Communications 365
December 3, 2015
A House Divided: Meaning Making through Paratexts of House of Cards
Perhaps the most key question that television producers are grappling with in recent years is how to not only attract an audience, but also how to keep it. The marketing campaigns and introductory sequences for television series play a critical role in earning a viewer’s attention and building hype and expectations for new shows. However, the variety of media that surround these series could easily be conflicting, sending mixed messages to potential viewers about the attitude of the narrative and storyworld that they can anticipate. Knowing this then, there’s a simple question that follows: how do the various promotional or introductory materials for shows keep a consistent tone in representing the larger text? Advertising firms and those creating series’ intros must seriously consider these concerns when generating the textual and visual designs for the materials that will represent the series as a whole. These paratexts take on the tremendous job of conveying the overall feeling of a show, something about narratives or characters, and, perhaps most importantly, why a consumer in this media saturated era would want to spend their time on this series. Using a mix of semiotic and psychoanalytic analyses with the promotional poster from season one of the Netflix series, House of Cards, and the title sequence of the show as an example of how this meaning management takes place, it becomes clearer how different types of introductory texts work together or against each other to manage the show’s meaning making abilities and the audience’s expectations for the upcoming series. Ultimately, these two texts, despite the differences in content and medium, play off of each other to create a detailed picture for audiences of what the series’ tone, storyworld, and narrative will be, describing without explaining the dark, dangerous and political world that viewers were in for.
These types of promotional or introductory media and their abilities to create and convey meaning through their visual affordances have received quite a bit of study and analysis already. The idea of paratexts originally comes from Gérard Genette where paratexts were described as “an overarching category to describe a text's "accompanying productions," which "surround . . . and extend it, precisely in order to present it, . . . to ensure . . . its 'reception' and consumption in the form (nowadays at least) of a book” (Genette 262). While this is similar to the current working definition of paratexts, it was somewhat limited as it specifically referred to the materials accompanying literature. Furthermore, while Genette puts forth the idea that paratexts have interpretational and commercial functions, that is not all they do according to Dorothee Birke and Birke Christ in “Paratext and Digitized Narrative: Mapping the Field.” The authors claim that, “Paratextual elements also have a navigational function in that they guide the reader's reception in a more mechanical sense, both when approaching the text and when orienting herself within the text” (Birke et al. 68). Both promotional paratexts and title sequences appear to fall within this updated and more inclusive definition, working to give viewers a hint of context when entering the text. These definitions and purposes have been further expanded and refined to include new media such as television and digital content more recently by Jonathan Gray. One of the most cited essays concerning these types of texts is the chapter, “Coming Soon! Hype, Intros, and Textual Beginnings,” from Gray’s book, Show Sold Separately. In this chapter, Gray defines paratexts as all the supplementary materials and commentary that surround a larger text, including posters, advertisements, and fan remixes, among others. Gray goes onto explain that these paratexts play a fundamental role in reading a text; they not only frame expectations for genre and tone of the main text, but they are also part of the text, helping to establish a "proper" interpretation or reading (Gray 48, 79). This broader definition highlights the key role that promotional materials, like posters, and introductory material, like title sequences, can play in meaning making and management for the larger text of the series. In fact, a review of Gray’s studies by Ian Reilly drives home the importance of paratexts in meaning making, saying, “Gray's engrossing study of an increasingly elaborate textual ecosystem strikes at a moment when paratexts no longer refer to crass commercialism, but to a growing set of transmedia narratives designed to enhance the ways in which stories are told, consumed, and recirculated” (Reilly 210). Paratexts, as Gray says, aren’t just supplementary materials to offer context, but rather part of the larger experience and story of a text.
