Semiotic Analysis Of 'The Last Of Us'

Hello, I am Daniel. Welcome to my semiotic analysis of the Opening Credits of “The Last of Us”.
First, let’s introduce some terms. Semiotics is the study of signs. As defied by Chandler, *SHOW IMAGE* “A sign is a meaningful unit which is interpreted as ‘standing for’ something other than itself.” “…the signifier is the form which a sign takes… something which can be seen, heard, felt, smelt or tasted” and the “…signified is the mental concept represented by the signifier”. (Chandler, 2013). Denotation is what we physically see as the sign. *SHOW IMAGE* The denotation of a white dove would be that it is a fruit and seed-eating bird with a small head and short legs with a pointed tail and a ‘coo’ as a voice, they are also known to be messengers.
These news stories use heavy words which suggest a catastrophe is happening on a national or possibly a global scale. Such words include execution, bodies, infection, emergency, quarantine, riot and panic. We can denote that numerous voices are presenting, such as if the events are being broadcast in many places nationally or even globally. Some of the language used would suggest that these news broadcasts are happening over a period of time. The use of such radical, heavy words, in the format of a news-styled broadcast, generates the feeling that there is an ongoing global catastrophe occurring. As with the music, the sense of this being a nation-wide or global event entails such a sense of mysterious happenings and despair of what is becoming of the world.
Before we discuss the texture of the opening credits, it is worthy to talk about trypophobia. *SHOW IMAGE* Although it has yet to be recognized formally in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), many scientists and psychologists maintain the clinical existence of trypophobia – a visceral aversion to mainly naturally occurring patterned characteristics. Such phobic material includes honeycombs, lotus seed pods, crumpets, and coral structures. Phobic stimuli may cause migraines, panic attacks, hot sweats, and surges in heart rates in sufferers.
*PLAY AUDIO AS I SPEAK* We first hear the speaker’s voice in a brief lull in the music, this draws attention to it. The audio itself has been mastered to sound like a phone call, in contrast to the news reports earlier. This helps to create a sense of intimacy in contrast to the global scale of the earlier news reports. The speaker uses contrasting terminology such as ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, in order to draw further attention. Significantly, the speaker’s voice at the end of the phone call becomes digitally distorted at the same time as we see the fungal spores dissipate. *SHOW CLIP