Så, nu har ännu en finalweek överlevts, har min sista om 30 minuter. tentor till höger och vänster i en vecka och sen, sen är det som om all luft går ur en och man får äntligen hoppa fritt utan all stress som tynger en. 13 dagars ledighet innan sommarterminen börjar och 10 veckor innan jag äntligen får sätta mig på ett plan hem till svea för 1 månad hemma in the V-town.- Tack och lov för att 10 sommar veckor rinner iväg som bara attans.
The big 21 slår till på fredag, känner mig som 17 hemma i sverige igen, när jag valsar omkring i väntan på att få fylla 18 och springa på plurran. Men nu så, snart - så är hemmafester ännu en gång ett minne blott, eller inte - för collegefesterna is still någonting av det coolaste fröken Em någonsin har valsat in på. Clubbarna är inte att leka med och pojkarna från fotbollslaget, japp - dom ser ut - precis som på film!
här är min engelska final, ta tiden att läs - och förstår att det toooog mig hela helgen att skriva den, när alla andra valsade med jello-shots i handen. Förstå genom att läsa den, vilket ospännande liv jag lever 5 veckor in på terminen när allt handlar om bra betyg och prestationsångest... well, jag längtar hem, jag längtar efter ostbågar och jag får panik på vikten, jävla USA mat. Men det rasar ju fortfarande av, men det är fortfarande 3 envisa små kilon som trots extremt nyttig mat och massa träning vägrar försvinna.. sen är det ju finalweek och då, då består iof dieten av chips och glass.
Emelie Lindgren
English 111; 8 am
Mr Lowe
Research paper
12/06/08
No Man is an Island
This is a semiotic analysis of the film, "About a Boy" directed by Chris and Paul Weitz. It was released in America on May 17th 2002, and is based on Nick Hornby's best selling novel with the same name. I will explain how the two main characters' roles and statuses in their society are supported by semiotics and symbols throughout the film. I will briefly combine the semiotic with the Sociological school of analysis when we talk about symbols and signs in our society that we can see in media, and how we, based on the knowledge about what these symbols mean, are able to stereotype. The paradigmatic method can help us "search for hidden patterns of opposition that are buried in it and that generate meaning" (Dundes 24). In this analysis I will combine the symbols, codes and social patterns from the two main characters Will and Markus, and show how they are important for each other and how that view grows stronger with the help of symbolism throughout the film. Almost everything that we can see in a film is there for a reason; it helps to make the impression that the producer is trying to convey. Arthur Asa Berger writes that "some semioticians, perhaps carried away, suggest that everything can be analyzed semiotically; they see semiotics as the queen of the interpretive science, the key that unlocks the meaning of all things great and small" (Berger 5). In a society created by people, things are made by people and therefore everything has a curtain meaning for human beings and symbolizes some type of feeling or thought. Movies all have symbols and codes that are well known by people in the society, thus the viewers can understand the symbols as a support for the action or the characters' personalities. Without the symbols and the social codes in this movie, the plot of the movie would not have been as clear as it is when the producer reinforces it with symbols and codes that the audience can relate to. Doing a semiotic analysis of a text makes the viewer or reader aware of the importance of details and symbols.
There are many different areas in semiotics that support my idea about the understanding of symbols from the previous paragraph. A symbol standing by itself is useless unless there is a significant meaning behind it that the viewer will be able to understand. "... a sign doesn't stand on it's own, it is part of a system of meaning. The signifier and the signified work together in an inseperatable bond to form the sign. Together, they convey a meaning which is the unified sign. Without the meaning, a sign would be useless" (Boyle 1).
Relation and signs are two of the key notions of semiotic. This is based on associations we learn and then carry around with us. Anyone who communicates uses associations between signifiers and signifieds all the time. (Berger 9) Everything that we know, we know because of our experiences and what we have been taught. For example, language does not have a big role when someone reads symbols that are common among people in our society, language is just a way to explain the symbol with words. In languages there are only differences; there would never be anything called happy if we did not know that there also was something called sad. The words happy ad sad stand in relation to each other and for us to understand this, we have symbols that support our emotions, and those symbols represent the same emotions no matter what language a person might speak. Laughing represents happiness and crying represents sadness, and both are symbols that people can relate to and understand because they are well-known symbols among people in our society. Human beings tend to connect symbols that they see with words and emotions that they know. For example, if a person is driving a brand new car and is dressed in fancy clothes, they will be viewed as someone who is rich and has high status in society. Automobile companies consistently use this in their advertising. In a lot of commercials for cars the audience often sees an image of the car connected with a word like ‘luxury', and together with the word and the image of the car, there is almost always a person who drives this car, a person who has a nice hair cut, sophisticated clothing and a confident look. The audience will therefore connect people that look like that with the image of the car and the word the commercial uses and vice versa. As I mentioned earlier in this section, an image cannot stand by itself, it must have an opposite for people to compare it to. Continuing with the car example, if a person driving a fancy car is rich and possesses a high class status, the person who drives an older car and has a less groomed appearance, they must be poor with a lower class status. This might not necessarily be true, but this is how people in our society tend to stereotype after they have seen and interpreted the symbols and signs that are represented by physical appearance, cars, houses, personalities and clothing.
