ABSTRACT
Symbolic and semiotic meanings are entirely different things. The incest imagery generated by this urge toward renewal is essentially symbolic, linked as it is, simultaneously, to the relatively unknown depths of the psyche and to the psyche’s unknown future. Within modern American and European film study there are three major semiotic approaches: film semiotics as such, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalyses, and the various Marxist approaches. The semiotic attitude is ultimately limiting because it either denies the existence of the symbolic realm by definition, or denies its existence in practice by attempting to explain symbolic expressions semiotically. However, if the symbolic attitude is to have any credence as an interpretative approach it must be answered. The individual, like humankind in the aggregate, is informed by, and sometimes compelled by “complex and impersonal” psychic factors; Jung tagged them archetypal.
