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intertextual frames (such as typical situations: the Oedipean triangle as proposed by Freud is one among these); genre rules produce textual frames more reduced than common frames. The intertextual frame «the great train robbery» made popular by a number of early western movies encompasses fewer actions, individuals, and other properties than does the common frame «train robbery» as referred to by professional outlaws. |
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0.6.1.7. Ideological Overcoding. |
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In Theory (3.9) I have described ideological systems as cases of overcoding. Let me say, for the present purpose, that the reader approaches a text from a personal ideological perspective, even when he is not aware of this, even when his ideological bias is only a highly simplified system of axiological oppositions. Since the reader is supposed to single out (in box 9) the elementary ideological structures of the text, this operation is overdetermined by his ideological subcodes. |
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This means that not only the outline of textual ideological structures is governed by the ideological bias of the reader but also that a given ideological background can help one to discover or to ignore textual ideological structures. A reader of Fleming's stories who shares the ideological judgments expressed by the text at the level of discoursive structures is probably not eager to look for an underlying ideological scaffolding at a more abstract level; on the contrary, a reader who challenges many of the author's explicit value judgments is to go further with an ideological analysis so as to 'unmask' the hidden catechization performed at more profound levels. |
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But ideological biases can also work as code-switchers, leading one to read a given text in the light of 'aberrant' codes (where 'aberrant' means only different from the ones envisaged by the sender). Typical examples are the medieval interpretation of Virgil and the proletarian interpretation of Les Mystères de Paris. In both cases the code-switching took place in spite of the explicit ideological commitment of the author. |
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Finally, an ideological bias can lead a critical reader to make a given text say more than it apparently says, that is, to find out what in that text is ideologically presupposed, untold. In this movement from the ideological subcodes of the interpreter to the ideological subcodes tentatively attributed to the author (the encyclopedia of his social group or historical period being verified in singling out the ideological structures of the text), even the most closed texts are surgically 'opened': fiction is transformed into document and the innocence of fancy is translated into the disturbing evidence of a philosophical statement. |
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Sometimes a text asks for ideological cooperation on the part of the reader (Brecht); at other times the text seems to refuse any ideological commitment, although its ideological message consists just in this refusal. |
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