Bao/Jung/Sign/Symbol/Film - Semantic vs. Semiotic Readings
Thoughts On: Bao (2018) & Don Frederickson's Jung/Sign/Symbol/Film (2001)
A question of how to read films.
I am currently reading though Christopher Hauke and Ian Alister's book, Jung & Film, a compilation of Jungian essays on cinema. The most striking essay I have so far read is the first: Don Fredericksen's Jung/Sign/Symbol/Film. The assertions made in the essay are simple yet evocative and profound in their alignment of a Jungian perspective of mythological narrative, fantasy and dreams with the modern cinematic narrative.
The brilliance of so much of Jung's thought rests in his assignment of unfathomable depth to the unknown and then his subsequent arrangement of the unknown in ways that make them accessible - knowable to whatever degree is functional and necessary. Jung does this with his most famous theories of the collective unconscious and the archetypes. It manifests also in what Fredericksen highlights as Jung's distinction between symbolism and semantics. The following is a quote from Jung's Collected Works (book 6) used in the essay:
Semantics is concerned, by and large, with what words and things concretely mean and can be defined as. A semantic mode of analysis in film may then question the validity and function of defined entities. We can draw up an example of this with the short film Bao.
You may have seen this if you watched Incredibles 2 in the cinema. Bao follows a lonesome middle-aged lady. We are introduced to her making breakfast, bao, for her husband. After her husband eats and leaves for work, the woman is flabbergasted when a piece of bao she puts in her mouth cries out; this is not food, but a baby. The mother decides to care for the child and it grows fast. She does all she can to protect the boy, but all he wants is to confront life despite its dangers. All too soon, the kid is grown. He brings home a strange girl and tells his mother that he is leaving. Distraught, she tries to stop him from going - but the only way she knows how is to eat him. She is awoken later that night by her real son. They reconcile and, the next day, the whole family - which includes the son's girlfriend - make bao together.
Read semantically, we can suggest that the piece of bao is, indeed, not just a piece of food come to life, but a metaphorical representation of the mother's son. The short is then an allegory about how quick a child can grow up and how a terrifying this can be to a mother, who will have difficulty recognising a grown son as more than what was just a baby seemingly only moments ago.
There is a deeper, yet almost equally obvious, reading one could make of this film: a Freudian one. A dream of an all-consuming Oedipal mother, bao, read in Freudian terms, sees a mother's ego overtaken by destructive impulses from her id. The piece of bao is an extension of her conscious mask, her ego and identity as a mother. Embedded into this 'child' is the libido of the mother - that which has an oral focus. As an implication of an inferrable oral fixation complex, the mother is a rather helpless and highly dependent person. This is how she becomes an 'Oedipal mother'. It is not that her son wishes to kill his father and sleep with her, but that she wishes to kill the man, the father, her son could be, and consume the baby he no longer is.
This Freudian reading is semantic. Fredericksen makes such a distinction briefly, emphasising Freud's semantic place by demonstrating how Jung and Freud differ most greatly in regards to their reading of fantasy; Freud's analysis was concrete, his dream analysis an attempt to unmask unconscious truths that are hidden to us by the unconsciousness itself. Jung was far from concrete in his his approach. Fredericksen quotes him thusly:
Exemplified here is Jung's absolute trust in nature over consciousness: man. To Jung a dream does not mask its meaning from the dreamer. Furthermore, a dream cannot be pre-formulated by an analyst - as is attempted in dream dictionaries. A dream is alive, given a soul by nature. It is man's task to realise this nature, to try bear witness to it. It is therefore the consciousness' task to uncover, not meaning in a dream, but its very own eyes. We can now then come to understand why even the Freudian reading is a semantic one, despite being abstract.
If we were to read bao as an Oedipal mother's dream, we would be applying constructs of a tangible character onto the short. That is to say, we would reduce the ambiguity of the short to rational absolutes and all of its ambiguous elements to knowable attributes of a logical narrative. The question then is, is this viable?
Fredericksen makes use of Edward Eddinger's term, 'reductive fallacy' to describe the errors of some semantic readings:
We can question, however, if our previous semantic readings are consequences of reductive fallacy by assessing the complexity of impressionism exhibited in the film, which is to say, we must ask if the little piece of bao is an inanimate object, a breathing, complex person or some intermediary entity.
