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When two things become one Disclaimer: Do not read beyond the introduction before seeing the film. It 1) is full of spoilers and 2) won’t make any sense to you. Introduction “It is bad when one thing becomes two.” There is a lot going on this movie. And even when we can agree what is the topic of the subtext, there are lots of different ways to interpret what is being said about it. As Pearline comments on the book Rashomon, "It's like a story, but each person in it sees a completely different story." In this sense, Ghost Dog is a modern telling of Rashomon, however the difference is that the event in question isn’t an offscreen murder, but the film itself: something we, the audience, all just witnessed ourselves. There are many comparisons to Jim Jarmusch’s previous film, Dead Man (1995) and the most obvious connection is the appearance of Gary Farmer playing what is credited as being the same character from Dead Man: Nobody. However, the largest difference between the two films is that Dead Man is about two loners who are alienated from their own cultures, whereas Ghost Dog is about two cultures alienated from their time. As Ghost Dog says about himself and Louie, his Italian mobster counterpart, his “Reclaimer,” as he calls him: “We're from different ancient tribes. Now we're both almost extinct." Dead Man is about two cultural-outsiders banding together; Ghost Dog is about two outsider-cultures battling it out. The Code What is Ghost Dog? People like to know who and what they are. People define themselves, usually, by what they are not – we need to put something outside of us in order to give ourselves context, a point of reference. We instinctively desire Brave New World’s motto: community, stability, and identity. We must divide the world into like me, and unlike me. Into us and them. Into insiders and outsiders. If we don’t know who we are, we have no ground to stand on, no basis to form our lives and identities. This is the origin of contemporary gangs: a shared identity, a sense of belonging. Once we do acquire a knowledge of who we are and who are not us, we’ve formed an exclusive club: a clan: a code: the society. The society, with shared goals, culture, or language, is the lens through which we understand our reality: without it we are lost amid a storm of incertitude, in constant flux. Or maybe, as linguist James Paul Gee (1990) puts it: “What is important is not language, and surely not grammar, but saying (writing)-doing-valuing-believing-combinations. These combinations I will refer to as ‘Discourses’, with a capital ‘D' (‘discourse' with a little 'd', I will use for connected stretches of language that make sense, like conversations, stories, reports, arguments, essays; 'discourse' is part of 'Discourse' — 'Discourse' with a big 'D' is always more than just language).” Gee’s take, and one director Jim Jarmusch is obviously sympathetic to, is that language itself (and not only the words of language, but the doing-valuing-believing-combinations that comprise larger experiences of language) are central to our identities in a given social context. (Gee and his emphasis on Discourse with a capital D. Gee D. GD. Ghost Dog.) What is Ghost Dog? What society (Discourse, Way, Code) does he belong to? The obvious answer can be found by looking at the second half of the film’s title: The Way of the Samurai. The Way of the Samurai is a code. It is a code that Ghost Dog, the character, follows and lives by. But it is not the only code in his life. Ghost Dog, the character, is an in-between. He belongs to and employs a variety of codes in his life. Like the magic device he uses to open locked cars, Ghost Dog effortlessly enters societies and employs their codes. Ghost Dog is a shape shifter with no original form: a social chameleon. He is the wedge in the center of a Venn diagram between America, Africa, Japan. A hit man, a gangster, a samurai. He is a grey area between East and West. He is fluent in many other codes: he can take the form of Bob Solo, he can take the form of baby-sitting-book-lover with Pearline, he can take the form of Chess-buddy with Raymond, he can take the form of a gangster willing to steal your car or mug you for your clothes, he can take the form of loving caretaker for the pigeons. Ghost Dog is many things, but first and foremost he is a chameleon. Ghost Dog is also a pigeon, in the sense that he is a pidgin (a hybrid of two languages that came into contact). Since, essentially, a language is, in a way, the practical state of a code, (and a Nation-State is, in a way, the geographical state of a code) Ghost Dog is the pidgin between the codes that surround him. He is the center hub of an expanding network of codes – the center of the ancient Japanese flag, the Rising Sun, shining off in all directions. The References Ghost Dog, the film, is also the center of