Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 17:16:34 EST
Sender: Visual and Verbal Semiotics <SEMIOS-L who-is-at ULKYVM.BITNET>
From: Steven Skaggs <SXSKAG01 who-is-at ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: is there too much semiotics happening here?
This reminds me of other cultural disjunctions in which one culture
is 'posed' for the merriment of another. Usually, as in kitsch, the
posed culture is considered (implicitly) inferior to the other. The
posing of the 'other' culture then serves to both stand in contradistinction
to the norm, and also be a subject of derision which by so doing, serves to
call attention to the importance/virtue of the dominant.
Gary will recall the paper presented at the San Antonio conference in
which expressions were grouped into Box and Brick categories. The idea is
that when you receive a sign vehicle in such a way that your attention is
drawn further into the _materiality_ of the sign vehicle, you receive it
in a box kind of way. It has further contents and you look deeper.
On the other hand, when you receive a sign vehicle in such a way that
you are led to references it makes about other aspects of culture...
that is, away from the immediate sign vehicle to other referents....in such a
case you receive that sign vehicle in a brick sort of way. Bricks are
sign vehicles that are solid - that is - closed.
The music of the Grateful Dead, in such a situation as this ball, would
probably be acting mostly as brick... as symbolic of the Grateful Dead.
it would be received as symbolic of the Dead and the culture of Deadheads.
The business folks get to take on the aspects and behavior of Deadheads-
a reversal not unlike carnival but probably with overtones of derision.
The derision is necessary because the memetic content of Deadheaddom
is inimical and potentially injurious to 'straight' culture (although not,
ironically, to entrepreneurial culture).
So the Ball acts as a giant innoculation in which opposed memes are adopted
and purged at the end of the night.
That the music is given short shrift in the process is no surprise. The
Grateful Dead had long since passed from being anything but symbols of
lifestyle in the mainstream culture - their music almost ignored. The tunes
became ultimate bricks - they produced only the interpretant 'hippie'
and lost in the process any richness they could have held as box. A box
response would have yielded formal relationships, expressive and affective
possibilities and a whole range of connotations. As bricks, the tunes were
simply sign-clots yielding precious little beyond the highly-specific,
highly-conventionalized interpretation: a psychedelia referred to, not a
psychedelia experienced.
Well enough. What I'd have liked to have seen would have been Mr. Longshore
(great name, btw) and the president of 1st Alabama bankspend an hour in a
comfortable, tranquil space with very good acoustics and a bottle of Merlot
at hand, listening to, say, Playin>Dark Star>Morning Dew from 5-20-72.
SS