Un-Characterizing Madness The Semiotic Revolution of Donnie Darko

controls meaning. The nebulous, uncontrollable urges and
formless thoughts contained within the human psyche – the
savage, socially untouched sense of meaning – is actually under
the power of arbitrarily invented societal prompts.
The film’s disreputable pop-therapy master, Jim
Cunningham, provides an example of Saussure’s claim that
language controls meaning. Throughout the film Cunningham
preaches the self-help binary “fear vs. love,” and believes Donnie
is “controlled by fear.” In doing so, Cunningham assumes that
there is a distinct human emotion clearly aligned with “fear.”
The pop-therapy master understands a segment of meaning to
be aligned succinctly with a certain resulting linguistic signifier,
the word “fear.” Saussure, though, would assert the opposite:
it is Cunningham’s use of “fear” that defines what it means.
Language for Saussure is not a simple “nomenclature” that works
to articulate preexisting structures of meaning. Rather it is the
empty word that manages to divide and imply a certain signified
– those emotions associated with fear, fright, and terror. This
tidy package of signifier and subjugated meaning form Saussure’s
sign. And again, Saussure would argue that Donnie’s emotions
result from certain combinations of prompts and randomly
assigned significance. “The bond between signifier and signified,”
for Saussure, “is arbitrary” (788). What Donnie shows us, then,
is that the relationship between signifier and signified is not only
arbitrary, but alterable. In other words, where Saussure shows
us that the genesis of meaning is arbitrary but to some degree
socially determined, Donnie shows us that meaning continues to
be a calculus of signification. For Donnie, even after the signifier is
arbitrarily assigned to the signified, meaning continues to change.
The state of “fear” that Cunningham so adamantly opposes does
not, in fact, preexist its word. Donnie aims throughout the film
UN-CHARACTERIZING MADNESS [ 71 ]