{"id":964,"date":"2008-01-30T13:39:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T18:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/30\/imitating-roland-barthes\/"},"modified":"2020-10-09T06:38:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T13:38:51","slug":"imitating-roland-barthes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/imitating-roland-barthes\/","title":{"rendered":"Imitating Roland Barthes"},"content":{"rendered":"

We read Roland Barthes for our Critical Theory class this week. And I have learned stuff. For instance, from this quote from Image-Music-Text<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\nNarrative thus appears as a succession of tightly interlocking mediate and immediate elements; dystaxia determines a ‘horizontal’ reading, while integration superimposes a ‘vertical’ reading: there is a sort of structural ‘limping’, an incessant play of potentials whose varying falls give the narrative its dynamism or energy: each unit is perceived at once in its surfacing and in its depth and it is thus that the narrative ‘works’; through the concourse of these two movements the structure ramifies, proliferates, uncovers itself – and recovers itself, pulls itself together: the new never fails in its regularity.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What have I learned, you ask? That apparently I can use as many semicolons and colons within a single sentence as I darn well please! Plus a dash, thank you very much. Now every time professors ask me to rephrase rather than use dashes or semicolons, I’m going to point to this passage and say “Barthes did it.” Note for any fiction writers out there, you can use Jane Eyre<\/i> to pull the same trick; I swear, she’s got some sentences that go on for a whole page – separated only by semicolons and dashes. Or Vanity Fair<\/i>, which has the most prodigious dash use I’ve seen in my life, and believe me, I love me some dashes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We read Roland Barthes for our Critical Theory class this week. And I have learned stuff. For instance, from this quote from Image-Music-Text: Narrative thus appears as a succession of tightly interlocking mediate and immediate elements; dystaxia determines a ‘horizontal’ reading, while integration superimposes a ‘vertical’ reading: there is a sort of structural ‘limping’, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,15],"tags":[827,826],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":454,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/bradbury-and-authorial-intent\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":0},"title":"Bradbury and Authorial Intent","author":"Jandy","date":"June 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been around the web for a while (and I guess the regular news, too, but I'm not a regular news person), but Ray Bradbury has spoken out against the common interpretation of his book Fahrenheit 451 as an anti-censorship novel. Instead, he says, his intended target was television, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35137,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/tcm-film-fest-2015-dont-bet-on-women\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":1},"title":"TCM Film Fest 2015: Don’t Bet on Women","author":"Jandy","date":"April 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Jeanette MacDonald is mostly remembered for her series of light operettas with Nelson Eddy, and for slightly more adventurous classic film fans, for her series of Pre-Code musical comedies with Maurice Chevalier and Ernst Lubitsch. That doesn't always stand her in good stead, since her particular brand of coloratura soprano\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "TCM Film Festival"","block_context":{"text":"TCM Film Festival","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/tcm-film-festival\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/DBoW-Dont-Bet-on-Women-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":28848,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/classic-horror-dead-of-night-1945\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":2},"title":"Classic Horror: Dead of Night (1945)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Omnibus films have a long and distinguished history, especially in the horror genre, and it's possible that this quiet British film from Ealing Studios is one of the first. It's certainly one of my favorites. I've seen it several times before, but when TCM played it recently, I couldn't resist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/deadofnight-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2132,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/new-release-review-the-perfect-sleep\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":3},"title":"New Release Review: The Perfect Sleep","author":"Jandy","date":"March 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Near the beginning of indie noir homage The Perfect Sleep, the nameless Narrator drives off after having brutally killed an enemy and his voiceover warns us: \"Some of you clever types might think this was one of those stories where everything kinda makes sense in the end. Wrong.\" When I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36087,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/challenge-week-26-dinner-at-the-ritz\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":4},"title":"Challenge Week 26: Dinner at the Ritz","author":"Jandy","date":"July 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"For this one, Naomi REALLY reached deep into the vaults, pulling out a 1937 British mystery I had never ever heard of. It's fallen into the public domain, but the print I saw was pretty decent for being in that condition, and I had an overall good experience with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tf-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":505,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/no-new-sytycd-so-the-matrix-instead\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":5},"title":"No new SYTYCD!! So, The Matrix instead…","author":"Jandy","date":"July 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There's no So You Think You Can Dance this week! I'm totally bummed. I've been looking forward to it all week. Wah. I guess they figured they wouldn't get anyone watching on the fourth of July. Oh, yeah, Happy Independence Day, everybody! Still. I don't like when my TV is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}