a massive network of references. It’s not unlikely that one of them is to the film Network. Referring to his grandson who is sticking his head out of an apartment window, Louie says, “…Now he’s mad as hell.” And he’s not gonna take it any more? (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ELleCQvew) An important reference, obviously, the Japanese film Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa. Another Kurosawa film parallels Ghost Dog: the samurai film Yojimbo. Tishoru Mifune plays the stoic, emotionless, Ghost Dog-like Sanjuro the samurai. Mifune enters a town as the stranger, he steps in between a feud involving two houses, and aligns with neither. Mifune’s character, like Ghost Dog, is the wedge in the Venn diagram between them. Belonging to neither, but going in and out of both. Ghost Dog does this with the street gangsters. In the film a red-clad gang greet him as he exits the Birdland store where he buys his bird food. They greet him with reverence, saying, “Knowledge to knowledge.” An all blue-clad gang rap about him with as much reverence. But Ghost Dog does not hesitate to rob a blue car with blue headlights from a blue parking garage. He doesn’t think twice about robbing the red convertible. Ghost Dog is, in some ways, very unlike a loyal dog. It’s interesting, then, that a musical motif from one of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western’s surfaces in one of the rap songs on Ghost Dog’s stereo. The same theme Ennio Morricone wrote for For a Few Dollars More, it being the middle (in-between) film in a trilogy inspired by Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. (Compare 1:45 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqpEXI5C3Ck to 1:22 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFtmdorQG-U) These Leone films were what won now legendary Clint Eastwood his first success. The references loop around through the network back to Ghost Dog through Bird, a film directed by Eastwood starring Forest Whitaker as titular role Charlie Parker. Jarmusch paints a swirling circle of references around Ghost Dog, by having the chameleon buy his bird food at, yes, Birdland – the same name of the club Charlie Parker played in. More references surround Ghost Dog bilaterally: the actor who plays Handsome Frank bears an uncanny resemblance to Salvador Dali, surrealist artist who worked with Luis Bunuel on another Dog movie, Un Chien Andalou. Un Chien Andalou is renowned for its cut between the moon and an eye: both being sliced horizontally, by a cloud and a knife, respectively. Ghost Dog features a number of shots the moon, and a number of Whitaker’s lazy eye – very much like the eyes of a chameleon. Neither is being sliced, but the moon is halved, and the eyes are not synchronized. There is possibly, also, a sly Godfather reference, which undoubtedly is an icon in the Italian mobster’s mythos. When Ghost Dog climbs up to his roof and finds the pigeons all murdered, there are orange lights in the background, and even an orange (the fruit) lying on the ground, which may be a reference to the Francis Ford Coppola’s use of the colour orange to symbolize death in his gangster epic. A more broad and important reference is to Le Samouraï (1967), a French film by Jean-Pierre Melville. These two films connect in a number of ways. Jef Costello, in Le Samouraï, is a loner, who takes care of a bird, and kills people for money. The two films follow almost identical plots, and even have some similar characters, props, costumes, techniques, and dialogue. Jef Costello has a giant ring of keys, allowing him to penetrate and use any car, similar to Ghost Dog’s updated, electronic version. It appears Ghost Dog is a (post)modern remake of Le Samouraï. The film references French, American, Italian and Japanese films: all the importance languages and cultures in the film. There are likely far more references than these such as the stare-off from Do the Right Thing, also a film about racial ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, the name Bob Solo, a combination of Harrison Ford names from Star Wars/American Graffiti (remember, it is bad when one thing becomes two, but good when two things become one [also note the emphasis on language in Star Wars and culture in American Graffiti]). Whether or not the references are intentional, they form an outward circular Rising Sun, or a protective moat surrounding the film, a lot like the circular, insular, protective qualities of a society striving to maintain their collective identity. Like a group of people protecting their code. The Visions Ghost Dog is not as protective of his code as the circular, insular members of more defensive clans: the Italian gangsters and their racist dismissal of all “others” as the same. “Indians, niggers, same thing,” croaks a near-deaf senior. Their insular nature only goes so far – they fail to catch the