Trans-Semiotic Analysis: Shaggy Codes

Extract

What I am proposing here in relation to the The Shaggy Dog Animation is not, strictly speaking, a semiotic analysis. Rather, I would call it if the term was not even more intimidating, because it does not exist yet, trans-semiotic. Any other approach, including traditional semiotics, could make sense—lots of sense—but I am convinced that sense, good sense, normal neurotic sense, is precisely what Shaggy Dog is up against. So should I enforce conformity by means of an already existing theory or alter the approach itself in order to record the impact of a specific production? This obviously raises a somewhat ethical question about the function of criticism. Can we devise a battery of approaches independently of the pieces they are meant to elucidate? Is it advisable to try to establish a “library” of methods that could be used eventually by other critics no matter what type of production they might intend to study?