Forest God - Princess Mononoke
Visage
Bambi
Plague Dogs
"Doe, a deer..." The Sound of Music
Nature is unpredictable, deer appearing suddenly on darkened roads. Nature is sacred (and haughty too), deer silently protecting their land from trespassers. They come to represent life itself in The Deer Hunter.
When deer are harmed or their character twisted, then the world is suddenly off-kilter, wild and disintegrating...
Evil Dead 2
A Stillborn Fawn - Antichrist
"Animals are coming" - A deer about to be hit - A Prophet
This was a cool little experiment :) What made you choose a deer? It is interesting how similar portrayals of signs or symbols can form connotations if there's enough of them in film.
ReplyDeleteApril Skye xx
http://ticketsandpopcorn.blogspot.com
Thank you, April.
ReplyDeleteI chose a deer because the last two films I'd seen had deer in and suddenly I was reminded of all the other times they had been used with similar meaning attached.
"It is interesting how similar portrayals of signs or symbols can form connotations if there's enough of them in film."
Yes, absolutely.
Here's a question brought up by a chance reading of a fellow named Italo Calvino: What do you make of the relationship between literary symbols and cinematic symbols? Do you think cinema simply borrows the stock symbols of previous narrative forms, or is there something unique about cinematic symbols and symbolism? Do they operate in the same way upon our perceptions and psyche, or is there a noticeable difference introduced by the medium or in some other way?
ReplyDelete"What do you make of the relationship between literary symbols and cinematic symbols? Do you think cinema simply borrows the stock symbols of previous narrative forms, or is there something unique about cinematic symbols and symbolism?"
ReplyDeleteI haven't really thought about this.
I would say these symbols were born long before literature - in the minds of people, before anything like painting. As soon as the characteristics of something enable that something to be a shorthand for those characteristics. Symbols are as old as time itself.
A difference I think is that symbolism in film can be more easily and subtly integrated.
ReplyDeleteIn books everything is put there without accident. Although a film is also heavily and meticulously controlled we tend to think 'oh it's a forest...of course there's a deer there'. In books you put the deer there in a more obvious way.
Symbolism is fundamentally a visual thing anyway. Books have to introduce a verbal screen.
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about film, but literary symbolism, while having to introduce a verbal screen, seems to perhaps, as you say, operating upon a verbal screen, but whose images are a projection cast by the reader's internal world of experience and imagination.
It would seem almost the reverse is true of a cinematic symbol--the film projects the image, but the structure of meaning (this would be referring mainly to symbolic type of meaning) is provided by those who receive the image (and in both cases the element that the viewer/reader works upon is worked in conjunction with the author/creator, so that there is a range within which the two paths can converge, if the work and viewing be successful together as a meaningful experience).
Well, I'm glad your post reminds one of the opportunity to consider how the interplay of creative works with their medium, and the subsequent interplay of a work in a medium with us as recipients of a work, reveals to oneself ideas about the way one receives and creates meaning. What people who think about this too often maybe sometimes forget is the implications this may have upon our lives, relationships, understandings of our past, all in the day-to-day stuff of existence.
Ok, when one rattles on in this vein, it is usually a sign that silence will soon be appropriate for a time.
Thanks for your blog; keep up the good work.
"It would seem almost the reverse is true of a cinematic symbol--the film projects the image, but the structure of meaning (this would be referring mainly to symbolic type of meaning) is provided by those who receive the image..."
ReplyDeleteYes there's some truth to that, and about what you say about a collaboration of creation/understanding between artist and viewer.
"What people who think about this too often maybe sometimes forget is the implications this may have upon our lives, relationships, understandings of our past, all in the day-to-day stuff of existence."
Indeed. Well said.
Thanks for your own thoughtful responses, Will, and for your kind words.
How do you even think of such things?! The last two images were the first that came to mind. I think deers have a natural mythical association which Antichrist seems to have tapped. Befitting. A very novel post, Stephen.
ReplyDeleteLike I said to April above, I watched two films in a row with deer and it brought back images from other films.
ReplyDelete"I think deers have a natural mythical association which Antichrist seems to have tapped."
Indeed. There were very strong images of nature in turmoil in Antichrist - a dead chick falling from the nest, the fox tearing at itself.
Thanks again, JAFB. It's much appreciated.