punchline of their own joke, and their guilt of applying strange nicknames to their members just like the “others”. Ghost Dog carries an inner-dissonance, best shown in a scene where he witnesses a black gangster (someone he can identify with) trying to mug an elderly Asian man (someone, too, he can identify with). Before he can decide which team to cheer for, the Asian team wins the game, and Ghost Dog is left with a haunted facial expression, as though he doesn’t know who he is. This scene, I believe, is a surreal vision: Ghost Dog is actually looking into a mirror. He sees inside himself the New Way, personified by the young black gangster, confronting the Old Way of the samurai, personified by the elderly Asian man. The Old Way wins out – for now – but there is a yearning inside Ghost Dog to belong to a society that may eventually chip away at the Old Way. The catalyst for the vision is without a doubt the friendly reception from the red-clad gangsters outside of Birdland seconds early. “Knowledge to knowledge.” This isn’t the only surreal vision Ghost Dog encounters. He later parks his stolen Lexus near two camouflaged hillbilly hunters, whom he kills. These bigoted hunters are the only southerners in the movie, and dressed in camouflage for hunting – a practice normally carried out in bright orange vests. This, too, is a self-reflexive vision. Ghost Dog, in his mirror, sees a version of himself. He is camouflaged, like the chameleon, and he is eliminating an almost-extinct group of people. Ghost Dog is killing off the gangsters, eliminating the old and irrelevant Way of the Italian mobsters. In the inverted vision, he, the bear, also a subscriber to an old and irrelevant Way, is being hunted down. This vision, like the first, exposes a dissonance inside Ghost Dog: he is eliminating an Old Way, though he himself is an Old Way. Ghost Dog and his target are inseparable. Ghost Dog is shooting into a mirror, and committing seppuku. This is why Ghost Dog’s death was inevitable: it was part of his own designs: inherit in his project. A Network Like the film’s many references, and like the character’s many identities, Ghost Dog has a number of subtexts: a network of messages. And they all converge; they all share an overlap. It emphasizes communication (conveyance), language (what is conveyed), semiotics (the system of conveyance), culture (the context of conveyance), and film itself (the medium of conveyance). Where to they converge? Well, obviously, in the theme of conveyance itself: but in a deeper, more philosophical sense, they overlap on meaning. Ghost Dog is a sincerely existential movie, for what is existence itself but raw meaning? (There wouldn’t be any reality if you didn’t have anyone to share it with. [Self/other…]) Some of the ideas connected here are not explicitly or even implicitly connected to the film: they happen to discuss topics in the film, and I am using them to expand on themes therein. Ghost Dog the Silencer What is communication? Simplified, it is “Knowledge to knowledge.” Like the suppressor for his guns he himself builds, Ghost Dog is a silencer. He breaks communications. Not only literally, cutting the television connection of Valerio’s house, but metaphorically. The film emphasized communication, and the lack of it. Pigeons carrying messages fly past telephone wires (old/new means of conveyance). People are clarifying things for each, even the nearly deaf elderly mobster who echoes what was just said: “He said ‘Ghost Dog!’” There may also be a more deeply coded reference to communication, namely the reference to two opposing theories in communication studies. The transmission model, plots a simple linear path of knowledge from a source to a receiver (similar to the path of the television broadcast into your living room). The transmission model overvalues its effects, overdetermines its influence, overstates change, paints the receiver as powerless. There is also the ritual model (or the cultural model), which recognizes a society’s communication as a reaffirmation of the culture, recognizing all communication as a symbolic process representing shared conceptions in order to maintain a society. Jarmusch undoubtedly takes the side of the ritual model in Ghost Dog, not only for its emphasis on the attempts of cultures to maintain themselves, but also on its emphasis on symbolic representation. Think of the cartoon TV shows: cartoons are pure representation, reaffirming cultural values like fighting death (Woody the Woodpecker having a laugh-off with Death), dominating nature (Betty Bop directing the pigeons), or the need for a climax to a film (Itchy and Scratchy’s battles escalating into the sun). Cultures have existed that did not demonize death as we do, did not lord over nature as we do, and certainly the medium of Film does not naturally result in the cultural form of ‘a movie’ with a climaxing plot structure. But