↩[LWC 64]
After having read this post, and after observing a certain prevailing trend amongst entries and comments around my familiar regions of the blogosphere, I’m going to have to elaborate and modify an earlier argument in which it was stated that it is not the reader that creates meaning but the author. This whole post is probably more rooted in a semiotic and philosophical sphere in which I am nearly illiterate, although I will use David Bohm’s notion of “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” to facilitate this particular articulation.
In elaboration of Part 1, I’m going to add that, while it is not necessarily the viewer that creates meaning out of meaningless or not-so-meaningful things (I will later address the very notion of “creation”), the meaning that authors insert into anime is not all-encompassing of the entirety of the anime itself. As the title suggests, there is a serendipitous, if not incomplete component of the author’s construction of their universe; there is an implausibility of empiric semiosis (if this title didn’t already turn you off). In other words, more meaning exists beyond the first and fundamental semiosis, without disregarding that this primary semiosis is complete unto itself. This puts forth the controversial notion that a completed anime will have more meaning than what was originally created by the authors. And so what exactly does this nebulous jargon entail? Let me explain Bohm first.
Bohm thinks of the universe as a continuous flux wherein existing “sub-totalities” (i.e. these elementary particles and any kind of existing body like galaxies, stars, and so forth) are autonomous, but our perception of reality cannot be empirically reduced to such sub-total autonomies. In an interview with Bohm published by Omni, it was remarked that:
“Believing that the nature of things is not reducible to fragments or particles, he argues for a holistic view of the universe. He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the implicate order.”
In essence, sub-totalities are autonomous entities within the larger whole, yet this whole presupposes the existence of things that are part of it. Bohm also called this the “Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement,” that is to say that “this view implies that flow is, in some sense, prior to that of the ‘things’ that can be seen to form and dissolve in this flow.”
In receding now to the partialities and holistics of semiosis, the first thing I am addressing is the notion of “depth” in anime. The second is the processes by which we engage in this depth, that is, our alleged “creation of meaning”. The third is semiosis and hermeneutics as complete functions in and of themselves.
Section 1: Depth
After reading these pieces on depth in anime, there is a recurring motif dealing with depth which bifurcates meaning as simply existing or not existing. Batezi’s piece is the only one that dives into the subjectivity of interpretation, some talk about the difference between intellectual fan service vs. actual depth, and some talk about art vs. entertainment. However, none of these deal with depth as an already-existing thing besides one brief phrase about how “viewers search for meanings in some shows that aren’t there in the first place;” yet this quote is about searching, which presumes the existence of meaning but strives to prove such an existence.
However, my analysis is attempting not to epistemologically solve the issue of the ontological binary of meaning since that in itself presents us with the paradox of our methodology. I am trying to peer into the ontology – the form – of depth; not the epistemology – the content.
What I’m trying to say is that there is this prevailing trend to dismiss meaning as either there or not there in a single location – that there is no holistic process of semiosis and hermeneutics, and that there is no meta-analysis of the context of meaning in which anime is situated. There is an endless depth because anime is just a sub-totality within the wholeness of reality, and in such a relation, anime assumes all the meaning present in reality because essentially, they are one in the same. I’m arguing that depth is always there – not in a superficial Evangelion or Ergo Proxy fashion – but in the reality that is connoted, not the reality that is denoted as its own microcosm: anime metonymically connotes the entirety of reality, but denotes only a small focal portion of it.
You may discover a caveat to this interpretation: universes that do not depict our reality, as in, Gundam and whatnot; but do not be fooled, for the denotation is futuristic, the human relations are not. The very fact that any anime is inherently human in its relationships and mentalities, within an envisioned future or otherwise, will only buttress my argument that it is not the content of the meaning but the form, and that there is one and only one form of knowledge – human knowledge.
Section 2: The “Creation” of Meaning
Now we come upon a common debate: that there is no meaning and that viewers create the meaning, or whatever articulation you fancy. Since I stated in Section 1 that meaning is always there, this will refute (1) that meaning is created since this presumes that (2) there was no meaning to begin with. We are not ever really creating meaning, but rather, we are simply viewing the predominant meaning or extracting a more subtle one. In essence, we are viewing anime through different lenses. This is a good description since it’s widely used around the blogosphere. Another analogy I saw the use of the stencil in this post. Both the “lens” and “stencil” imply that only a portion of meaning is taken out – and this assumes that there is something more, something prior, which is wholeness. In order to use a stencil, you must first have a large wall. In order to have a lens, you must first have a complex body through which you interpret, not in fragments, but in “dimensions” or “flavors”.