There are different signs and advertising and they play diverse roles when they are used to analyze something. I will use three of them in my semiotic analysis: material culture, activities and performance. "The material culture are objects and artefact - the things that make up what is known as material culture - also serve as sign and can convey a great deal of information." (Berger 11) When the audience analyzes and reads people in real life or in media texts, such as films, TV shows or in books, the audience pays attention to things like their hairstyles and the clothing and shoes they wear. All of these objects are signs meant to convey certain notions about what these people are like. Also the setting might tell us a lot about them; if they are located in a room, what do the objects in the room tell the audience about these people? (Berger 12) Activities and performance are the gestures, body language and action of the character. "these are all signs that we use to "read" people-that I, to attempt to gain some insight into their truthfulness, temperaments, personalities, and values" These are the different approaches that can be found in the following analysis of the film "About a Boy."
The two main characters, Will and Markus, are two very different individuals, but also very similar at the same time. They both belong to different social classes and throughout the movie the audience can find signs and symbols that support this. Will is an upper class single man. The audience knows that he is an upper class man when they look at the different signs and symbols that the producer has chosen to represent his character, including the silver Audi that he drives. Looking at Audi's website, we can see that Audi commercials are always filmed on nice blocks of a town with expensive houses lining the street and a driver with a very groomed appearance and sophisticated clothes. Both the setting and the driver in these commercials are meant to convey upper class standards. Will also fits in to this category, he has nice clothes with brands that are well known by people in our society, he drives the car that the audience recognizes as a car driven by people in a higher class, and the audience can therefore assume that he is a man in the upper class. The setting for his home supports this as well; he lives in a huge apartment with everything a person can wish for when it comes to electronics and comfort, but also high class design. It is well known that electronics are expensive and that people from a lower class could not afford everything that Will has in his apartment. The design of his apartment and his large collection of expensive looking furniture has the same style. Nothing looks older than anything else, which means that he must have bought everything at the same time, and that is something that a person from a lower class never would be able to do.
Markus is an eleven-year-old boy from the lower class who lives with his single mother and goes to school. The fact that Markus lives in a single parent home tells the audience that there might be struggles in his family. "Regardless of a woman's race, education, earning capacity or reasons for the absence of a male partner, both female heads of households and officials say that raising children alone is a process replete with struggles" (Brenner 3). The audience can see that they are members of the lower class by just looking at the clothing Markus wears. His clothes do not really fit, which means that his family can not afford to buy new clothes because he has grown out of the clothes he already has or that they can not afford to buy clothes that he will grow out of in a short amount of time. His pants are always too short and his sweaters and jackets are always too big. His hair looks like he once got a haircut that looked good at the time it was new, but then was allowed to just keep growing. It looks like a hairstyle that would have been inspired by The Beatles when they were at the height of their popularity in the 1960's. It tells the audience that the mother has a hard time affording something as simple as a hair cut, which supports the idea that they belong to the lower class. If the audience looks at the setting that the producer has chosen to support this family's quality of life, the audience will see the opposite of Will's home with the nice furniture. Here the audience will find old furniture that does not match, is so old and worn down that it is practically falling apart. These are all signs that symbolize a lower class family.
