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robinturnerWhoopee, CNBC are going to show Trois Couleurs: Bleu this Wednesday. Cancel all appointments, I'm going to have a couple of hours of Binocholatry.
La Binoche - 18/9/99 (just)
Oh, yes, I remember now, and it wasn't anything of significance to anyone but me and a few dedicated Juliette Binoche fans. If you find French actresses and semiotics boring, skip this.
Last night I watched The English Patient again. I was actually much more moved by it the second time, because the first time I was only interested in watching Juliette Binoche, and wasn't so interested in the main plot. This time I took in the full tragedy of the film, which at times makes King Lear look like Heidi. Even so, I still paid far more attention when Binoche was on-screen.
My wife is familiar with this obsession, and while pottering around the house took pains to jokingly make disparaging remarks about my goddess. She had a point when she said that Binoche doesn't have a particularly sexy body, but that really isn't the point. It is her face, her voice and her body-language that drive people like me to an almost religious devotion. On second thoughts, forget the "almost". Obviously if God exists, It does not resemble a human being, but if It did, that human would be Juliette Binoche.
What is it that inspires this devotion amongst Binoche fans? It's certainly not just sex-appeal. La Binoche has as great an effect on women as on men - I have a female student who shares my obsession, and like me, is puzzled by the fact. Binoche is a very good actress, but there are better - Jodie Foster, for example, who fills me with awe as an actress, but leaves me rather cold as a person.
Unfortunately, Binoche's presence on the web has declined. Whatever her divine attributes may be, she obviously is not hip to cyberspace, and, under the influence of some unnamed malevolent being, has decided that the WWW is a vehicle for porn-addicts, child-molesters and the like. She has broken off correspondence with sites like www.binoche.com and has even, apparently, taken legal action to stop her pictures being shown on some web-sites. This strikes me as a bit like God taking out an injunction to close churches.
Exaggeration like this aside, what interests me most is this tendency for even the most rational of us to idolise people, ascribing qualities to them which they don't possess, or, more commonly, which they possess to some extent, but not to the impossible extent we like to imagine. Obviously I don't really believe in the divinity of Juliette Binoche. I'm sure her armpits smell if she doesn't wash, and she may well pick her nose into the bargain. She is as human as any of us, and behind that beautiful face there must be at least a few unpleasant thoughts from time to time. Maybe she filches spoonfuls of her friends' desserts when they're not looking. I don't know.
This means it's time to get semiotic. In Saussurean terms, what I know of Binoche is a signified, not a signifier (these words have the opposite meaning to what you would expect - the signified is what we would normally call a sign). In the simplest sense, the words "Juliette Binoche" are not the same as the person, but bear an arbitrary relationship to them. This is the essence of Saussure's linguistics, and you might be tempted to say "Huh, big deal." Saussure was only concerned with language, and his aim was to show that signs (i.e. words) only have a meaningful (i.e. not arbitrary) relationship with each other. But what about a sign like a picture of Binoche? Obviously the picture is not the person, but the relationship is not arbitrary either. Juliette's parents could have named her Marie-Claire or Fido, but they couldn't really have given her a different face.
If we move on to Charles Sanders Peirce, we get a slightly more useful model for my Binoche obsession. Rather than a simple and arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, we have a triad: the Object (Binoche herself, or Binoche as depicted), the sign or "Representamen" (the name "Binoche" or a photograph of her) and, resulting from the two, the Interpretant, which is "the proper significate effect," i.e. what is supposed to happen on hearing the name or seeing the photograph. What makes a name and a photograph different is that the former is a Symbol whereas the latter is an Icon. Symbols relate to their objects in a purely conventional way, while Icons have some resemblance to their objects. This is related to some rather weird ideas Peirce had about "Firstness", "Secondness" and "Thirdness", but fortunately this particular example is pretty simple.
So far, so good, but this is not enough to explain the obsession. What makes Peirce's theory fun is that each Interpetant is also a Representamen, or sign. The new sign relates to a new Object, leading to a new Interpretant, and so on, which has the wonderful name of "unlimited semiosis". To oversimplify things (and oversimplifying is the only way I can understand Peirce) this is like the association of ideas that patients used to produce on psychiatrists' couches when such things were still fashionable, or the "stream of consciousness" typical of daydreaming or experimental writing. What is important is that, at least as I see it, it is not a simple linear stream. The process branches out, doubles back on itself and produces feedback loops. The photograph is not a simple sign that represents an actress (which is what a Saussurean view would imply) but, through its Interpretant, sparks off a whole complex of signs, many of which feed back into the Icon, or photograph. At a basic level, I don't see a photograph and just think, "Oh that's Juliette Binoche," I access a whole load of images from her films and the characters she plays in them, which then charge the photograph with extra meaning. When I watch The English Patient (tragedy), I am also at some level watching Three Colours, Blue (redemption), The Lovers of the Pont Neuf (???) and even A Couch in New York (comedy). In this way, a complex and emotionally-charged "Binocheness" becomes the Interpretant of the Icon. Wow, look at that last sentence - I'm starting to sound like a post-modernist.
