Semiotic Clouds

A guy by the name of Juri Lotman, an early film theorist, came up with the idea of the “semiotic aura.” Like many academic terms, it’s a fancy word for something we all have a sense of already from our own experience, but gives it a specific name.

“Semiotic aura” refers to the way in which actors who appear in movies bring their “persona” from previous roles to each new movie they appear in. That is, even if Sylvester Stallone appears in a film adaptation of Krapp’s Last Tape, he still brings with him associations the audience has of him as Rocky (and Rambo, etc.) and these will color the meaning of his performance in the new movie, no matter what he does.

The “semiotic aura” is something basically of the actor’s own creation, given choices of roles and performances. I think there’s something here that applies to Don Imus that helps explain both why he’s popular and why his most recent excursion into racist rhetoric has drawn the attention and ire it has.

But in the case of Imus, his public persona isn’t entirely a creation of himself. Rather, it owes a lot to other people’s willingness to be publicly associated with him and to lend their own cache to him.

I suggest the term “semiotic cloud” as a reference to those persons and organizations that, in their association with a particular speaker, color our perception of what she or he says. While a speaker can still play a role in creating this cloud, the power ultimately rests with the people who choose to remain in it. If they don’t, it’s a cloud that can dissipate quickly.

And, for reasons unclear to me, Imus has a bonafide cumulonimbus of a semiotic cloud, regularly schmoozing with high profile politicos and journalists, whose willingness to appear on his show bestows on him a degree of gravitas he wouldn’t enjoy otherwise. Lord knows his scintillating wit and insight doesn’t merit much attention on its own.

I haven’t made it through more than five minutes of listening/watching Imus. The coquettish relationship he, and his collaborators on his show, have with out-and-out racism (and misogyny, and homophobia, etc.) aside, I just find his program incredibly dull. It’s a downer. He’s a curmudgeon without any real wit or insight to leaven his negativity. Even the humor is largely aimed at coming up with the most demeaning and vitriolic things to say about whoever comes up in conversation.

Imus’s show is thanatos to Howard Stern’s jouissance.

But, unlike Stern, who’s guest couch is usually chockablock with one-legged strippers and D-list celebs, the “I-man” still lands big-name guests.

To outrageously mix metaphors, though, this semiotic cloud is a two-edged sword. While it gives Imus a certain gravitas (isn’t he actually in the Broadcasting Hall of Fame?), it also holds him up to a higher standard. Would anyone blink if Stern had talked about “nappy headed ho’s?”
I don’t know if what Imus said about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was qualitatively worse than many of the other things that have been said by him and his cohosts. Perhaps the outcry over this most recent bit of hatefulness is sort of like Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award for The Departed—it’s more of a recognition of his lifetime achievement in the field than a response to the particular episode.

And like Scorsese’s Oscar, it’s long overdue.

Which is part of why I find it so disturbing that otherwise thoughtful, decent people continue to appear on his program and, worse yet, defend him even after this latest ugliness. I mean, for crying out loud, even Tom Oliphant claimed “solidarity” (yes, he used that word) with Imus just yesterday! Say it ain’t so!

And he’s apparently only one (and, to me at least, the most disappointing) of a growing number of members of the “I Heart the I-Man” club.

It’s time, past time in fact, for those who form the thunderhead of Imus’s semiotic cloud to disperse and fall like rain. There are venues and hosts more deserving of their time and talent.