Excerpt on sign and frame from Umberto Eco, Semiotics of Theatrical Performance

Semiotics of Theatrical Performance Author(s): Umberto Eco Reviewed work(s): Source: The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 21, No. 1, Theatre and Social Action Issue (Mar., 1977), pp. 107-117 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1145112 .

EXCERPT

…. Let me start with an example proposed (without thinking of theatre) by the founding father of American semiotics, C. S. Peirce. He once wondered what kind of sign could have been defined by a drunkard exposed in a public place by the Salvation Army in order to advertise the advantages of temperance. He did not answer this question. I shall do it now. Tentatively. We are in a better position than Averroes. Even though trying to keep a naive attitude, we cannot eliminate some background knowledge. We have read not only Aristotle but also Francis Ferguson, Etienne Souriau, Peter Szondi, Umberto Eco and Woody Allen. We know Sophocles, Gilbert and Sullivan, and King Lear, I Love Lucy and En attendant Godot and A Chorus Line, Phbdre and No, No Nanette, Murder in the Cathedral and Let My People Come and The Jew of Malta and Oh Calcutta!. Therefore we immediately suspect that in that sudden epiphany of intoxication lies the basic mystery of (theatrical) performance.

As soon as he has been put on the platform and shown to the audience, the drunken man has lost his original nature of “real” body among real bodies. He is no more a world object among world objects-he has become a semiotic device; he is now a sign. A sign, according to Peirce, is something that stands to somebody for something else in some respect or capacity-a physical presence referring back to something absent. What is our drunken man referring back to? To a drunken man. But not to the drunk who he is, but to a drunk. The present drunk-insofar as he is the member of a class-is referring us back to the class of which he is a member. He stands for the category he belongs to. There is no difference, in principle, between our intoxicated character and the word “drunk.”

Apparently this drunk stands for the equivalent expression, “There is a drunken man,” but things are not that simple. The physical presence of the human body along with its characteristics could stand either for the phrase, “There is a drunken man in this precise place and in this precise moment,” or for the one”Once upon a time there was a drunken man”; it could also mean, “There are many drunken men in the world.” As a matter of fact, in the example I am giving, and according to Peirce’s suggestion, the third alternative is the case. To interpret this physical presence in one or in another sense is a matter of convention, and a more sophisticated theatrical performance would establish this convention by means of other semiotic media-for instance, words. But at the point we are, our tipsy-sign is open to any interpretation: He stands for all the existing drunken men in our real world and in every possible world. He is an open expression (or sign-vehicle) referring back to an open range of possible con- tents.

Nevertheless, there is a way in which this presence is different from the presence of a word or of a picture. It has not been actively produced (as one produces a word or draws an image)-it has been picked up among the existing physical bodies and it has been shown or ostended. It is the result of a particular mode of sign production. Ostension has been studied by medieval logicians, by Wittgenstein, by contemporary theorists of theatre (for instance, the Czech, Ivo Osolsobe). Ostension is one of the various ways of signifying, consisting in de-realizing a given object in order to make it stand for an entire class. But ostension is, at the same time, the most basic instance of performance.

You ask me, “How should I be dressed for the party this evening?” If I answer by showing my tie framed by my jacket and say, “Like this, more or less,” I am signifying by ostension. My tie does not mean my actual tie but your possible tie (which can be of a different stuff and color) and I am “performing” by representing to you the you of this evening. I am prescribing to you how you should look this evening. With this simple gesture I am doing something that is theatre at its best, since I not only tell you something, but I am offering to you a model, giving you an order or a suggestion, outlining a utopia or a feasible project. I am not only picturing a given behavior, I am in fact eliciting a behavior, emphasizing a duty, mirroring your future. In Jakobsonian terms, my message is at the same time a referential, a phatic, an imperative, an emotive-and (provided I move gracefully) it is esthetic. By picturing your future way of dressing (through my present one) I have, however, added the verbal expression “more or less.” My performance, which was eminently visual and behavioral, has been accompanied by a verbal metalinguistic message establishing some criteria of perti- nence. “More of less” signified “making an abstraction from the particular stuff, color and size of my tie.” It was a rather important device; it helped you to de-realize the object that was standing for something else. It was reducing the pertinent features of the vehicle I used to signify “tie” to you, in order to make it able to signify all the possible ties you can think of.

