|
FORWARDED TO PEIRCE-L BY JOSEPH
RANSDELL
----- Original Message -----
From: Norbert Wiley
To: Joseph Ransdell
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 6:05 PM
Subject: question for Peirce list (if appropriate) Monterey, CA 93940 Dear Peirce List, I'm looking for usable Peirce concepts (and precedents) for a film analysis One thing I'd like to do is translate Roland Barthes' notion of mythology as second order semiotic into Peircian language. I'm treating my film as a kind of mythology. But I'd also like to find someone who has used Peirce for narrative analysis, film or otherwise. I'd even be interested in stretching or building onto Peirce if necessary to do the job. Here's my movie case, which is now a question rather than an answer. *************** Cinderella Man and the Great Depression: A Disingenuous Allegory The film Cinderella Man concerns the 1930’s prize fighter, Jim Braddock. Braddock’s career, as the movie continuously suggests, more-or-less parallels that of capitalism. He does well in the late twenties, crashes at the end of the decade, gets reduced to poverty in the early thirties, experiences a comeback in the mid thirties and coasts with wealth and fame in the late thirties. The parallel with capitalism works fairly well for the most part, except for the comeback. Braddock’s comeback was due to his personal efforts, sheer grit, commitment to his family, honesty, etc. The implicit message of the film was that capitalism’s comeback too was due to these laudable, Protestant Ethic-like virtues. But history tells us the Depression was ended by the approach of World War II and its revival of demand. It ended “by accident” so to speak, and not because of moral efforts. So the movie legitimizes capitalism by stretching an allegory too far. The movie does this by exploiting the viewer’s willing suspension of disbelief and sneaking in an ideological fallacy under cover of that suspension. *************** Any suggestions will be welcome. Yours, Norbert Wiley Professor emeritus, sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana
No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.13/221 - Release Date: 1/4/2006 |
No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.13/221 - Release Date: 1/4/2006
--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