these cultural values are not being created by the symbolic representation of communication (in this case, cartoons) and inserted into us, as the transmission model would suggest, but they already exist in the culture and are just being reaffirmed for greater solidarity, as the ritual model suggests. The fact that the cartoons breach their fourth wall internal to the film by referencing what has just happened further emphasizes 1) the impact of symbolic representation on real life, 2) the fact that this film is also just as much symbolic representation as the cartoons are (even though cartoons are easier to recognize as such), and 3) the values represented in the cartoons already exist in the culture. Another way in which the film touches on communication studies is in Stuart Hall’s theory of Encoding/Decoding as a scheme of how meaning occurs. There are producers, like the writers of Pearline’s books, like the broadcasters of the radio show that say ice cream is good, or like Jarmusch himself. The producers encode meaning into their creations. However, what the audience understands is not necessarily the same as the producers. The audience’s decoded meaning is not always what the producer encoded. Therefore meaning occurs in the audience’s reading. Thus, like Rashomon, there is not necessarily one ultimate truth, one meaning to a text. Meaning does not occur in speaking, but in hearing: ergo self and other, for if we were all truly one, there would be no one to make meaning. (A relevant aside: Jarmusch is fond of the quote, ‘You can understand the poem without knowing what it means.’) The film may depict a progression from interpersonal media (message from one sender to one receiver: one to one speech, telephone calls, the pigeons) to mass media (one to many: the radio talking about ice cream, the television cartoons, the mass-print books Pearline carries around) to network media (many to many: internet is the prime example, and though the film is lacking such a concrete image, it does seem to emphasize networks and non-hierarchical systems). The film itself appears to some sort of narrative from how language is established, succeeds in conveying meaning, and then is no longer relevant, falls apart, ceases to convey meaningfully. Like the Italian mobsters, who can only convey meaningfully to others clinging to their Old Way, to their group, their language has failed. (As Louie says, “Nothing seems to make sense any more.”) Conversely, Ghost Dog, who is open and floating freely on the river of meaning, clinging to nothing and moving in flux with the tides, can understand even those speaking another language altogether. His job is to silence those would rather cling than float freely. However, in the end Ghost Dog himself clings to the notion of floating freely, and undermines his own efforts. As he says near the end of the film, “Everything around us seems to be changing, huh, Louie?” He can identify with the mobster’s struggle to cling to a Way, to a certain meaning, amid changing times. Ghost Dog the Pidgin Something central to all of Jarmusch’s films is the theme of language, and the interaction between different languages. I’ve already mentioned the parallel between the pidgin language Ghost Dog operates within and the pigeons he cares for. (It may also be worth noting the Haitian French is sort of a pigeon [a Creole, actually], as is Jamaican: both of these cultures are mentioned, if briefly, in the film.) But there’s more in the realm of (applied) linguistics (and Discourse studies) that relates to this film: particularly in how language and identity interact. Gee’s notion of the identity kit and its relationship to language is also key to Ghost Dog: “A Discourse is a sort of 'identity kit' which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular social role that others will recognize. Imagine what an identity kit to play the role of Sherlock Holmes would involve: certain clothes, certain ways of using language (oral language and print), certain attitudes and beliefs, allegiance to a certain life style, and certain ways of interacting with others.” Ghost Dog’s magic (identity) kit, carried in his saxophone case, is full of tools that allow him to penetrate other ‘hoods’ (that is, vehicles), to listen in on other people’s language, to blend in. Like Felix the cat’s magic bag that can change into anything that the context needs, Ghost Dog’s identity kit is ever changing – is actually many identity kits. Ghost Dog is also wealthy in what sociologists and applied linguists call cultural capital. If applied cultural know-how and the ability to have a flexible changing identity were a commodity, essentially, Ghost Dog would be swimming in it (contrary to his low-class portrayal). His knowledge of different cultural contexts and ability to apply that knowledge in different contexts (at many different levels of group membership) is