Dick Hebdige 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style

barthes in one day

Barthes notes

No such thing as natural

That society is constructed

Used the boxing ring as a genuine sport (re: Stephen Cummins)

The

role of the ‘performance’ and the pretence of the spectator (re: theatre of cruelty cf. Wrestling)

What we are doing is using SIGNS that actually have NO CONTENT ie: not genuine, - no SIGNIFIER that the signs can refer back to - there are no GUARANTEEING CENTRE OF ULTIMATE TRUTH

The things SIGNIFIED remains static in cultures but the SIGNS but the linguistic SIGNS that we use differ from culture to culture

The signs (and gestures of wrestling) seem natural but are really only structures and are a sophisticated CODE.(these obviously are the gestural and film form codes that the super 8 relate to – they make the natural look very unnatural by highlighting them and ironising them). Again theatre of cruelty is reacting to these codes (probably in a coded manner (does Bill Moussoulis get the code of the audience)

The films themselves are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS.

Important that we SUSPEND OUR DISBELIEF

a CATEGORY MISTAKE is confusing the language which we use to talk about events in real life with the poetic use language characteristic of imaginative literature.

Signs can be ICONIC, MOTIVATED and ARBITRARY (How many of the films can fall into these categories)

Taboos can be a means/sign of differentation re: alcohol with Muslims/Christians

All these are cultural signs re; dietary signs, body signs, sexual signs, fashion signs, super 8 film signs (what type of film is who I am) – they need to be mediated though language (including film language) and expressed by it - he sees semiology as part of linguistics – this takes him past Saussure (linguistics part of semiology) and makes barthes a post-structuralist = he sees the relationship between the sign an the thing signified as not arbitary but MOTIVATED

Did not go as far as Derrida (also a post-structuralist) as to say that as there is no such thing as the meaning of text (death of the author) but would say that there is no final authority or meaning attached to signs


Sartre – we are all free but constantly pretend that our actions are predetermined – ‘bad faith’ – pretend to dress spontaneously

Barthes has two biases – Marxism plus a tendency to favour the working class (favourable) over the middle class bourgeoisie (unfavourable)

Is mark’s radical incompetency a SIGN – is it a biased ‘working class sign’ or a real postmodernist liberation – does mark’s work demonstrate BAD FAITH – this radical could be close to bathes tactic of ‘unreadability’ do destroy the bourgeoisie construct of CLARITY – the FOUR STRUCTURALISTS who rejected clarity were LACAN, LEVI-STRAUSS DERRIDA and FOUCAULT

Genres are codes (see super-8 film genres0 – realism, all one can do is to be honest and point out what code you are using (I must do this in MY INTRODUCTION)

Barthes believed that the author (filmmaker) does not, in the last analysis, understand heir own wok, so you have to introduce ways of thinking to understand eg. Marxism, Freudianism, structuralism, it is these things ‘WAYS OF THINKING that the SUPER-8 FILMS are about maybe.

Did the SYDNEY and MELBOURNE groups have a distinct enough difference in manifestos for there to be ‘a struggle for intellectual hegemony’ – probably played out quietly in on the beach, filmnews and ‘theatre of cruelty’ – probably good to mention this debate in INTRODUCTION in relation to documents

MIMESIS is IMITATION


Barthes says that a text (film) dos not have just one meaning but is nothing but THE PLURALITY OF ITS SYSTEMS , its infinite (circular) transcribeability

For Barthes the DEATH OF THE AUTHOR has the immediate and liberating consequence of the BIRTH OF THE READER. I can play this role as someone interpreting these films as they can signs can evoke meaning in my mind.

It is the READERS FREEDOM that gives meaning to the text [better if it can if it allows itself to be filled with imagination] not it’s CONTENT

Japanese HAIKU is an example where form is everything and content is nothing

Barthes did write a book on PHOTOGRAPHY but in the context of its truth, only showing what is there, not quite what the films were about, OR MAYBE this is what the films wee about – this is my backyard – this is who I am = take it or leave it – this is me and my life and my sub-culture and my identity and my SIGNS

WESTERN society has an essentially INSTRUMENTAL viewpoint of language; as a tool to translate experience into rationally comprehensible terms: this DOES NOT have o be so – it is only a social construct that you have to supply the solution/answer re: the social construct of the MEGA-NARRATIVE

LANGUAGE should be PHYSICAL PLEASURE and NOT COMMUNICATION – the GRAIN of film [especially super 8] can cast us away from the SIGNIFIED – from LE PLAISIR DU TEXTE