In my estimation, the piece of bao, despite being brought to life, is not rendered as a complex human. Furthermore, because it is not given a primarily inanimate quality, it cannot necessarily become a symbol. The piece of bao is a mask, a representation of an archetypal son. Falling into a mid-range of complexity, not a device or caricature, not a symbol of true character, the piece of bao is an archetype of sorts. An argument for both a semantic and symbolic reading of this narrative may then be viable. Perceiving the piece of bao as a basic archetype, not a Jungian one, our two semantic readings are acceptably complex; as complicated as the short; as penetrative as the short is ambiguous. One may find a Jungian archetype in this short, however.
Considered not just a son, but the essence of a son - masculine potential embodied by a Jungian 'child archetype' - the piece of bao can be understood as that quality of time which seeks to transcend the body; that quality of time that sees things die. A separation of yin and yang, a conflict between the mother's animus and her own persona (that which is bound by eros and the mother archetype that it is imitative of), the narrative transformation in bao is characterised by a fear of feminine darkness and individuation.
In this reading there are multiple vague and ambiguous terms: masculine potential, child archetype, time, yin and yang, animus, eros, mother archetype, feminine darkness, individuation, etc. These terms are intentionally imprecise as they mean not to reduce the short to knowable entities, but to outline the unknown qualities of it that are anchored to the bedrock of the collective unconscious and therefore truth in reality. This Jungian reading outlines what we don't know but can feel; a Freudian analysis outlines what our unconscious has hidden from us; our initial reductive reading outlines what you may not have seen but could have easily inferred. What is most accurate? What is most useful?
It is this set of questions that Fredericksen's essay provides. Whilst it argues that there is a need for more symbolic reading in film, it also poses a question of when and why this symbolic reading would be used. I then leave you with just one example in Bao. How should this be read? Furthermore, how, if you would hazard to answer, should films in general be read?
Before you go, I'd also recommend you read this essay for yourself. A good chunk of it can be found here.
Previous post:
The Night Comes For Us - Fight For Your Soul?
Next post:
Out Of My Hand - The Grind
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A question of how to read films.
I am currently reading though Christopher Hauke and Ian Alister's book, Jung & Film, a compilation of Jungian essays on cinema. The most striking essay I have so far read is the first: Don Fredericksen's Jung/Sign/Symbol/Film. The assertions made in the essay are simple yet evocative and profound in their alignment of a Jungian perspective of mythological narrative, fantasy and dreams with the modern cinematic narrative.
The brilliance of so much of Jung's thought rests in his assignment of unfathomable depth to the unknown and then his subsequent arrangement of the unknown in ways that make them accessible - knowable to whatever degree is functional and necessary. Jung does this with his most famous theories of the collective unconscious and the archetypes. It manifests also in what Fredericksen highlights as Jung's distinction between symbolism and semantics. The following is a quote from Jung's Collected Works (book 6) used in the essay:
A symbol always presupposes that the chosen expression is the best possible description or formulation of a relatively unknown fact, which is nonetheless known to exist or is postulated as existing... Every view which interprets the symbolic expression as an analogue or an abbreviated designation for a known thing is semiotic. A view which interprets the symbolic expression as the best possible formulation of a relatively unknown thing, which for that reason cannot be more clearly or characteristically represented, is symbolic... The symbol is alive only so long as it is pregnant with meaning. But once its meaning has been borne out of it, once that expression is found that formulates the thing sought, then the symbol is dead.
Semantics is concerned, by and large, with what words and things concretely mean and can be defined as. A semantic mode of analysis in film may then question the validity and function of defined entities. We can draw up an example of this with the short film Bao.
You may have seen this if you watched Incredibles 2 in the cinema. Bao follows a lonesome middle-aged lady. We are introduced to her making breakfast, bao, for her husband. After her husband eats and leaves for work, the woman is flabbergasted when a piece of bao she puts in her mouth cries out; this is not food, but a baby. The mother decides to care for the child and it grows fast. She does all she can to protect the boy, but all he wants is to confront life despite its dangers. All too soon, the kid is grown. He brings home a strange girl and tells his mother that he is leaving. Distraught, she tries to stop him from going - but the only way she knows how is to eat him. She is awoken later that night by her real son. They reconcile and, the next day, the whole family - which includes the son's girlfriend - make bao together.
Read semantically, we can suggest that the piece of bao is, indeed, not just a piece of food come to life, but a metaphorical representation of the mother's son. The short is then an allegory about how quick a child can grow up and how a terrifying this can be to a mother, who will have difficulty recognising a grown son as more than what was just a baby seemingly only moments ago.
