GUNS

By Kristen Vosberg

The gun has become enveloped in mythology as popular culture mediums reinforce its appropriation into myth. It is man’s tendency to regard the gun as a totem object, attaching to it gravid symbolism and exclamation that the public do take to be true. Their historical correspondences involve victorious, noble triumphs in which good taunts evil with its holy steel equalizer. Able to give historical intention a natural justification, internal taxpayers are often immobilized into believing the language of the gun is contained within innocent speech, as this language is naturalized through its prominent and positive position within historical dialogue. Popular media is successful in deriving a myriad of secondary signifiers, with the fire finger always serving as the primary. Discussing the integrated signified as well as historical and modern language of the gun is most conclusive when considering the linguistic mechanisms used to achieve its figment. This approach to analysis will serve dutifully the agenda of de-mythologizing.

Guns act explicitly as weapons capable of taking human life, and have existed under this function since their beginnings. To deny a pistol’s malicious morphology would be to deny that its handle displays grip notches into which one’s hand can slip comfortably, alleviated of some discomfort found in the white-knuckle grip. Indeed the gun’s skeleton has nestled into the innards of history as a critical extension of man’s guiding hand. Guns in history have been highlighted in educational texts and national media as necessary for countering danger and restoring morality amongst the composition of a people. History employs guns as a signifier to the signified, dignity. Truly also death, but death lies looking up at the overtones of honor and legality. American history shoots to evoke dialogue and attitudes associated with essentials such as patriotism, defense, and sympathy in guns. Under the mythology induced by gun history, a gun’s prescience can communicate insurance, martyr, salvation, and strength. Adversely, guns in the grasp of a chap who has been historically condemned to a status of potentially misguided, this conviction based on historical opposition, evokes opposite speech amongst the bourgeois. What’s signified changes under special conditions, which is characteristic of a myth and uncharacteristic of truth. Most of all, the gun’s role in both noble and malicious history makes the contingency of the standardized, stock situations under which it is employed appear eternal. The justification of the guns use via its history of overconsumption and overemployment deems it myth.

In a modern setting, guns permeate the media and the public consciousness with their expansive fabrication and limelight. Guns as a functional noun exercise the right to kill, and thus embody power and influence. Movies like Reservoir Dogs and Deer Hunter display the gun’s signifier of power, while comedian of questionable merit Sam Hyde exaggerates gun as a signifier for masculinity. Dirty Harry blatantly sexualizes it and Hip Hop musicians suggest “hands up, do or die, he got heat, no surprise.” Guns permeate our culture even though they are an object of innate destruction. The many appropriation aspects of the gun employ the display of power. It is exclaimed in the last example, MF Doom’s The Finest, that this confrontation now involves heat, the hot seat, pressure, and whatever’s going down will go down according to the beholder of the heat. The coined term ‘heat’ references again the distinct signifier of the gun’s morphology. Its explosive capabilities make the heat not merely an object but rather a hip-riding comrade one mobilizes for emotional support. The gun can be very comforting to stroke and experience, the power that history has invested in it communicates great certainty in the outcome for cats on both ends. Thus, fabrication of it is extensive and comprehensive. Whether their power is just or unjust, the associations made with guns are false, and can be best brought home by the echoed idiom “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The visual of a gun will literally dictate the trajectory of any situation due to the weight assigned to it by history and the congruent immobilizing significations employed by the modern media.

Guns have a history and geography, and places where their signification is not welcome.

It’s easy to make people feel weird when you talk about guns. You can try it. It’s completely fun. An apt example exists in my experience. When I told my brother and our friends that yes, I was going to college, they would often saunter up to me mumbling “better watch out, me and my gal are going to ruin your college experience.” They flash a toy gun. Weird shit! To anyone else this engagement would have maybe shaken them up for a full day, even justified some sort of restraining order-type action. If this is agreed upon by all of us, then it becomes clear that the algebraic value of the gun is considerable, and can act in place of language. Guns are a type of speech, as is true of Barthesian myth.

Guns are inflicted with the ailment of Icon. Having come to represent comprehensive notions of power and seduction, gun speech mongers emotion and allows for powerful and lucid communication to be exchanged even in the absence of words. Many unadjusted perspectives suggest that the continual ignorance of this mythologized language sustains problematic cognitive outcomes.