Talk about subjectivity in terms of photography critiques. 1910-1920 Film Theory Coincided with psychology and theories of visual perception Hugo Munsterburg The Film: A Psychological Study Munsterburg in this book established the basis for modern theory of movement “Film doesn’t exist on the film stock, but within the mind” It tells the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world: Space Time Causality They become part of our inner world: Attention Memory Imagination Emotion The spectator actualizes an ideal (is this difference from how we have characterized the spectator in the past?) Rudolf Arnheim:Gestalt theory: (Art and Visual Perception 1954) Our mind is part of our visual perception—it translates what we see. Completing of a shape. The Birth of a Nation. (By DW GRIFFITH) Thanks Heather for saving my butt in class! Lev Kuleshov (The Kuleshov Effect) Inexpressive actor A table full of food A corpse A naked woman KULESHOV EFFECT: Robert Butz offers the following: The name given to the mental tendency of viewers to attempt to figure out how filmed shots fit together, even if the shots are totally unrelated. This effect was noted and articulated by Soviet director and film theoretician Lev (Leo) Kuleshov, who was appointed head of the newsreel section at the Moscow film studios early in the post-revolutionary period. Around 1919, Kuleshov began a series of editing experiments which led to a startling discovery (in what has become known as the "Mozhukhin Experiment"). In separate sequences, shots of various objects (a bowl of soup, a smiling child, and a dead body), were juxtaposed against identical archive clips of a famous actor (Ivan Mozhukhin). The audience read a different meaning into Mozhukhin's expression with each combination. This discovery demonstrated the power of editing to alter the perception of the subject, in this case, the actor's emotions and thoughts. The experiment also, implicitly, advanced the verisimilar acting style as the ideal for film; purportedly, Mozhukin was praised by the audience for his subtle acting abilities. In another experiment, Kuleshov spliced together another series of shots which had been filmed entirely out of sequence and in different times and places: a waiting man, a walking woman, a gate, a staircase, and a mansion. The audience read spatial and temporal 'sense' into the sequence, deciding that they saw the man and the woman meeting in front of the gate at the same time. This demonstrated the viewer's essential role in creating a film's continuity and advanced the notion that a filmmaker creates a 'fictive space', with the freedom to shoot out of sequence and join together unrelated shots. Kuleshov used these discoveries to advance the theory of montage as the central device of cinema, later adapted by Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevelod Pudovkin. Editing is a deliberate guidance of thoughts and perception 1956 Edgar Morin Cinema allows us to reflect on reality’s imaginary or the imaginary’s reality. The cinema is a machine that makes imaginary situations We give a should to things on the screen. Presence-absence of the object wherein the object is defined as an authentic presence and a real absence Offers the aspects of magical perception—such perception is common in primitives, infants, and neurotic individuals. Identification with character on the screen—(most mentioned) the identification with a look alike and with a stranger are both occurring in film. The charm of the image and the image to the world within reach makes up the exhibition the cinema stimulates identification The role of identification in the creation of the ego (the part of the mind that has self awareness) What does psychoanalytic theory mean in terms of identification? Sigmund Freud’s 1923 elaboration of the psychic apparatus Id (inherent instinctive impulses that are part of the unconscious) Ego (the part of the mind that has self awareness) Super Ego: the part of the mind that has a conscience Identification is the simultaneously the basic mechanism of the imaginary constitution of the self. Primary Identification: where the ego and the id can’t differentiate themselves. Investment in the object and identification with the object The Mirror Phase: Jacques Lacan Between six and eighteen months. The child will constitute in imagination a true corporeal unity. Such as an image of the mother holding the child. The child will identify themselves by viewing the counterpart as an “other” (corporeal: bodily physical) mirror phase corresponds with the advent of primary narcissism by bringing an end to the fantasy of a fragmented body. Jean-Louis Baudry made the double analogy between the child in the mirror phase and the film spectator—first of all he talked about the framed limited and circumscribed surface. Allows the spectator to isolate an abject from the world and at the same time to constitute it as a total object. Metz talks about the screen in a sense is equivalent to a primordial mirror. And Barthes