Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Semiotics

  • Death and the Icon

    E. John Winner ___ Let us begin with a technical clarification, by way of a discussion of the semiotic status of icons. An icon is a powerful representation, not only of an object or a person, but of the concept of that object or person; a reminder of what it is the perceiver of the […]

  • The Redundancy of Batman the Movie

    by E. John Winner There have been now several efforts to realize a cinema narrative with living actors in performance, concerning the comic book hero Batman. The first, in the 1940’s, developed as a serial or series of interconnected narrative episodes released to theaters weekly. There was a highly respected, well-budgeted feature length film in […]

  • The Many Cups of Coffee

    E. John Winner 1. Semiotic interpretation is important, and yet it is somewhat variable and changeable, depending on the context in which it occurs. Consider the crucifix: if found in a Catholic church we interpret it one way; in a vampire movie another; and hanging around the neck of a Hell’s Angel motorcyclist something else […]