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an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and imageVolume 2, February 2005, ISSN 1552-5112
Psychoanalysis and Film Theory
Part 1:
A New Kind of Mirror
Paula Murphy
Your study is located at the crossroads of magic and positivism.
That spot is bewitched. Only theory can break the spell.[1]
Theodor Adorno
Introduction
Film theory as we know it today did not come into existence until
the late 1960s, and since then has been dominated by
psychoanalytic ideas. This article seeks to specifically investigate
the influence of Lacanian psychoanalysis on film theory. Its
development will be traced in two articles through classic film
theory, the role of Karl Marx and Louis Althusser, the contributions
of semiotics, the debates surrounding apparatus theory and the
gaze, and finally the input of feminism. While this type of broad
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overview has been attempted in many general introductions to film
theory, it is hoped here to provide a rough sketch of its formative
stages of development, while filling in the detail on a number of
significant issues that highlight Lacans influence.
Classic Film Theory
It was not until after the First World War that it became possible to
identify two particular groups within film criticism. Spearheading
the first of these groups was the figure ofSergei Eisenstein, whose
film-making and theoretical essays in the 1920s established a
conception of the role of the cinema as a primarily aesthetic one.
According to Eisenstein, a films aesthetic value depended on its
ability to transform reality and in his films this usually took the form
of montage.[2] In opposition to Eisenstein were the impressionists
and surrealists. They also believed the main function of the cinema
to be aesthetic, but thought that the camera itself was enough to
render ordinary objects sublime. Their emphasis on cinema as a
visual medium meant that they regarded narrative in many cases as
an obstacle that had to be overcome. This, coupled with their
emphasis on fragmentation, meant that the impressionist / surrealist
tradition was unsuited to the rapidly expanding business of
commercial cinema.
Eisenstein and his followers gradually overshadowed other
theoretical groups to the extent that it was not until after the
Second World War, in the 50s, that any radical development within
film theory took place. This development was primarily due to the
influence of Andr Bazin and his two essays, The Evolution of the
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Language of Cinema and The Virtues and Limitations of Montage,
which critiqued the two most prestigious schools of thought in film
at the time: Eisensteins Soviet school of montage and German
expressionism (Ray 2001, 7). Bazin overturned existing
conceptions of film by claiming that cinemas true purpose was the
objective representation of reality. The expressionists, surrealists
and the Soviet school all evinced a belief in the manipulationof
reality: Eisenstein through abstract montage and mise-en-scene,and
the impressionists and surrealists through their elevation of the
image and disregard for other aspects of cinematography. Bazin
argued that cinema offered the chance of completely objective
representation for the first time in history. His position has come
under severe criticism from post-structuralists, for whom reality is
always a subjective experience.[3] However, it is interesting to note
that contemporary television would seem to have come full circle in
a return to Bazins conception of film: reality TV is the ultimate
symptom of a desire for totally objective, unmediated presentation
of everyday life.
Question Marx
The influence of Bazins theories was short-lived and the political
upheaval that occurred in France in 1968 was the catalyst for a
complete change of direction in film studies. Bazins style of
criticism based around the notion of the auteurand the aesthetic
function of cinema soon became outdated as film studies became
indisputably political: [t]here was no place outside or above
politics; all texts, whatever their claims to neutrality, had their
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ideological slant (Lapsley and Westlake 1988, 1). Film makers and
film critics alike were forced to consider the relationship between
ideology and power and the position of cinema within that
dualism. This new politically-centered, theoretically-driven film
criticism was given a forum in two highly influential French
journals, Cahiers du Cinmaand Cinthique, along with their British
counterpart Screen. The editorial by Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean
Narboni in the October 1969 issue ofCahiersillustrates the radical
new direction that film studies had taken. In a marked reaction
against the subjective, speculative analyses of classical film theory,
Comolli and Narboni stress the scientific basis of their critique.[4]
In addition to scientific methodology, they also emphasise the
political nature of their aims which are heavily influenced by
Marxism. They see film as a product that becomes transformed into
a commodity which is also an ideological product of the system,
which in France means capitalism (Comolli and Narboni 1969,
45). Acknowledging their own imprisonment within capitalist
ideology, post-revolution film studies envisaged that theory would
provide the key to unlock their chains. It was through theory that
operations of ideological control in cinema could be recognised,
and through theory that resistance could be asserted. The
post-revolution critics saw the lack of theory in classical film studies
as one of the primary reasons for its impotence:
the classic theory of cinema that the camera is an impartial
instrument which grasps, or rather is impregnated by, the world in
its concrete reality is an eminently reactionary one. What the
camera in fact registers is the vague, unformulated, untheorized,
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unthought-out world of the dominant ideology. Cinema is one of the
languages through which the world communicates itself to itself.