This post also brings up how you can analyze anime through lenses (without actually referring to the process), in this case genres. The problem with lenses, stencils, genres and any kind of classificatory system, as I’ve been pointing out this whole time, is that they inherently disregard one thing or another. Comedy or slice of life? Slice of life or comedy? There was a spectrum included that demonstrated how an anime’s genre is not white and black, that there is a gradient. However, the problem with this is that such a gradient is composed of homogenous fragments (genres) and is still planted within the discourse of anime whose fragmentatious nature always divides, cuts up, divides, chops up, until now we have what is seemingly heterogeneity – but it is not, since that very gradient is still paradigmatically homogenous, that is to say, each section going from SoL to comedy is homogenous unto itself. This is what Bohm has argued. In trying to strictly define anime, we make our systems of classification smaller and smaller until we have these fundamental units of analysis that constitute anime. We cannot be fooled by the syntagm of heterogeneity.
Hence, the serendipity of our hermeneutics. We may look for one thing, but end up finding another, both of which (all of which) exist within the same wholeness.
Section 3: The Completeness of Semiosis and Hermeneutics
Semiosis and hermeneutics are processes by which meaning is, in Bohm’s terms, enfolded and unfolded, or through the conduit metaphor, packaged and unpackaged. When meaning is packaged, there is no extra meaning whatsoever. This is the author’s intent. What the author intends, he or she intends, and that’s it. However, what they intend and the final products they create are different. They create those universes that connote infinity. However, their denotation – their intent – is strictly limited. I’m expanding (and obfuscating) these terms in that the author’s intent is both denoted (what is visible) and connoted (what is invisible), while the original connotation is not inserted into the medium, since that is impossible. Culture and wholeness connote denotation. If this is bizarrely confusing read this post about Barthes’ “Photographic Paradox“. This post is called Part 2 for a reason. I also made a fancy diagram.
Second level signification (or second-order in Barthesian terms) is simply when the denotative acquires a connotation due to culture. That is, when a sign elicits an understanding that is cultural, for instance, the intellectual fanservice in Evangelion. Third level signification refers not even to the meaning which the sign itself produces, but the ideology around it and how it is used. This is the metaphysics of the sign: for instance, lolicon being a staple of otakudom.
Basically, this section being the complement of the first, I’m saying that while there is an infinite amount of depth in the external reality that is imaginatively internalized within anime, the semiosis of meaning does not insert that specific depth into the final product because the author’s denotation – his intent and semiosis – cannot also contain a connotation. We cannot possibly uncover an inserted connotation within the physical denotation – that is why we always guess at what the author really meant, and in those rare times when they tell us, they are giving us their own connotation. But we cannot forget that there is a connotation within the denotative anime – that is wholeness. That is the realm in which we analyze, interpret, misinterpret, create meaning, and so forth. This realm of wholeness is not created by the author, yet this does not make it by any means “incorrect”.
Selected Responses
IKnight: I suspect the language of this post is beyond me (especially at 00:15). I’m sure you’ve grasped my own position, that meaning is created whenever the viewer plays the anime, like a musical score; I like it like that because it’s simple, complex semiotics being mostly beyond me whatever time of day it is! I’m struggling to see how there can be any meaning in something before it’s experienced. It might help if I mention that epistemologically I stand somewhere near Berkeley’s immaterialism (which may explain a lot).
One minor thing I suppose I should mention is that I find it hard to see the way genres, lenses &c always disregard things as a problem. I think of it more as essential to the way we experience the world and think (‘Forgetting meanings is also part of reading’). But it’s entirely possible that you were going somewhere else with that, so excuse me if this paragraph is a misstep.
Anyhow, great post, though I think it requires some re-re-reading. I suspect I’ll be revisiting it.
Mike: I am also of the opinion that meaning is created. Not all meaning is simply there. I think I would also need to re-read the post, but I strongly disagree that meaning is simply around us. It has to be created, mentioned, or pertained to – otherwise, how can it exist?
Lelangir: Animanachronism/Michael: You both brought up meaning-as-experience. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about meaning in that sense, nor did I even conceive of a possibility of a semantic issue behind “meaning” (sorry!), but rather, meaning-as-depth, or meaning as products of analysis. The “meaning” you’re referring to I would agree with, that you can’t experience anything before it’s experienced. That makes sense. And I’m always up for different experiences that can only be created, however, when we analyze anime, I have used “meaning” to be defined as its “physics” or “mathematics” – its inherent logicalness due to its location within wholeness. That’s why when we hear the phrase “that ‘meaning’ is wrong” I disagree with that – since a “wrong” meaning assumes there is finite meaning. I think we do need to make a distinction between these two definitions, although if I’m wrong this whole thing goes down the drain!
