Rabbits and Semiotics

Rabbits and Semiotics

1. What is semiotics?

   • Semiotics is the study of how meaning is created from media text from symbols

2. A denotive reading of Rabbits

   • A description of exactly what happens

3. A connotative reading of Rabbits

   • This is where you start to read into the meanings and symbols of the series
     • Semiotics in Rabbits
       • Dress codes (how the way characters dress in the text holds symbolism and meaning): The older female rabbit is dressed in a night gown ironing from this you would assume she is the mother of the younger dressed rabbit woman. The man is wearing a suit so you would assume he is the working man of the house, aka the father.
       • Iconic codes (widely recognised symbols): the laugh track symbolises a comedy, even when nothing funny is happening, this along with the way it is filmed and how the characters interact shows that this series is a sitcom
         • it may be a sitcom but the things you usually find in a sitcom greatly contrast with the usual sitcom, making rabbits a satire of the sitcom genre.
           • This helps to deepen the depressive feeling of rabbits, since you're left comparing it to much happier shows in the genre.
       • Rabbits lacks a lot of anchorage which is usually a very important role in semiotics. Making it harder to place meaning on what is happening in this abstract film.
       • There are some non verbal codes used in rabbits such as the large amount of interpersonal distance between the characters
         • This shows that there must be a lot of distance in their relationships, they're not a very close family/ set of people.
       • It's strange how David Lynch uses rabbits instead of humans to show the characters
         • This could be seen as sort of an iconic code because we all see rabbits as non human. Almost test subjects like guinea pigs.
           • This could feed into it's sitcom link as when we watch a sitcom we watch the daily lives of these characters almost as if they are not human, almost enjoying what drama happens in their lives. Treating the actors and characters almost like animals on a stage. We dehumanize them so Lynch has used rabbits as the characters so we can already dehumanize them straight off the bat.
           • It could also just be Lynch using rabbits to show the lack of depth in these sitcom like shows. This could also be shown in the lack of dialogue and emotion, which gives a very boring feeling to the whole thing.

4. How should this clip of Rabbits be understood?

   • From all the details seen in the clip Rabbits should be understood as a satire of the sitcom genre. It's almost like David Lynch's commentary on the genre.

Images and files in the map

• A Denotative Reading Of Rabbits (application/pdf)
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