Semiotic Images

Abstract

Julia Kristeva’s work on cinema has generated inquiries focusing on the figures of the Abject and feminine bodies. Yet, these inquiries do not emphasize Kristeva’s conception of the Semiotic as a part of filmic signifying processes, and thus narrow the Kristevan field of studies in film. In this essay, I undertake her Semiotic model in relation to an avant-garde film, Calendar (1993) by Atom Egoyan, and a traditional Hollywood movie, Jurassic Park (1993) by Steven Spielberg, to expand Kristevan interpretations of film. Both films ask questions about aesthetic contemplation and about the consumption of images, thereby commenting on the nature of the viewer’s role while featuring semiotic moments. In Egoyan and Spielberg’s works, the Semiotic reaffirms some of the symbolic messages, but also disrupts their order, which allows critics to address matters of pleasure and commodification in more complete and complex ways.