Film

FILM
Te Key Concepts
ISSN 1747-6550
Te series aims to cover the core disciplines and the key cross-disciplinary ideas across the
Humanities and Social Sciences. Each book isolates the key concepts to map out the theoretical
terrain across a specic subject or idea. Designed specically for student readers, each book in
the series includes boxed case material, summary chapter bullet points, annotated guides to
further reading and questions for essays and class discussion
Forthcoming in this series
Technoculture: Te Key Concepts
Debbie Shaw
Design: Te Key Concepts
Mark Westgarth and Eleanor Quince
Fashion: Te Key Concepts
Jennifer Craik
Food: Te Key Concepts
Warren Belasco
Globalization: Te Key Concepts
Tomas Hylland Eriksen
New Media: Te Key Concepts
Nicholas Gane
Performance: Te Key Concepts
Philip Auslander
Photography: Te Key Concepts
David Bate
Queer Teory: Te Key Concepts
Noreen Giney
Race: Te Key Concepts
C. Richard King
Te Body: Te Key Concepts
Lisa Blackman
Visual Culture: Te Key Concepts
John Lynch
FILM
The Key Concepts
Oxford New York
Nitzan Ben-Shaul
English edition
First published in 2007 by
Berg
Editorial oces:
First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Nizan Ben-Shaul 2007
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ben-Shaul, Nitzan S.
Film : the key concepts / Nitzan Ben-Shaul.
p. cm.(Te key concepts)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-365-8 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-365-8 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-366-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-366-6 (pbk.)
1. Motion pictures. I. Title.
PN1994.B4147 2007
791.43dc22
2006033244
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84520 365 8 (Cloth)
978 1 84520 366 5 (Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn.
www.bergpublishers.com
To the memory of my mother, may she rest in peace.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 From the Photogenic to the Simulacrum 3
Introduction 3
1 Realist Approaches 5
1.1 Photogenic Truth in Film 5
1.2 Film as Truth Machine 8
1.3 Photogenic Beauty in Film 9
1.4 Critiques of Photogenic Beauty in Film 14
2 Formalist Approaches to Art 16
2.1 Te Formalist Approach to the Photogenic 17
2.2 Marxist Critiques of Formalism 21
3 Film as Simulacrum 22
Chapter Summary 28
2 Film Constructs 29
Introduction 29
1 Saussure, Semiology, Structuralism and Film Constructs 30
1.1 Ferdinand de Saussures Key Linguistic Concepts 30
1.2 Semiological Film Constructs 33
1.3 Lvi-Strausss Structural Method 41
1.4 Structural Film Constructs 45
1.5 Critiques of Semiology and Structuralism 52
2 Poststructuralism and Film Constructs 53
2.1 Poststructural Redenitions of the Categories of Author,
Genre and Narrative 53
2.2 Poststructural Intertextuality and Film 55
2.3 Critiques of Poststructuralism 57
3 Cognitivist Film Constructs 59
3.1 Noel Carrolls Question-and-Answer Film Construct Model 61
3.2 David Bordwells Constructivist Film Spectator 62
4 Neo-Marxist and Psychoanalytic Critiques of Cognitivism 65
Chapter Summary 66
3 Dialectic Film Montage 69
Introduction 69
1 Constructivist Dialectic Film Montage in the Context of Marxism 70
1.1 Key Marxist Concepts 70
1.2 Marxism and Film 75
2 Deconstructive Dialectic Film Montage in the Context of
Neo-Marxism 81
2.1 Deconstructing Films Fake Aura 82
2.2 Neo-Marxism and Ideological Apparatuses 86
2.3 Film as an Ideological Apparatus and Dialectic Montage as
its Deconstruction 90
3 Reconstructive Dialectic Film Montage in the Context of
Anti-colonialism 93
4 Decentred Dialectic Film Montage: Postmodernism, Post-Marxism,
Postcolonialism 97
Chapter Summary 100
4 Imaginary Signiers/Voyeuristic Pleasures 103
Introduction 103
1 Psychoanalysis and Film 104
1.1 Freuds Dream Work 104
1.2 Film as Dream 106
1.3 Lacans Mirror Stage 109
1.4 Film and the Mirror Stage 110
1.5 Critiques of the Analogies Film as Dream and Film as Mirror 113
2 Varying Voyeuristic Pleasures 114
2.1 Feminist Deconstruction of Films (Male) Voyeuristic Pleasures 114
2.2 Post-feminist and Queer Teories of Voyeuristic Pleasures 122
2.3 From Gender Bending to Cyborgs 126
2.4 A Post-Marxist Critique of Queer and Cyborg theories 128
Chapter Summary 128
Questions for Essays and Class Discussion 131
Notes 133
Annotated Guide for Further Reading 144
Index 149
v i i i c o n t e n t s
PREFACE
Tis book is based on various lm theory courses I have been giving for the past
fteen years at the Film and Television Department in Tel Aviv University. I would
like to thank my students in these courses. Teir varied questions and comments
helped me to consolidate a presentation of the dierent theories addressed by the
book as clearly as possible. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the department,
particularly Dr Anat Zanger, Professor Nurit Gertz and Professor Michal Friedman
for their contribution to the organization and teaching of the lm theory course of
studies in the department.
I thank Tristan Palmer from Berg Publishers, for suggesting this book to me and
for his gracious accompaniment of its dierent stages of production. I also thank the
anonymous reviewers of the book for their valuable suggestions.
I especially thank my wife Daphna Cohen Ben-Shaul and my daughters, Noga,
Carmel and Guy, for their patience and support.
I dedicate this book to Professor Annette Michelson, my present friend and
former doctoral adviser at the Cinema Studies Department in New York University.
Tanks to her in-depth seminars I devoted my professional life to the theoretical
research of lm.
Nitzan Ben-Shaul
Tel Aviv University
INTRODUCTION
Diering from lm history, lm criticism or lmmaking activities that deal with
specic lms in specic historical contexts lm theory strives to oer general ideas
on the nature of lm and models for lm analysis, presumably applicable to every lm
irrespective of its specic context of production. Beyond the obvious pleasure and
reward involved in thinking about this multilayered culturally dominant medium,
lm theory enriches our viewing. It also aids historians, critics and lmmakers who
are by necessity consciously or inadvertently guided by theoretical assumptions in
their practice.
Learning about what has been said on the nature of lm, on its peculiar sig-
nifying processes, on its ideological and psychological eects, or on the ways it
can be productively placed within historical, social, spectator or authorial contexts
broadens our comprehension of the medium, enriches our viewing, and enhances
awareness of the theoretical questions relevant and deserving attention when writing
lm history, criticizing a lm or making one.
