Between the Sensible and the Intelligible: A Semiotic Reading of the Episode The National Anthem of the Series Black Mirror

Abstract

This paper proposes an articulation between the theoretical models of regimes of interaction and meaning and regimes of visibility. Complementarily, it also mobilizes the concepts of union and contagion – part of Eric Landowski’s sociosemiotics, aiming at understanding the relationships between the sensible and the intelligible in the engenderment of meaning in the episode The National Anthem of the British series Black Mirror. This proposition proves thereby to be fruitful, since it allows demonstrating the overlaps and passages from a regime based on the intelligible (manipulation) to a regime based on the sensible (adjustment). Based on the syntax of seeing, it introduces a new regime of interaction through the various possibilities between wanting-to-see and wanting-to-be-seen. Finally, the paper also poses the problem of the point of view regarding accident and programming. It is possible to observe that the presence of the spectator, at a given point in the syntagmatic chain, that is, being-able-to-see or being-able-not-to-see as regards these two regimes, can make emerge either one of the regimes of interaction and meaning, which are characterized, respectively, by the sensible and the intelligible.