Relevance of the signified or significance of the signified Text and film in The unbearable lightness of being
Titel:
Relevance of the signified or significance of the signified Text and film in The unbearable lightness of being
Auteur:
Grabe, Ina
Verschenen in:
Communicatio
Paginering:
Jaargang 15 (1989) nr. 1 pagina's 39-48
Jaar:
1989
Inhoud:
It is argued in this article that in a postmodernist novel, like Milan Kundera's The unbearable lightness of being (for instance), the novel's selfreflexive commentary on the arti fice of writing (i.e. its foregrounding of the narrative signifier) is emphasized to such an extent as to dictate the perception of its narrative content (i.e. its underlying narrative signified or "message"). Therefore, the possible relevance of the signified (the intertwinement of the personal stories of Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz with the historic invasion of Prague by Russia in 1968 and its political aftermath) is channelled through the deliberations on the signifier (the "laying bare" of the writing process, or the making audible of the narrative's own discourse on itself). In the selective focalizing of both the fictional relationships and the historic events in the filmic version of Kundera's text the suppression of the textual tissue of commentary on such a "purified" signified results in a reductive reading of the text in that the filmic version neglects the sophisticated questioning of a possible narrative statement resulting from postmodern narrative strategies utilized in the written text. Such an attempt at reconstructing the signified without proper consideration for the significance of the signifier results in a different reading of the text — it involves, on the one hand, a romantic depiction of Tomas's sexual exploits and it lends itself, on the other hand, to a propagandistic portrayal of the political events.
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