Symbols and Semiotics
The most basic building block of semiotics
What is a sign?
This concept describes a future in which communication technologies collapse space and time
What is the Global Village?
Physiological, physical, psychological, and semantic are all descriptors of this term.
What is Noise?
Who is Karl Marx?
Spielberg was seen as ironically initiating this film era
What is the Blockbuster Era?
The idea that words are only temporary carriers of meaning, and this meaning is often random.
What is arbitrariness?
McLuhan famously allowed this typo to be printed on the cover of his book
What is "the medium is the massage?"
Stuart Hall's process of 'producing' a message
What is Encoding?
The dominant cultural code of operation
What is Hegemony?
This type of closure in cinema affirms ideological values
What is narrative closure?
The Swiss founder of the field of semiotics
Who is Ferdinand de Saussure?
Occurs often on social media platforms, makes communication susceptible to distortion
What is Context Collapse?
A model of communication in which information is passed from the media (news networks) through influential others to the population
What is the Two-Step Model?
These stories are privileged above others in society, often times held as truth or gospel.
What are Dominant Narratives?
The period in cinema from 1920-1960 is known as this
What is the Studio/Star System?
The literal meaning of a word or symbol
What is Denotation?
"We shape our tools and then our tools shape us" (Rodriguez, p. 50) refers to this overarching McLuhanian concept
What is Media Ecology?
Stuart Hall's process of interpreting a message
What is Decoding?
This media ecologist was critical of technology's imagined ability to solve the world's biggest problems
Who is Neil Postman?
A style of shooting/film grammar that includes ‘everything that is in the frame’ of a shot
What is Mise-en-scene?
According to the earliest semiotic model, signs are composed of the signified and this
What is the signifier?
McLuhan argued that advertising could be made more effective if it used this concept.
What is Cool Media?
A stick-figure man is an example of this semiotics term
What is an Icon?
These scholars were critical of the power of cinema
Who are Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno?
Using this business technique, the production studio, the distribution network, and cinemas were owned by the same company.
What is the Vertical Integration of Hollywood?