Un-Characterizing Madness The Semiotic Revolution of Donnie Darko

Donnie, Gretchen, Ms Pomeroy, even Frank – each embraces a
semiological revolution that the film seems to argue is necessary
for a life unfettered by the despotism of imposed meaning. What
the film titles liberty, the psychiatrist labels insanity.
The viewer, perhaps inclined like critics to label various
characters “madmen,” is soon shocked to see that the film itself
makes no such dismissals – the semiotic attitude Dongen associates
with madness is rather suffused through the characters, events,
and themes. Moments could be analyzed and labeled as either
innocent or psychotic; characters could be allocated to one side
or other of this remarkably fine line. But if the viewer is to truly
understand the role of bricolage and madness in Donnie Darko
and elsewhere, he must work within the semiological mindset
of the film itself; the viewer must resist the urge to label and
restrict characters with signifiers that can never be totalizing. If
the personal construction of meaning necessarily correlates with
madness, then as Donnie Darko must be read as emphasizing, even
mandating, the role of the bricoleur, Kelly’s work must inevitably
be seen as advocating madness as such. If, as the film asserts, the
arbitrariness of the ‘sign’ and the resulting capacity for bricolage
plays such a crucial role in an individual’s fulfilled experience,
then this semiological freedom must also relieve the pressure of
applying labels as “bricoleur” or “madman.”
It must be conceded that Kelly’s film honors the bricoleur.
Even beyond the numerous contained examples of bricolage,
the viewer must admit that the film as a whole becomes an
enormous re-signification of a linguistic prompt. The pivotal
event in the story, the mysterious jet-engine crash that appears
at the beginning and end of the story, becomes the overarching
signifier, and the entire film advocates its cosmic re-signification.
The majority of Donnie Darko recounts the expected meaning
[ 82 ] JOSEPH MORCOS