This whole discussion is extremely problematic and has caused some
disorientation in film scholarship. It is very easy to impose symbolic
values to objects that may be in fact be quite indexical. If one wants to
say for example that Marian Crane's journey (in Psycho) is a "journey into
the unconscious" who is to say no, it is not. One can say the knife used
by Norman is a phallic symbol when in fact it is merely an instrument for
murder. Cleaning up the mess after the murder symbloizes the psychological
process of "repression and denial," etc. One person's index can become
another person's symbol. A deconstruction of these definitions reveals
their arbitrariness and nebulous use. One can say the sled in Citizen Kane
is a symbol of Kane's childhood, a symbol of his mother, a symbol of
innocence, or a sign of his mother or a sign of innocence. I'm not sure what
value these definitions have because they can be so arbitraily applied to
anything. In another thread discussing trains in films trains have been
variously defined as "symbols of the creative process, replications of
cinema itself, symbols-signs of modernity, of Time and Space,etc.
The problem is that one can see what one wants, argue anything...It is this
open-endedness which makes it extremely problematic. My question really
is: what difference does it make whether something is a symbol/sign/index?
Ron
From: "elaine pigeon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 11:16 AM
Subject: Symbol and Index
> This post raises an interesting point for me. I am not exactly sure of how
> film theorists define an index. I have a PhD in English studies, but an
BFA
> in film studies, although that was some time ago. I think it is important
> that we be able to speak across disciplines, though. The symbol, in
> literature, is not necessarily stable as a figure, as it underwent at
least
> one change with the symbolists poets, who personalized or subjectified the
> symbol. Later, I would suggest, what became significant in modernist
writing
> was the attribution of symbolic value, not the symbol itself, per se. Thus
> even the meaning of symbol itself is subject to change over time. Is an
> index, then, the measure of that or a similar change?
>
> Elaine Pigeon
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Reynolds" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 11:43 PM
> Subject: And now for a new subject: Trains
>
>
> > Trains are used effectively, I think, as a symbol (or do I mean index?)
> > of the modern condition in Juozo Itami's Tampopo. In a movie
> > explicitly concerned with the role of food in our lives, those lives
> > are linked together visually by the recurring appearance of elevated
> > trains.
> > Also, if one considers the Lumiere film, I think it would be a good
> > idea to consider also Jerome Hill's Film Portrait, which quotes from
> > and recreates the Lumiere film, appropriating it as a symbol (yes,
> > symbol) of the self-refreshing nature of film art.
> >
> > DR
> >
> > *
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