seems angry and sullen, but that’s about it. Everyone seems angry and sullen. It’s an angry, sullen movie. The guy who plays the film’s villain is marginally better, as he seems to display more emotion (since he’s putting on a front for the public), but generally, no one in this movie is acting in such a way that it stands out. I’d say it’s satisfactory, but not much more than that.


Action/Special Effects

This is where I was disappointed the most. Casino Royale’s stunts and action sequences were bloody amazing. The shots were clear and stunning. Watching this film on the big screen made one feel they were actually on top of a big crane. Whoever coordinated those stunts deserves some kind of medal. However, the action scenes here (while no less larger in scale) suffered from the “Camcorder Syndrome;” All the shots were quick-edited sequences of close-up, shaky camera work, making the sequences both daunting and confusing. It’s much the same as other films like Batman Begins and Transformers, where the action was just so jumbled, it gave me a headache. However, this does luckily damper a bit as the film progresses. The final action scene in Greene’s lair is much clearer, and the aerial dogfight recreates some of that sense of being high up in the air. However, sadly, at least 50% of the fight scenes are in the first 30 minutes of the movie, so at least half of what we come to see is, really, ruined. Seriously, directors, stop that; I don’t care if you want to recreate the feeling of being beaten up by Batman, or being in the middle of a monster invasion, it’s bothersome.


Music

Dave Arnold returns to the drivers seat scoring this film, and his work is no less well done than it was in the previous film. We’re even treated to some more of his renditions of classic Bond motifs, which are very good indeed. If you like that sort of thing, I urge you to check the score out.

I’d like to discuss the Bond Theme for a moment, which was “Another Way to Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White. Um, it sort of sucks. I mean, the actual musical score to the song isn’t bad, but with them singing it, it sounds sort of like hip-hop or rap or whatever the kids listen to these days. It had some elements of some more classic Bond music elements, but overall I was largely disappointed. Way to go, Alicia Keys and Jack White. The first duet in Bond Theme history and you go and blow it. Thanks.


Direction

Not bad, not anything astoundingly bad. But it’s clear that Casino’s director played his Bond with much more nuance. Casino Royale created something entirely new, and entirely awesome. I’ll be honest; I was never a fan of James Bond before Casino Royale. I thought he was silly and the plots were boring. About the only Bond-related thing I’d ever loved before two years ago was the Goldeneye video game for N64. Casino changed that. It impressed me so much that not only did it score a 0/4; I retroactively awarded it the Vesty for Best Film of 2006. I feel if you look at Quantum of Solace as the last hour-and-forty-seven of Casino Royale, it works. The characters have already been established, and the plot follows directly from the end of the previous film. If you look at it as a separate movie, it takes a step back towards the more corny James Bond films of the past. However, that’s not to suggest I’m too critical of this, because I do literally mean just one step; it only just touches on the campy stuff and the formulaic plot lines without actually crossing the line into it. Still, I found the pacing to be odd at the beginning of the film, the shots weren’t nearly as stunning, it suffered from that “Camcorder Syndrome,” and the ending was slightly unsatisfactory. The one change the director made that I think was actually really neat was the way in which they superimposed the names of the various locations into the film. If you’ve ever seen Heroes, and the way their episode titles fit in with the scenery, it’s something like that, with specialized font for each locale. That was neat. But besides that, I feel that the directorial changes made were not made overly well, but not horrendously bad.


FINAL SCORE:

1/4

A good film, but not perfect. I think the reason that people are divided by this is because they expected something as amazing as Casino Royale. They were so geared for something as amazing as before (myself included), that something just slightly sub-par seems like crap by comparison. I think perhaps this may be the result of making a sequel that is so directly tied to its predecessor. If they had left Casino Royale as it was, ending and all, and left the rest to our imagination, and then gave us a whole new story for the sequel, it might have felt more self-contained. But for what it was, it wasn’t bad. The story was mostly clear, there were still lots of decent action, and Daniel Craig was still awesome. It just felt different than Casino Royale, or rather more aptly; it’s somewhat too similar to what we’ve seen before. But it certainly was entertaining, I was never bored, and it was worth the $10 to go see it.

I’m just happy that this film ended conclusively, because I’m looking forward to something original for the next one. Here’s hoping.

