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Page 104
the pertinent features of the vehicle I used to signify "tie" to you, in order to make it able to signify all the possible ties you can think of
The same happens with our intoxicated man. It is not necessary that he have a specific face, a specific eye color, a moustache or a beard, a jacket or a sweater. It is, however, necessary (or at least I think so) that his nose be red or violet; his eyes dimmed by a liquid obtuseness; his hair, his moustache or beard ruffled and dirty; his clothes splashed with mud, sagging and worn-out. I am thinking of the typical Bowery character, but when I think of him I am ready to make abstractions from many features, provided that some essential characteristics are conserved and emphasized. The list of these characteristics is established by a social code, a sort of iconographic convention. The very moment our Salvation Army sergeant has chosen the right drunk, he has made recourse to a socialized knowledge. His choice has been semiotically oriented. He has been looking for the right man as one looks for the right word.
Nevertheless, there is something that distinguishes our drunkard from a word. A word is a sign, but it does not conceal its sign quality. We conventionally accept that through words someone speaks about reality, but we do not confuse words with things (except in cases of mental illness). When speaking, we are conscious that something impalpable (flatus vocis) stands for something presumably palpable (except in cases of lying). But not every sign system follows the same rules as the others. In the case of our elementary model of mise-en-scène, the drunk is a sign, but he is a sign that pretends not to be such. The drunkard is playing a double game: In order to be accepted as a sign, he has to be recognized as a "real" spatiotemporal event, a real human body. In theater, there is a "square semiosis." With words, a phonic object stands for other objects made with different stuff. In the mise-en-scène, an object, first recognized as a real object, is then assumed as a sign in order to refer to another object (or to a class of objects) whose constitutive stuff is the same as that of the representing object.
Our drunk is representing drunkenness. His red nose has been selected as a natural unintentional event able to represent intentionally (the intention belongs to the Salvation Army, not to him) the devastating effects of intemperance. But what about his teeth? There is no specific convention establishing that an average drunken man lacks his incisors or has a set of black teeth. But if our intoxicated man possesses those characteristics, this would work very well. Insofar as the man becomes a sign, those of his characteristics that are not pertinent to the purposes of representation also acquire a sort of vicarious representative importance. The very moment the audience accepts the convention of

 
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