They constitute its ideology for they reproduce the world as it is
experienced when filtered through its ideology. (Conolli and
Narboni 1969, 46)
It was the philosophy of Louis Althusser that provided the political
conceptual system for post-revolution film theory. One of the
driving forces behind Althussers break with traditional Marxism
around 1945 was the desire to establish a scientific status for his
theory in order to bestow upon it a degree of autonomy. This
move was to have a direct impact on film studies as the first
paragraph of Comolli and Narbonis editorial elucidates:
Scientific criticism has an obligation to define its fields and
methods. This implies awareness of its own historical and social
situation, a rigorous analysis of the proposed field of study, the
conditions which make the work necessary and those which make it
possible, and the special function it intends to fill. It is essential
that we at Cahiers du Cinema should now undertake just such a
global analysis of our positions and aims. (Comolli and Narboni
1969, 43)
It was perhaps this desire for scientific fortification that attracted
Althusser to the theories of Lacan. While psychoanalysis had an
enormous direct influence on film studies, it also influenced itindirectly through the Marxist theory of Althusser. In order to
re-conceptualise the simplistic base/superstructure model of society
espoused by Marx, Althusser borrowed the psychoanalytic term
overdetermination in order to articulate the complex web of
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conflicting elements, which combine to generate a historical
movement in society. In psychoanalysis, this term is used to
describe how a mental phenomenon like a symptom can be traced
back to several conflicting and often incompatible desires. J.
Laplanche and J. B. Pontalais define it as [t]he fact that formations
of the unconscious (symptoms, dreams, etc.) can be attributed to a
plurality of determining factors[t]he formation is related to a
multiplicity of unconscious elements which may be organized in
different meaningful sequences, each having its own specific
coherence at a particular level of interpretation (Laplanche and
Pontalais 1988, 292).
Althussers concept of structural causality is also redolent of
Lacanian psychoanalysis. The term refers to the way in which
[m]en are no longer agents actively shaping history, either as
individuals or classes, but rather are supports of the process within
the structure (Lapsley and Westlake 1988, 6). Lacan also
emphasizes the primacy of societal codes (in the form of the
symbolic order) in the shaping of subjectivity. The way in which
the subject is inculcated into the social order is described by
Althusser as interpellation: a process explicated in all its complexity
by Lacan in the Oedipus and castration complexes, the mirror stage
and the acquisition of language. According to Althusser,
interpellation takes place through ideological state apparatuses
(ISAs): family, religion, education, media, etc. In Lacanian terms,
these social and familial structures are saturated with symbolic law.
Although both Cahiers du Cinemaand Cinthiqueused the
philosophy of Althusser as the basis for their critique of ideology,
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they did so in different ways. For Cinthiqueall films were hopeless
victims of the ideology of the ruling class and had to be rejected in
their entirety, whereas Cahiers du Cinemadivided film into seven
different categories, only one of which it wholly condemned,
although this was the largest category: films which are imbued
through and through with the dominant ideology in pure and
unadulterated form, and give no indication that their makers were
even aware of the fact (Comolli and Narboni 1969, 46). This
emphasis on the ideological nature of films and of signification in
general owes an obvious debt to the philosophy of Lacan. But
although there are several points of connection between the two
theorists, the Althusserian and Lacanian subject are nonetheless two
distinct and often opposing entities. For Althusser, interpellation
fixes the subject into a position of permanent blindness to the
ideological mechanisms of his/her society. The Lacanian subject is
ceaselessly developing and changing through language, and
although constituted by the symbolic order is the producer as well
as the product of meaning (Lapsley and Westlake 1988, 53). This
idea is explored more fully in the following section in relation to the
graph of desire.