Introductory material plays a similar role to paratexts in establishing tone and expectations, but it goes about it differently than promotional materials. In Krasner’s chapter, “Motion Graphics in Film and Television,” show openers are said to, “set the stage for the upcoming program. Imaginative show openers help to promote the network’s identity and can make the difference between captivating audiences or making them reach for the remote” (Krasner, 34). The opening for House of Cards plays a crucial role in retaining the audiences won through the paratextual hype, a true challenge in a media world with so much viewer agency and choice. At the same time, Krasner points out some genre conventions of show openers that this series and other Netflix originals break, including a general limit of 15-30 seconds for the opening, whereas the House of Cards opening is a full minute and a half (Krasner, 34). While this and other breaks from standard conventions could either be to the benefit or the deficit of the series, in Netflix’s case, it appears to be the former. The streaming platform has built a name for itself by breaking from television and film norms, both as a medium and as a producer. In Sidneyeve Matrix’s article, “The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Media Trends,” it’s pointed out that Netflix is, “winning the original content wars, producing shows that are cinematically interesting, with complex narratives, compelling characters, and enough cliffhangers to keep audiences hooked, episode after episode, season after season” (Matrix, 131). While the title sequence of House of Cards doesn’t completely fall within general show opening conventions, it’s still proving to be part of a larger text that is widely successful in capturing and keeping audiences.
In examining the paratextual and introductory materials for season one of House of Cards, both semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis methods were chosen in order to better examine both the visual composition and the role of looking in a viewer’s expectation building and interpretation. To begin with, the main paratext being examined is a poster (Appendix Figure 1) which depicts a white man wearing a suit and sitting in what appears to be the chair from the Abraham Lincoln statue in Washington D.C. with blood running from his hands. From the start, the image begins to manage viewers' meaning making by introducing the viewer to the tone of the series' story world. In the broadest sense, it establishes that this show will be dark and serious through the paradigmatic choice of the shadowy gray background and the cold, impassive expression that the man wears. His elevated position above the viewer also suggests power and superiority. This tone is truly driven home, though, with the blood running from his hands. The blood implies potential themes about the series, such as danger, violence or murder. These assumptions are also reaffirmed through the intertextual references to Shakespeare's play, "Macbeth," in which a character tries to wash the blood from her hands after she aids in a murder. In Gillian Rose’s chapter, “Semiotics,” intertextuality is introduced as a key semiotic tool in which a reference to outside texts is made to connect ideas of theme or narrative to the new text (Rose, 133). By creating the visual connection between the man in the chair and the literary character, an expectation has been created that this man is not only dangerous, but perhaps even capable of murder, establishing a dark, edgy tone from the poster alone.
The expectation for the story world's potential narrative is also established through the poster's semiotic elements. The idea that this series will have something to do with politics comes from the relationship between the man's attire and his positioning on a particular chair. This chair is perhaps the clearest indicator of narrative of all within the poster as it is an intertextual reference to the widely recognized statue of Abraham Lincoln. By putting the man in the former president's chair, sitting in Lincoln's place, the designers have created an expectation about the narrative being about this man running for president or replacing the sitting president in someway. His position even seems to imply that he is a king or emperor, a powerful man ruling over his domain. This narrative expectation is further reinforced by the man's well-fitted suit. In Crane's article, "Men's Clothing and the Construction of Masculine Identities," a well-tailored suit that falls within accepted fashion parameters for business wear is pointed to as an indicator of social status, wealth, and can even have a symbolically attached meaning to politics (Crane 173). Using semiotic analysis, the signs of the chair, his position within the chair, and the suit work together within the paratext to create expectations about the plotline of the show.