Tis book aims to provide a brief and coherent overview of lm theory for
beginning readers. It isolates six key concepts in four chapters, through which the
main sites in lm theory are covered. Each chapter follows the changing conception
of the concept addressed through key articles. Some necessary historical guidelines
and references to adjacent elds are oered, along with boxed summaries analysing
lms and bulleted summaries at the end of each chapter to provide beginning
students with a map of the eld. A section oering questions for essays and class dis-
cussions and an annotated bibliography appear at the back of the book.
Each key concept focuses attention on a particular aspect of the medium: From
the Photogenic to the Simulacrum addresses the evolving understanding of the
relation between lm and reality. It opposes the realist version of lm as revealing
reality through its reproduction, to the formalist conception of lm-art as anti-realist.
Tese two opposing views nd relief in the postmodern notion of the simulacrum,
according to which lm and reality are both simulations. Film Constructs focuses
on the evolving notion of how lms signify. It starts with the semiological and struc-
tural comprehension of lms as enclosed structures, followed by the poststructural
deconstruction of such enclosures, ending with the reconstructive cognitivist posi-
tion that places signication in the mutual play of lm text and the spectators cogni-
tion. Dialectic Film Montage addresses the notion of lms ideological functioning.
It traces the comprehension of lm as ideology from early constructivist Marxism,
to deconstructive neo-Marxism and anti-colonialism, and on to post-Marxism and
postcolonialism. Imaginary Signiers/Voyeuristic Pleasures focuses on the relation
between lm and the spectators psyche, dealing with how lms oer a generalized
spectator voyeuristic pleasures and the reinforcement of his/her sense of self. Tis
is followed by the feminist and queer theory focus upon the diverse voyeuristic
pleasures and displeasures oered by lms to dierent genders or to a diversity of
sexual sensibilities, concluding with the non-gendered cyborg myth.
In order to address the hotly contested topic of lm theory, the book oers a
cross-referencing of lms and readings across chapters as a way of arming the
exibility of the categories being set up, leaving them open for emergent concerns.
Moreover, while each chapter stands on its own, tracing the historical evolution
of each concept to the present, the book shows how ideas/approaches/theorists
interact across the last century. Tis is done through the underlining of an overall
homologous evolution across chapters of aligned conceptual comprehensions within
dierent theories, and through dialectically opposing theoretical approaches to each
other within and across chapters.
2 f i l m : t h e k e y c o n c e p t s
1 FROM THE PHOTOGENIC TO
THE SIMULACRUM
INTRODUCTION
Te concept of the photogenic in lm was developed by French theorist and lm-
maker Jean Epstein. It concerns the specic nature of the lm image. For the
dierent variants of the realist approach to lm, the photogenic implies the cine-
cameras unique ability to reveal hidden dimensions of the photographed object.
Te formalists rejected this understanding of the term and developed a diametrically
opposed conception. For them the photogenic is an aesthetic quality derived solely
from lms stylistic transformations and abstractions of the recorded images. Te
Russian formalist Yuri Tynjanov coined the term cinematogenic as a correction to
the photogenic. He used the term to imply the peculiar aesthetics of lm that derive
from its transmutation of reality resembling qualities, qualities that in themselves
had no artistic merit in his view.
Te realist/formalist debate as it evolved around the concept of the photogenic
has a long art-theory pedigree. It concerns dierent approaches to the purpose,
value and function of art. While realists conceived art as striving to reveal the truth
about the world or its beauty through imitation of its surface appearance, formalists
maintained that art should distance itself from nature and express the human
capacity for abstraction. Both positions share the premise that there is no eective
way to commingle the aesthetic values found in nature with those of human-made
art. As phrased by art theorist and psychologist Rudolph Arnheim:
Tere is a decisive dierence between things of nature and works of art . . . In
the visual arts . . . form is applied to a material by external inuence. In fact,
the artist tends to avoid highly organized materials such as crystals or plants.
Te art of arranging owers is hybrid because it subjects organic shape to
human order . . . Kracauer has pointed out that in photography highly dened
compositional form falsies the medium . . . Artistic shape is made, whereas
organic shape is grown . . . Te shape of a seashell or a leaf is the external
manifestation of the inner forces that produced the object.
1
Te formalist position came to the fore with the artistic ferment of the modernist
movement that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginnings
of the twentieth century with movements such as impressionism, expressionism
and cubism, each trying in its own fashion to break away from the traditional com-
mitment of the arts to imitate reality as it is normatively perceived. Te concomitant
advent of lm generated a heated debate over its value as an art form. It brought
forth a hidden dichotomy between two widespread premises concerning arts essence
namely, that each artistic form fashions its own peculiar materials (music fashions
sounds, poetry fashions words, painting fashions colour, etc.) and that art strives
towards abstraction. Hence, for the formalists, arts struggle for abstraction was
bound by denition to encounter strong resistance from the lms material given its
technological, automatic and highly mimetic way of recording reality. For them, the
medium was anti-aesthetic according to its material and hence somewhat limited in
its artistic potential. On the other hand, the same presumption about each art forms
peculiar material base brought those who saw lm as a new art form to call for a new
aesthetic, realist in its nature and betting lms peculiar material base.
Te dialectic between these founding conceptions of lm as art frame to a large
extent the aesthetic debates surrounding the medium and the motivations provided
for its evolution. Some, like Andr Bazin, described the evolution of lm as a
constant struggle to rearm its commitment to reproducing reality and reduce to a
minimum what he perceived as the mediums non-cinematic tendency for abstract
fabrications. Others, like Tynjanov,
2
saw the mediums aesthetic evolution as striving
towards abstraction through overcoming its debasing faculty of reproduction.
Tis dialectic is also evident in most lm histories, which usually open with the
opposition between the early documentary lmmaking of the Lumire brothers
and the cinematic tricks of their contemporary Georges Mlis, a magician turned
lmmaker. For instance, the Lumire brothers documentary lm Arrival of a Train
at La Ciotat (1896) consisted of one stationary shot showing a train arriving from
the screens background to its foreground at a station and the passengers getting
o, whereas Mlis fantastic lm A Trip to the Moon (1902) mixed animation with
recorded images, stop-motion, superimpositions and other cinematographic eects.
Tese founding conceptions haunted each other, failing to account for lm
aesthetics whenever each ignored the other. Realist positions failed to provide a
comprehensive account of the complex conventions of editing, lm metaphors or
narrative that construct even the most realist of lms, while formalist positions failed
to account for the complex documentary import of lm images and sounds.
f r o m t h e p h o t o g e n i c t o t h e s i m u l a c r u m 5
Te postmodern revolution oered to break down this long-held tension between
realist and formalist conceptions of lm. Baudrillards notion of simulacra shattered
the traditional distinction between the object as origin for the image simulating
it. Perceiving this distinction as arbitrary and unwarranted, he claimed that the
simulated image (e.g. lm) does not originate from something beyond it (such as
reality) but precedes or even originates what it presents. Te concept of simulacrum
implied that lm was neither a reproduction of reality nor its artistic abstraction.