Cinematic Semiotics
Robert Lapsley and Micheal Westlake isolate two aspects of Lacanian
theory, which were to prove crucial to film studies. The first is
Lacans reversal of the Cartesian notion of subjectivity. Rather than
the subject creating and naming the world, Lacan states that is in
fact language itself, which creates the world, the
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conceptengenders the thing (Lacan 1989, 72). This idea has
many implications for filmic criticism, as speech can thus be
conceived of as already saturated with the predominant ideology,
making it difficult or even impossible to utilise speech to criticize
ideological norms. In fact, Lacan even goes so far as to say that
language can neverfully articulate what the subject wishes to say:
the unsignifiable order of the real is evidence of this.
The second of Lacans theories that proved indispensable for
film studies is his re-reading of Ferdinand de Saussure. Lacan
reverses Saussures formula for the sign, placing language above
reality (S/s). He states that, [f]or the human being the word or the
concept is nothing other than the word in its materiality. It is the
thing itself. It is not just a shadow, a breath, a virtual illusion of
the thing, it is the thing itself(Lacan 1987, 178, my italics).
Language murders the thing and takes its place. In this model of
the sign, there is an endless sliding of signifiers over signifieds,
which is temporarily halted by the point de caption. The graph of
desire (Lacan 1989, 335) articulates succinctly the complexities
inherent in signification. The horizontal vector represents the
signifying chain, and intersects with the vector S at two points.
The first point of intersection denotes the constitution of the
signifier from a synchronic and enumerable collection of elements
in which each is sustained only by the principle of its opposition to
each of the others (Lacan 1989, 336). In short, this point
represents the signifier, which attains its status through its
difference from other terms in the system of language. The second
point of intersection denotes the moment of punctuation, in which
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the signifier at the first point of intersection attains its full meaning
retroactively. The two points of intersection are not symmetrical,
nor are they intended to be. The first is a locus (a place rather
than a space) and the second is a moment (a rhythm rather than a
duration) (Lacan 1989, 336). The elementary cell of the graph
cited here is simplistic, but serves to illustrate the relationship
between subject and meaning.[5]
Meaning isproduced aprs-coupby the subject through the
retroactive nature of punctuation (the second point of intersection)
in the subjects enunciation. However, the subject is also produced
by signification, as the meaning of the signifier at the first point of
signification is a differential meaning, not an inherent meaning.
This means that the subject must choose from a selection of
signifiers that are available to him/her, which themselves shape and
define the signified. Collectively, these signifieds construct the
world in which the subject exists, and so construct subjectivity
itself. For Lacan, there is an unending flux between the subject and
signification, and this idea occurs in film studies in several different
ways.
Christian Metz defends the analysis of cinema from a
linguistic or semiotic point of view because although it is not a
languein the Saussurian sense of the word, it is certainly a
language. Metz argues that the cinema does not constitute a
languefor three reasons: because there is no intercommunication;
because it is duplication of reality rather than the unmotivated,
arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified and finally
because it lacks the double articulation thatis the hallmark of
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natural language (Lapsley and Westlake 1988, 39). Natural
language can be described as having a double articulation because
it is comprised of both words (morphemes) and smaller units,
phonemes, which signify nothing in themselves, but when
combined produce morphemes. While the camera shot could in
theory be likened to the phoneme, there are numerous difficulties
with this equation. There are an infinite number of shots to select
from, but there are a finite number of words. Moreover, the
meaning of the shot is not defined by its paradigmatic dimension,
i.e. by the other shots which could have been selected, whereas the
meaning of words isdefined paradigmatically. Because of these
difficulties in analyzing cinema through its paradigmatic
relationships, Metz instead embarked upon an analysis of the
syntagmatic relationships in cinema: his grande syntagmatique
(Lapsley and Westlake 1988, 40).