Now, I could go further and look at the question from the standpoint of Lacan, Derrida or whoever, but the risk of making a fool of myself, great enough to start with, increases as I adopt the views of philosophers I understand even less than Saussure and Peirce. What interests me is this idea of "Binocheness", which implies that there is something in this tangle of signs that I can name as a kind of super-sign.
Now, I would hazard a guess that as signs acquire an ever-greater complex of Interpretants and evolve through ascending levels of super-signs (or "connotative signs", as Barthes more prosaically called them) they get kind of metaphysical. "Binocheness" sounds almost Platonic, and it is tempting to reverse the process and think of a Platonic Idea of Binoche, of which the "actual" Juliette Binoche is simply a shadow. Where Plato got it wrong (in my arrogant opinion) was the "simply a shadow" part. Reading Plato, most people get the feeling that he was looking at the world backwards. It takes a supreme effort of imagination to think of the Idea of a table as being more real than the physical piece of wood. On the other hand, it doesn't take quite such a leap of faith to believe in "Binocheness". We are so used to believing in abstractions like "mind", "love" or "democracy" that one more shouldn't make much of a difference.
Unfortunately, English is not well suited to abstraction. While continental philosophers were getting carried off into metaphysics (and later, semiotics), the prosaic Anglo-Saxons were still debating things like "What do I really mean when I say 'this table'?" Trying to talk about semiotics in English can all too easily make you sound like a complete prat (as is probably the case with this diary entry). We have a limited set of abstractions, which is why "tableness" sounds silly, but "freedom" doesn't. People get away with saying "I believe in democracy" but not with "I believe in Binocheness."
But this is simply a matter of linguistic habit. When Hindus talk about Krishna, they can mean either a particular person with blue skin and a fondness for cow-girls, or they can mean a metaphysical principle. This is one reason why it's so easy to get deified in India, not because people think that if you sit cross-legged for long enough you turn into a god, but that they recognise that you embody an aspect of the cosmos that is worth putting your name on. From this perspective, worshipping Juliette Binoche - or Binocheness, to be more precise - doesn't sound so silly after all.
To finish this before I myself reel off into unlimited semiosis, a few words form Binoche herself that seem somehow appropriate:
"Being an actress is to forget yourself, to radiate charm. To give something that was brought you: maybe the grace, the strength and the last element, the one that brings a fragrance to your mind: the absence."
La Binoche - 18/9/99 (just)
Oh, yes, I remember now, and it wasn't anything of significance to anyone but me and a few dedicated Juliette Binoche fans. If you find French actresses and semiotics boring, skip this.
Last night I watched The English Patient again. I was actually much more moved by it the second time, because the first time I was only interested in watching Juliette Binoche, and wasn't so interested in the main plot. This time I took in the full tragedy of the film, which at times makes King Lear look like Heidi. Even so, I still paid far more attention when Binoche was on-screen.
My wife is familiar with this obsession, and while pottering around the house took pains to jokingly make disparaging remarks about my goddess. She had a point when she said that Binoche doesn't have a particularly sexy body, but that really isn't the point. It is her face, her voice and her body-language that drive people like me to an almost religious devotion. On second thoughts, forget the "almost". Obviously if God exists, It does not resemble a human being, but if It did, that human would be Juliette Binoche.
What is it that inspires this devotion amongst Binoche fans? It's certainly not just sex-appeal. La Binoche has as great an effect on women as on men - I have a female student who shares my obsession, and like me, is puzzled by the fact. Binoche is a very good actress, but there are better - Jodie Foster, for example, who fills me with awe as an actress, but leaves me rather cold as a person.
Unfortunately, Binoche's presence on the web has declined. Whatever her divine attributes may be, she obviously is not hip to cyberspace, and, under the influence of some unnamed malevolent being, has decided that the WWW is a vehicle for porn-addicts, child-molesters and the like. She has broken off correspondence with sites like www.binoche.com and has even, apparently, taken legal action to stop her pictures being shown on some web-sites. This strikes me as a bit like God taking out an injunction to close churches.
Exaggeration like this aside, what interests me most is this tendency for even the most rational of us to idolise people, ascribing qualities to them which they don't possess, or, more commonly, which they possess to some extent, but not to the impossible extent we like to imagine. Obviously I don't really believe in the divinity of Juliette Binoche. I'm sure her armpits smell if she doesn't wash, and she may well pick her nose into the bargain. She is as human as any of us, and behind that beautiful face there must be at least a few unpleasant thoughts from time to time. Maybe she filches spoonfuls of her friends' desserts when they're not looking. I don't know.
This means it's time to get semiotic. In Saussurean terms, what I know of Binoche is a signified, not a signifier (these words have the opposite meaning to what you would expect - the signified is what we would normally call a sign). In the simplest sense, the words "Juliette Binoche" are not the same as the person, but bear an arbitrary relationship to them. This is the essence of Saussure's linguistics, and you might be tempted to say "Huh, big deal." Saussure was only concerned with language, and his aim was to show that signs (i.e. words) only have a meaningful (i.e. not arbitrary) relationship with each other. But what about a sign like a picture of Binoche? Obviously the picture is not the person, but the relationship is not arbitrary either. Juliette's parents could have named her Marie-Claire or Fido, but they couldn't really have given her a different face.
