UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI “FEDERICO II”

DIPARTIMENTO DI STUDI UMANISTICI

CORSO DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE IN

LINGUE E LETTERATURE MODERNE EUROPEE

Paper in
LINGUISTICA INGLESE

MEET JOE BLACK (1998): A METAPHOR OF LIFE

Ch.mi Professori
Paolo Donadio
Flavia Cavaliere
SARA ORSENO
Matricola: N61000955

Anno accademico 2020/2021

 ABSTRACT

Meet Joe Black (1998), directed and produced by Martin Brest, shows us the unnatural journey that
Death enjoys on Earth among the humans, in both a dramatic and romantic key. Length and
slowness are some of the characteristics that make the whole production interesting and evaluable
from the point of view of multimodality, which is a recent paradigm in discourse studies that links
the study of language with other “semiotic resources”. Starting from the definition of
multimodality, a detailed analysis of the film will teach us to recognize the main aspects of the
discipline operating in a communicative context.

INTRODUCTION

1. WHAT DOES “MULTIMODALITY” DEAL WITH?

According to the study of language, linguists have developed a lot of theories to explain its main
aspects. Kress, particularly, focuses on the Social Semiotics, whose central concept is the sign, a
combination of a signifier, the physical mark of the sign, and a signified, the meaning associated
with the signifier. Signs are made by a sign-maker, that always take in consideration a history of
experiences in various social environments and their culture, in order to deal with the social world.
Key concepts about the theory are interest, representation and communication: interest produces the
attention, representation is focused on the interest of the speaker (rhetor) who creates the message
(self-oriented), while communication implies the representation of messages, signs, meanings that
we want to transfer and it is based on one's own interest, by virtue of the relationship with other
speakers. Communication happens when a participant’s attention has focused on some aspect of the
communication that serves as a prompt. This one becomes a sign and then leads to another
communicational act: (attention > framing > interpretation). The frame marks spatial or temporal
extension and limits of a text or other semiotic entity, and it is linked to the interpretation. Without
them, there is not communication. This complex relation of signs is encapsulated in the notion of
the logonomic system. With it, we refer to the scenario in which we are analysing something. It is
the “room” where different modes are arranged in the MMD approach. When we change the
“room”, we change the meaning of the message.
In the age of multimedia, spoken language is no longer the carrier of all meaning, and therefore we
must also look at other ways to communicate. The multimodality approach deals with all the means
we have for making meanings and considers their specific way of configuring the world. 1 Images,
scientific symbolism, gesture, action, music, sound are diversified and expressive modalities and all
1
KRESS, VAN LEEUWEN, Multimodal Discourse, 2001, p. 15.
of them contribute to the creation of meaning, even if they belong to the non-verbal language. These
resources are called “semiotic resources” or “modes”. Modes are chosen by a society for
representation, they are socially and culturally shaped, create meanings and differ from culture to
culture; that is why they are not identical in each country. The more cultural differences are
highlighted, the greater are the differences in the resources of representation and in the practices of
their use.2 For example, writing has a long list of grammars and syntaxes, but it also has graphic
resources as font, size, colour or punctuation marks that serve to emphasize one aspect in particular;
sound shows a variation in energy or rhythm and accent, pitch variation and intonation; while
image presents a variety of elements located in a space. Modes have to allow the rhetor to create the
message that the interpreter will encode according to his own vision, his social experience and his
own interest. Each mode has a different potential in communicating, that is why the rhetor combine
them with each other to realize social positions and points (multimodal design). Rhetor and designer
come together in one same role.
Nowadays, the world of communication – together with economy, technology and society – is
changing. The reason of all these changes is globalization, which promotes the interactions between
different cultures and populations around the globe: thanks to that, it is possible for characteristics
of one place to be present in another one. Globalization happens in all places, and it has different
effects because all places are different.

2. JOE “BLACK”: BEYOND THE COLOURS

Colour is one of the most powerful modes that speakers can use to convey a message and it has a
strong communicative function.3 It arouses emotions and feelings but can also represent a concept
or denote a textual meaning through a set of elements and features, such as saturation, modulation
and purity.
As we said before, modes are related to the social world and depend on cultural context and on
religion, ethnicity, nationality, but thanks to the globalization they come into contact with one
another. For this reason, many times, a specific meaning can become a “global” meaning and a full
shared experience (for instance, traffic lights’ colours convey the same message all over the world).
According to this statement, it can be affirmed that generally black is the colour used to identify
Death and its bad energy, and this is one of the most dominant aspects of Meet Joe Black (1998),
produced and directed by Martin Brest as a remake of Death Takes a Holiday (1934), which is an
adaptation of the Italian play La Morte in Vacanza by Alberto Casella.