For Baudrillard reality is not an origin for an image re-presenting it since reality is
always-already an image or a simulation. Tis engendered a conception of lm as one
among other uid successions of images and sounds whose tagging as documentary,
ctional or artistic referred to nothing else but dierent and equally valid modes
of simulation.
Te following sections consider the major realist and formalist comprehen-
sions of the photogenic in lm followed by a discussion of the notion of lm as
simulacrum.
1 REALIST APPROACHES
A major premise underlining most realist approaches to the photogenic is that lm
is a medium with a peculiar realist capacity to bring forth hidden or overlooked
aspects of reality through its moving, audiovisual recordings of appearances. Tis
is derived from the mediums way of producing images and sounds. Diering from
even the most accurate of paintings, lm images result from a mechanical process
of reproduction without the need for human intervention in the recording process
itself. Tis process results in moving images and sounds that resemble better than
any other medium the way humans see and hear their surroundings.
As will be seen, the way in which lm produces its images and sounds is also the
ground upon which critics of photogenic realism base their aesthetic, structural,
cognitive, psychological or ideological reservations. In focusing upon the realist
claim that lm is better situated to go beyond appearances merely by its mode of
reproduction, these critics consider lm realism to lack aesthetic worth and cognitive
purpose, or as a psychologically misleading and ideologically harmful conception of
lm.
1.1 PHOTOGENIC TRUTH IN FILM
Te term photogenic in relation to lm was used in the 1920s by Jean Epstein,
a leading early French impressionist avant-garde lmmaker and theoretician. As
discussed by Stuart Liebman in his study of Epstein, the term encapsulated his
conception of lm as art as well as his epistemological premises. For Epstein the
photogenic was a revelation or enhancement, through cinematography, of hidden
qualities stemming from the object photographed. In his view, lms capacity to
reveal such qualities was not restricted to the mechanical reproduction of the object
by photography, but was also found in the lms rendering of photographed objects
and events in motion, revealing rhythms hidden from our daily perception. Epsteins
belief that these qualities were hidden from normal perception led him to try to
reveal them through cinematic devices such as varying lenses, changes of camera
distance and angle, the shifting of the cameras recording speed from fast to slow
motion, and the shifting of editing rhythms. Tis can be evidenced in some of his
lms, particularly in Coeur Fidele (1923) and Te Fall of the House of Usher (1928).
What drove Epstein was the type of knowledge about the world oered by lm.
He distinguished epistemologically between intellectual and emotional forms of
knowledge. While the intellect asks how the world operates and tries to decipher
the laws governing nature, emotional knowledge ponders about the worlds existence
and strives to gain such knowledge through intuition or direct unmediated evidence.
As Epstein wrote, knowledge through feeling is immediate . . . Whereas we grope
our way toward scientic understanding, feeling gushes forth insight.
3
Probably
inuenced by the writings of French philosopher Henri Bergson, who argued that we
intuitively sense the existence of things and that the basis of this is motion, Epstein
suggested that a crucial component of emotional knowledge had to do with motion.
Hence lms shifting images in motion evoked the emotional mode of knowledge.
Moreover, argued Epstein, since emotional knowledge is based on emotions that by
denition cannot be rendered verbally, the suspension of verbal articulation in silent
lm further encourages emotional knowledge. Tus, for Epstein, lms capacity
to render silent images of recorded objects and events in motion, turned it into a
unique art form capable of enhancing emotional knowledge.
Moreover, silent lm was for Epstein the art form of the new modern era. Tis
was because it catered to what he termed a lyrosophical way of knowing that was
peculiar to the era, described by Epstein as a kind of passive state of the brain; there
is enough distraction, that is to say engagement, to allow the senses freely to record
or not the movements of the external world, and there is also disquiet enough in
this torpor so that the attention emerges at the slightest unexpected noise.
4
Epstein
believed that this lyrosophical state of partial awareness, stemming from the constant
fatigue in which modern people nd themselves due to the dizzying pace of life
dictated by modern technology, brought humans closer to emotionally knowing the
world because it neutralized intellectual knowledge. Hence, silent lm betted the
lyrosophical episteme both because it neutralized intellectual knowledge in its being
silent, and because of its large amount of visual stimuli, provided by its shifting
images in motion.
Epstein saw a direct relation between the photogenic revelation of lm, motion
and emotional knowledge. Hence, the photogenicity of the world, revealed through
motion, oered emotional rather than intellectual knowledge.
Tus the photogenic does not merely reveal hidden qualities, but these qualities
can only be known emotionally, in a direct, intellectually unmediated way. Terefore,
the photogenic addresses the visual sense through images in motion: Photogenic
mobility is simultaneously movement in space and time. It can therefore be said that
the photogenic aspect of things is a result of its variations in space-time.
5
In such manner the photogenic reveals to the eye of the beholder hidden qualities
in matter as well as the personality of the photographed people. As he writes, What
is photogenie? I shall call photogenic those aspects of things, of beings and of souls
whose moral stature is enhanced by their cinematographic reproduction.
6
In sum, for Epstein, lmmakers are to try to bring forth the elusive photo-
genic qualities of gured objects and people through all available cinematic devices
(particularly close-up shots that bring us emotionally closer to the character or
object gured, while also abstracting their essence by decontextualizing them
from their surroundings). Shifting lm images evoke the lyrosophical mode that
oers viewers a direct knowledge of the essence of things, events and people.
Te documentary photogenic core embedded in lmed images was of ongoing
concern to lm theoreticians. Even the 1960s semiological approaches, which
considered the system of sign-conventions in the medium as bearing the full import
of its meaning, could not avoid its documentary import, which in turn threatened
the legitimacy of their complex delineation of lm conventions. Roland Barthes for
example, constantly returned to what he perceived to be a photographic paradox:
On the one hand photographs call upon us to derive a meaning that semiology
can fully explain by relating its various aspects to dierent sign systems such as
detecting symbols, references to previous artistic compositions, or clearly articulated
ideological positions. On the other hand, there was for Barthes something in every
photographed object that evaded semiological explanation. Tis became evident for
him in the shocking or traumatic eect that photographed images of atrocities have
on us, images that arrest our ongoing chains of signication.
7
Tis documentary
import, which seems to be a variant of Epsteins photogenic, returns the viewer to an
unmediated, direct experience of the photographed event. Another recent impressive
revitalization of Epsteins conception of the uncovering of the photogenic through
movement in lm (as well as its relation to the philosophy of Bergson) can be found
in the extensive writings of Gilles Deleuze on cinema. For Deleuze, the moving lm
image is not an image of something but it is that something as image, knowable
through aect.
