Snow Angels: a Semiotic Musing

A taste of spring we've been given, but snow flurries are expected tonight. So here is a post inspired by the only snow activity in which Orion can truly participate, and arguably the only effective snow activity with the non-sticky, powdery fluff lately: the Snow Angel. I think his tiny snow angels (one pictured next to one of my own, for scale) are so charming--they're really wintry cupids--putti di neve, diciamo. But the real question: are they a symbol, an index, or an icon?

For those who've forgotten: a review lesson in semiotics, the study of signs and meaning. There are (at least) three basic signs which can represent something. (The sign is the signifier, the something represented is the signified.) A symbol does not bear any resemblance to its signified.
The thing I always think of is a flag.
The American flag can be a symbol for many things--liberty, freedom, the USA, etc. For others it means gun rights, freedom of speech, or even kindling. The point here, however, is that it actually DOES NOT LOOK LIKE any of those things. How can one represent the abstract idea of freedom of speech anyway? That's why symbols are so useful.



Now this example, for an icon, is problematic and complicated among my art historian friends, but it is always what comes to my mind as an example: a Byzantine Icon. An icon is a sign that does resemble its signified. What is represented here is a mother and child, specifically the divine beings of Mary and baby Jesus, making an absent, divine body present in the image--it DOES LOOK LIKE THEM (that's how St. Luke painted them, of course). (Major bonus points for naming the cheek to cheek icon type in the comments. Orion's been really into facepressing/owl-eyes lately, fyi.)

Finally--the index signifies its signifier as a PHYSICAL TRACE, something that was physically left--footprints are a classic example, as an index of the person or animal that walked through the mud or sand. The saying "where there's smoke there's fire" comes to my mind when I think of an index.

So finally: are Snow Angels index, symbol, or icon?


Well, symbol seems to me the weakest case. Angels can symbolize a divine message, qualities such as goodness or peace, even the holiday season. But a snow angel? Maybe it's just silly children waving their arms lying down in the snow, making the image of an angel. Ah ha--it must be an icon! It shares the same shape and ghostly outline of an angel, albeit overly symmetrical, stereotypically winged and female Christmas-tree-topper angel. But we can't really tell if it looks like one, since people don't seem to be in agreement about their appearance. (Male and wingless, female with poofy dresses, harp players, giants breathing fire, etc. etc.)

The sign we can really be sure of here is an index. The shape of a body or two in the snow, the smooth, striated arc where the arms swept up and down, the unwitting churned untidiness where the person had to get up again, even the unseemly shape of snow in the negative space between two legs. And a story unfolds--a mama and her cooperating, puzzled baby boy, getting bundled up, seeing an untouched expanse of white, lie and are laid down, to form angelic indexical indentations in the powdery white.