There's a great piece by Metz in his book Psychoanalysis and Film/The
Imaginary Signifier, "The Fiction Film and Its Spectator. A
Metapsychological Study," in which he examines the relationship of the
cinema experience to dreams (in deep sleep), daydreams, and the fully
conscious waking state. The film experience in the cinema coincides
with none of the other three exactly, but it does have greater
affinities with daydreaming than with the other two mental states (real
dreams and full consciousness). There is an irreduceable difference to
the cinema experience, which means that to some extent we cannot help
but talk about it in metaphorical terms (seeing a film is like x, y,
and z, but never completely so).
In acknowledging the irreduceable specificity of cinema (meaning the
theatrically exhibited feature fiction film) there is, however, the
danger of being essentialist: since, as has already been pointed out,
films are watched in many different forms of exhibition (privately,
incl. tv, video, dvd, as well non-theatrically, e.g. at schools etc.),
there is a difference between film and the cinema; and even within the
cinema, the situation might change when we are dealing with
documentary, animation or non-narrative forms.
There is a strong element of - corresponding to the 70s political
climate - conspiracy theorizing in apparatus theory. Nonetheless, the
wholesale cognitivist debunking of concepts such as "voyeurism",
"fetishism", "identification," "viewer positioning" etc. in favour of
the totally conscious and rational viewer - with spectator emotions
being rationally subsumed as a consequence of cognitive cues and
inferences - seems to depend on how literally these terms are used: if
you insist on a narrow, psychopathological definition of "voyeurism,"
for instance, then the cinema experience as such is not voyeuristic:
there's nothing clinically wrong with going to the movies, obviously.
However, if you take a broader view of these terms covering a grey area
of non-pathological everyday behaviour, then they might be of some
heuristic use.
Henry
> Adam et. al.,
>
> You begin your "argument" against Carroll with an assault on the
> analytic way of doing philosophy that is sophomoric. You then fail to
> come to grips with the main arguments Carroll offers. As I see it,
> they are fourfold:
>
> 1) The hypothesis that we regress to some infantile state in which
> allows the cinema to influence us in profound ways ovestates the
> impact of the filmic experience, making it look that we are more in
> its thrall than we really are.
> 2). The analogy with Plato's cave weakens rather than strengthens the
> original claim, by diffusing the focus of the analysis. It in effect
> changes the subject, adding some preposterous folderol about the
> allegory prefiguring the cinematic experience.
> 3). Both analogies have the ideological function of "crying wolf",
> warning us too urgently of the ability of film to deceive and mislead
> us.
> 4) The dream screen argument collapses when we view films in
> non-theatrical settings (e.g. on television) or in non standard
> positions (like standing up), which does not fundamentally alter the
> cinematic experience.
>
> These are four fairly convincing arguments, and Carroll goes on to
> expand on these themes in A Philosophy of Mass Art, my review of which
> still appears in the Salon archives.
>
> Dan Shaw
>
> "For beauty is the beginning of terror we are still able to bear, and
> why we love it so is because it so serenely disdains to destroy us"
> Rilke's First Duino Elegy
>
> Daniel Shaw
> Professor of Philosophy and Film
> Lock Haven University
> Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
> website: www.lhup.edu/dshaw
>
>
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Dr. Henry M. Taylor
Fellow, University of Zurich
Phone +41 44 272 21 61
Mobile +41 78 639 49 82
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