1.2 FILM AS TRUTH MACHINE
Te positions entertained by Epstein were strongly criticized by early Marxist the-
oreticians and lmmakers. For them, notions such as Epsteins photogenic truth,
knowable through aesthetic-emotional unmediated knowledge were nothing but
an idealization and mystication of reality. Far from revealing any truth about the
world, its apparent mystery was lauded and positioned as unreachable to human
knowledge.
8
Moreover, the mystication embedded in emotional aesthetics blurred
peoples capacity to realize their real situation in the real world and aided the
continuation of their material exploitation.
Notwithstanding this opposition to emotional aesthetics, early Marxists of the
1920s shared Epsteins belief in the capacity of lm to reveal truth given its way
of reproduction. Te documentary lmmaker Dziga Vertov was the strongest pro-
ponent of this position. While calling for the separation of art from lm, since art
was a lie that blinded people to reality, Vertov, like Epstein, saw lm as a truth
machine due to its mechanical way of reproducing reality. While his notion of truth
did not stem from the mediums emotional-aesthetic qualities but from its scientic
attributes, he also called for lms decoding or revealing of the dynamics driving
manifest appearances. Moreover, Vertov shared Epsteins conception of the lm
apparatus as capable of enhancing human sensual faculties, calling for the revelation
of truth through all the devices allowed by the medium (slow and fast motion, split
screens, close-ups, editing, etc.). However, unlike Epstein he aimed at deciphering
societys class structure in its relation to the means of production as these are manifest
in daily life, through the scientic arrangement (i.e. editing) of truth pieces (i.e.
documentary shots).
9
Vertovs attitude towards truth in lm reverberates in Walter Benjamins 1930s
theses. Like Vertov, Benjamin saw in the attempt to reveal through the photogenic
some hidden mystery, which he termed an object or a persons aura, a faked ritual.
10

Also, like Vertov, Benjamin thought of lm as a truth machine potentially revealing
scientic-political aspects of social life. As he wrote:
By Close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar
objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the
camera, the lm, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities
which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense
and unexpected eld of action . . . Evidently a dierent nature opens itself to the
camera that opens to the naked eye if only because an unconsciously penetrated
space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man.
11
1.3 PHOTOGENIC BEAUTY IN FILM
Diering from both Epsteins and Vertovs theories of lm as revealing truth, the
French theoretician Andr Bazin developed a very inuential realist-aesthetic theory
of the medium in the 1950s. According to Bazin, lms calling was to reveal the
worlds beauty to the eyes and ears of cinemagoers. His theory developed from an
acceptance of the premise that aesthetic values are either natural or cultural but
cannot eectively be both. Tis led him to try to establish a lm aesthetic that would
distinguish it from other art forms because of the automatic and mechanical way
lms reproduce reality. Te titles of two of Bazins seminal essays reveal the problem
stemming from this position. Hence, in Te Ontology of the Photographic Image
12

Bazin tried to establish an aesthetic of lm based on its unique way of reproduction,
demanding that lmmakers reveal the worlds beauty. However, in his second essay,
Te Evolution of the Language of Cinema,
13
he tried to come to terms with
what apparently disturbs natural beauty, that is, the processes of lm articulation
necessarily imposed from the outside on natural beauty. Bazins thesis concerning
this problem founded his realist lm aesthetic.
In Te Ontology of the Photographic Image Bazin developed a theory of the
evolution of art to ground his conception of lms peculiar realist aesthetic. He argued
that beside the struggle to form an expression of human spirituality, art was always
committed to full an irrational human craving to safeguard the worlds constantly
vanishing being, a craving he called our obsession with realism.
14
He found traces
of this in the ancient Egyptians practice of mummication. Bazin found these
two impulses to be balanced in medieval religious art in that images resemble the
objects depicted but are not committed to their exact reproduction. Tis allowed
artists to express their subjective or spiritual conception. However, he went on, the
fourteenth-century invention of linear perspective in the arts broke this delicate
balance. Tis was because by allowing artists to render a deceitful exact copy of
appearances, perspective forced them to satisfy the primordial psychological craving
to safeguard the worlds vanishing being. Hence, the invention of perspective led
most artists to forgo the expression of their inner vision, oering instead a deceitful
reproduction. However claimed Bazin, the sin of perspective was redeemed by the
invention of photography.
15
Photographic reproduction laid bare the illusion and deception practised by the
plastic arts through linear perspective, and freed the plastic arts from their com-
mitment to satisfy the viewers psychological craving to mummify being. It freed
artists to express their inner soul abstractly because the photograph took the role
of satisfying the human craving for realitys mummication, given its humanly un-
mediated, automatic and superior imprint or ngerprint of the reality reproduced.
Film went even further than photography by mummifying the passage of time and
movement in space. Hence, even a poorly rendered photograph or lm shot seems
to oer more convincing evidence of the existence of what it portrays than any exact
copy obtained through painting or sculpture. Nevertheless, for Bazin, the freeing
of the plastic arts from the need to oer a resemblance of reality did not mean that
photography and cinematography were artless. On the contrary, it meant that this
new medium called for a dierent aesthetic stemming from its unique power of
reproduction. As Bazin wrote:
All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an ad-
vantage from his absence. Photography aects us like a phenomenon in nature,
like a ower or a snowake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable
part of their beauty . . .
16
Tose categories of resemblance which determine the
species photographic image likewise, then, determine the character of its aesthetic
as distinct from that of painting . . . Te aesthetic qualities of photography are to
be sought in its power to lay bear the realities. It is not for me to separate o, in
the complex fabric of the objective world, here a reection on a damp sidewalk,
there the gesture of a child. Only the impassive lens, stripping its object of all
those ways of seeing it, those piled up preconceptions, that spiritual dust and
grime with which my eyes have covered it, is able to present it in all its virginal
purity to my attention and consequently to my love.
17
Bazins belief in the unique power and function of photography and lm to reveal
the worlds beauty to the eyes of the beholder implied a problem. His calling to
lmmakers to neutralize their world-view in order for the world to imprint its
aesthetic beauty on the screen was paradoxical. Tis was because the lmed world is
always humanely mediated and structured by the very act of framing, camera angle
or editing. Aware of this contradiction, Bazin concluded his essay on the ontology
of the photographic image by saying that On the other hand, of course, cinema is
also a language.
18
In Te Evolution of the Language of Cinema Bazin tackled the problem and
suggested a cinematic articulation that remained loyal to lms aesthetic-realist
calling. In his view, the cardinal division in lm art was between Tose directors
who put their faith in the image and those who put their faith in reality. By image
I here mean . . . everything that the representation on the screen adds to the object
there represented . . ., [additions] that relate to the plastics of the image and those
that relate to the resources of montage, which after all is simply the ordering of
images in time.