There is that infinite meaning insofar as it is accessible, and in that case, anime is the medium or gateway to accessing that wholeness, since it is imaginatively internalized. Perhaps it would have sufficed here to bring up Benedict Anderson but he doesn’t use imagined communities in the same way so that may have convoluted the essay even more.
Animanachronism: I think that lenses and so forth are inherently problematic because they’re not holistic. This disregarding of other meanings – a fragmented weltanschauung – leads to the belief that they are wrong and that, again, meaning is finite. While it is important to forget some meanings while reading, it does not have to be so through lenses, in that meaning can be manipulated to one’s desire after it is extracted via wholeness. Hypocritically to say the least, I don’t really know how that’s possible – I literally cannot imagine a different mode of interpretation in action – that is something hard to visualize.
Mike: Ah, I see more clearly now. In that case, I would have to agree with you. As products of analysis one can never limit meaning in a container or a placement in either right or wrong, black or white. In that case, I agree, meaning is indeed infinite, because otherwise, saying an interpretation is correct or wrong limits the text – and this is something we do not want.
I would say that while I understand your argument and the gist of your post, like Animanachronism, I was never an expertise in semiotics. Worse, I’ve never read Roland Barthes like you two. Without the references, however, I still ‘get’ (somewhat) the drive of your post. 
Baka-raptor: As long as you admit it
Practically, we can’t help but box our analyses into neat little categories. Meaning may be infinite but our brains’ capacities aren’t. We couldn’t function efficiently if we had to analyze everything from scratch. Imagine:
Me: What kind of show is Lucky Star?
Lelangir: It’s everything.
Me: *Spaces out*
Lelangir: *Steals my wallet*
I’ve must admit, this whole Semiosis/Hermeneutics messing with me. My old view was that the author’s intended interpretation is the only correct one, and anything else is BS. I don’t expect to change that view drastically, but maybe, thanks to you, I’ll be less harsh on all those hippies who create extract their own meaning.
IKnight: Ok, I think I see where you were going with this. So there’s a kind of inherent meaning (not as experience) to be found in anime because of its origins in, existence as part of, and role in metonymically connoting (I liked that bit), everything? I suspect my unease really is the product of my immaterialism, then: my idea of ‘everything’ is horribly contingent and doubt-ridden.
15 Comments
Too confusing.
ahhhh, lit majors…
if you really think about it, all meaning and language is an agreement between speakers and listeners/writers and readers. the word “agreement” means what it means because you and i have agreed AND continue to agree what it means.
therefore, there really is some “meaning” in any intended communication – most especially created works of culture (art, anime, music, etc.). however, and this is important: that meaning (the intention) is subjectively interpreted by each person who experiences it.
will there be an agreement between the viewer and the creator of the anime? only if they both confirm and validate each other’s experience of the work after the fact.
most likely there will be agreements between many people who experience the created work since these people will communicate more often with each other discussing the work (through reviews, blogs, 4chan, etc.).
majority wins.
this is why for now (and meaning is actually temporal – this will change as more people change their views and validate each other), code geass is a “trainwreck”.
It’s not too confusing, but I did need to related the expressed logic into the realm of the pure science.
(all of which) exist within the same wholeness.
I concur, and I believe this is the defining moment of the concept. Not only does this apply for genre, but also meaning, yet in slightly varied aspects. You write of the gradient, but I think genre may better be thought of as a non-negative scalar, subjectively computed.
If each genre can be 0 or greater, then we can assume every genre exists for every title, and create the genre vector. Among the vector dimensions, some genre naturally shine more than others (each genre is it’s own dimension).
Now, in terms of meaning, I also see a duality, similar the idea of Schroedinger’s cat, but rather than having or not having meaning, the meaning is either recognized or has infinite potential. The potential is important to note, because it is the viewer which transforms that potential into recognized meaning (subjectively).
Finally, on the notion of a writer’s intent of meaning. I believe a viewer’s meaning and a writer’s meaning to be separate, for the reason that the entirety of a writer’s meaning can never be fully recognized unless explicitly declared (externally from the source material).
In some manner, everything exists and voids all at once, but the difference between the realized and unrealized may be a more daunting transform than simple linear translation.
Sorry if the ideas are a little broken up, I haven’t considered a better way to mesh them.
So…anime is a ‘part’ of reality, and thus here is inherent meaning/depth to anime, surpassing what individuals, authors & viewers inclusive, can each read from it. That’s a realist stand, that it’s all ‘out there’ and existing as a whole even though it is impossible for any individual to know of that whole. We are all only able to know of the parts of it that our own cultural upbringing and past experiences can afford us. So even if it’s unintended, that meaning is still valid and there. Thus there is no way to take a piece out of ‘human knowledge’ and set it aside on its own, nor is there anyway to have knowledge beyond ‘human knowledge’.