makes the distinction that it is a mirror that never reflects back. The second is the underdeveloped motor skills, preponderant role of the visual function that a child has when perceiving this corporeal unity for the first time. Basically a child at the stage of the mirror phase perceives the world as if they are in a movie. The world operates as if it is the cinematic institution and (appears as projected pictures) Screen sends back images of other bodies The immobile seated position Overinvestment of our visual activity because we are seated in a darkened room. The constant use of mirrors in cinema may exist to create depth or possibly some expository elements—but it may be a reflection on the analogy of the primordial mirror. Secondary Identification and the Oedipal Complex: Individual becomes constituted as a subject while establishing his or her singularity. Desire projected on the opposite sex and anger and hostility toward the member of the opposite sex. However he identifies with his father’s desire and feels identification with the father. This brings about a feeling of ambivalence. Conflict: what one wants to be and what one wants to have Many times the spectator finds themselves having ambivalent feelings toward the assailant and assailed. Pleasure in horror films etc. Subject: one who desires Object:one who is desired Combined action of eyelines and continuity editing: Characters are the subject of the look. They see the set and others. They are also the object (being looked at by the spectator) Lacan defined the identification of the ego with the imaginary function of the ego. Gilles Deleuze Narcisstic nature of identification permits the egos restoring of the absent or lost object and the denial by this narcissistic restoration of the absence or loss. Offers the subject the opportunity to satisfy himself without recourse to the external object. (so all narrative identification is porn) falling back of the fetishist on to the fetish. The willing away of the object We go to the movies as a penchant for solitude. This is a regression into early stages according to the theatrical theorist and writer Berthold Brecht. All identification is dangerous to the extent that it suspends judgement. That is how we can see the Klu Klux Klan as heroic freedom fighters at the end of the “Birth of a Nation.” Many have seen identification as a stumbling block for film because it doesn’t allow for spectator/spectacle discourse. Films (militant documentary directors) who have the desire or the will to influence the course of events or that motivate the spectators to become more conscious or active in their social lives. Regression to Oral Stage—we repress our desires by eating what we desire— The regression is again brought about by the conditions of projection Dark theater Inhibited motor activity Passivity before the moving images Script Thematics An identifiable character who loses their footing Primary Cinematographic Identification This term was coined by Metz, so not to confuse with Primary Identification, which is a pre Oedipal condition. This identification (diegetic secondary identification) identification with the represented Identifying with a character in a fiction film Due to the spectator’s ability to identify with the subject of vision. Without this capacity a film would be nothing more than a succession of shadows forms and colors Two-dimensional images offer the viewers a simulacrum of their perception of the real universe It is the means by which spectators identify with their own glance and also prove to themselves that they are the locus of the representation by being privileged, central, and transcendental subject of the vision. You get to ride along with the cowboy get close to the pretty girl or pretty boy you are placed in the omniscient position. All this while understanding that the film was recorded. Secondary Cinematographic Identification Every narrative replays the Oedipal scene Confrontation between the desire and the law Lack Lack creates desire Delay the satisfaction Active pursuit of an impossible satisfaction that is always delayed Every narrative deals with this desire and the law, which is related to the spectator and their own desire and how it relates to their original desire. This is how we can get caught up in a television show or a movie even though we may judge it unworthy intellectually, ideologically or artistically. Identification and Structure Film can cause us to sympathize with characters that we wouldn’t ever be able to sympathize with in reality. Norman Bates the killer, Melanie the thief, and Uncle Charlie the murderer. So, the traits of the good character are not the only means to create identification. According to Barthes identification is not a psychological process it is purely structural I am the one who has the place I have. Identification is a question of place. Feminist Theory and the Spectator: Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Classical cinema constructs pleasure for a male viewer alone