The Spectator

Question 1

For Berger, what do American films reflect?

Answer 1

The capitalist ethos, ideology; that has shaped our desires and way of thinking… Reflects this larger system. **

Question 2

What is apparatus theory?

Answer 2

Looks at how films reflect ideology, its form is embed with and also reflected in audiences.

> cultural implications (not just images and story)

Question 3

For John Berger, what does a film reflect?

Answer 3

It embodies, or reflects, a way of seeing…

• contains the attitude of the person (often director) behind the camera.
• coded/informs through ideology.

Question 4

According to Berger’s writing, where does ideology tricks down from? Where is this rooted/formed?

Answer 4

Art informs language which is further informed by the ruling class.

Question 5

For Berger, film reflects what? Why is this important and what are its implications for the spectator?

Answer 5

It reflects ideology. Can cut us off from our own culture and, more-so, humanity.
Appeals to the male spectator (western, white, etc)…

Question 6

In “introduction” was does ___ say that film is In relation to psychoanalysis?

Answer 6

The art of dream portrayal… Film as the projection of though, and wish, on-screen.

Question 7

What overarching principle from Freud’s thinking ties into film?

Answer 7

That our earliest ties to the world continue to make themselves felt through the institutions of politics and culture, and that there is a profound correspondence between cinema and the unconscious mind; extending to both how and what the mind thinks.

Question 8

Why is film often though of as corresponding to dreaming?

Answer 8

With such effects as dissolves, superimposition, slow motion, etc… Surrealist effects that correspond to the experience of dreams.

Question 9

Barbara refers to Lacanian Imagery. What is this?

Answer 9

the period when the child experiences its first sense of a united self during the mirror stage…

Question 10

What, according to Lacan, are the three orders in the history of human development?

Answer 10

The imaginary, the symbolic, and the Real

Question 11

What order in human development is the mirror stage?

Answer 11

The imaginary.

Question 12

What is the “mirror stage”?

Answer 12

Mirror stage refers to that moment when the infant first experience the joy of seeing itself as complete, and imagines itself to be more adult; more complete; an idealized version of the self

Question 13

According to Baudry, what does Plato’s prisoners-human beings desire?

Answer 13

A return to a kind of psychic unity in which the boundary between subject and object is obliterated; UNITY!

Question 14

Who introduced the idea of voyeurism, and what is it?

Answer 14

Metz - there is always a distance maintained between the viewing subject and its object; the characters cannot return the spectator’s gaze. [pleasure in this one-way seeing]

Question 15

What is Metz’s idea of the “imaginary signifier”?

Answer 15

The screen might offer images that suggest completeness, but this is purely imaginary, and because of this the spectator is forced to deal with a sense of lack a that is an inescapable part of the viewing process.

Question 16

What is the idea of the fetish in cinema? Explain this phenomena.

Answer 16

This has to do with an unresolved Oedipus complex… The boy understands the mother has no phalis and, rather than repressing the desire for the mother which will then be projected on another ‘inherited woman’, or he will conjure up reassuring images of another part of her body such as breasts or legs… [spiky heels]… In response to this ‘trauma’..

Question 17

How is the narrative seen as being in the service of the subject’s desire to overcome ‘lack’?

Answer 17

That a situation in which the status quo has been updated, the hero or heroin must solve the problem and restore an equilibrium.. [solve an enigma… A lack of resolution/problem]

Question 18

How does Metz account for a fetishizing of cinema itself?

Answer 18

That the spectator knows the cinema is an illusion, and making up for this a sense he fetischizes the cinema itself.

Question 19

What does Apparatus theory emphasize? Yes, spectator, but more…

Answer 19

The way the cinema compensates for what the viewing subject lacks; imaginary unity to smooth over the fragmentation at the heart of subjectivity.

Question 20

What did Laura Mulvey argue in her essay “visual pleasure and narrative cinema?

Answer 20

female star=passive position, an erotic object for the desiring look of the male spectator (and character). Male=active…

Question 21

What is the general idea behind Mulvey’s psychoanalytic theory?

Answer 21

examining the way in which Patriarchal unconscious influences film form.

Question 22

What is the Oedipal heroine (an offshoot/response to Mulvey)?

Answer 22

That the spectator did not identify in a monolithic, rigid manner with his or her gender counterpart, but actually alternated between masculine active and feminine - passive positions, depending on the codes of identification.

Question 23

What was the key criticism of apparatus theory?

Answer 23

That it constructed a monolithic spectator. Male and passive.

Question 24

What was a criticism of psychoanalytic theory?

Answer 24

Ahistorical: Blurs any serious engagement with political and cultural issues… Perhaps film should be studied more in relation to history and society than to the unconscious and subjective.

Question 25

For Frued, what did the fetish reflect?

Answer 25

A penis-substitute. ‘Special penis’, the purpose of the fetish is to substitute the mother’s phallus which the boy once believed in and does not wish to forgo. DENIAL

Question 26

What is the mirror stage?

Answer 26

The first instance in which the child, with as-yet undeveloped motor skills, sees itself in the mirror; recognizes, identifies and mis-identifies itself.
The mental emergence of the “I”

Question 27

Mulvey discusses some possible pleasures in cinema. What are these and what do they mean?

Answer 27

1) General scopophilia - pleasure enjoyed in looking at another person as an object; Spearation!! Voyeurism [pleasure in one-way objectifying]
2) An narcissistic scopophilia - [mirror phase] recognition/misrecognition and identification of the ideal self in the film.

Question 28

Mulvey writes the, traditionally,the woman displayed has functioned on town levels. What are these?

Answer 28

Erotic object for the characters within the story
Erotic object for the spectator in the auditorium.
(Often unified without any apparent break)

Question 29

What is Mulvey’s position on the objectified male?

Answer 29

That the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like.

Question 30

In Psychoanalysis (Freud, presented through Mulvey) what are the two dynamics present with women characters

Answer 30

• threat of castration.

- inducing voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent her threat - possession

Question 31

(Mulvey) What are three different ‘looks’ [perspectives/ways of seeing] integrated in the cinema?

Answer 31

The camera
The audiences
The character
(Which are blurred… A problem that leads to voyeurism and active male spectatorship (gaze).