Did the gods go crazy? Emergence and symbols (a few laws in the symbolism of objects)

The theme of this article is emergence in the field of the symbolic content of objects. The authors analyze the characteristics of symbolic thinking, then collect some aspects of emergence, making use of the example of the Coca-Cola bottle that plays an important role in the Jamie Uys film ‘The Gods...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Semiotica 2008-01, Vol.2008 (170), p.97-123
Main Authors: Kapitány, Ágnes, Kapitány, Gábor
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Eastern Europe
emergence
objects
semiotics
symbols
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Summary:The theme of this article is emergence in the field of the symbolic content of objects. The authors analyze the characteristics of symbolic thinking, then collect some aspects of emergence, making use of the example of the Coca-Cola bottle that plays an important role in the Jamie Uys film ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’. They distinguish emergence from innovation and recount different features and preconditions of emergence. Besides the symbolic elements of the Coca-Cola bottle, they present some typical changes in the culture of objects in the countries of Eastern Europe (after the system change of 1989–1990). They analyze the popularity of Asian objects (and their meaning), the changing role of television, and, finally, they present some results of their new research. In this research, they have looked for symbolic association in fields of objects, and they show some changes of these associations, for example the change of the meaning of ‘old,’ ‘young,’ or ‘adult.’ The article is about the symbolism of objects and about emergence of new elements in these symbols, but the conclusions attempts to summarize the general features of emergence.
ISSN:0037-1998
1613-3692
DOI:10.1515/SEM.2008.050