Similarly to last week’s reflection, the main thing I want to talk about this week is more worldbuilding — specifically, iconography.
The main contribution to the exhibition for me is propaganda posters: ones from both for and against the Codans use of chemical engineering to bend nature to their whim. The posters had to feel familiar enough so that the audience could understand what was being communicated, but alien enough so that it still felt like it was created by the Codan society.
Sobchack discusses this when talking about iconography in science fiction (2005). Unlike other established genres like the western or the noir, sci-fi is so expansive and has less ties to our world, meaning concepts and icons present are much harder for the audience to relate to. In a western, the saloon is always tied to shootouts, drinking and seediness, sci-fi icons are much broader in meaning and are less automatically recognisable to the audience; a spaceship may be representative of a home, invading force, or travel vehicle, for example.
As such, meaning in sci-fi must be attached through pre-established audience connotations and connections to icons in our world, especially for visual in-universe elements like the Codans propaganda posters.
For example, figure 1 shows a Star Wars warning sign. While not looking like one from Earth, audiences automatically know it as a warning sign due to the general colours and shapes that, although slightly tweaked, give off the feel of a warning sign.
Fig 1. A Star Wars Warning Sign
In that same vein, the propaganda posters use similar, yet not exact, iconography to Earth symbols to elicit meaning and connotations in the audience: The classic ‘circle with a line through it’ became an elliptical oval with two lines bisecting it to make it feel like the former, but yet feel alien enough to where the audience can both recognise its meaning and understand its extra-terrestrial nature.
Figure 1. ‘Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Warning Sign Replica’, viewed 20 May 2023, <https://www.yourprops.com/Warning-sign-replica-replica-movie-prop-Star-Wars-The-Empire-Strikes-Back-1980-YP803551.html>.
Redmond, S. (2005). Images of Wonder: the look of science fiction: Iconography, by Vivian Sobchack. In Liquid Metal. Columbia University Press.