what gives him the capacity to contain multiple identities. As an aside, the inclusion of Gary Farmer as ‘Nobody’ (the character he plays in Jarmusch’s previous black and white western, Dead Man) may be a reference to Gee’s notion of the ‘real Indian’ (simplified and in short, a ‘real Indian’ is someone who isn’t acting a role, but naturally is the role, who fits the context he or she is put in, unlike a Barbie in a biker bar). There is also mention of the internalization of language in two important ways. One, when Ghost Dog eats (consumes) Louie’s message from the pigeon (thus literally internalizing the words). The second example of this is when Ghost Dog asks Pearline what’s inside her lunch box, and she reveals it to be books. Books are substituting food in this case: ready for consumption and internalization. Why is this important? Well it likely relates to Lev Vygotsky’s notion of a, “verbally organized world schema.” That our world is the one inside our minds: the world of internal language. “The world we respond to is the world as we represent it to ourselves.” (Janna Fox, 2010). It’s the language inside of us that defines how we experience the universe, how we understand and perceive reality, and even how we react to that reality. Yes, our experiences shape our identity, but our language shapes our experience. This may be one justification for the Rashomon reference – an emphasis on the subjectivity of perception, caused by different kinds of internal languages. This also relates to Jarmusch’s own philosophies as he has expressed them in interviews. After a showing of his films in Iceland, he told a story from his childhood, when his father chastised him and told him, “how the world really works.” Jarmusch then concluded that others couldn’t tell him how the world really is, because the world is inside himself: he is the interpreter and thus creator of the world. (He says it somewhere in here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbiWN-RdXuc) This is also reflected in the lyrics to the song Lies to Live By from Jarmusch’s band The Del-Byzantines, which go, “If I only have one life, let me live it as a lie.” The only difference between then and now is that Jarmusch no longer calls it a lie, but believes that a subjective experience of the world is all there is, and is equal to all others. It isn’t a lie: it’s the truth. Ghost Dog the Sign Killer There is an important scene towards the beginning of the film, where Ghost Dog walks around a street corner, and as he appears (seemingly unnoticed by the men on the street, like a real ghost) the signs in the shop windows go out. The presence of Ghost Dog ensures the absence of the signs. Ghost Dog is also a murderer, but on screen those aren’t real people being murdered, just light arranged to signify a person: a sign. Ghost Dog is a sign killer. For those who are unfamiliar with the basics of semiotics, essentially it’s the science of signs or the language of language. Its building blocks are a trinity: the sign, the signifier, and the signified. In this context, the sign is the complete meaning: a signifier and a signified interlocked. The signifier is the tangible, physical aspect of the sign: for example the word “dog,” whether written or spoken. The signified is the intangible concept that a signifier refers to, gives rise to, or intelligibly evokes in our minds: for example our mental picture of a dog. The signified and the signifier must coexist together and must remain together, otherwise meaning will vanish. But that’s not all that’s required for meaning to occur: the sign must exist in a code that a number of people use. A fully-fledged sign (signifier/signified together in harmony) is useless if the user is speaking to a mirror. There must be a society surrounding and using the code. This duality of meaning (signifier/signified) surfaces throughout the film. Even the name Ghost Dog conjures an image of a both worldly tangible (dog) and an intangible concept (ghost). But it’s also reflected in the Samurai relationship between the Reclaimer and the Samurai, the latter who must at all costs remain loyal (like a dog?) to its Master. It is also reflected in the Hagakure quote, “It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all ways and be more and more in accord with his own.” A prime example of semiotics occurs during Ghost Dog’s encounter with Handsome Frank. Shortly before plugging him, Handsome Frank asks Ghost Dog, “What do you want? My Rolex?” There is a lot of semiotics at work here. First of all, Handsome Frank sees a black man in his house uninvited and reads the sign as though he’s a burglar. Secondly, Handsome Frank asks if he wants the Rolex of all things. What he really meant was, “Do you want my possessions?” Why did he choose the Rolex specifically to embody all possessions: to embody possessionness? Because the Rolex is the signifier, and