A psychoanalytic approach offers many of the same conclusions about the paratext and the series as a semiotic analysis does, but the methods and points of focus are vastly different. In Laura Mulvey’s essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” film is described as being a medium of the patriarchal unconscious wherein women are objectified by the "male gaze" as well as a vehicle to facilitate the three looks associated with cinema: "that of the camera as it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion" (Mulvey 17). In the image, the man in the chair is staring directly at the viewer from a slightly elevated position with his head tipped back, suggesting that he is superior and looking down on the viewer, both figuratively and literally. This plays into the larger tone expectations being created for the viewer, alluding to elitism, power dynamics, and interpersonal hierarchies. The fact that the man is both the subject of the viewer’s look and, as a man, the bearer of the gaze does complicate the implications that the image creates for the series’ tone though, and even what Mulvey has to say about the male gaze. In this way, bell hooks’ ideas from her text, “From Reel to Real: The Oppositional Gaze,” are also present, showing that there is more than one way of looking and more than one kind of viewer to consider (hooks 208). In this case, while a viewer would normally have the power to objectify the object being viewed, the man’s gaze seems to acknowledge that he is the both the object and the master of that gaze. He controls the way he is being viewed, giving the power back to the object of the gaze. This has larger implications about the type of narrative and storyworld as well; this is a man that thinks he controls everything. He is not afraid of the viewer seeing the blood on his hands. He might even lack shame or enjoy the power that comes with inciting fear from his image. The psychoanalytic analysis builds on the already established assumptions created through the visual components seen in the semiotic analysis. Between these two methods of analysis, the potential tone, storyworld, and narrative for the series begins to become a cohesive unit. Together, these conclusions suggest a dark, dangerous tone, a world filled with politics and powerful men, and a story concerning chasing the presidency and perhaps even murder.
In comparison, the title sequence for season one is also a key way to introduce viewers to the series they are about to watch (Appendix Figure 2). In the 95 second sequence, the viewer is shown a series of time-lapse images of monuments and landscapes filmed throughout a day in Washington D.C. and set to an important, serious sounding instrumental track. Based on these images, a tone, storyworld, and narrative begin to be built, independent of the promotional poster. To begin with, the storyworld is established through the monuments and scenery which act as both metonymic and synechdocal signs. The monuments and landmarks that are featured throughout the sequence not only symbolize the larger themes of politics, history, and United States government, but also stand in as a representation of Washington D.C. itself. The setting is clearly defined through the title sequence, offering some grounding context for the series. Plus, while this location has the denotation of being America’s capital, it can also have a variety of connotations, including power, secrecy, and corruption.
These possible storyworld connotations play into both the narrative and the tone of the series as well. In particular, the storyworld suggests that the narrative will follow a political drama, but the kind of drama it will be depends on the tone. One of the strongest indicators for this is the time lapse images, which depict shadows progressively creeping across the pristine, scenery, which is devoid of people, save for the occasional highway traffic. This has a variety of implications, including a tone that might start as a clean cut story of a politician which then devolves into darker themes. The velocity of the time lapse clips could also suggest a frenzied speed for either the events within the series or for the daily lives of the characters within this storyworld, creating expectations for a series with some sort of a quick pace. At the same time, the score is slower and brassier; it evens out the quick pace of the visuals to add a layer of seriousness and tension, creating a tone that implies this series is momentous or significant in a grand way.
Examining the title sequence from a psychoanalytic standpoint, on the other hand, is slightly more complicated. As previously mentioned, there are not people within the sequence to consider in the “field of looks,” but the viewer certainly has a viewpoint. In many of the shots, the viewer is positioned either as a tourist or average citizen, walking the streets and seeing the sights, or the viewer is placed up high, looking down on the city like a god. These different positionings offer a variety of interpretations to a viewer that is new to the show; in particular, it seems to suggest that the audience is being privileged as an omnipotent being within the action, seeing the entirety of the city from afar, all encompassing and glittering with lights, but also up close in the seedy underbelly of the city where anything can happen. Based on the angles, it is also possible that the viewers are meant to imagine themselves as the main character or a politician in this city, ruling from up high like a king but remaining a citizen with their hands in a multitude of pots at the same time. All of this plays into the tone of power dynamics in flux, a storyworld full of history and politics, and a narrative of someone taking on the entire city. Between the semiotic and the psychoanalytic analyses, a more cohesive picture of the series as a whole begins to emerge from the introductory text. From the title sequence alone, the audience comes to expect a shadowy storyworld that glitters from up above, a narrative that grapples with larger than life politics and power dynamics, and a tone that gets increasingly darker as the series progresses.