The same happens with our intoxicated man. It is not necessary that he have a specific face, a specific eye color, a moustache or a beard, a jacket or a sweater. It is, however, necessary (or at least I think so) that his nose be red or violet; his eyes dimmed by a liquid obtuseness; his hair, his moustache or his beard ruffled and dirty; his clothes splashed with mud, sagging and worn-out. I am thinking of the typical Bowery character but when I think of him, I am ready to make abstractions from many features, provided that some essential characteristics are conserved and emphasized. The list of these characteristics is established by a social code, a sort of iconographic convention. The very moment our sargeant of the Salvation Army has chosen the right drunk, he has made recourse to a socialized knowledge. His choice has been semiotically oriented. He has been looking for the right man just as one looks for the right word.

Nevertheless, there is something that distinguishes our drunkard from a word. A word is a sign, but it does not conceal its sign-quality. We conventionally accept that through words someone speaks about reality, but we do not confuse words with things (except in cases of mental illness). When speaking, we are conscious that something impalpable (flatus vocis) stands for something presumably palpable (except in cases of lying). But not every sign-system follows the same rules as the others. In the case of our elementary model of mise-en-scbne, the drunk is a sign, but he is a sign that pretends not to be such. The drunkard is playing a double game: In order to be accepted as a sign, he has to be recognized as a “real” spatio-temporal event, a real human body. In theatre, there is a “square semiosis.” With words, a phonic object stands for other objects made with different stuff. In the mise-en-scene an object, first recognized as a real object, is then assumed as a sign in order to refer back to another object (or to a class of objects) whose constitutive stuff is the same as that of the representing object.

I stress this point because it makes evident a crucial semiotic question: that is, the difference between so-called natural and artificial signs. Everybody agrees on the fact that words or pictures are signs insofar as they are intentionally produced by human beings in order to communicate. But many semioticians wonder whether medical symptoms, animal imprints or unintentional body movements are to be considered as signs. Undoubtedly the trace of a cat’s paw on the ground means that an animal (namely a cat) has passed there. Undoubtedly if I stagger, it “means” that I have drunk a little more than is due. But can one consider those events as signs? Is there a difference between signification by means of intentional and artificial devices ruled by a convention (such as words or road signals) and signification as inferred from natural and unintentional events such as symptoms and imprints?

The semiotic approach of Peirce is, in my view, the most powerful because it proposes a unified set of definitions able to take into account both species of signs. Both are instances of something standing for something else on the basis of previous learning (or convention), and I agree with Charles Morris when he says that, something is a sign only because it is interpreted as a sign of something by some interpreter…. Semiotic then is not concerned with the study of a particular kind of object but with ordinary objects insofar (and only insofar) as they participate in semiosis. I think that this is a paramount definition of the semiosis of mise-en-scene, since it is hard to distinguish, in suth a framework, artificial signs from natural ones. What is a Chinese pot upon a table in a set design? A natural object? An artificial device? Is it representing something else?

Our drunk is representing drunkenness. His red nose has been selected as a natural unintentional event able to intentionally (the intention belongs to the Salvation Army, not to him) represent the devastating effects of intemperance. But what about his teeth? There is no specific convention establishing that an average drunken man lacks his incisors or has a set of black teeth. But if our intoxicated man possesses those characteristics, this would work very well. Insofar as the man becomes a sign, those of his characteristics that are not pertinent to the purposes of representation also acquire a sort of vicarious representative importance. The very moment the audience accepts the convention of the mise-en-scbne, every element of that portion of the world that has been framed (put upon the platform) becomes significant. I am thinking of the sociopsychological frame analysis proposed by Erving Goffman in his latest book. Goffman imagines two situations, both concerning a mirror and a lady. First situation: The mirror is in a beauty parlor and the lady, instead of using it to adjust her hairdressing, inspects the quality of its frame. That seems irregular. Second situation: The mirror is exhibited in the shop of an antiquary and the lady, instead of considering the quality of the frame, mirrors herself and adjusts her hair. That seems irregular. The difference in the mode of framing has changed the meaning of the actions of the characters in play. The contextual frame has changed the meaning of I the mirror’s carved frame-that is, the frame as situation has given a different semiotic purport to the frame as object. In both cases, however, there is a framing, an ideal platforming or staging, that imposes and prescribes the semiotic pertinence both of the objects and of the actions, even though they are not intentional behavior nor non- artificial items.

I should, however, stress that, until now, I have incorrectly put together natural and unintentional signs. I have done it on purpose because it is a kind of confusion frequently made by many semioticians. But we should disambiguate it. ….(see original text for continuation)

MoMA | The Collection | Gillian Wearing. Drunk. 1997-1999.