2
KRESS G., Multimodality, A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, 2009, p.1.
3
VAN LEEUWEN T., Languages of Colour, 2010.
The film tells us about the unnatural journey that Death enjoys on Earth among the humans: its
“job” is getting boring, so it decides to take a holiday because of its curiosity to know humanity in
all its characteristics and, in particular, wishes to understand what love means. This is the strongest
contradiction ever: Death wants to live, and Bill Parrish – starred by Anthony Hopkins – seems to
be the perfect pawn for its purpose. He is an esteemed businessman surrounded by his daughters’
affection, with a life full of successes, and the rightest person to guide it through its journey to
discover earthly feelings and passions. Without any doubts, Death is the major character just before
Bill, and its power lies in its ability to show itself in multiple shapes.
Its first coming on stage overlaps with the beginning of the film: it is late at night and the scene
opens with a rapid shot on
a huge well-kept garden,
dominated by a majestic
villa. All around is
completely dark, the
atmosphere is a little bit
gloomy and this happens
every time Death sets in
and acts, before taking on
new appearances: black
backgrounds close the
scenes and separate them from the following ones. The viewer and the protagonist do not know yet
what will happen, nor could they imagine it: Bill is lying in bed and suddenly a pain in his left arm
forces him to wake up, thinking about a heart attack; in his silent bedroom, a deep voice says ‘yes’,
but there is no one else with him.
Some shots later, Bill’s youngest daughter, Susan – Claire Forlani –, is having breakfast in a coffee
bar she usually goes to and meets a guy. She is engaged, although she is not sure of her love, and
she is so fascinated by the stranger that running away seems to be the best choice to her. When they
both leave the place and turn the corner, he is hit
by a car.
Once again, a black background follows the end
of the scene: we cannot be completely sure, but
most likely the guy is dead.
At this point, Death has appeared twice and it still
has its usual form.
During a family dinner at the villa, Bill hears again the same deep voice that has been tormenting
him for days, and then he is told by a housemaid that there is a man waiting for him outside the
door. Maybe it is the most suggestive moment of the whole film because Death – starred by the
young and handsome Brad Pitt – shows itself in flesh and bone. Just going forward, the spectator is
informed of what happened to the guy that Susan had met in the coffee bar by listening to the
significant conversation that his father has with the stranger in his library: Death has taken his body
because it has decided to live as a human being, it has chosen Bill as its earthly guide because he
has competence, wisdom and experience,
and gives him in exchange more time to
live before taking him away forever. This
is the first great paradox. Then, the
unexpected guest has to be introduced to
the others and no name fits him better
than “Joe Black”, with a clear reference to
its deeper essence, that nobody knows
except Bill.
Therefore, during the whole film, colour plays a fundamental role in identifying the parts: dark
tones underline the presence of Death and evil, and the fear of the eternal sleep, while lighter and
brighter tones identify the other characters and scenarios. So, Joe and Bill always wear black suits,
as well as Dru, Susan’s partner, who represents a sick ambition; but just the opposite of Joe and
Death, with a good soul and pure feelings, Susan is a doctor and brings her patients back to life.
All these aspects take into account the metafunctional value of the colour.

3. TRANSLATION, STEREOTYPES AND RESEMIOTISATION: FROM

PARTICULAR TO GENERAL

As it has been stated at the beginning of this analysis, thanks to the globalization a specific meaning
can become a “global” meaning, through persuasive techniques which influence the way people
perceive reality (electronic or print media). This leads to the concept of stereotype, or a generalized
belief about a particular category of people. It is sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and
resistant to new information, but other times reflect reality.
We can talk about stereotype thinking of the common idea of Death and introducing the second
great paradox of the whole film, which is linked to the colour and can also concern the shape. That
is all about the fact that in the common
imagination Death has always been represented
as a dark entity with black clothing and
terrifying appearance, but Joe Black is right the
opposite: Death takes the body of a young man
with straight blonde hair and wonderful blue
eyes, on a smooth, fair skinned face, looking
more like an angel than a demon. Considering
that, the most denotative characteristic of the
stereotype is inverted and conveys another
meaning: Death may not be as bad as people
think, although its job is not joyful and it is a duty to which it must necessarily submit. Moreover, it
has fallen in love with Susan and it seems that it does not want to leave its place on Earth because
she wants Joe to stay. Passion and human feelings have changed forever its inner essence.
This transformative process is called resemiotisation, or when a sign, previously used in a certain
context, is reused in another context in other to convey a different meaning. Resemiotisation can be
seen as a kind of translation, which consist in moving a meaning from one semiotic domain to
another. It can occur also by moving from a mode to another, for example from writing to film
(transduction), or it can occur by reordering the entities in a syntagm, for example the translation of
a novel from German to English (transformation).