The real question that must be addressed, though, is how the promotional paratext and the introductory material interact in terms of meaning making for a viewer. To begin with, in regards to what Gray had to say about how paratexts manage meaning, it appears that his conclusions are largely but not completely supported. Viewers could gain an early understanding before the series had even premiered or the episode has begun about the story world, plot, and attitude of the show, which is inline with Gray's points. However, there is polysemy in these texts: it is very easy for viewers to have multiple interpretations of the smaller texts that would go against "true" or "right" interpretations of the larger text. For instance, visual elements in the title design itself, displayed prominently in both the poster and the introduction, have polysemy that can work against the "true" reading of the text (Rose 144). When designers were interpreting the nature of the series to synthesize it into this promotional poster and title sequence, they included an upside down American flag as part of the title visual. While the designers perhaps intended for this element to signify distress, other intertextual references to what an upside down flag can represent can disrupt this interpretation; a viewer might assume that this series is anti-American, which, arguably, is very far from the "truth" of the series and goes against what the preferred or dominant reading of the text. Gray's ideas have merit, but polysemy and irrelevant intertextual associations can also work against a paratext's ability to manage the meaning of a larger text.
However, while the paratexts cannot accurately convey everything about a larger text, the poster and title sequence appear to work together to convey tone, narrative, and storyworld with little friction. While there is some difference in the imaginings of these texts, such as the poster putting more emphasis on the character and his gaze while the title sequence relied more heavily on worldbuilding, it seems to work to their benefit. Each text has a separate function and does it well, one pulling an audience in and the other retaining it. Between the two of them, a viewer comes to expect a story about a dangerous politician in a shadowy world aiming for the top position, becoming ruthless in his quest for power. Not only is this a unified expectation, but it’s also “correct” in terms of the series’ reality.
In short, through a semiotic and psychoanalytic reading of all the visual elements of the paratext and title sequence, the reader has come to expect a dark series, concerning murder or violence, about a man aiming for or holding the president's seat, with all the genre conventions one would expect from a Netflix original. Gray's ideas are largely supported but also somewhat complicated by this example of a paratext and the viewer's ability to bring their own assumptions and associations to the text. Overall, though, this poster and the titles sequence not only do a fairly accurate job of setting up the attitude and story of what the audience was in for, but also do it with little to no friction between the different spaces of interpretation.
Bibliography
Birke, D., & Christ, B. (2013). Paratext and Digitized Narrative: Mapping the Field. Narrative, 21(1), 65-87. doi:10.1353/nar.2013.0003 Retrieved from: http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/narrative/v021/21.1.birke.html
Gray, J. (2010). Coming Soon! Hype, Intros, and Textual Beginnings. In Show sold separately promos, spoilers, and other media paratexts (pp. 47-79). New York: New York University Press. Retrieved from: https://umich.instructure.com/courses/38221/files/folder/reading-pdfs?preview=355848
Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 6-18. Retrieved December 16, 2015. Retrieved from: https://umich.instructure.com/courses/38221/files/folder/reading-pdfs?preview=355865
Hooks, B. (1996). Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 197-213. Retrieved December 16, 2015.
https://umich.instructure.com/courses/38221/files/folder/reading-pdfs?preview=355855
Crane, D. (2000). Men's Clothing and the Construction of Masculine Identities. In Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from: https://umich.instructure.com/courses/38221/files/folder/reading-pdfs?preview=389167
Genette, G., & Maclean, M.. (1991). Introduction to the Paratext. New Literary History, 22(2), 261–272. http://doi.org/10.2307/469037. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/469037?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Reilly, I. (2011). Show sold separately: Promos, spoilers, and other media paratexts. The Journal of American Culture, 34(2), 209-210. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/873821685?accountid=14667
Krasner, J. (2012). Motion Graphics in Film and Television. Motion Graphic Design, 24-67. Retrieved December 16, 2015. Retrieve from: https://umich.instructure.com/courses/38221/files/folder/reading-pdfs?preview=586898
Sidneyeve Matrix. "The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Media Trends."Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 6.1 (2014): 119-138. Project MUSE. Web. 9 Dec. 2015. <https://muse.jhu.edu/>.