Metz divides the narrative syntax of the cinema into eight
parts, ranging from the smallest segment, the autonomous shot to
the largest segment, the sequence. While Metzs analysis set up a
detailed schema for understanding a films construction, it was
nonetheless open to criticism. Segments from films could not be
categorized as neatly as Metz imagined and he was also criticized for
being so formulaic that there was little room for practical
interpretation of the workings of meaning and ideology within
cinema. Metzs grande syntagmatiquedid elicit several progressive
critical responses however. Film director Pier Paolo Pasolini argued
against Metzs proposition that there was nothing in the cinema to
correspond to phonemes, which would align it to languages dual
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articulation. Pasolini names the smaller units of cinema cinemes,
which represent reality, or objects from reality. Through a process
of selection and combination cinemes were formed into shots,
analogous to languages morphemes. Umberto Eco criticized
Pasolinis naivety in supposing that the cinema could articulate an
unmediated reality. Rather, Eco argues that reality is represented in
the cinema through a system of cultural codes which are intimately
connected to ideology. He states also that cinemes could not be
equivalent to phonemes, since phonemes only possess meaning in
combination, whereas cinemes possess meaning in isolation.
Against Metzs uni-articulation and Pasolinis double-articulation,
Eco contends that the cinema has a triple articulation made up of
semes, smaller iconic signs which only attain meaning in relation to
semes, and finally the conditions of perception (Lapsley and
Westlake 1988, 45), which takes into account the audiences
perception of light, shade, textures, colours, etc. which contribute
to their understanding of the filmic text. Later on, Eco revised this
model slightly, suggesting that signs are better thought of as
sign-functions correlating a unit of expression with a unit of
content in a temporaryencoding (Lapsley and Westlake 1988, 46,
my italics), recognizing that signs are defined by their context and
that their meaning cannot be fixed.[6]
The relationship between the subject and the narrative text
in the cinema was explored by many film critics and much of the
remaining sections are concerned with an analysis of this
relationship from various critical viewpoints. One such critic is Colin
McCabe, who was on the editorial board for the revolutionary British
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film journal Screenin the 1970s and was also a regular
contributor. Screentook on board the challenge of analyzing the
relationship between ideology, subjectivity and signification, and
did so through psychoanalysis, semiotics and Althusserian Marxism.
It is in the structuralist mode that McCabe theorizes the production
of meaning in film in the article that will be discussed here.[7]
The model for McCabes analysis of film is a literary one. Since the
dominant mode of film was (and still is) realism, McCabe finds his
model in the classic realist text, the nineteenth century novel, which
he defines as one in which there is a hierarchy amongst the
discourses which compose the text and this hierarchy is defined in
terms of an empirical notion of truth (McCabe 1974, 54). The
Marxist influence of McCabes analysis is obvious. Extrapolating the
hierarchical divisions within the realist novel allows him to uncover
the mechanisms of ideology within the text. McCabe divides the
realist novel into narrative prose and object language. Narrative
prose is characterised by the omniscient narrator, informing,
commenting and providing judgement on the object language, the
language of the characters, represented in inverted commas.
McCabe states that the narrative prose is the first order of hierarchy
in the novel. It functions as a metalanguage that can state all the
truths in the object language (McCabe 1974, 54). The narrative
prose attempts to conceal its status as metalanguage: since its
words are not spoken, it is almost as if they are not there. Its
invisibility hides its function as purveyor of the dominant ideology.
In film, McCabe believes that the camera is analogous to the
metalanguage of the classic realist novel: [t]he camera shows us
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what happens it tells the truth against which we can measure the
discourses (McCabe 1974, 56).