4. EXPRESSING THROUGH THE SENSES

Together with colour, body language is

another interesting aspect of the film to
analyse in more detail. Because of their
powerful communicative value, gestures
and facial expressions can be considered
as ‘modes’: gestures concern the use of
the hands and other parts of the body
and are considered a part of the kinesics,
which is about movement and posture;
facial expressions, instead, are more
related to the emotional field, they are synchronised with speech and can add emphasis to the
content of talk. All of them merge into the film to make it a significative example of multimodality.
Since the beginning of the story, what catches immediately the attention is the fact that, apart from
words, Joe is able to communicate through the eyes. Although it does not belong to the human
skills, he can convey his messages just looking
intensely at his interlocutor. It happens when
they meet for the first time: Bill asks Joe who he
is, where he comes from and how it is possible
that he knows everything about his life; Joe
approaches and makes him understand his
identity just with a look.
But it is not a single moment: the viewer has not
to forget that the guy from which Death has
taken the body does not exist anymore, he is just
the envelope within which Death hides and even if it has decided to take a holiday, however it has
to fulfil its duty. And so, when the guy goes to the hospital to visit Susan during her service hours,
he meets a very sick and suffering old woman who recognises him as a sorcerer, just feeling his
negative energy and looking at him in the eyes. She asks him to make her die, but Joe puts his hand
on hers and with the power of his touch gives her some relief.
As we can see, gestures and facial expressions can offer a wide range of signifiers and convey a lot
of different meanings: body speaks and Joe expresses his emotions with a grimace or a head
movement, as other characters do, like Bill or Susan in particular.
Meet Joe Black not only is the result of a meditation about a deep and widely discussed topic, but it
also is a sentimental drama about the love story between a woman and an idea, personified in a
man, in which concreteness and
abstraction go hand in hand, like speeches
and body language. With this regard, some
scenes are crucial to represent this strong
ambivalence: at its first appearance as a
man, Death does not know how to behave
during dinner and looks at everything with
wonder and curiosity, under the amazed
gaze of the other guests. It has never felt
the softness of a mattress, looked at
himself in the mirror or tasted peanut butter, and above all, it does not know yet what it is like to
have feelings. Susan will be the only one to make Joe feel the power of love, the warmth emanating
from a body and from the touch on the skin. The moment they make love represents a turning point
that moves towards the end of the film, together with another important scene, in which Joe goes
again to the hospital and decides to visit the old woman he knew the first time there. He confesses
her his love for Susan, but she reminds him that his feeling cannot last forever because of who he
really is.

5. THE VALUE OF SOUNDS AND SILENCE

Music and soundtracks belong to the group of modes, and contribute to characterise and emphasize,
as images, body language and colour. Being Meet Joe Black a very introspective and demanding
film, there is not a widespread use of music
background, because most of the scenes require only
the actors to play and the spectators have to focus on
their words and quotes to grasp the message they
want to convey. On the contrary, deep sounds and
silence are the preferred means to communicate.
Until the part where Joe makes his appearance,
Death only exists in shape of a deep voice that
torments Bill during his days and nights and anticipates its coming in flash and bone; it serves as a
warning. Its main function is similar to that of the narrator who introduces the story: it explains the
reason why it has chosen Bill and has decided to land on Earth. Moreover, its task is that of
highlighting the most interesting considerations about life and experience, in particular through the
character of its earthly guide.
At the same time, the great number of silences, made up of looks and unspoken thoughts, serves the
characters to think over these same considerations. Since these elements occur very frequently
among the scenes, it can be introduced another important feature of multimodality, which is the
resonance, or repetition (or redundancy) of elements, in order to enhance concepts and give
coherence to the images.

6. A METAPHOR OF LIFE

At the end of this analysis, we can add to the previous list the most powerful concept of
multimodality and – in my opinion – of all linguistics: the metaphor. The word itself derives from
two Greek roots, μετα (‘over/beyond’) and φορά (‘carry/transfer’) and identifies a figure of speech
by which a characteristic of one object is assigned to another, different but resembling it or
analogous to it. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, metaphor consists of “giving
the thing a name that belongs to something else”. All signs are metaphors. As Kress said, it is
extremely important to take into consideration who we are addressing the message to: when we see
pictures, signs, gestures, we have a personal point of view; so, everything is subjective. This is due
to the fact that we all have our own culture and our own perception. More frequently, metaphors are
considered linguistic strategies which are useful for evoking specific images or emotions.
Meet Joe Black is an emotional and eventful metaphor of life, of which the characters live every
moment to make it memorable. A sentimental story that, through the character of Bill Parrish,
enhances the value of an existence that is worth living only if it is overwhelmed by love in its most
extreme form, because “to make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven't lived a
life at all. But you have to try, cause if you haven't tried, you haven't lived.”. He would like her to
forget her brain to listen to her heart; he dreams for her of a man who knows how to love her, who
is worthy of her and who can support her “through this beautiful thing called life”, but above all, he
dreams of someone who belongs to her own world and Joe cannot be the right person for it. This
awareness generates the drama and leads to a humanly unachievable ending which, however, hides
a hope: during the party in honour of Bill’s birthday, Death says goodbye to Susan and brings the
guy of the coffee bar back to life, finally giving her the chance to live the love she has always
sought.

7. CONCLUSION

To conclude, therefore it is possible to notice how images, sounds, colour or any mode that implies
a message can be considered as communication. A sign is not communicated only through the word
itself, but also through other modes. The interpreter will be able to understand the meaning
vehiculated by the speaker according to his own interest, the social circumstances in which he
moves and, perhaps, even his own state of mind.

REFERENCES
 KRESS G., Multimodality. A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, 2010, p. 1.
 KRESS G., VAN LEEUWEN T., Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design London and New
York, 2006.
 VAN LEEUWEN T., Languages of Colour, 2010.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
 https://multimodalityglossary.wordpress.com/