Semiotics Preliminary Exercises 1

Barthes Theory of Denotative and Connotative Signs (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire)

Examining the: Characters, costumes, acting, setting, color, lighting, audio, etc.

Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist that claimed that there are multiple ways to read codes and that a certain text or object could have more than one meaning. In addition, Barthes recognized five different sorts of semiotic elements that all texts have in common. Such are denotation, connotation, Polysemy, myth and ideological signs. Examples of some of these words are in the movie "The Hunger Games" where the announcer of the tributes which are entering the games, Effie Trinket, wore more colorful clothing than everyone else at the event which shows that she was open to a choice of a lot more clothing than anyone else as well as being wealthy and in a position of power. Another example is in a clip of one of the tributes, Katniss Everdeen, in her supposed "wedding dress". Her dress was all white and when she spun around and lifted her arms, it was all black with fake wings on her back. The dress being white at first shows that Katniss followed the tradition of women wearing white dresses to a wedding ceremony and the dress then being black and having wings was supposed to represent a "Mockingjay".

The Hunger Games is a movie in which women and men from the ages to 12 to 18 years old enter an event called "The Hunger Games" where one man and one woman fight each other to the death and only one of the two come back alive. Signs that portray this synopsis include the ballet boxes, the crowd with men on one side and women on the other, the amount of security in the area, the announcer, Effie Trinket, saying that Katniss, one of the tributes, was the first volunteer for tribute and Katniss' sister, Primrose, screaming and crying after her when she realized that Katniss was replacing her and risking her own life. Our assignment for the day was noting signs in the scene with Katniss and her wedding dress on a chart based off of Roland Barthes' theory.