This post combines some old work with some new work for me with semiotics. In the older stuff I'm using a Peircian model rather than Saussure. Although the two kind of blur and blend for me. What was the difference again? Someone thinks that there is no objective reality beyond the sign...Saussure, I think. To be honest, I'm pretty vague on that notion myself. Language is pretty darned powerful but I'm loath to make the broad claim that it is ultimately deterministic. At any rate...about Tara:
The following clip represents the opening credits of Showtime's award winning original series United States of Tara. Although Saussure's Course on General Linguistics delimits the signifying medium as purely linguistic and thus temporally linear, I would suggest that the visual medium both signifies in a comparable manner to the linguistic, and expands the possibilities for semiotic analysis of the complex signifiers taking place in the show. The use of a series of graphic images to introduce the show's foundational concepts illustrates this point nicely.
As you will see, the show's title character, Tara, suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (more commonly known as multiple personalities.) What is interesting about this disorder as represented in the show, semiotically speaking, are the ways in which Tara's various identities are constructed and performed by way of a complex of social signifiers. These signifiers include dress, vocabulary, behavior, and so on, and are simultaneously interpreted and judged both by the textual/fictional community in which Tara and her family are constructed, and meta-textually, by us, the viewing audience.
As the opening theme to United States of Tara suggests, Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities. According to Umberto Eco, semiotic theory is implicit in all systems of interpretation, which is salient being that interpretation itself is the pivotal point on which semiotic analysis rests. Other theories and critical viewpoints, however, provide the ideological lens by which an interpretation is made. The framework for this semiotic analysis of gendered ideology and performative identity in United States of Tara rests on the foundational semiotic theory of Charles Peirce, the body theories of Judith Butler, and Roland Barthes’s Mythologies.
Peirce’s semiotic theory establishes the framework of sign systems, whereby a “signifier”—arbitrary in and of itself—suggests a “signified,” or an endowment of meaning; together, they constitute a complete sign. Signs, then, accumulate to construct “sign systems,” which, in turn, compromise meaningful units of knowledge about larger concepts, phenomena, and so on. One very significant aspect of Peircian semiotic theory is the notion that signfication, or the creation of meaning, is simultaneously interpretive, subconscious, and instantaneous. Peirce also gives us the notion that interpretation is accomplished through accessing the larger cultural consciousness, thus resulting in the creation of “knowledge” that is socially agreed upon. While important, this notion alone is problematic insofar as the phenomenon of interpretation is ambiguous and vague. The “how” and “why” of that instantaneous interpretation remains largely evasive.[1]
Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” intersects with Peircian semiotics by applying the interpretive framework of socially constructed sign systems to the concept of gender. Butler shows how gender is different than sex and encompasses a moray of social mores, behaviors and values that are constructed as masculine or feminine and enacted through the performance of socially agreed upon signifiers of masculinity and femininity. Her work separates the concept of gender—a significant aspect of identity—from the body and deconstructs it, showing how gender itself is a semiotic construction reflecting communally agreed upon social signifiers.[2] Still, Butler’s theory doesn’t explore in-depth the mechanism by which the interpretation of social signifiers occurs.
Roland Barthes’s Mythologies provides the link that explores the mechanism by which instantaneous, subconscious, and socially agreed upon judgments—in Barthes’s words, the “what-goes-without-saying”—that occurs in the interpretive process.[3] These mythologies represent the cultural narrative constructed upon unspoken assumptions that are both the foundation for and the cause of the interpretations they produce. They both constitute and enable a socially constructed interpretation of signifiers. Finally, they embody the corpus of signifiers called upon to perform identity. Mythology, perception, and performance interact perpetually to produce meaning.
Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities that explore alternative possibilities that are largely gendered and centered around the feminine ethic of care and the role of the mother. According to the premise of the show, Tara’s other personalities, or alters, compensate for Tara’s perceived deficiencies. Clinically, the development of dissociative personalities is theorized to derive from trauma, particularly violent or sexual trauma. The audience’s ready identification with a dissociative protagonist implies the correllation of trauma with socially imposed behavioral mores and proscribed roles—specifically those associated with gender and maternity.