Appendix
Figure 1 (Also referred to as “the paratext,” and “the poster”)
Figure 2 (Also referred to as “the title sequence,” “the video,” and “the introductory materials”)
To locate: Go to youtube.com, search for “house of cards title sequence season 1”, click on the 2nd link which is titled “2013 House of Cards, Introduction with Shots of D.C.” posted by user Adrienne Lawrence
December 3, 2015
A House Divided: Meaning Making through Paratexts of House of Cards
Perhaps the most key question that television producers are grappling with in recent years is how to not only attract an audience, but also how to keep it. The marketing campaigns and introductory sequences for television series play a critical role in earning a viewer’s attention and building hype and expectations for new shows. However, the variety of media that surround these series could easily be conflicting, sending mixed messages to potential viewers about the attitude of the narrative and storyworld that they can anticipate. Knowing this then, there’s a simple question that follows: how do the various promotional or introductory materials for shows keep a consistent tone in representing the larger text? Advertising firms and those creating series’ intros must seriously consider these concerns when generating the textual and visual designs for the materials that will represent the series as a whole. These paratexts take on the tremendous job of conveying the overall feeling of a show, something about narratives or characters, and, perhaps most importantly, why a consumer in this media saturated era would want to spend their time on this series. Using a mix of semiotic and psychoanalytic analyses with the promotional poster from season one of the Netflix series, House of Cards, and the title sequence of the show as an example of how this meaning management takes place, it becomes clearer how different types of introductory texts work together or against each other to manage the show’s meaning making abilities and the audience’s expectations for the upcoming series. Ultimately, these two texts, despite the differences in content and medium, play off of each other to create a detailed picture for audiences of what the series’ tone, storyworld, and narrative will be, describing without explaining the dark, dangerous and political world that viewers were in for.
These types of promotional or introductory media and their abilities to create and convey meaning through their visual affordances have received quite a bit of study and analysis already. The idea of paratexts originally comes from Gérard Genette where paratexts were described as “an overarching category to describe a text's "accompanying productions," which "surround . . . and extend it, precisely in order to present it, . . . to ensure . . . its 'reception' and consumption in the form (nowadays at least) of a book” (Genette 262). While this is similar to the current working definition of paratexts, it was somewhat limited as it specifically referred to the materials accompanying literature. Furthermore, while Genette puts forth the idea that paratexts have interpretational and commercial functions, that is not all they do according to Dorothee Birke and Birke Christ in “Paratext and Digitized Narrative: Mapping the Field.” The authors claim that, “Paratextual elements also have a navigational function in that they guide the reader's reception in a more mechanical sense, both when approaching the text and when orienting herself within the text” (Birke et al. 68). Both promotional paratexts and title sequences appear to fall within this updated and more inclusive definition, working to give viewers a hint of context when entering the text. These definitions and purposes have been further expanded and refined to include new media such as television and digital content more recently by Jonathan Gray. One of the most cited essays concerning these types of texts is the chapter, “Coming Soon! Hype, Intros, and Textual Beginnings,” from Gray’s book, Show Sold Separately. In this chapter, Gray defines paratexts as all the supplementary materials and commentary that surround a larger text, including posters, advertisements, and fan remixes, among others. Gray goes onto explain that these paratexts play a fundamental role in reading a text; they not only frame expectations for genre and tone of the main text, but they are also part of the text, helping to establish a "proper" interpretation or reading (Gray 48, 79). This broader definition highlights the key role that promotional materials, like posters, and introductory material, like title sequences, can play in meaning making and management for the larger text of the series. In fact, a review of Gray’s studies by Ian Reilly drives home the importance of paratexts in meaning making, saying, “Gray's engrossing study of an increasingly elaborate textual ecosystem strikes at a moment when paratexts no longer refer to crass commercialism, but to a growing set of transmedia narratives designed to enhance the ways in which stories are told, consumed, and recirculated” (Reilly 210). Paratexts, as Gray says, aren’t just supplementary materials to offer context, but rather part of the larger experience and story of a text.