19
Hence, lmmakers who derived the meanings of their lms not
from the qualities stemming from the photographed reality but from their violating
this reality by adding theatrical decor and painterly compositions, or by forging
meaning primarily from what lies in between the shots through their editing and
juxtaposition, missed the realist-aesthetic nature of the medium.
Among these violators of lm aesthetics he mentioned the practice of some
German expressionist lmmakers who distorted the photographed image by using
theatrical and painterly articial decor. Tis is clearly evident in Robert Wienes lm
Te Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) where the characters wear heavy, accentuated
make-up and move within a painted landscape. Others deplored by Bazin included
Soviet lmmakers such as Eisenstein and Vertov, who considered the single lm
shots value and meaning to derive from its juxtaposition to other shots rather than
from the slice of reality it reproduced. What he had in mind can be seen in Vertovs
Man with a Movie Camera. Te lm, although composed solely from documentary
shots, conveys its meaning not from the brief shots content but from the shots
decontextualization from the locale where it was taken and its recontextualization
through complex juxtapositions to other brief shots in a dazzling rhythmic editing.
It is safe to presume that Bazin would also have deplored the seamless editing initiated
by Grith and dominant in American lmmaking. He would have considered the
latters attempt at imparting an illusion of uninterrupted ow through tricks of
editing (such as cuts in motion or maintaining eye-line matches across shots) as
similar in principle to the tricking of the eye used by the plastic arts through linear
perspective. Although Bazin conceded that these lmmakers developed dierent
lm styles and genres, these were not cinematic since they violated the aesthetic
import of the mummied images.
As against these, Bazin mentioned various directors whom he claimed were driven
by a realist aesthetic derived from the imprint of the recorded reality on lm. A
summary of Bazins description of these lmmakers aesthetics reveals the cinematic
compositions considered by him as essential to any realist lm aesthetic. Hence, in
describing Flahertys poetic documentary Nanook of the North (1922), Bazin was
fascinated by Flahertys lengthy uncut rendition in long shot of Nanook waiting for
and eventually catching a seal in the snow, since it caused the viewer to experience
the passage of time aesthetically. Likewise, he found in F. W. Murnaus expressionist
lms a realist poetic rendering of the notion of destiny. Tis can be seen in an
uncut long shot in Nosferatu (1922) showing the slow approach of a ship carrying
Nosferatu the vampire in his con to the dock of a medieval town. When writing
on Erich von Stroheims lms, Bazin addressed his use of long close-up shots whose
length gradually revealed the lmed characters inner cruelty of being, a process he
compared to the breaking of a suspect under intense interrogation. A good example
of what Bazin has in mind is Carl Teodor Dryers lm Te Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928), which is mostly comprised of a series of long, grainy close-ups of the actress
Falconnetti, whose tortured silent face conveys Joan of Arcs mounting despair in face
of her executioners. Troughout the shots uninterrupted length, revealing through
its uncut duration the beauty of the passage of time (Flaherty), the sense of destiny
(Murnau) or the revelation of inner feelings (Von Stroheim), Bazin emphasized the
use of deep-focus lenses that enhanced the viewers experience of the worlds three-
dimensionality and depth, by maintaining the foreground and background portions
of the shot in focus. He found Jean Renoirs use of deep-focus shots particularly
fascinating, since Renoirs search after composition in depth . . . is based on a respect
for the continuity of dramatic space and, of course, of its duration.
20
As pointed
out to me by Annette Michelson, Renoirs obsession with depth can be seen in a
shot from his lm Te Little Match Girl (1928) where he shoots from one window
the window of a building opposite; suddenly a box of matches thrown from below
oats into the shot and swirls in the air, opening up the space between the buildings
(earlier unnoticed because of the at two-dimensional screen).
For Bazin, Orson Welless Citizen Kane (1941) brought aesthetic realism to un-
precedented heights through its use of single long deep-focused shots to convey
an entire sequence. Welless deep-focused one-shot sequences covered an entire
dramatic event without recourse to cutting, thereby preserving the events duration
while enhancing spatial depth. An emblematic example of this strategy can be seen
in the scene from the lm where Kane the child is being given away by his mother
to the guardianship of a nancier named Tatcher. Te whole scene is conveyed in
one long deep-focused shot in which we see the mother in the foreground discussing
the arrangement with Tatcher while in the background, through a window, we see
little Kane happily playing in the snow, unaware of the transaction that will change
the course of his life forever.
From Bazins fascination with the long deep-focused shot and his rejection of
articial framing and editing we may deduce that his approach to framing conceived
One-Shot Sequences in Angelopolouss Landscape in the
Mist and Snows Wavelength
Later elaborations of one-shot sequences can be found
in the lms of Greek director Theo Angelopolous. In his
Landscape in the Mist (1988) there is a scene where a
truck-driver rapes a girl he gave a ride to in the back
of his truck. Angelopolous conveys this event through
one lengthy shot that starts with a view from afar of
the back of the parked truck, showing the driver slowly
stepping out of the cabin, climbing into the darkened
back of the truck where we know the girl is, and
stepping out after a while. The camera then starts to
move in slowly towards the darkened space and as it
reaches a closer view the girl is shown tumbling down
out of the truck and walking slowly away towards the
road. The event is powerfully conveyed by the slow
movement of the camera towards the truck. It literally
emblematizes Bazins idea of the mystery of depth in
of the shot as a window showing part of a vaster reality rather than as a self-enclosed
articial composition, whereas editing devices such as cuts and dissolves were
conceived of as necessary transitions in time and space between slices of reality rather
than as articial stylistic or rhythmical juxtapositions. A good idea of what Bazin
had in mind in terms of framing and editing can be seen in Pier Paolo Pasolinis lm
Accatone (1961), where he conveys a sense of using inattentive cutting across slice of
reality shots, achieved by sparse and seemingly sporadic cuts between lengthy long
shots of the same locale, as when he follows in a few shots a group of noisy, low-class
boys, slowly climbing up from a river, showing wretched-looking dwellings spread in
the natural scenery, whose expanse and depth are emphasized. Tis realist-aesthetic
approach recurred in many other neo-realist lms such as Roberto Rosselinis Paisan
(1946) and Vittorio De Sicas Bicycle Tieves (1948). In these lms, the use of
what appears to the viewer as inattentive cutting between deep-focused shots was
often through dissolves that imparted a notion of time condensation rather than
disjunction.