Doesn’t that raise a problem with infinite meaning/depths? Essentially there’s no ‘correct’ or ‘wrong’, only what the author meant and what the author didn’t intend to mean. [which, if you put freud into the mix, will get much more complex, for the author's subconscious intent is not even knowable to him/herself.] I’m rather uncomfortable with having infinite possibilities, since having nothing to differentiate them results in the lack of meaning [similar in the case of extreme subjectivity] So where do we get the basis for the judgment of whether interpretations are wrong or right? Social consensus? or it’s pointless to talk about wrong/right interpretations?
I myself is more on the idealist side though, that reality is without meaning, [if it actually exists in the first place] and that meaning must be created, etc etc. For isnt’ it human ability to associate and distinguish? reality without intepretation would be uniform and thus meaningless.
———
have to say it’s a hard post to digest; esp. that my education had been 90% pure science, so lots of terms looks…alien XD.
…wrote this on 2nd reading, and there are some parts that i suspect I still do not fully understand. oh well, that’s what makes things interesting.
————–
so, on the side, what is the work, i.e. the anime? is it just the images, the physical entity, or is it the ideas included in it? interpretations? because as viewers there is eventually a grey zone that we cannot erase which contain things that could have been put there by the creator, or interpreted by us… to admit ideas make up the work too, doesn’t it put us in with the creators too?
Reika:
Wouldn’t saying that it’s arbitrary work here?
I thought lelangir has said that it encompasses all of this stuff. In terms of us finding meaning in it, you could say that we’re all creators, but that seems to open up more bags or worms.
ah yes it does. conciseness is forever beyond my reach, lol.
SoSo/Karin: Typical.
ghostlightening: I’m not a lit matjor; language and meaning aren’t contingent upon agreement ipso facto. We inherently, linguistically and cognitively agree based on the principles of English, but the content of our meaning isn’t in agreement, not “the meaning of language” itself.
The majority only establishes the discourse. Of course what seems agreeable upon is based on and within the discourse that it was realized and made visible. It’s because – technically speaking – that discourse already existed and was simply realized itself through various sociocultural/etc. conditions.
RyanA: Ew, science…I don’t get what you mean when you use your non-negative scalar metaphor. The potentiality thing makes sense though.
reika: It is probably pointless to speak of right or wrong in this context. It takes human cognizance to actualize, realize, concretize, make visible, interpret, digest, extract (etc. etc.) meaning, though in this theoretical “wholeness” it existed before human intelligence did – it’s existence that hermeneutically “necessitates” sapient concretization is not in any contingent upon humanity itself. Basically, it always existed, but it needs some kind of intelligence that concretely exists in the universe to make it visible and known to some observer.
There was originally a fifth section here on the disassembly of the roles of author/viewer, not because any one creates, but because they both have to actualize meaning from wholeness. Generally, it was just too short and overly redundant.
I don’t think meaning distinguishes between its medium. Images, physical entities, ideas, sounds, feelings; they’re all equal conduits for meaning. What does a drop of water mean? What does the sound of a piano mean? It’s about what the ethereal, bodyless meaning rather than the physical link through which it passes.
N: mmhm.
Generally, this “serendipity” thing is a very politically unviable tool. Who cares if meaning is infinite? It has a tendency to distract from political priorities. It’s kind of ironic that this is intellectual fanservice, or at least mental masturbation. (though this time around the text wasn’t the intended [hence irrelevant at that] meaning anyway.)
@ lelangir,
this discussion has become quite entertaining. forgive me if i won’t bother quoting my sources – in return i won’t pretend to contribute anything original.
language itself is a system of agreements. discourse only exists because there is a language that powers it. each individual utterance of sound, or each sign experienced by a person may be ascribed meaning contingent to the person’s subjective experience. when that person reproduces that utterance or sign as a unit of communication to another person, it is nothing more than a proposal. it is up to the recipient to agree on the meaning (with the sender, or with other recievers).
this is why there is plenty of difference (as well as a lot of similarities) with alphabets and phonetics (aspecially those using roman letters). the spanish agree with themselves that the letters j and x produces h sounds, while the english don’t necessarily agree (at least for the first few times they hear it).
complex signs like an anime follow the same rules. the planning team wants to communicate a specific thing, the writer perhaps another, the stockholders maybe another, and then there’s the director.
anime is released, initiating the discourse between creators and consumers.
the anime itself, once produced is consumed through the filters of expectations of each individual consumer. these people talk to each other (another discourse) and form conclusions that become popular. and for a time, this is what will stand. this i believe why code geass has the dubious honor of being enjoyed as a “trainwreck”.