There is a deeper, yet almost equally obvious, reading one could make of this film: a Freudian one. A dream of an all-consuming Oedipal mother, bao, read in Freudian terms, sees a mother's ego overtaken by destructive impulses from her id. The piece of bao is an extension of her conscious mask, her ego and identity as a mother. Embedded into this 'child' is the libido of the mother - that which has an oral focus. As an implication of an inferrable oral fixation complex, the mother is a rather helpless and highly dependent person. This is how she becomes an 'Oedipal mother'. It is not that her son wishes to kill his father and sleep with her, but that she wishes to kill the man, the father, her son could be, and consume the baby he no longer is.
This Freudian reading is semantic. Fredericksen makes such a distinction briefly, emphasising Freud's semantic place by demonstrating how Jung and Freud differ most greatly in regards to their reading of fantasy; Freud's analysis was concrete, his dream analysis an attempt to unmask unconscious truths that are hidden to us by the unconsciousness itself. Jung was far from concrete in his his approach. Fredericksen quotes him thusly:
We have no right to accuse the dream of, so to speak, a deliberate manoeuvre to deceive. Nature is so often obscure or impenetrable, but she is not, like man, deceitful.
Exemplified here is Jung's absolute trust in nature over consciousness: man. To Jung a dream does not mask its meaning from the dreamer. Furthermore, a dream cannot be pre-formulated by an analyst - as is attempted in dream dictionaries. A dream is alive, given a soul by nature. It is man's task to realise this nature, to try bear witness to it. It is therefore the consciousness' task to uncover, not meaning in a dream, but its very own eyes. We can now then come to understand why even the Freudian reading is a semantic one, despite being abstract.
If we were to read bao as an Oedipal mother's dream, we would be applying constructs of a tangible character onto the short. That is to say, we would reduce the ambiguity of the short to rational absolutes and all of its ambiguous elements to knowable attributes of a logical narrative. The question then is, is this viable?
Fredericksen makes use of Edward Eddinger's term, 'reductive fallacy' to describe the errors of some semantic readings:
The reductive fallacy is based on the rationalistic attitude which assumes that it can see behind "symbols" to their real meaning. This approach reduces all symbolic imagery to elementary known factors. It operates on the assumption that no true mystery, no essential unknown transcending the ego's capacity for comprehension, exists.
We can question, however, if our previous semantic readings are consequences of reductive fallacy by assessing the complexity of impressionism exhibited in the film, which is to say, we must ask if the little piece of bao is an inanimate object, a breathing, complex person or some intermediary entity.
In my estimation, the piece of bao, despite being brought to life, is not rendered as a complex human. Furthermore, because it is not given a primarily inanimate quality, it cannot necessarily become a symbol. The piece of bao is a mask, a representation of an archetypal son. Falling into a mid-range of complexity, not a device or caricature, not a symbol of true character, the piece of bao is an archetype of sorts. An argument for both a semantic and symbolic reading of this narrative may then be viable. Perceiving the piece of bao as a basic archetype, not a Jungian one, our two semantic readings are acceptably complex; as complicated as the short; as penetrative as the short is ambiguous. One may find a Jungian archetype in this short, however.
Considered not just a son, but the essence of a son - masculine potential embodied by a Jungian 'child archetype' - the piece of bao can be understood as that quality of time which seeks to transcend the body; that quality of time that sees things die. A separation of yin and yang, a conflict between the mother's animus and her own persona (that which is bound by eros and the mother archetype that it is imitative of), the narrative transformation in bao is characterised by a fear of feminine darkness and individuation.
In this reading there are multiple vague and ambiguous terms: masculine potential, child archetype, time, yin and yang, animus, eros, mother archetype, feminine darkness, individuation, etc. These terms are intentionally imprecise as they mean not to reduce the short to knowable entities, but to outline the unknown qualities of it that are anchored to the bedrock of the collective unconscious and therefore truth in reality. This Jungian reading outlines what we don't know but can feel; a Freudian analysis outlines what our unconscious has hidden from us; our initial reductive reading outlines what you may not have seen but could have easily inferred. What is most accurate? What is most useful?
It is this set of questions that Fredericksen's essay provides. Whilst it argues that there is a need for more symbolic reading in film, it also poses a question of when and why this symbolic reading would be used. I then leave you with just one example in Bao. How should this be read? Furthermore, how, if you would hazard to answer, should films in general be read?
Before you go, I'd also recommend you read this essay for yourself. A good chunk of it can be found here.
Previous post:
The Night Comes For Us - Fight For Your Soul?
Next post:
Out Of My Hand - The Grind
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