wealth is the signified. The watch itself holds no monetary value: is not wealth in itself, but he assumes this burglar is after the signifier of wealth: in pursuit of the appearance of meaning within the semiotic code of the society. But Ghost Dog’s project is to dismantle their society’s code, not to operate within its boundaries. Handsome Frank did not realize that this was a true “other,” outside of even the mainstream society Frank’s mobster-kind rejects. But the code doesn’t work perfectly just like that. There are problems. There are misreadings, showing the innate unreliability of signs. As is written in Introducing Postmodernism (on a section about philosopher Jacques Derrida), “Against the essentialist notion of certainty of meaning, Derrida mobilizes the central insight of structuralism – that meaning is not inherit in signs, nor in what they refer to, but results purely from the relationships between them.” (page 79) There are straight misreadings: the elderly Asian man is misread as weak and vulnerable, and turns out to be agile and powerful. There are also split-signifiers (a signifier that doesn’t neatly refer to one signified, but to two: one word referring to two concepts. Things like the signifier “Gangster.” Is it referring to the Italian mobsters, à la Godfather, or the street-rappers à la Wu-Tang? What about the word hood? In the (street) gangster terminology (or code) it means (neighbor)hood. In the idiom of everyday English users, a hood is something you put up on your head. Interesting, then, that Jarmusch has Ghost Dog put on his own personal hood as he drives the stolen car out of his (neighbor)hood. Or if you take the example of the second stolen car (the convertible) Ghost Dog raises the car’s hood. Other misreadings arise in the confusion between English and French. For example, the pigeons end their flight at the bird coup. The word coup is French for cut (‘cutting’ is important for its samurai as well as filmic properties). One meaning: two words. But the misreadings can go the other way: split-signifieds: a signified that isn’t neatly referred to by one signifier, but by two different signifiers. One concept being referred to: two different words referring to it. In an early scene when Louie is being interrogated by Vargo and Valerio, Louie refers to the same person in two different ways. “The girl,” and then corrects himself, looking at Vargo, “…mister Vargo’s daughter.” Later, Louie tells a dying Vinnie “You just shot a broad.” Vinnie corrects him, “I shot a cop.” Or, again bringing up the English/French conflict, as Louie stands waiting, ready for the final shootout, Raymond tells Ghost Dog, “C’est louis.” In English, meaning “It’s him.” However, “louis,” and “Louie” are pronounced identically. Two words: one meaning. Ghost Dog also emphasizes the empty gesture: a sign out of context, in the wrong code, signifying no meaning. The most glaring example is Ghost Dog’s ritualistic swoosh of his blade as he sheathes it. This swinging (which also makes the ∞ infinite shape) originally had a very practical worldly use: to sweep off the blood from the blade. But it has become a ritual, and Ghost Dog performs the motion when sheathing his guns (in no need of cleaning). The gesture, once removed form its context, holds no meaning. The final case of semiotics in Ghost Dog is the notion of the floating signifier: a signifier without a signified attached. A word that has no specific meaning. David Chandler describes it as, “a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified.” This notion is capitalized by the postmodernists, like Jacques Derrida, who suggests there is a “freeplay” of signifiers, emphasizing the tenuousness, the artificiality, the cultural construction of the signifier/signified relationship, and that signifiers are not tied to their single signified (with the loyalty of a dog, you could say). What a perfect image to represent this notion of a “floating signified,” but the opening shot: one of a pigeon floating freely, with nothing behind it but empty skies – nothing to compare it to, nothing to give it context or meaning outside of itself. The bird flies remaining within the center of the frame – moving but not going anywhere. If we take the image of the floating pigeon as a representation of the “floating signifier,” ready to be painted with any meaning we project onto it, it’s important then that that opening shot is superimposed over Ghost Dog’s face as he reminisces on his past: specifically on the day Louie saved his life, the event remembered differently by him than by Louie. Rashomon: the narrative of an ancient “floating signifier,” of the evasion of objective truth; of one single signifier referring to one single signified. Ghost Dog the Bear There are insiders and there are outsiders. We see people huddle together, dressed alike, talking alike, or having a shared goal. We see people