Hence, the long deep-focused take, enhancing the passage of time; the fullness and
three-dimensionality of objects shot in close-up; the depth and expanse of space in
long shots; and the minimal use of editing, conceived of as a transition between slices
of reality, were the basic tropes considered by Bazin to be powerful and authentic
lm articulations. Tis was because these tropes satised in his view the spectators
craving for the mummication of being while positioning them in such a way that
they could aesthetically experience the owing passage of objective time, the worlds
depth and ambiguity, and the gradually manifested yet mysterious inner being of
the pre-recorded event, object or character.
space. Moreover, the narrative process of revelation
is embedded in this one, slow, continuous camera
movement despite the fact that, or rather because, the
camera never shows what went on.
This intense sense of a process of narrative revelation
through one shot was explored by the avant-garde
American lmmaker Michael Snow in his lm Wavelength
(1967). The lm consists of a single, 45-minute-long
tracking shot with the camera slowly crossing an almost
empty New York loft towards a meaningless black and
white photograph of a sea wave hung on the opposite
wall.
One-Shot Sequences in Angelopolouss Landscape in the Mist
and Snows Wavelength
1.4 CRITIQUES OF PHOTOGENIC BEAUTY IN FILM
Let us begin with a discussion of the world-view embedded in Bazins lm aes-
thetic. In dierent places Bazin emphasized that out of the continuous long deep-
focused framing of reality the mystery of a character or of spatial depth was
gradually revealed. Bazin described this result as metaphysical whereby depth of
focus reintroduces ambiguity into the structure of the image . . . Te uncertainty in
which we nd ourselves as to the spiritual key or the interpretation we should put
on the lm is built into the very design of the image.
21
Also, as has been shown,
the viewers exposure to the worlds mystery through recorded ngerprints implied
that in authentic lmmaking the lms artist is nature or the world and not the
people who made the lm, whose main function was to help the world deliver
itself aesthetically. Finally, Bazin tended to treat photographic and cinematographic
ontology in metaphysical, often religious terms, imparting a kind of holy power to
these images. Tis comes through in the conation he made between image and
object whereby the photograph shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming,
the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model.
22
Moreover,
in his use of the term violence to describe articial manipulations of photographs,
in his contempt for the tricks of linear perspective, in his use of terms such as
virginal purity to describe the photographed image, in calling the invention of
linear perspective a sin and the advent of photography a redemption from that sin,
a religious world-view surfaced in Bazins writings.
Indeed, Bazins aesthetic realism has often been used explicitly to depict a spirit-
ual, metaphysical reality that commingles real and spiritual worlds. Tis is evident,
for instance, in Wim Wenders lm Wings of Desire (1987). By using Bazinian-type
long deep-focused shots in a oating movement, Wenders conveyed the point of
view of two angels, imparting the notion that the essence of the reality depicted
was spiritual. Particularly impressive is the series of oating long shots in Berlins
city library in which one of the angels is shown walking unseen among the library
visitors while hearing their inner thoughts. Te scenes highlight comes when the
angel picks up the tangible spiritual counterpart of a pen lying on a table while the
material pen itself remains unmoved.
Bazin tended to read metaphysical meanings into lms on account of socio-
political implications. As noted by MacBean, in his comments on Luis Buuels lm
Land without Bread (1932), Bazin was fascinated by Buuels documentary images
of the poor inhabitants of the remote Spanish town of Las Hurdes, nding in these
an abstract spiritual expression of the wretched destiny of humanity and of human
suering. He overlooked, however, Buuels harsh criticism of the Spanish authorities
and of the church, blamed in the lm for the miserable situation of people whose
hunger bred hereditary retardation.
23
Bazins lm-realist aesthetic was criticized by 1960s neo-Marxist and psycho-
analytic lm theorists. Teir critique was based on the acceptance of Bazins lm
aesthetic premise that viewers are positioned in such a way that they believe that the
lm being played is real. Accepting this premise, they attacked Bazin on the grounds
that the represented reality was actually a powerful ideological (neo-Marxists) or
imaginary (psychoanalysts) projection, imparting the notion that realitys essence
is spiritual and reinforcing the viewers deceitful perception of their own selves as
spiritual. Henceforth, they insisted, the best thing lms could do was to deconstruct
this imaginary illusion and disjoin the illusory cinematic continuum so as to force
viewers to be constantly aware of the lms ideological manipulations. Diering from
early Marxists such as Vertov, these theoreticians rejected the truth-value of any lm
images whatsoever. Tese were, to use Althussers term, always-already imaginary
ideological projections determined by the capitalist mode of production.
24
Cognitivists of the 1980s and 1990s rejected Bazins premise that realist lms
caused viewers to believe in the reality represented. Terefore they also rejected
the neo-Marxist and psychoanalytic critiques of Bazin. According to cognitivists,
viewers are active agents processing the projected lm data out of constant awareness
that the lm is a reproduction rather than reality itself. Noel Carroll, for example,
rejected the widely accepted notion of the suspension of disbelief upon which
many theoreticians based their explanations of the viewers belief in, and consequent
emotional involvement with, a movie. Why, asked Carroll, do spectators remain
seated and not escape the theatre when they see a roaring lion on screen? In fact,
claimed Carroll, people can get emotionally involved when entertaining what if
thoughts without needing to believe in the actual existence of such thoughts. Hence,
I can think and visualize someone dear to me on the brink of jumping o a cli
and get emotionally agitated without needing to believe that the deed happened.
Moreover, asked Carroll, how can a person willingly suspend his disbelief? Can
I make myself willingly believe that 1 + 1 = 3? Terefore Carroll rejected Bazins
premise concerning the spectators belief in the reality portrayed by lm, viewing
this as a misunderstanding of the spectators active cognitive processes.
25
Te 1990s cognitivist critique of lm realism was akin to the 1920s lm-formalist
position. Both shared the notion that lm realism was simply one cinematic style
among others. Formalists even considered lm realism to be a poor cinematic style
since it did not strive for the abstraction they demanded of art. Let us turn to the
formalist notion of the photogenic in lm.
2 FORMALIST APPROACHES TO ART
Te basic principles of the formalist approach to lm derive from their general con-
ception of art. Formalists contended that art is an autonomous human activity having
its own essence and should be discussed in terms relevant to its essence. Terefore,
conceptions of works of art derived from extra-artistic contexts such as trying to
learn about history or about an artists psychology or biography from the work of art
are irrelevant to art. According to the Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky,
art exists (so) that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one
feel things, to make the stone stony . . . Te technique of art is to make objects
unfamiliar, to make forms dicult, to increase the diculty and length
of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself.
Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object itself is not
important.
26
Hence, arts essence resides in the human abstraction of content through form,
irrespective of the reality function of such a process. Tus, a man drowning would
probably cry help! since, were he to poetize his words, those around him would
probably stop and listen to him rather than help him out. What is important in art
as opposed to daily functional activities is that art draws attention to its forms. It
does so by dierent devices estranging familiar objects from customary perceptions
(e.g. a huge oblique close-up of one hair). In this way, perceivers of art are forced to
pay attention to the objects formation and to their act of perception as they try to
gure out the object.
