New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics

198 CINEMATIC REALISM
meaning, making the hermeneutic code in this sense comparable to an
oracular discourse which conceals as much as it reveals.
The revelation of the truth generally comes at the end of the classical
narrative, leading Barthes to compare the hermeneutic narrative to the
grammatical sentence, where closure depends on full “predication” of
subject and object. The classical hermeneutic sentence/narrative states a
subject and elicits curiosity about the predicate, but delays their
conjunction by lying and equivocating. For the reader/spectator, the
hermeneutic code fosters curiosity. In Sarrasine, the enigma begins with the
title, which poses the question: “Who is Sarrasine?” The title of Citizen
Kane, similarly, raises the question—“Who is Citizen Kane?”—a question
quickly supplanted by the question: “What is the meaning of ‘Rosebud’?”
Welles offers us partial truths, but systematically excludes us from
plenitude. The young Kane appears on the sled in the snow, but nothing
prods the spectator to connect that sight with the word “Rosebud.”
Enigmas, finally, are not always so clearly related to questions of suspense
or the ambiguities of character. The enigma in an avant-garde film such as
Wavelength is the simple one of the simulated zoom’s ultimate destination,
the truth of which is both disclosed and hidden by the pun of the title.
Barthes’ proairetic code refers to the code of actions. PROAIRESIS, for
Aristotle, was the ability to rationally determine the result of actions. Thus
the proairetic code refers to the logic of actions as they are governed by the
laws of narrative discourse. Barthes elsewhere offers an example from a
James Bond film, Goldfinger. Bond hears a telephone ring; the proairetic
code ensures that an orderly sequence of narrative actions will ensue. Bond
will answer the phone, wait for a reply, converse, hang up and act
according to the message received (Barthes 1977). The code of actions
pertains to sequential narrative and its parceling out of gestures into
comprehensible segments; it forms the main armature of the readerly text.
The actions named by the proairetic code can be trivial (a phone call, a
knock at the door) or momentous (a declaration of love, a murder, an
elopement). The code of actions functions in conjunction with the other
codes to produce a legible coherent narrative.
The code of actions has historically received the bulk of attention in both
ancient and modern accounts of narrative form. Aristotle in the Poetics
defines actions, rather than character, as the fundamental prerequisite for
narrative. Barthes sees proairetic sequences as artificial constructs of
reading which gain definitive characteristics only through the act of naming
them: “kissing sequences,” “murder sequences,” “walk-in-the garden
sequences.” The code of actions in the cinema would touch on such
questions as: (a) what actions are considered legitimate objects of filmic
representation?; (b) what actions are conventionally prescribed (or
proscribed) for specific situations?; and (c) how much of each action is to be
shown? The first question has to do with what Metz calls the