Introductory material plays a similar role to paratexts in establishing tone and expectations, but it goes about it differently than promotional materials. In Krasner’s chapter, “Motion Graphics in Film and Television,” show openers are said to, “set the stage for the upcoming program. Imaginative show openers help to promote the network’s identity and can make the difference between captivating audiences or making them reach for the remote” (Krasner, 34). The opening for House of Cards plays a crucial role in retaining the audiences won through the paratextual hype, a true challenge in a media world with so much viewer agency and choice. At the same time, Krasner points out some genre conventions of show openers that this series and other Netflix originals break, including a general limit of 15-30 seconds for the opening, whereas the House of Cards opening is a full minute and a half (Krasner, 34). While this and other breaks from standard conventions could either be to the benefit or the deficit of the series, in Netflix’s case, it appears to be the former. The streaming platform has built a name for itself by breaking from television and film norms, both as a medium and as a producer. In Sidneyeve Matrix’s article, “The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Media Trends,” it’s pointed out that Netflix is, “winning the original content wars, producing shows that are cinematically interesting, with complex narratives, compelling characters, and enough cliffhangers to keep audiences hooked, episode after episode, season after season” (Matrix, 131). While the title sequence of House of Cards doesn’t completely fall within general show opening conventions, it’s still proving to be part of a larger text that is widely successful in capturing and keeping audiences.
In examining the paratextual and introductory materials for season one of House of Cards, both semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis methods were chosen in order to better examine both the visual composition and the role of looking in a viewer’s expectation building and interpretation. To begin with, the main paratext being examined is a poster (Appendix Figure 1) which depicts a white man wearing a suit and sitting in what appears to be the chair from the Abraham Lincoln statue in Washington D.C. with blood running from his hands. From the start, the image begins to manage viewers' meaning making by introducing the viewer to the tone of the series' story world. In the broadest sense, it establishes that this show will be dark and serious through the paradigmatic choice of the shadowy gray background and the cold, impassive expression that the man wears. His elevated position above the viewer also suggests power and superiority. This tone is truly driven home, though, with the blood running from his hands. The blood implies potential themes about the series, such as danger, violence or murder. These assumptions are also reaffirmed through the intertextual references to Shakespeare's play, "Macbeth," in which a character tries to wash the blood from her hands after she aids in a murder. In Gillian Rose’s chapter, “Semiotics,” intertextuality is introduced as a key semiotic tool in which a reference to outside texts is made to connect ideas of theme or narrative to the new text (Rose, 133). By creating the visual connection between the man in the chair and the literary character, an expectation has been created that this man is not only dangerous, but perhaps even capable of murder, establishing a dark, edgy tone from the poster alone.
The expectation for the story world's potential narrative is also established through the poster's semiotic elements. The idea that this series will have something to do with politics comes from the relationship between the man's attire and his positioning on a particular chair. This chair is perhaps the clearest indicator of narrative of all within the poster as it is an intertextual reference to the widely recognized statue of Abraham Lincoln. By putting the man in the former president's chair, sitting in Lincoln's place, the designers have created an expectation about the narrative being about this man running for president or replacing the sitting president in someway. His position even seems to imply that he is a king or emperor, a powerful man ruling over his domain. This narrative expectation is further reinforced by the man's well-fitted suit. In Crane's article, "Men's Clothing and the Construction of Masculine Identities," a well-tailored suit that falls within accepted fashion parameters for business wear is pointed to as an indicator of social status, wealth, and can even have a symbolically attached meaning to politics (Crane 173). Using semiotic analysis, the signs of the chair, his position within the chair, and the suit work together within the paratext to create expectations about the plotline of the show.
