Mike,
Hmmmm, okay...
Basically, if it's Wenders, Jarmusch, Hitchcock etc. then it's 'art'. If not... we don't like to talk about that sort of film here.
Anyway...
"...my understanding of metonymy has been that it's a replacement device in which a particular meaning or referent is signaled not by the conventional sign for that meaning
but by some other sign that in the real world is associated with the
conventional sign...[in LADY VANISHES]...there is no substitution on the
level of signifier here . . . the train actually IS the agent of the race against
time . . ."
No, I don't think so. The train isn't the villain, so I'm not sure it could be adequately called the agent. Nor is Mt Rushmore the villain in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, by the same logic.
Perhaps the train is metaphoric, rather than metonymic? If the train is not the villain, but is the agent of *the problem*, in that it physically stands for both villainy and task, then I might still be able to stretch it to metonymic. Otherwise, you got me there.
"...the implication is that anything and everything in the
mise-en-scene becomes not not the site of meaning but a metonymic
replacement for something else . . . so, in this conception, what in film
ISN'T metonymy? . . . and if everything is metonymic haven't we lost
the value of the concept as signalling a particular kind of representation?"
Funny, because production design, as a reification, if not a rarefaction, of space often works on the very principles you set out as metonymy (except when they're metaphor, of course), in that their iconic value is of a greater importance than the symbolic or the indexic (to mix semiologies). Objects in production design more often than not have to stand for ideas rather than simply represent practices through verisimilitude. I suppose it depends on where you draw the line between "it's there to look authentic" and "it's there to represent...". Historical films are the most obvious - retro films pile on the metonymic, whereas history tends to (or is seen to) veer towards veridical mimesis. However, the extent to which a film's mise-en-scene connotes pastness as well as the historical past, and to what extent does that reflect the uses of history, are questions open for debate.
I think.
Damian
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