One thing that the audience can see that Will and Markus have in common is their struggle to be accepted by other people in their own society. Will is a bachelor and meets many women, but he still struggles to be accepted by the people around him. Will does not have many close friends that the audience knows about. The audience only sees that he is close with his brother and his brother's wife, who both constantly talk about how he must find himself a wife and that his behaviour is not appropriate for a grown man. "I conclude that bachelors are eligible males. Rules out popes and infants; leaves entangled unmarried males in where they belong and seek to be: limbo. And perhaps is an advance toward retrieving the analytic-synthetic distinction from that same place." (Cole 16) According to this, if Will is a bachelor, he needs to be eligible for marriage and should find a woman that he can be serious with. This will lead to acceptance among people in his society, since his behaviour as a bachelor is not accepted. Markus' struggle to be accepted by the people in his society is because of his label as an outsider. The definition of an outsider is someone that is excluded from a community, and the definition of a community is a group of people sharing a common understanding who reveal themselves by using the same language, manners, tradition and law. Markus' school is in this case the community he is excluded from, because he differs from the other students in the community. He does not dress the same way, he sings to himself in the classroom, he is not very bright and he does not follow the social roles that the community has. Because he is excluded from his community, he is labelled an outsider, and in turn, being an outsider makes him a person who is not accepted among people in the society where he lives. (all words)
"No man is an island," the quote that starts and ends the movie, is a metaphor that ties the whole story together. "metaphor and metonymy are two important ways of transmitting meaning. In metaphor, a relationship between two things are suggested through use of analogy". (Berger 28) An island is an independent piece of a land, where everything that lives on it can survive without help from other pieces of land. This metaphor provides the information to the audience that no man can do everything by himself. In the beginning of the movie, Will believes that he is an island because according to him, he has everything that he needs. His believes this until the day he lets Markus into his life. Markus represents what is missing in Will's life: the need to have someone to care about even if it is just as a friend. Markus believes that he is an island as well, even though he does not have all the things that Will has. Markus believes that he can make his mother's struggle easier by himself and it is not until he meets Will that he understands that he might need help from someone else. The story is a journey where the audience gets introduced to the metaphor and the whole story is an explanation about the meaning of it. The story explains how life is if a person walks around thinking he is an island, and it explains how life can be so much easier if you let people in to help you and share your burden. "No man in an island" ties the story together and helps guide the audience in understanding the metaphor that is being made. Using the same quote in the beginning and again in the end focuses the audience very effectively.
The symbols and signs shown in actions in the film make the audience understand that a friendship is growing between Markus and Will during the second half of the film. "Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts, nor measure words, but to pour them all out just as they are, chaff and grain together knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness blow the rest away" (Eliot 6). All people have different ideas about what represents friendship, but there are still some symbols and signs that are known throughout a society to be symbols and signs representing friendship. Laughing together, being there for each other in difficult situations, and supporting each others' decisions are three of the actions and performances in the film used to illustrate the friendship between Will and Markus. The quote "no man is an island" is the central metaphor in the film, and it is used to articulate the struggle of gaining acceptance among the people in the society that both Markus and Will face. To make sacrifices and help people in your close circle of friends are common signs of friendship. Since both Will and Markus constantly battle to be accepted by others in their societies, they help each other through it. Will buys Markus a pair of sneakers, which is a symbol for what Markus does not have, which makes him an outsider. Markus is not accepted by people in his society because he does not follow the social roles in his community as mentioned previously. Will buying shoes for Markus is his attempt to help Markus be accepted by the other children in the school, which represents the community and society that Markus is a part of. What Will needs to understand is that he needs to care about other people besides himself. Only then can he attempt to be accepted by the people in his society. Will's action to help Markus is an improvement in that direction. Markus helps Will believe in sympathy. Will's actions toward Markus are a sign of sympathy for another human being. His friendship with Markus makes Will understand that he needs other people in his life to be able to be a whole person which is what he needed to do to be accepted among the people in the society in which he lives. Markus helps Will to believe in and value friendship. Together and with help from each other, they both understand that no man is an island and that they both needed other people in their lives to make them happy. Happiness is something that is represented by laughter and smiling faces. After the journey the audience takes during the film leads to the final scene, we can see all of the characters gathered together, laughing, smiling and talking. The audience can see that friendship is important to living a happy and healthy life and in general, if people let their friends and families into their lives, they will feel more supported and fulfilled.
When a producer creates a movie, he has many ideas for the different characters and settings of the story. He needs symbols and signs that create and support his ideas. A character's lifestyle and personality would not be understood by the audience if the producer did not use symbols and signs that the audience is familiar with. The signs and symbols in a film can create a deeper understanding for the viewer who reads and interprets the meaning behind the different actions and what they represent in the film. Symbols support and create the central struggle that leads the audience to the text's climax, which means the symbols that the producer uses make the story stronger and give the characters and the plot more credibility. The audience can understand the meaning of the text "About a Boy" using semiotic analysis. It is easy to take the different symbols and signs to create a deeper understanding about the central struggle and the characters in the film. The metaphor that is being used in both the beginning and end, "no man is an island", is an important part of the film. The metaphor ties the story together and focuses the audience's attention. The author of the text takes the audience through a journey of two people finding the meaning and the value of true friendship, and finding the truth in the statement "no man is an island." Doing a semiotic analysis makes the story clear, and creates the connection between the metaphor and the story itself.