McCabe defines two aspects of the classic realist text in both
novel and film. He states that [t]he classic realist text cannot deal
with the real as contradictory. In a reciprocal movement the classic
realist text ensures the position of the subject in a relation of
dominant specularity (McCabe 1974, 58). The real here does not
signify the Lacanian real. It refers rather to the real events which
are related in the subjective discourse of the cinema and conversely
in the object language or dialogue of the realist novel. He is stating
therefore that realist narrative cannot accommodate a tension
between metalanguage and object discourse. The nature of the
genre means that the object discourse must subscribe to the
commentary of the metalanguage, and therefore to the status of
metalanguage as ideologically motivated. However, while tension is
impossible between these two hierarchical levels within the film or
the novel, it ispossible for either to resist the dominant ideology of
society. So while the two elements are necessarily harmonious
within the narrative of filmic text, in unison they are capable of
critique:
the classic realist text (a heavily closed discourse) cannot deal
with the real in its contradictionsit fixes the subject in a point of
view from which everything becomes obvious. There is, however, a
level of contradiction into which the classic realist text can enter.
This is the contradiction between the dominant discourse of the
text and the dominant ideological discourses of the time. (McCabe
1974, 62)
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While McCabes analysis provides a useful account of the invisible
operations of the camera as commentator and interpreter of the
action, it fails to provide a theoretical analysis ofhowthe spectator
receives this ideological cinematic code and the exact nature of the
relationship between spectator and film. This task required an
analysis of the subjects relationship with other subjects, images,
language and culture, and film critics found a theoretical paradigm
that explicated all of these factors in psychoanalysis. The emphasis
on the occasion of consumption (the dialectic between subject and
film in the cinema, when he/she is engaged in the act of
perception) is one of the most important differentiating factors
between film theory and literary criticism. This is the central focus
of the branch of film studies known as apparatus theory, which
relies most heavily on philosophy of Lacan.
Apparatus Theory
Metzs foundational essay The Imaginary Signifier is an exemplary
account of the film/spectator relationship, providing what was to
become a model for the use of psychoanalytic theory in film
criticism. In the scientific manner that characterized post-revolution
film studies, Metz sets out to define exactly what the cinema is and
how it differs from the other arts. He proposes that the main
distinguishing factor is that the cinema is a signifier whose presence
is absence, i.e. the act of perception takes place in real time, but
the spectator is viewing an object which is pre-recorded and thus
already absent: it is the objects replicain a new kind of mirror
(Metz 2000, 410). He states that, [m]ore than the other artsthe
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cinema involves us in the imaginary: it drums up all perception, but
to switch it immediately over into its own absence, which is none
the less the only signifier present (Metz 2000, 410). Metzs
definition of the cinema is an accurate one, although he
over-emphasises the difference between film and other arts. All of
the arts involve an element of presence in absence: reading a book
or listening to a piece of music are activities where the action is not
directly present. Even the act of watching a play where the actors
are present on stage necessarily involves the agreed absence of
reality (suspension of disbelief), which is a fundamental convention
of drama.
Watching a film necessarily involves for Metz an instance of
identification, since without identification meaning cannot be
generated for the subject. The spectator continues to depend in
the cinema on that permanent play of identification without which
there would be no social life (Metz 2000, 411). The question of
what exactly the spectator identifies withproves to be more
difficult. The obvious answer is a character in the film, but Metz
points out that not all films contain characters. Even in instances
where characters are present, there cannot be total identification:
the screen is a mirror but not in a literal sense. Metz concludes that
the spectator must identify with the cinematic apparatus itself, and
its re-creation of the act of looking: the spectator identifies with
himself, with himself as pure act of perceptionas condition of
possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind of transcendental
subject, anterior to every there is (Metz 2000, 413).
Identification is with the projector, the camera and the
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screen of the cinematic apparatus. The projector duplicates the act
of perception by originating from the back of the subjects head
and presenting a visual image in front of the subject. The various
shots of the camera are akin to the movement of the head. As
vision is both projective and introjective, the subject projects
his/her gaze and simultaneously introjects the information received
from the gaze. The cinema replicates this experience, with the
screen functioning as the recording surface for what has been
introjected. Opening the eyes to view the film, I am the projector,
receiving it, I am the screen; in both these figures together, I am
the camera, pointed yet recording (Metz 2000, 415).
