Jack Pearson

The Afronauts Semiology Essay

Photojournalist Christina De Middel put together a video based on ‘The Afronauts’, focusing on a space program based in Zambia that aimed to land the first African on the moon. Zambia is only a small country; therefore they will not have the facilities and technologies required. Using Christina’s video will give me the opportunity to explain how semiotics work with the use of signs and how they convey a message depending on the social and cultural conventions. Christina’s views on these events are clearly playful so it makes the viewer wonder why this idea seems so absurd.

Semiotics is basically the study of signs in society, but its how we interpret them that matter, depending on our cultural backgrounds. A sign is a combination of, a ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’. The signifier is the form of the message (also known as denotation), and the signified is the concept of the signifier (also known as connotation). It’s important to recognise the way we look at signs as it depends on the viewers’ ethnicity and beliefs. Once the connotation and the denotation of a sign are clearly arbitrary, the conventional meaning can then be interpreted with the use of appropriate codes.

Christina uses a variety of signs showing a bizarre representation of Africans preparing for Zambia’s Space Program. The main signifiers that are specified throughout the clip are the absurd looking African styled men, this is then signified by the African styled spacesuits and other African elements, such as the elephant trunk, which I think Christian has used as an oxygen tool for them, this

Jack Pearson

could signify that the Zambians are unable to afford the facilities needed for such a prestigious mission.

The codes portrayed throughout this piece are predominantly social codes, as this clearly shows behavioural rituals, verbal and body language focusing on a connection between space and African culture.Textual codes are also evident during the clip as the texts imply more meaning to a myth like story. The texts, such as, ‘We have been studying the planet through telescopes and headquarters and are now certain Mars is populated by primitive natives’, in my opinion, escalates the story, from sending the first African to the moon to studying life on Mars.

The combination of the codes help create a myth, as it’s unlikely that the Zambians will match large powerful countries like the USA and Soviet Union in the space program race, they simply don’t have the finances and technologies. Christina’s quest was to start from a real fact that took place 50 years ago, and then rebuilding the documents creating an impossible dream that only lives in pictures.

Christina quoted: ‘I respect the basis of the truth but also to break rules of veracity in pursue to push the reader into analysing patterns of stories we consume as real’. I believe her video is an exceptional piece of work and clearly demonstrates a vision into a real event that will provoke responses from viewers with veracity.