Task 1: Analyse Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video giving consideration to the following elements of Genre:
- Signifiers
In semiotics there are three basic types of sign and code:
1. Iconic signs and codes are created to represent the thing itself so that an image of a mafia gangster looks like, or signifies, a mafia gangster.
Iconic codes also work to create extra meaning so that when we see an image of a gangster we associate it with meanings of lawlessness, of a person involved in drug dealing, a dangerous person who will kill, and who our culture identifies as a definite ‘baddie’.
2. Indexical signs are different. They work by indirectly suggesting a meaning by prodding our existing knowledge and understanding.
For example a heart shape signifies romance suggesting love between two people. The heart shape has no meaning in itself, except to symbolise love. Indexical codes are a type of media shorthand which can be seen everywhere in advertising and in the way signs are used to give us information such as road signs.
Think of all the memories, ideas, feelings, and cultural references that the indexical sign of a lighted Christmas tree invokes.
You can add your musical signifiers too, which may not be just Christmas songs and carols.
3. Symbolic codes act as signifiers of meaning which are not remotely the same as what they actually look like (what they denote).
Often in a film the bad guy wears all black, and this is to symbolise evil.
An all black outfit may suggest ‘cool’ too. Both meanings have nothing intrinsically to do with the clothes themselves.
In comedy sketches a burglar may wear a striped shirt, a mask, and carry a bag marked swag – we all know that this costume symbolises a comic burglar – it works as a short hand for the audience– but why the striped shirt symbolises a burglar is an interesting question.
Theorists in Semiology tell us that the meaning a code communicates is always culturally determined. This means that we learn codes and symbols as we grow up according to our society and culture.
- Conventions
Technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography, lighting etc.
Visual codes – codes that are decoded on a mainly connotation (or hidden meaning) level – things that draw on our experience and understanding of other media texts,
- Iconography
Concerned with the use of visual images and how they trigger the audience's expectations of a particular genre, such as a knife in slasher horror films.
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