in the fringes of the screen, huddled in close-knit circle, at picnic tables eating, around chess sets playing, in the park rapping. The insider-outsider scheme is important; it shows what happens when different Codes or Ways rub up against each other. Sometimes, in the case of an inclusive or expansive vessel, the Codes overlap and coexist, as is the case with Ghost Dog. Sometimes, the Codes are insular or violent, and this leads to the Old Ways of Italian mobsters’ racist remarks, lobbing all “others,” into one inferior category. As is said, “It is bad when one thing becomes two.” Ghost Dog is many things becoming one. He contains a number of identities, and may even thus personify America’s dismissal of such a character. As Gee explains, “The individual instantiates, gives body to, a Discourse every time he or she acts or speaks, and thus carries it, and ultimately changes it, through time. Americans tend to be very focused on the individual, and thus often miss the fact that the individual is simply the meeting point of many, sometimes conflicting, socially and historically defined Discourses.” This insider-outside scheme leads to escalation, like the Itchy and Scratchy battle in the final cartoon. It seems to be Ghost Dog’s purpose to stop the escalation, to wipe out the groups that practice the insider-outsider-identity. But in so doing, Ghost Dog is himself guilty of the same crime, making an “other” of those who practice bigotry, making an “outsider,” of all those who see the world differently than him. He makes a “them” out of those who divide the world into “us and them”. His end was necessary, was part of his own designs, was his seppuku. Film: The New Old Way Ghost Dog is killing Italian mobsters. Italy was the cultural center of the Renaissance, where the art of painting famously flourished, and reigned as a central cultural form. There is a sly reference to a Caravaggio painting in the framing of the above screenshot, but the Old Way of painting is growing stale (as can be seen by the tacky, electric-lit Italian painting in Louie’s apartment). Even experimental modern painters like Salvador Dali (Handsome Bob) have to go. They are being replaced by the New Way, film. Ghost Dog, in this subtext, represents film itself. He is a walking collection of movie clichés: he’s a samurai, he’s a hitman, and he’s a gangster. His saxophone case (a reference to Bird) contains filmic objects: an audio device for listening in, a gun for shooting, his knives for cutting, etc. And at the climax he plays out another film cliché: the Western gunslinger showdown at High Noon, with church bell tolling and all, and the death of the hero. (Also note the layered wordplay: Ghost Dog is unarmed, Louie is also unarmed but in a different way. He’s literally a gunslinger.) In this light, Ghost Dog was removing the Old Way, painting, from prominence to replace it with film as the society’s major artistic medium. But even afterwards Ghost Dog dies. Film is destined to some day fall to same fate as painting. As filmmaker Gaspar Noé says, “Cinema is going to get old quickly.” (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxmHmcyOtKM) Film is now over a hundred years old: it is the New Old Way. Two Ghost Dog is referred to as a Bear, as a Cat, as a Pigeon, as a Chameleon, and, of course, as a Dog. Where do you find all these animals? Well Noah’s ark, of course, where a certain Way will survive the flood, where two of each animal is assembled. Two appears to be an important number to the film. Binary oppositions dot it: vanilla and chocolate, black and white (skin, chess), English and French, signifier and signified, the double meanings of words: pigeon/pidgin, hood/hood, gangster/gangster. The double loop of the infinity sign. Two is an important number to meaning, too, since without contrast, meaning cannot occur. “If everything was red, there would be no word for the colour red,” (Michael Goodson, 2010). The study of semiotics lists a number of key things for meaning to occur, and one of them is that a sign is unique to all other signs. Contrast is required. And for all its eastern philosophy, Jarmusch resists the urge to paint a yin-yang symbol anywhere within his film (though perhaps multiple shots of the moon is the closest thing to it [a white dot on a black sphere]). Instead, he shapes the canvas of the film itself as a yin-yang. A network of opposites united. Ghost Dog is the space between the binary, perhaps personifying Jacques Derrida’s notion of freeplay between opposites. Yet, this seemingly transcendence of a Way is itself a Way, and in the true tradition of the samurai, it must commit seppuku. It is caught in the contradiction of postmodernism, which makes a grand overarching transcending statement of truth in saying, “there are no grand overarching transcending truths.” What is Ghost Dog? He is the fairy-tale hero for the 21st century. He is postmodernism personified. Bibliography list: Gee, J.P. “Social Linguistics and Literacies” (1990) / https://www.curricublog.