So all this was just about trainwreck Anime? Man did I miss the point…
Someone ought to make a meme of a brain dressed in pantsu with the caption “Intellectual Fanservice”. To Photoshop I go, if no-one else will…
@lelangir, non-negative scalar wasn’t a metaphor, I was referring to numbers greater-than, or equal-to, zero. I was implying that the value I wrote of was not, however, a vector.
And also, any statement in language can be expressed using logical statements, which can incorporate the same meaning with a more compact dictionary; hence efficiency. I feel trying to get philosophical on language is a round-robin.
ghostlightning: Perhaps, though we can take a large, aggregate terminology as “Spanish” for granted here; there are a multitude of dialects of what we can call “Standard Spanish” like Standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, Pacuco, and so forth (Anzaldúa, 1987) – also that Standard Spanish speakers of the Iberian Peninsula (at least those of Seville from what I’ve heard) pronounce the theta (‘z’ goes to ‘th’), while speakers within Mexico don’t. Perhaps yes, architecturally speaking, language is ‘a system of agreements’ since it then has power to establish various discourses.
For all intensive purposes, language as a structural, artificial, synthetic thing is a system of agreements, though meaning can be different. As you said, that meaning must be accepted and decoded to be realized, mentally concretized and actualized, though by the intent of that author, the meaning exists by his or her very awareness of that meaning, regardless of its acceptance by another practitioner of that same cognitive system. By extension, meaning is contingent soley upon nothing but its very existence, though through the production of semiotic noise via culture and interpretation meaning is then based upon agreement and disagreement. The decoding of linguistic proposals would then make little or no distinction between agreement or disagreement, “correct” or “false” interpretation, as these are dependant upon a “biased”, cultural view that uses specified systems of cognizance with which to differentially interpret signs. Essentially, meaning is not exclusively dependant upon agreement nor disagreement but, rather, on the very act of realization, actualization, concretization. [The reverse swastika in Manabi Straight will generate different first-hand thoughts for those who are historically [un]aware of the Nazi’s propagation of that shape, but, nevertheless, an interpretation of its placement constitutes pure meaning]
Yes, Geass is labeled as a trainwreck because the advocators and propagators of the discourse on it are x, y, and z. The dubious honor that some anime are entitled to by the ‘aristocracy’ of the aniblogosphere has a rather hegemonic relationship to most ‘proletarian’ viewers and/or bloggers. Kaioshin’s counter hegemony against the discourse on Geass and ideology of ‘trainwreckage’ is admirable. Though any three-dimensional person can see how, in comparison to the average two-dimensional consumer, getting tangled up within Geass leaves little room for analysis that stems from its content though occurs extradimensionally to it and into a larger context.
JM: It’s not…
RyanA: ew…science…math…but I get what you mean, now that I thought about the term.
“any statement in language can be expressed using logical statements,” what about non-sequitors? They’re not philosophically logical, but linguistically, syntatically, they can be.
@lelangir:
AAAAAARRGGH! My brain, it burns!
Let’s not start mentioning the F word, Foucault that is, not the four letter one…
@lelangir, non-sequiturs can be expressed in logic, but it will be incomplete logic, and therefore not as useful (shows the fallacy). I think this is a special case, because tautologies can be shown even when “assuming the opposite is true” or any kind of assumption, so long it blossoms in the closing statements. We are on a tangent, I agree that sometimes logic needs to be thrown out, but most of the time it can clarify things.
@ lelangir,
well argued. i do maintain the agreement argument. meaning as an “in-itself” (omg here comes the existentialists) is a no-thing, until agreed upon as a unit of, or represented by, language. your reverse swastika example created different experiences among the viewers, but i predict that after exposure to discussion about it, the hegemony of the more widely accepted meaning will prevail, at least for a time (longer perhaps than the first impressions, shared with the local/immediate community).
the phenomenon of dialects can be interpreted as a phenomenon of power relationships as well. the dominant english was the english of the ruling class and the communities/colonies around them (Received Standard English). It took CNN in the 90s to dislodge this english as the most spoken and understood. Still, it maintains some hegemony due to the cultural artifacts written in it – Shakespeare, being so valued.
@Ryan A,
logical statements cannot be made outside of language. math is expressed entirely as a language. it’s not called english or french, just the language of math. 1 is an acceptable symbol for things that are not 0, 0.01, 1.1, 2, etc.
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