• Bordwell's Four Ways of Making Meaning
• Bordwell's Schema Applied to "Closet Land"
• Discussion

Bordwell's Four Ways of Making Meaning

• Referential Meaning. We construct a version of the diegesis, or spatio-temporal world, and an ongoing narrative (fabula). Bordwell writes: "In constructing the film's world, the spectator draws not only on knowledge of filmic and extrafilmic conventions but also on conceptions of causality, space and time and on concrete items of information." Bordwell calls this the referential meaning.
• Explicit Meaning. We may also abstract or assign a conceptual meaning to the fabula and diegesis. Here we find in the film cues we take to indicate how the film intends to be interpreted. Bordwell calls this the explicit meaning of a film and categorizes the referential and explicit as the "literal" meaning.
• Implicit Meaning. We may additionally construct covert, symbolic, or implicit meanings. Bordwell writes: "The spectator may seek to construct implicit meanings when she cannot find a way to reconcile an anomalous element with a referential or explicit aspect of the work; or the 'symbolic impulse' may be brought in to warrant the hypothesis that any element, anomalous or not, may serve as the basis for of implicit meanings."
• Symptomatic Meaning. Finally, we may construct "repressed or symptomatic" meanings that the work reveals "involuntarily." Symptomatic meanings clash with referential, explicit, or implicit meanings. Bordwell writes: "If explicit meaning is like a transparent garment, and implicit meaning like a semiopaque veil, symptomatic meaning is like a disguise." (8-9)

Bordwell's Schema Applied to "Closet Land"

Discussion