Identification takes place in the imaginary order. The
imaginary is governed by the symbolic, and the cinema is no
exception to this rule. Any theorization of the imaginary in cinema
must pre-suppose the symbolic since the cinema is a system of
signifiers which signify an absent signified. Metz does not explicitly
acknowledge that the cinematic experience replicates the experience
of the child in the mirror: if the screen takes the place of the
childhood mirror, then both can be said to create a version of
reality that is based upon an illusion. However, Metz does identify
the cinema as characteristically imaginary, since what is depicted is
already a reflection of reality. He focuses on the imaginary at the
expense of the symbolic and this issue has been taken up by several
feminist critics who will be discussed in part two of this article.
This emphasis on the imaginary generated a large amount of
theoretical analysis. Like the childhood mirror, the imaginarycompleteness that the screen represents merely serves to disguise an
inherent lack. The means by which this imaginary completeness is
created is known as suture.
Stephen Heaths ground-breaking work, Narrative Space,
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provides an informed description of suture, foregrounded by a
detailed discussion of filmic narrative space in general. Pivotal to
Heaths analysis is the notion of central projection and he outlines
the development of this idea from fifteenth century Italian painting
to early photography. It is defined as the art of depicting
three-dimensional objects upon a plane surface in such a manner
that the picture mayaffect the eye of an observer in the same way
as the natural objects themselves (Heath 1993, 69). Central
projection, which we now regard as natural, dominates modern
cinema. For the illusion of central projection to be fully accurate, it
is essential for the eye of the spectator to be positioned in the
central point of perspective. Anamorphosis is the term that is used
to describe what happens when a painter or a film maker plays with
central projection. This is the distorted sensation experienced when
an image draws the eye to one side. Heath cites Holbeins The
Ambassadors as an example of anamorphosis: playing between
appearance and reality, it situates the centre of the projection of
the paintingobliquely to the side, the sense of the paintingonly
falling into place (exactly) once the position has been found
(Heath 1993, 69). Although unacknowledged by Heath, the
emphasis on the importance of subject position in maintaining the
illusion of reality contains strong echoes of Lacans optical
experiment, in which the position of the subject is crucial in order
to maintain the delicate balance between the three orders[8].
Watching a film is also based on an optical illusion in which images
on a flat screen appear three-dimensional and realistic. The
identifications engendered by film narrative centered around the
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imaginary order are similarly based upon mconnaisance.
Heath divides filmic space into space in frame and space out
of frame. The space in frame is narrative space. It is narrative
significance that at any moment sets the space of the frame to be
followed and read (Heath 1993, 69). This narrative space is
characterized and delimited by various conventions. For example,
most films contain a master-shot in the opening sequence: a shot
that shows the whole setting in order to allow the spectator to
integrate themselves into the spatial layout of the film. The
conventions of the 180 and 30-degree rules also regulate the
narrative space of the cinema. The 180 degree rule means that the
camera rarely goes beyond the 180 degree line of the screen, in
front of which the spectator would be placed within the narrative
space of the film. In order to avoid a jump in narrative space,
which would interrupt the illusion of total visual access to the
narrative space of the film, the 30-degree rule is common practice,
which means that the camera should not attempt a sudden jump of
more than 30 degrees. All of these conventions function to
maintain the illusion of reality that the cinema creates. The illusion
or misrecognition that is inherent in the cinematic experience
centers around the complex issue of suture.
The term originates with Lacan, who uses it only once in his
seminar of 1965, and was later transformed into a concept by
Jacques-Alain Miller in his article for Les Cahiers pour lanalyse, later
printed in ScreenasSuture (Elements of the Logic of the
Signifer). In this article, Miller theorizes the notion of suture as the
relationship between the subject and the signifying chain.
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spectator to remain in his/her position as voyeur. Suture became
an important concept in film studies in both Britain and France until
it underwent another transformation with the advent of
deconstruction, where it became a vague notion rather than a
concept, as synonymous with closure: suture signaled that the
gap, the opening, of a structure was obliterated, enabling the
structure to (mis)perceive itself as a self-enclosed totality of
representation (Zizek 2001, 31). Heaths narrative space is thus
dependent upon the action of suture since the cinema, as much as
the childhood mirror, poses for the spectator an absence, a lack,
which is ceaselessly recaptured forthe film, the process binding
the spectator as subject in the realization of the films space (Heath
1993, 88).
