When being interviewed by Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, comedian and writer Michael Showalter mentioned in college that he had majored in the obscure field of semiotics. After Maron asked him what that is, he explained by way of example: “you’re watching a cowboy movie, and you see a guy who’s wearing a white hat, what does that mean?” There’s more to the discipline than how to best watch cowboy movies of course, but it provides an apt example. In many aspects of life and especially in narrative art, volumes can be communicated implicitly via these small signifiers.