If we move on to Charles Sanders Peirce, we get a slightly more useful model for my Binoche obsession. Rather than a simple and arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, we have a triad: the Object (Binoche herself, or Binoche as depicted), the sign or "Representamen" (the name "Binoche" or a photograph of her) and, resulting from the two, the Interpretant, which is "the proper significate effect," i.e. what is supposed to happen on hearing the name or seeing the photograph. What makes a name and a photograph different is that the former is a Symbol whereas the latter is an Icon. Symbols relate to their objects in a purely conventional way, while Icons have some resemblance to their objects. This is related to some rather weird ideas Peirce had about "Firstness", "Secondness" and "Thirdness", but fortunately this particular example is pretty simple.
So far, so good, but this is not enough to explain the obsession. What makes Peirce's theory fun is that each Interpetant is also a Representamen, or sign. The new sign relates to a new Object, leading to a new Interpretant, and so on, which has the wonderful name of "unlimited semiosis". To oversimplify things (and oversimplifying is the only way I can understand Peirce) this is like the association of ideas that patients used to produce on psychiatrists' couches when such things were still fashionable, or the "stream of consciousness" typical of daydreaming or experimental writing. What is important is that, at least as I see it, it is not a simple linear stream. The process branches out, doubles back on itself and produces feedback loops. The photograph is not a simple sign that represents an actress (which is what a Saussurean view would imply) but, through its Interpretant, sparks off a whole complex of signs, many of which feed back into the Icon, or photograph. At a basic level, I don't see a photograph and just think, "Oh that's Juliette Binoche," I access a whole load of images from her films and the characters she plays in them, which then charge the photograph with extra meaning. When I watch The English Patient (tragedy), I am also at some level watching Three Colours, Blue (redemption), The Lovers of the Pont Neuf (???) and even A Couch in New York (comedy). In this way, a complex and emotionally-charged "Binocheness" becomes the Interpretant of the Icon. Wow, look at that last sentence - I'm starting to sound like a post-modernist.
Now, I could go further and look at the question from the standpoint of Lacan, Derrida or whoever, but the risk of making a fool of myself, great enough to start with, increases as I adopt the views of philosophers I understand even less than Saussure and Peirce. What interests me is this idea of "Binocheness", which implies that there is something in this tangle of signs that I can name as a kind of super-sign.
Now, I would hazard a guess that as signs acquire an ever-greater complex of Interpretants and evolve through ascending levels of super-signs (or "connotative signs", as Barthes more prosaically called them) they get kind of metaphysical. "Binocheness" sounds almost Platonic, and it is tempting to reverse the process and think of a Platonic Idea of Binoche, of which the "actual" Juliette Binoche is simply a shadow. Where Plato got it wrong (in my arrogant opinion) was the "simply a shadow" part. Reading Plato, most people get the feeling that he was looking at the world backwards. It takes a supreme effort of imagination to think of the Idea of a table as being more real than the physical piece of wood. On the other hand, it doesn't take quite such a leap of faith to believe in "Binocheness". We are so used to believing in abstractions like "mind", "love" or "democracy" that one more shouldn't make much of a difference.
Unfortunately, English is not well suited to abstraction. While continental philosophers were getting carried off into metaphysics (and later, semiotics), the prosaic Anglo-Saxons were still debating things like "What do I really mean when I say 'this table'?" Trying to talk about semiotics in English can all too easily make you sound like a complete prat (as is probably the case with this diary entry). We have a limited set of abstractions, which is why "tableness" sounds silly, but "freedom" doesn't. People get away with saying "I believe in democracy" but not with "I believe in Binocheness."
But this is simply a matter of linguistic habit. When Hindus talk about Krishna, they can mean either a particular person with blue skin and a fondness for cow-girls, or they can mean a metaphysical principle. This is one reason why it's so easy to get deified in India, not because people think that if you sit cross-legged for long enough you turn into a god, but that they recognise that you embody an aspect of the cosmos that is worth putting your name on. From this perspective, worshipping Juliette Binoche - or Binocheness, to be more precise - doesn't sound so silly after all.
To finish this before I myself reel off into unlimited semiosis, a few words form Binoche herself that seem somehow appropriate:
"Being an actress is to forget yourself, to radiate charm. To give something that was brought you: maybe the grace, the strength and the last element, the one that brings a fragrance to your mind: the absence."
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-12 05:01 pm (UTC)Abstractions
Date: 2003-04-13 12:59 pm (UTC)One Englishman once told me that English philosophers don't think. Sweeping statement indeedy, but interesting nevertheless. :-) Does it have something to do with what you are talking about the abstractions?
(This is really inane comment, I know.)
Re: Abstractions
Date: 2003-04-13 01:23 pm (UTC)