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/gee-discourses-1990.pdf Thiltges, A. "The Semiotics of Alienation and Emptiness in the Films of Jim Jarmusch" (2002) / http://www.jim-jarmusch.net/biblio/online/amy_thiltges_the_semiotics_.html David Chandler. “Semiotics for Beginners.” (2001) / http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02a.html Richard Appignanesi, Chris Garratt, Ziauddin Sardar & Patrick Curry. “Introducing Postmodernism” (2007). / http://www.introducingbooks.com/book/view/postmodernism Heaton, Dave. “"Almost Extinct" Spirits of the Ages Meet: Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog under partial study” (2001) / http://www.erasingclouds.com/06ghostdog.html Janna Fox, power point slides + class notes from ALDS 1101, Carleton University, 2010 Michael Goodson, class notes, Film/Video, John McCrae Secondary School, 2010 Posted by J.Scam at 8:11 PM Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Labels: Analysis, Jim Jarmusch 6 comments: 5plitreelDecember 28, 2010 at 11:30 AM Great post, enjoyed it very much as I did Ghost Dog. Reply J.D.January 28, 2011 at 10:44 AM Wow! What insight and loved your indepth analysis. I certainly agree with your eloquent observations about this fascinating film. It makes a great companion piece, in some ways to another Jarmusch film, DEAD MAN, which does to the western genre what GHOST DOG did to the gangster/hitman genre. Reply Chris CrisseyNovember 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM Actually, there is a Ying / Yang when Raymond goes to Ghost Dog's body. Ghost dog is in all black. He is S shaped. Raymond, in white, fills the space behind his legs. I wish I could find a screen shot..... Reply leetdoodApril 16, 2014 at 10:37 AM I really enjoyed this! May I ask- which caravaggio painting is it? The martyrdom of St. Ursula? Reply AnonymousDecember 28, 2014 at 3:56 AM Retainer man, retainer....not reclaimer And Raymond is speaking standard French not Haitian Creole but that's interesting in itself as it would put him within a particular minority from Haiti. Reply AnonymousDecember 28, 2014 at 3:59 AM Oh, and of course a creole and a pidgin are not really the same thing. You could also argue that Haitian is a koine now. Reply Load more... Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Large Association of Movie Blogs About Me My Photo J.Scam Pretentious, self-referencing, grammar-transcending, word-hyphenating child of the nineteen-90s. University student and going nowhere real slow. View my complete profile Blog Archive ► 2012 (19) ► 2011 (18) ▼ 2010 (12) ▼ December (1) Ghost Dog Analysis ► November (1) ► October (1) ► September (1) ► August (2) ► July (6) Followers Labels 1 Sentence Review (7) Akira Kurosawa (1) Analysis (16) Andrei Tarkovsky (2) Charlie Kaufman (1) Christopher Nolan (3) David Cronenberg (3) David Lynch (4) Director Spotlight (7) editorial (9) Gaming (3) Gasper Noé (3) George Lucas (1) Guillermo del Toro (2) Harmony Korine (1) Image (1) Jim Jarmusch (3) Lars von Trier (2) List (3) M. Night Shyamalan (1) Martin Scorsese (1) Music (1) Nobuhiko Obayashi (1) P.T. Anderson (2) Powell + Pressburger (1) Review (13) Stanley Kubrick (2) Terrence Malick (2) Tim Burton (1) Wes Anderson (1) Ethereal template. Powered by Blogger.
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Jan 21, 2015 15:14
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Well sure, but why?
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Jan 21, 2015 19:57
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You got probated on 01/28/11 for a low content post. Those were the days, my friend. The salad days.
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Jan 21, 2015 20:11
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ʇɐɥʍ
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Jan 21, 2015 21:39
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Redlettermedia already reviewed this.
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Jan 22, 2015 13:04
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That part where he shot the dude through the sink drain was p. dope.
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Jan 22, 2015 15:39
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McSpanky posted:That part where he shot the dude through the sink drain was p. dope. Word, though it is kind of telling that the coolest thing in the movie is quoted directly from Branded to Kill.
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Jan 22, 2015 15:41
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what compels someone to start a new thread that no one will read? 
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Jan 22, 2015 18:32
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