My remaining

drawings
Understanding meaning
making
Hayakawa (1990)
Geertz (1973)
Bourdieu
Meaning making & Roshomon
Film Critic of Roshomon
 A group of us (in ETD) viewed Roshomon
last week for critic. I am still trying to make
connection between the film and the idea
of perception-conception driven by
motivation and interest.
 I copy a description of the film in the next
slide
Description of Roshomon
 Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa, working in
close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. The film depicts
the rape of a woman and the apparent murder of her husband through the
widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the rapist and, through a
medium, the dead man. The stories are mutually contradictory, leaving the
viewer to determine which, if any, is the truth. The story unfolds in flashback
as the four characters - the bandit Tajōmaru, the samurai's wife, the murdered
samurai and the nameless woodcutter - recount the events of one afternoon
in a grove. But it is also a flashback within a flashback, because the accounts
of the witnesses are being retold by a woodcutter and a priest to a ribald
commoner as they wait out a rainstorm in a ruined gatehouse identified by a
sign as Rashōmon.

 Rashomon introduced Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western

audiences, and is considered one of his masterpieces. The film won the
Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and also received an Academy
Honorary Award at the 24th Academy Awards.
 Our critics
 Acting is theatrical and "talkie". Scenes/Sets - minimalist.
 Strong storyline (effective with no computer graphics), dialogues are
social commentaries'.
 Some scenes like the woodcutter walking in the forest is rather long.
 Scenes build up to the climax.
 There are many sides to a story, same story is seen from different
perspectives.
 Sometimes humans want to justify their actions and push the blame
onto others.
 Can relate story to "honour-killing" which existed in certain countries
today.
 Quote: "Women use their tears to fool others, sometimes they fool
themselves."
3 big questions still bothering me

 I can’t sleep tonight if I don’t get answers

to these questions. : )
 If two or more persons cannot construct the same
meaning (at best just an approximate of the other),
how do we explain culture artefacts as socially
constructed and having meaning “sedimented,
accumulated or deposited” (p. 23) in them?
 How does social construction of meaning take
place?
 How can the process be explained from the idea of
abstraction from Korzybski?
Tyvm!