A psychoanalytic approach offers many of the same conclusions about the paratext and the series as a semiotic analysis does, but the methods and points of focus are vastly different. In Laura Mulvey’s essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” film is described as being a medium of the patriarchal unconscious wherein women are objectified by the "male gaze" as well as a vehicle to facilitate the three looks associated with cinema: "that of the camera as it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion" (Mulvey 17). In the image, the man in the chair is staring directly at the viewer from a slightly elevated position with his head tipped back, suggesting that he is superior and looking down on the viewer, both figuratively and literally. This plays into the larger tone expectations being created for the viewer, alluding to elitism, power dynamics, and interpersonal hierarchies. The fact that the man is both the subject of the viewer’s look and, as a man, the bearer of the gaze does complicate the implications that the image creates for the series’ tone though, and even what Mulvey has to say about the male gaze. In this way, bell hooks’ ideas from her text, “From Reel to Real: The Oppositional Gaze,” are also present, showing that there is more than one way of looking and more than one kind of viewer to consider (hooks 208). In this case, while a viewer would normally have the power to objectify the object being viewed, the man’s gaze seems to acknowledge that he is the both the object and the master of that gaze. He controls the way he is being viewed, giving the power back to the object of the gaze. This has larger implications about the type of narrative and storyworld as well; this is a man that thinks he controls everything. He is not afraid of the viewer seeing the blood on his hands. He might even lack shame or enjoy the power that comes with inciting fear from his image. The psychoanalytic analysis builds on the already established assumptions created through the visual components seen in the semiotic analysis. Between these two methods of analysis, the potential tone, storyworld, and narrative for the series begins to become a cohesive unit. Together, these conclusions suggest a dark, dangerous tone, a world filled with politics and powerful men, and a story concerning chasing the presidency and perhaps even murder.
In comparison, the title sequence for season one is also a key way to introduce viewers to the series they are about to watch (Appendix Figure 2). In the 95 second sequence, the viewer is shown a series of time-lapse images of monuments and landscapes filmed throughout a day in Washington D.C. and set to an important, serious sounding instrumental track. Based on these images, a tone, storyworld, and narrative begin to be built, independent of the promotional poster. To begin with, the storyworld is established through the monuments and scenery which act as both metonymic and synechdocal signs. The monuments and landmarks that are featured throughout the sequence not only symbolize the larger themes of politics, history, and United States government, but also stand in as a representation of Washington D.C. itself. The setting is clearly defined through the title sequence, offering some grounding context for the series. Plus, while this location has the denotation of being America’s capital, it can also have a variety of connotations, including power, secrecy, and corruption.
These possible storyworld connotations play into both the narrative and the tone of the series as well. In particular, the storyworld suggests that the narrative will follow a political drama, but the kind of drama it will be depends on the tone. One of the strongest indicators for this is the time lapse images, which depict shadows progressively creeping across the pristine, scenery, which is devoid of people, save for the occasional highway traffic. This has a variety of implications, including a tone that might start as a clean cut story of a politician which then devolves into darker themes. The velocity of the time lapse clips could also suggest a frenzied speed for either the events within the series or for the daily lives of the characters within this storyworld, creating expectations for a series with some sort of a quick pace. At the same time, the score is slower and brassier; it evens out the quick pace of the visuals to add a layer of seriousness and tension, creating a tone that implies this series is momentous or significant in a grand way.
