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Semiological horror: “Pontypool” (2008)

The plot is simple. The small town of Pontypool panic-stricken people affects the virus and turns them into zombies. The virus is transmitted through language, through words and their meanings. How to deal with this virus? Silent? But it will save only you, not others. To speak in a foreign language? If you know him. The main character finds another way to deprive the words of their ordinary meanings and “recode” their meanings.

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So, the main monster in this film is the language. Rather, the signified. Just as in the movie “Alien” monster dwells inside the person and then breaks out through his body, settles in meaning, the signified, the meaning of the word, and because language and thought are one and the same, the signified is infused into the consciousness and turns you into a walking dead man. You can explain it in a simple way: all the words we use have meaning, not invented by us; hence our words are obsessed with other people’s meanings; consequently, our minds obsessed with a false consciousness (ideology, myths).

It is possible to Express the same idea more difficult? words of French semiologist Roland Barthes, visualization of the theory of which is this film:

A myth is a language, not wanting to die; eating other people’s senses, he thanks them quietly extends its flawed life…it turns them into walking corpses.

In the film, this idea is formulated narration sinister refrain: “Signifier is a liar” (meaning – it is a liar).

At the end of the film the protagonist – the leading radio-programs – finds a way of dealing with linguistic zombie virus. He reverses the meaning of words: “Kill means kiss; heaven is a person; friends are the verbs”. In fact, he turns ordinary words into poetry. And this is again an illustration of the ideas of Roland Barthes:

There is another language that struggled opposed to the myth is the language of our poetry.

On the content level the film is about the obsession with the signifier and the signified the liberation from it through poetry. How to talk about what not to say? Using poetic language.

At the level of form, the same thing happens in the movie with the picture: we show that it is impossible to show. We do not see zombies until almost the very end. All the action takes place in a radio Studio, which receives messages from different people. We do not see the horror and hear it. Graph EQ rhythmically mounted with close-UPS of the leading radio studios: it becomes another character. We only hear about what is happening, we do not show it. Rather, it shows us not a Director, and our imagination (of course, controlled by the Director, just as the signified signifier controls, – such is the Director’s irony). In a sense, the whole film is a homage to the classic radio broadcasts in the horror genre, which was popular in the USA in the 30s-40s of the last century and gradually disappeared, giving place to television and cinema.

Weird. Sometimes boring. Perhaps too metaphorical and philosophical. Poststructuralism and all that. But the idea, and the way her expression is very interesting. Well, as stated in the title, we can talk about the birth of a new subgenre – semiological or linguistic horror.

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