Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

interpretant” (Stam 1992:6). Here the signifier is not similar to the signified, as is the case,
Stam notes, in most of the words forming part of natural languages, but it is merely
conventional and primarily arbitrary, like for instance, national flags, or traffic lights, or
any other linguistic sign representing objects only by linguistic convention (words,
punctuation marks, alphabetical letters, etc).
Whether this list is in the correct order of conventionality might not be relevant as,
regardless of their (iconic) form, signs tend to change based upon their relative
conventionality and, effectively, they do not exclude one another. From the example above
of the photograph Barthes saw in the Paris-Match magazine, the iconic sign exhibits the
person (the young soldier); in truth, the person pictured resembles the actual person in the
picture. Meanwhile, the iconic sign can also deploy an indexical or symbolic dimension,
creating thus a new signifier, that of French imperialism, for example. In this high degree
of complexity, one must assume a certain relativity, understanding that in this constant
movement between the three levels (iconic, symbolic, indexical) the sign gains life.
Saussure also explains the manner and the level to which the signified determines the
signifier, according to a certain degree of “motivation”. In fact, the higher the sign is
“motivated”, the less learning of a fixed convention is necessary and vice-versa.
It is due to the extreme iconic nature of photography and ultimately film that one
needs to resist the natural mimesis of film, or as Bazin would say, the “ontological link
between a pro-filmic event and the photographic representation” (in Stam 1992:6). The
terms “denotation” and “connotation” seem to make their appearance again when
introducing these notions of literal representation and its hidden symbolic meaning. The
fact that an iconic sign is normally more variable in the sense that it requires associative
meanings and is strongly dependent on the intervention of codes clearly means that the
cinematic image we watch on the screen, for instance, is never the real itself, no matter
how firmly it relies on the iconic and indexical method. Photographs and films are hence
built on conventions which require the learning of the codes and the subjacent idea that the
cinematic image must be thought of as a signifier that stands for something which is not
present. John Fiske also notes that:
the way we watch television and the way we perceive reality are fundamentally
similar, in that both are determined by conventions or codes. Reality is itself a
complex system of signs interpreted by members of the culture in exactly the same
way as are films and television programmes. Perception of this reality is always
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