This review will self-destruct in 30 seconds (sorry),
- Silent G

Swedile in the Classroom #3 - The Rhetoric of Typography

Eva Brumberger’s article on the connect or disconnect between visual and verbal thinking in an interesting read, but it pretty much says things that have been said before, and what’s more, are obvious in today’s generation; her belief is that typeface and design play a role in how we perceive any given text, and to some degree or another, this is true. For example, if I wrote a phrase somewhat equated with a ‘redneck’ manner of speech, such as “squeal like a pig,” in a calligraphy-style font, it would be so jarring that it would affect one’s perception of the phrase, and the writer. No one would take it seriously. However, her theory seemed to be more along the lines that even a less-drastic change in typeface could dramatically alter the perception of the material and it’s author, and I think the results of her study showed that this is not true to any noticeable degree.

This article did bring up another issue, however, that I would like to discuss in length; the divide between the verbal and visual type of thought. I, like Brumberger and a number of her colleagues that she cites, feel that one is not separate from the other. Some might be more inclined to one than the other, but we all think both verbally and visually. I, for one, would like to draw upon my own experiences to make a point on this topic; I think in both verbal and visual terms at the same time, almost to the point that I cannot separate the two (at least in regards to writing). I have a condition known as Synesthesia, specifically Grapheme > Color Synesthesia. That means…

This is how I perceive this sentence.

Every single letter and number has a specific color to me. It never changes (i.e. B is always blue, C is always red, etc), and is entirely automatic. And when I hear words being said, it is also largely automatic that I imagine the words for a moment, with said colors in mind. Yet at the same time, whenever I read words, I hear them in my head. Because of the color associations hard-wired into my brain, when I hear I see, and when I see I hear. It is a constant back-and-forth discourse between the verbal and the visual worlds. And I am far from alone in this regard. Recent studies have shown that accounts of Synesthesia are far more frequent than previously believed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17076063), and it is believed that 1 in 23 people have it. The numbers may be even higher, as to people with the condition, they often times have no idea the way they think differs from anyone else’s.

Of course, I don’t believe one has to have a form of Synesthesia to think both verbally and visually. I merely used it as an interesting example. I believe almost everyone thinks in both terms as opposed to just one or another. Both senses interact to give the viewer/listener a much more in-depth view of the world around them than just one or the other could do alone.

- Chris Muise

Swedile in the Classroom #2 - The challenges of hybrid forms of electronic writing

Having read Dene Grigar’s essay on hybrid forms of electronic writing, I was reminded of some thoughts I’ve had on the direction in which we read and write as a society. First of all, I’d like to point out that this essay, probably the first scholarly essay I’ve seen written like this (i.e. one not on a blog), uses Hypertext. I find that very interesting. However, what I find most interesting is not that Hypertext was used, but that it was used without changing the format of the annotated essay we’ve all seen and written.

The Hypertext was simply inserted into the essay, as many scholars would insert a reference to another scholarly work or an example from which they draw thoughts on or allude to. The writer did not have to alter the usual writing style to any degree to insert these links. Why is it the format of the essay already established - many decades before the advent of the personal computer and the Internet – lend itself so well to Hyperlinking? I think that speaks to the nature of the human mind and how we read, or perhaps more appropriately, how we’ve always wanted to read.

I don’t believe human beings think as linearly as we sometimes like to think we do. Speaking from personal experience, I can say my thought process, when reading at least, is both linear and non-linear at the same time. If I read an essay that has sources cited, or reading about something in an encyclopedia that mentions only briefly another subject, I often think (if the source cited is interesting), “Huh, I should look around for that. It might be interesting and informative.” I don’t believe I’m alone on this, either, considering the outstanding success of Wikipedia, which satisfies our instant curiosity; if you’re reading about Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and you suddenly think, “Gee, I’d like to know what else Frank Miller has done,” a link within the article itself links to a page on Frank Miller, and often times even a specialized page just on the works of the artist/writer.

The way I see it, human beings have, if not for eons, than at least for a number of centuries, have been prepared to read the way we read now. The only think preventing that was technology. Gutenberg could not burn links into the paper with his printing press, nor could it be transmitted with the speed at which we have now. The best people could do for years was to provide directions to the source, which they could check when they found the time and energy to do it. Now, the information is right there at our fingertips. However, I’m sure that, had the technology existed, people in Johannes’s time would be browsing Albert II and Hyperlinking to previous rulers of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and what have you. I think we’ve always been ready for this sort of reading experience; the problem was that technology just didn’t exist until recently. To have arguments about how it’s classified, and debates over the term “new media” versus “Electronic Literature” or “Electronic writing” seems like splitting hairs. It’s like Eagleton said, writing simply changes with the zeitgeist. And I’m sure it’s not done changing yet.

- Chris Muise