Re: Juxtaposition
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sat, 24 Oct 1998 22:41:09 +1000
> Lord, Camille, if someone says, "Ayn Rand is a Crock of Crap" you think
> that's censorious?
No, no, you miss my point. I'm not talking words, I'm talking SIGNS. That's
what I was trying to illustrate with my metaphor of the stop sign. The
semiotics of something can be completely at odds with the actual literal
meaning. I *know* that your post was just a pisstake. But here's what I
mean: as soon as you see something, you associate certain things with it.
Say you saw a big red leatherbound book. The words that would pop into your
head first would be `Old, authoritative, intellectual, heavy', whatever.
These preconceptions would stay in place even if upon opening the book you
discover it was just a book full of limericks or something.
When I see legal Harold Ober-esque language, the first thing that pops into
my mind is, like I said `censorious, unfair, biased', whatever. That's the
semiotics of it. The actual meaning is the pastiche. But both things form
part of the ultimate text.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
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