THE INTRIGUING ICONIC SIGN
THE INTRIGUING ICONIC SIGN

Summary/Abstract: The narrator in a text is the organizing other. Interpreting the narrator is therefore articulating an aspect of one’s identity. If an interpreter perceives a textual situation as non-mediated by a narrator, she perceives the situation as either objectively there, or as entirely a construct of her subjectivity, the modernistic split. In this paper, an argument is developed that the dominant narrative structures in our world of moving pictures show a strong iconic dominancy. This dominancy seduces the interpreter to neglect the indexical and symbolic in her interpretation, that is to neglect the relation with her experience and socialization, which is to neglect the narrator. This is because techniques of continuity editing dominate most moving pictures, especially documentaries and television reports, while thematic and cinematographic distinctions between so called ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ have largely disappeared. To bring back the awareness of the narrator requires a new form of media literacy.

• Details
• Contents