‘Reloading’ movies into commercial reality: A multimodal analysis of The Matrix trilogy's promotional posters
-
Arianna Maiorani
Her research interests include systemic functional linguistics and multimodality. Her publications include ‘Literature as the place of cultural encounters: A linguistic analysis of one of Kipling's “introductory” poems’ (2004); and ‘Karen Blixen: Language to preserve a disappearing Africa’ (2005).
Abstract
In 1999, the first episode of The Matrix movie trilogy was released, marking the beginning of a new trend in science fiction movies and also in the perception of motion pictures as interactive social and commercial events. This paper will analyze an aspect of The Matrix trilogy promotional campaign (1999–2003) focusing on the interplay between verbal and visual semiotics through a select corpus of posters. The method of analysis will be based both on the grammar of visual design developed by Kress and van Leeuwen, and on the Hallidayan model of analysis. The Matrix movies are set in a present (not future) ‘real’ world that is actually a ‘fiction of science,’ rather than a science fiction vision of a future reality. They are based on the idea of a very fuzzy border between real and virtual reality, which has become a major issue in these last fifteen years due to the advent of the internet and the fast growing number of internet users all over the world. This analysis will show how posters encode different kinds of promotional messages according to the social impact of each movie.
About the author
Her research interests include systemic functional linguistics and multimodality. Her publications include ‘Literature as the place of cultural encounters: A linguistic analysis of one of Kipling's “introductory” poems’ (2004); and ‘Karen Blixen: Language to preserve a disappearing Africa’ (2005).
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Wounded warriors: Further explorations into a biocultural semiotics
- ‘Reloading’ movies into commercial reality: A multimodal analysis of The Matrix trilogy's promotional posters
- The use of language to create realities: The example of Good Bye, Lenin!
- The narrative semiotics of The Daily Show
- Le produit in situ : Analyse (sémiotique) d'une photographie d'Andreas Gursky 99 cent
- Semiotic systemity of visual artworks: Case study of The Holy Trinity by Rublev
- ‘What's in a picture?’ A comparison of drawings by apes and children
- ‘Aller sans mais se sentir avec’ : emplois absolus non-innocents de avec et sans
- An interview with Paul Newman
- ‘Superreader’: Riffaterre revisited
- Application d'une hypothèse de linguistique textuelle : Le génotexte
- Information, semiotics, and symbolic systems
- Assuming positions: Organizational change as mediated through metaphors
- Icon, index, symbol and denotation, connotation, metasign
- Toxic substances, semiotic forms: Towards a socio- and textual analysis of altered senses
- Playing doubles: Derrida's writing
- Paratextology
- Semiotics of space: Peirce and Lefebvre
- Gesture and language
Articles in the same Issue
- Wounded warriors: Further explorations into a biocultural semiotics
- ‘Reloading’ movies into commercial reality: A multimodal analysis of The Matrix trilogy's promotional posters
- The use of language to create realities: The example of Good Bye, Lenin!
- The narrative semiotics of The Daily Show
- Le produit in situ : Analyse (sémiotique) d'une photographie d'Andreas Gursky 99 cent
- Semiotic systemity of visual artworks: Case study of The Holy Trinity by Rublev
- ‘What's in a picture?’ A comparison of drawings by apes and children
- ‘Aller sans mais se sentir avec’ : emplois absolus non-innocents de avec et sans
- An interview with Paul Newman
- ‘Superreader’: Riffaterre revisited
- Application d'une hypothèse de linguistique textuelle : Le génotexte
- Information, semiotics, and symbolic systems
- Assuming positions: Organizational change as mediated through metaphors
- Icon, index, symbol and denotation, connotation, metasign
- Toxic substances, semiotic forms: Towards a socio- and textual analysis of altered senses
- Playing doubles: Derrida's writing
- Paratextology
- Semiotics of space: Peirce and Lefebvre
- Gesture and language