From its very beginning then, throughout its influence by
Marxism and semiotics, film theory has relied on psychoanalytic
theory to provide a philosophical, pseudo-scientific and sociological
basis for the conceptualization of the spectator. However, the
psychoanalytic subject espoused by film studies is not without its
critics. Many have accused the discipline of diluting Lacanian
theory to serve their own purposes, reducing the complexities of
the Lacanian subject to a deceiving simplicity. In the second part
of this article, the writings of Joan Copjec and Slavoj Zizek on the
issue of the gaze will be analysed. These critics, along with otherdiscussed in part two, show that far from the cinematic screen
being a mirror akin to the mirror of childhood described in Lacans
mirror stage, that the mirror is in fact a screen, and that the
spectator is not the one who looks, but rather is being looked at.
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Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor, 1980. Letter to Walter Benjamin inAesthetics
and Politics. ed. by Frederic Jameson. London: Verso.
Comolli, Jean-Louis and Jean Narboni, [1969]. Cinema/Ideology
Criticism (1) in Contemporary Film Theory, ed. Anthony Easthope.
New York: Longman, 1993. [pp. 43-51]
Heath, Stephen, 1993, FromNarrative Space in Contemporary Film
Theory. ed. by Anthony Easthope. New York: Longman. [pp.
68-94]
Lacan, Jacques, 1989. Ecrits: a Selection. Translated by Alan
Sheridan. London: Routledge.
Lacan, Jacques, (1953-4), Le Sminaire. Livre 1. Les crits
techniques de Freud, 1953-4, ed. Jacques Alain Miller, Paris: Seuil,
1975 [The Seminar, Book 1, Freuds Papers on Technique, 1953-4,
trans John Forrester, with notes by John Forrester, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987].
McCabe, Colin, [1974], FromRealism and the Cinema: Notes on
Some Brechtian Theses in Contemporary Film Theory, edited by
Anthony Easthope. New York: Longman, 1993. [pp. 53-67]
Metz, Christian, 2000. The Imaginary Signifier in Film and Theory:
An Anthology, ed. by Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Oxford:
Blackwell. [pp. 403-435]
Ray, Robert B., 2001. How Film Theory Got Lost and Other
Mysteries in Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake, 1988. Film Theory: An
Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Roudinesco, Elisabeth, (1994), Jacques Lacan: Esquisse dune vie,
histoire dun systme de pense. Librairie Arthme Fayard. [Jacques
Lacan. Trans. Barbara Gray. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997].
Zizek, Slavoj, 2001. The Fright of Real Tears: Krystof Kielowskibetween Theory and Post Theory. London: BFI Publishing.
Notes
[1] Letter to Walter Benjamin inAesthetics and Politics, edited by Frederic Jameson, p. 129.
[2] Eisensteins stance on this issue was foregrounded by the earlier pictorialism movement,which sought to disguise the photographic image by disguising it as art (Ray 2001, 3).
[3] Ray states that Bazins philosophy is an example of what Derrida names unmediated
presence (Ray 2001, 8).
[4] While the aesthetic bias of Eisensteins criticism was rejected, his theoretical writings
were admired. Along with his Russian contemporaries, he was perceived as contributing to
the theoretical matrix of film studies (Comolli and Narboni 1969, 50).
[5] Lacan develops this graph in four stages in The Subversion of the Subject and the
Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious (Lacan 1989, 323-360).
[6]This view also bears the influence of post-structuralists like Lacan and Derrida who insist
upon the temporality of meaning in signification. For Derrida, il nya pas hors de contexte:
there is nothing outside the context.
[7] Colin McCabes analyses are not confined to structuralism. On the contrary, he is a
well-regarded film critic who is capable of analyzing in many different modes. This particular
article has been chosen as an example of structuralist criticism.
[8] See seminar 1.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and imageVolume 2, February 2005, ISSN 1552-5112