Formalists argued that the process whereby contents are transformed to be artistic
consists of shifting their real or natural motivations towards artistic motivations.
Terefore, mimetic arts were considered by the formalists to be inferior arts since
their composition was motivated by an attempt to mimic the shape of real things
rather than by the artistic struggle towards abstraction.
Composition and style in art were considered by the formalists to be the major
artistic functions responsible for forging a works artistic context. Te Russian
formalist Tynjanov explained this by showing how in Gogols short story Te Nose
(1836), through a compositional and stylistic shaping of words, the reader accepts
as plausible a nose that is detached from a body and that can talk, think and move
around.
27
Furthermore, just as arts general essence resides in the shaping of matter towards
abstraction, so each artistic medium has its own specic essence in that its abstracting
formal devices develop from its specic means of production. As the formalist Boris
Kazanskij put it, Te specic properties of any art form whatever, we are taught by
the contemporary science of art-study, must be sought in its manner of execution,
i.e. in its material technological basis. Tis in turn conditions both its entire system
of devices and the full range of variations in its styles.
28
Tus music shapes sounds
towards abstraction through musical instruments, poetry shapes words through
writing, painting shapes colours through brushes and canvas, and theatre shapes
the living, present human being through acting, stage and decor. Attempts to shape
the matter of one art form according to abstracting devices developed through the
means of production of other arts were perceived by formalists as alien to the art
form. Tus, trying to use compositions stemming from painting or poetry to shape
the living human being in theatre renders poor theatre, just as trying to understand a
play through the real history it alludes to renders a poor understanding of the play.
2.1 THE FORMALIST APPROACH TO THE PHOTOGENIC
Film posed a challenge to the early 1920s formalists since it implied a contradiction
between two of their major art premises: that which concerned the specicity of
each art forms means of production and that which called for abstraction through
these specic means. Although they saw in lm the advent of a new art form before
their very eyes and began studying its artistic potential, their premise concerning
arts struggle to abstraction through its means of production raised questions
regarding the new mediums artistic potential, given lms technological automatic
rendering of exact reproductions. Moreover, the recorded results were too bound to
the recorded object, making it dicult for the artist to shift their realist motivation
towards stylistic abstraction.
In a series of collected essays published in 1927 under the title Poetika Kino
(Te Poetics of Film) several Russian formalists applied the formalist aesthetic
premises to dierent aspects of the lm medium.
29
Te most comprehensive
and groundbreaking approach can be found in Yuri Tynjanovs article On the
Foundations of Cinema.
30
Tynjanov opened with a rejection of the realist and naturalist approaches to lm.
While lms mechanical reproduction aroused excitement, in his view this excite-
ment had nothing to do with art. He compared this to prehistoric mans attribution
of magical qualities to a leopard head painted on the blade that killed his prey.
What was important for Tynjanov was not the paintings resemblance to the prey
or its attendant magical power, but the fact that in time the painting may have
gone through a process of abstraction to become the tribes symbol, indicating the
emergence of language and art. As he wrote, a real leopard will not result anyway,
and . . . art has little use for real leopards.
31
Art was dened by Tynjanov as antithetical to reality. He therefore considered
photographic reproduction to be artless since in his mind it resists abstraction and
focuses the viewers attention upon the reality content of the photograph, bringing
forth its daily, ordinary perception. Tynjanovs anti-naturalism led him to develop
a two-phased theory of lm art making. His theory was based on the still photo-
graph as the lms basic material, conceived of as nothing but a pale and distorted
copy of its recorded object. Tis distortion was the result of the camera lenses,
angle, distance, exposure and framing, which form, reality wise, mistaken relations
between the objects included in the frame. Tese distortions, however, while having
the potential to forge an artistic context, do not add up to a shift in the viewers
attribution of naturalistic motivations to the photograph. Hence the photograph
was for him bound forever to the object it necessarily distorted. However, these
initial photographic distortions allow the lmmaker to forge an artistic context by
interrelating them, since the lm is based on a series of still photographs and on
their editing. Tis interrelation frees the recorded object from its naturalist context
and its being bound to one spot, and necessarily places it within a new context.
Hence, Tynjanov preferred the term cinematogenicity over photogenicity, since
the latter term drew attention to the reproducing qualities of photographs rather
than to their abstract aesthetic ones, located only on the lm and not in the single
photograph. According to Tynjanov, this necessary new lm context can become
artistic if the original distortions found in each still photograph are formed into a
calculated style:
Cinema was born of photography. Te umbilical cord between them was cut at
the moment that cinema perceived itself as art . . . Photography . . . surreptitiously
deforms the object. Deformation (in photography) is permitted, but on one
condition: that the primary focus on verisimilitude is maintained . . . But cinema
has a dierent focus, and photographys shortcoming becomes cinemas virtue,
its aesthetic feature.
32
Hence, Tynjanov and other formalists rejected the realist claim that the photo-
genic refers to a quality existing in the photographed object, revealed through the
photograph. For them, the aesthetic quality of photographed objects, which is the
only concern of art, is a result of the way these are transmuted by the devices of lm
and has nothing to do with the real object photographed or any hidden quality it
might have. Any object can be aesthetic since this is a function of the stylistic trans-
mutation of photographed objects. Film photogenicity, or rather cinematogenicity,
frees the transmuted objects from their being bound to one place, as in the still
photograph, and allows through editing the swift shift of space and time as well as
the latters abstraction. As he writes, Unity of place is not a problem for cinema, its
only problem is the unity of camera angle and lighting . . . Objects are not in and of
themselves photogenic. Tey are made photogenic by camera angle and lighting.
Te concept of photogenie must, therefore, yield altogether to the concept of
cinematogeny.
33
From this Tynjanov reached the conclusion that the two main devices specic
to the art of lm are the cinematogenic (i.e. the stylistic transmutation of objects
within shots due to the cine-cameras distortions) and the montage (the mounting
or editing of lm shots). Tese devices shift the photographed objects naturalistic
motivation towards an artistic one.
While the cinematogenic shifts a gured objects meaning away from natural-
istic motivations towards an artistic context within the shot, montage stylistically
interrelates the lm shots allowing for the semantic correlativity of the visible world
. . . rendered by means of its stylistic transformation.
34
He therefore rejected as artless the realist exaltation of the perceived living person
or inanimate object in photography. Te photographed person or object can function
in naturalistic or artistic contexts just as the same word can oer information in a
newspaper or gure in a poem. Te visible world is presented in cinema not as such,
but in its semantic correlativity . . . Te visible man and the visible thing constitute
an element of cinematic art only when they serve as a semantic sign.