Examining the title sequence from a psychoanalytic standpoint, on the other hand, is slightly more complicated. As previously mentioned, there are not people within the sequence to consider in the “field of looks,” but the viewer certainly has a viewpoint. In many of the shots, the viewer is positioned either as a tourist or average citizen, walking the streets and seeing the sights, or the viewer is placed up high, looking down on the city like a god. These different positionings offer a variety of interpretations to a viewer that is new to the show; in particular, it seems to suggest that the audience is being privileged as an omnipotent being within the action, seeing the entirety of the city from afar, all encompassing and glittering with lights, but also up close in the seedy underbelly of the city where anything can happen. Based on the angles, it is also possible that the viewers are meant to imagine themselves as the main character or a politician in this city, ruling from up high like a king but remaining a citizen with their hands in a multitude of pots at the same time. All of this plays into the tone of power dynamics in flux, a storyworld full of history and politics, and a narrative of someone taking on the entire city. Between the semiotic and the psychoanalytic analyses, a more cohesive picture of the series as a whole begins to emerge from the introductory text. From the title sequence alone, the audience comes to expect a shadowy storyworld that glitters from up above, a narrative that grapples with larger than life politics and power dynamics, and a tone that gets increasingly darker as the series progresses.
The real question that must be addressed, though, is how the promotional paratext and the introductory material interact in terms of meaning making for a viewer. To begin with, in regards to what Gray had to say about how paratexts manage meaning, it appears that his conclusions are largely but not completely supported. Viewers could gain an early understanding before the series had even premiered or the episode has begun about the story world, plot, and attitude of the show, which is inline with Gray's points. However, there is polysemy in these texts: it is very easy for viewers to have multiple interpretations of the smaller texts that would go against "true" or "right" interpretations of the larger text. For instance, visual elements in the title design itself, displayed prominently in both the poster and the introduction, have polysemy that can work against the "true" reading of the text (Rose 144). When designers were interpreting the nature of the series to synthesize it into this promotional poster and title sequence, they included an upside down American flag as part of the title visual. While the designers perhaps intended for this element to signify distress, other intertextual references to what an upside down flag can represent can disrupt this interpretation; a viewer might assume that this series is anti-American, which, arguably, is very far from the "truth" of the series and goes against what the preferred or dominant reading of the text. Gray's ideas have merit, but polysemy and irrelevant intertextual associations can also work against a paratext's ability to manage the meaning of a larger text.
However, while the paratexts cannot accurately convey everything about a larger text, the poster and title sequence appear to work together to convey tone, narrative, and storyworld with little friction. While there is some difference in the imaginings of these texts, such as the poster putting more emphasis on the character and his gaze while the title sequence relied more heavily on worldbuilding, it seems to work to their benefit. Each text has a separate function and does it well, one pulling an audience in and the other retaining it. Between the two of them, a viewer comes to expect a story about a dangerous politician in a shadowy world aiming for the top position, becoming ruthless in his quest for power. Not only is this a unified expectation, but it’s also “correct” in terms of the series’ reality.
In short, through a semiotic and psychoanalytic reading of all the visual elements of the paratext and title sequence, the reader has come to expect a dark series, concerning murder or violence, about a man aiming for or holding the president's seat, with all the genre conventions one would expect from a Netflix original. Gray's ideas are largely supported but also somewhat complicated by this example of a paratext and the viewer's ability to bring their own assumptions and associations to the text. Overall, though, this poster and the titles sequence not only do a fairly accurate job of setting up the attitude and story of what the audience was in for, but also do it with little to no friction between the different spaces of interpretation.
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Appendix
Figure 1 (Also referred to as “the paratext,” and “the poster”)
Figure 2 (Also referred to as “the title sequence,” “the video,” and “the introductory materials”)
To locate: Go to youtube.com, search for “house of cards title sequence season 1”, click on the 2nd link which is titled “2013 House of Cards, Introduction with Shots of D.C.” posted by user Adrienne Lawrence