I finished Barthes third essay
on photography “The Third Meaning” (The Photographic Message written in 1961,
Rhetoric of the Image written in 1964, and The Third Meaning written in 1970)
and would like simply to highlight some points. Barthes discusses messages and their
functioning on levels by critiquing stills from Ivan the Terrible (directed by Eisenstein). The first image shows
two figures who each pour a bucket of gold coins over a third figure
(presumably the king) in what Barthes suggests has three symbolisms: (1) “the
imperial ritual of baptism by gold,” (2) “the diegetic symbolism: the theme of
gold, of wealth,” and (3) “Eisensteinian symbolism:” displacement and
substitution (peculiar to S.M. Eisenstein) (52). These three particular symbolisms coalesce to
create the second level (the first level was informational) of meaning: signification (in the translator’s
notes, Barthes remarks the difference between signification and signifiance as
the former “belongs to the plane of the product, of the enounced, of
communication” and the latter as “the work of the signifier, which belongs to
the plane of the production, of the enunciation, of symbolization―this work
being called signifiance”). But it is at the third level of meaning, as Barthes
posits and is concerned with, that we arrive at signifiance (on the actors, the
make-up, wigs, whiteness). He further
clarifies and proposes: signification is an obvious meaning, which “presents
itself quite naturally to the mind . . . [and] endowed with a ‘natural’
clarity” (54); signifiance is an obtuse meaning, which “opens the field of
meaning totally” and “extends outside culture, knowledge, information” (55). In addition, this obtuse meaning “carries a
certain emotion” (59). Barthes also remarks that the obtuse
meaning “is a signifier without a signified, hence the difficulty in naming it”
(61). What Barthes suggests is that this
third meaning is able to escape language, unable to represent anything. It is “outside (articulated) language while
nevertheless within interlocution . . . and discontinuous, indifferent to the
story and the obvious meaning” (61). Barthes appears unable to identify the
contextual role in meaning-making. I
would argue that the larger context (for example, 20th century
conceptions of beauty in France) enable signifiance from the actor’s make-up,
wigs, bun of hair, beauty, et al. In
other words, the stills gain signifiance because they are contextual. Barthes hints at this idea, but isn’t
confident yet to argue for it. Barthes concludes his essay by calling for
further critiques of signifiance and this third/obtuse meaning.
The obtuse meaning is rare
(Barthes identifies only a few flashes in Ivan
the Terrible and rhetorically asks how many other films have it?) and is part
of what Barthes contends makes film filmic: “the filmic is that in the film
which cannot be described, the representation which cannot be represented” (64).
This level of meaning can be located, but not described. Barthes’ reluctance to engage with film,
primarily because of lack of interest and experience with cinema, limits him to
simply the stills, and hence the essay feels “unfinished.” And what we see in this
essay is Barthes’ move toward identifying signifiers that do not have signifieds
(and he doesn’t seem to accept completely that signifiers shift to other
signifiers), and ultimately his shift from structuralism to post-structuralism.
It is interesting to read Barthes’ writing at a time when he couldn’t
particularly identify the fact that the signified is another signifier, when he
attempted to suggest that unrepresentable, (possibly) the aesthetic, the
unnamed is simply an emotion. I don’t deny that some experiences and emotions
cannot be articulated with a complete meaning, but that applies to all words
(as post-structuralism contends): words always escape a definitive meaning,
always contain slippage, always direct our attention to other words. This obviously is my post-structuralist
education, but I enjoyed reading Barthes in his transition to the new academic
camp.
Obvious meaning: "Ivan's attitude, young Vladimir's half-wit foolishness
Obtuse meaning: "eroticism"
Obvious meaning: "ugly"
Obtuse meaning: "eroticism that is contrary to the beautiful . . . unease and perhaps sadism"
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