“The Donkey King” among the kings of the world: Semiotics of Animation

Abstract

Movie posters, images, props and objects reflect deep meanings through film semiotics. These meaningful images reflect socio-cultural aspects of a society. At the same time, some socio-political aspects are there in the structures of all pseudo-democratic norms. This paper is set out to examine movie posters and images of one of the five animation films produced in Pakistan, “The Donkey King” is released by Talisman Studios. Images were selected as per their themes and popularity index. Those images were analysed by using descriptive qualitative approach. Roland Barthes semiotics theory (1968) was applied for identifying verbal, non-verbal, denotative and connotative meanings of selected images. Hidden ideologies are then uncovered in signs of images, letting the audience know about the messages and the greater purposes of the producers. This analysis helped revealing Orwellian nature, social taboos and myths that are intertwined in socio-political scenarios. The analysis shows that these two semiotic modes complement and supplement add the denotative and connotative modes of meaning. The analyses of facial expressions, props and gestures can be very helpful for future studies on animations.