Body and senses in the production of cultural meaning: from Middle Ages to TV series, films and video games

Abstract

Just as medieval literary work was determined by contextual elements (the acoustic-momentary axis and the domain of gestural, instrumental and vocal codes, among other aspects) that conditioned producers and interpreters when it came to cultivating and perfecting their capacities and performance, on which the message as a whole depended, today the media and entertainment industry also use complex and rich connections between verbal and visual signs to produce highly symbolic messages through imaginary re-enactments of the past.In this way, the pragmatic-communicative perspective, appropriate to analyze the wide range of discursive productions of the Middle Ages, also offers adequate methodological tools to study contemporary semiotic practices that, when interpreting documentary sources of various types and pouring them into suitable fictional formats for the general public (such as films, television series, cartoons, videogames or virtual reality), they constitute playful reconfigurations of the historical, literary and fantastic Middle Ages.Accordingly, this paper attempts to examine certain devices and components of mass culture that have transformed narratives, characters and fictional worlds, distinctive of the Middle Ages, into communicative and semiotic practices that reinterpret historical and literary documents as a way of reflecting on people, social life and its problems in the present world. We will concentrate on TV series, films and videogames that focus on the representation of the human body and senses as areas of dispute about identity, otherness and society, since semantic plurality and diachronic bases of the idea of body and senses enable an interdisciplinary and comparative study to understand their historicity, their ideological effect and the innumerable aesthetic possibilities that they promote in different areas of culture. As in any instance of cultural translation, we will take into account the bodily and sensory aspects of the Middle Ages selected by series, films and videogames that have an impact, as significant elements, on current cultural orientations and attitudes.