Deconstruction

Hollywood films have a great impact on many countries in the world. Fictional cinema tends to predominantly follow a particular form of narrative which is used beyond the United States. British film tends to use this format but there are filmmakers who prefer to take an alternative route to creating film. Theoretical systems of postmodernism and poststructuralism, and textual analysis, reveal that the body of films by Sally Potter: Thriller, The Gold Diggers, The-London Story, Orlando and The Tango Lesson demonstrate deconstruction to varying degrees. Analysis indicates that Potter's deconstructive films speak from different perspectives, draw attention to stereotypical representations in cinema, expose binary oppositions, comment on the nature of film, and address issues that might be ignored in dominant film. The analysis explores the roots of her deconstructive tendency, examining national and artistic angles.

In response to assertions championing the absence of meaning and significance in language originating from Jacques Derrida's linguistic concepts of deconstruction, George Steiner and John Sheriff provide analyses of language that assert the opposite. Through an emphasis on subjectivities and subjective experience in the world, both find meaning to be bonded to subjective volition and the connectivities between subjects and language systems. For Steiner, this emphasis comes in the form of asserting the presence of others and the responsibilities we have to them, while Sheriff depicts how the semiotics of Charles Peirce make meaning-making subjective and communal. I argue, therefore, that in contrast to conceptions of language that challenge the presence of meaning in language, a structure of language as conceived through Charles Peirce's semiotics and George Steiner's vision of language asserts a dependability of language and the presence of meaning based on principles of connection and communion.