35
He therefore
rejected the notion of similitude in lm typecasting. According to him the choice of
actor is to be derived from his/her relation to other actors or objects and not from an
ordinary real context. His anti-naturalism led him to also suspect motion in lm,
Motion in cinema exists either to motivate the camera angle through the point of
view of a moving character, or as a means of characterizing the person (gesture);
it may also be used to alter the relationship between people and things . . . motion
in cinema exists not in and of itself, but as a certain semantic sign . . . (Motion
within a shot as an element of cinema has, in general, been highly exaggerated;
hustle and bustle no matter what is tiring).
36
Tynjanov found particular interest in close-ups, which (once rid of naturalistic
motivations such as intimacy through closeness) detach part of an object from its
whole (such as a head or hand from the body), allowing lmmakers to create ab-
stractions such as symbols and metaphors. In Pudovkins lm Mother (1926), for
example, a long shot of a rallying crowd is cut to a close-up of a hand waving a
red ag against the sky, coming to symbolize the spirit and direction of revolution.
He also highly valued the device of dissolve because of its capacity to articulate
simultaneity, as well as its abstracting the very notion of motion as is often the case
in dance lms. However, the lms illusion of three-dimensionality, if emphasized,
disturbed the abstracting potential of dissolves because the device appears to violate
natural law in its commingling of three-dimensional objects, thus generating eerie,
artless sensations in spectators. (Tis claim that dissolves create eerie eects may
seem outdated, but we can imagine what he has in mind in face of the eerie eects
often produced by the present use of digital morphing, through which objects seem
to violate natural law in their seamless mutation).
Finally, Tynjanov raised doubts as to the art value for lm of adding colour and
sound since these may tilt the medium once again towards naturalism and realism.
It should be pointed out, however, that Tynjanovs fears are groundless insofar as
his theory goes. As Jakobson has pointed out, lms can abstract sound just as they
abstract images. In fact, lmmakers use sounds and colours extensively as abstracting
devices. Hence, Godards opening shots in Contempt (1963) are tinted in red and
blue, symbolizing the colours of the French ag. Likewise, his widespread use of
asynchronous sound and image relations draws attention to lms manipulation of
soundimage synchrony, as in a scene in Le Chinoise (1967) where the characters
add a romantic musical score on a gramophone to accompany the repetition of a
conversation they just had, laying bare how the meaning of the scene changes into a
melodramatic interchange once the musical score is added.
Just as Tynjanov rejected naturalist motivations for lm shots so he rejected
montage based upon the notion of continuity in time, space or action. He suggested
viewing shots not in an additive way but as exchanges, like lines in poetry. Tis com-
prehension of montage emphasized rhythm and the correlating and dierentiation
underlying artistic abstraction. Such jumpy montage shifts the naturalist-oriented
movement within the shot to an abstract rhythmical context and allows the forming
of metaphors and symbols. Instead of people kissing, we see a pair of turtledoves.
Here too the visible thing is fragmented: dierent performers, dierent things are
presented as semantic equivalents; but at the same time the action itself is split in
two, the second part of the equation (turtledoves) giving it its specic semantic
coloration.
37
Films artistic merit was to be found in styles and genres that derived from the
mediums specic and unique devices of cinematogenicity and montage. He rejected
lms based on styles and genres borrowed from other art forms, since these were
based on these other arts own specic devices. Hence, for example, he rejected
the literary genre of the historical novel. Tis genre, which mingles historical and
ctional gures and facts within a narrative framework, is plausible in literature
due to its basic material of words, which do not raise in the reader the question of
whether the character resembles the historical gure represented. Hence, the word
Napoleon does not lead the reader to ask if the character resembles the historical
gure. In lm, however, the photographed actor immediately raises in the viewer the
question of resemblance, undermining the basis that allows this genre to be plausible
in literature. In lm, whose basic material is photographs, these historical dramas
turn into a moving portrait gallery.
38
Tis is perhaps why we often sense shallowness,
nostalgia and an overall articiality in historical ctional lms, particularly those
centred upon historical gures whose image is known to us, such as Hitler, Stalin or
Lincoln.
39
Tynjanov suggested that true genres are only those deriving from the mediums
specicity, since the question of genre is linked to the question of specic material
and style.
40
On the basis of such premises, Tynjanov as well as other Russian formalists valued
the 1920s lms of revolutionary Marxists such as Eisenstein, Vertov and Pudovkin,
since their lyrical and dramatic lms were based on the exaltation of cinematic
devices and montage.
2.2 MARXIST CRITIQUES OF FORMALISM
Te main opposition to lm formalism came from the same revolutionary Marxists
whose lms the formalists lauded. As mentioned, Vertov rejected altogether the
notion of lm as art and perceived his cinematic manipulations of documentary
shots as a search for truth in the world rather than as detached formalist abstrac-
tions. Eisenstein also revealed his aversion to formalism when he criticized Vertovs
cinematic manipulations as formalist Jackstraws and unmotivated camera mischief ,
meaning that his manipulations of manifest formal appearances led to misleading
formalist abstractions rather than to an understanding of real world processes.
41

As will be seen in Chapter 3, Marxisms major attack on formalism in general and
lm formalism in particular was based upon the formalist premise that art is an
autonomous, abstract striving activity and therefore independent from what Marxists
perceived as arts necessary and determining sociopolitical context. In 1927, when
Poetica Kino was published, Russian formalism was already coming under heavy
attack from Soviet quarters, a mounting attack initiated already in 1923 by Leon
Trotsky. Te movement was nally dispersed and dissolved after Stalins rise to power
and the ocial adoption of socialist realism as the partys cultural policy.
Roman Jakobson is credited with bringing formalism to the West through
his work within the Prague Linguistic Circle, whose ideas inuenced American
and West European poetic studies. In any case, formalism resurfaced in the West
during the 1960s. Noel Burch, its main proponent in lm, developed somewhat
paradoxically a neo-formalist approach based on the originally Marxist concept
of the dialectic (devoid of Marxist materialist ideology) to articulate a meticulous
theory of lm based on a typology of sound/image, space/time and o/on screen
relations. Burch argued that dialectical or rather asymmetrical or contradictory
intra- and interrelations drew attention to cinematic formal qualities and enhanced
the abstracting power of lm as art. However, inuenced by the periods owering
neo-Marxism, Burch critiqued in retrospect the source of embarrassment of his
early work as Formalism. A formalism of the worst kind . . . ight from meaning
. . . a neurotic rejection of content [which] stemmed from a studied ignorance,
and fear of the political.
42
Hence, for Marxists and neo-Marxists alike, with the
notable exception of the Frankfurt School,
43
formalism was anti-revolutionary and
embedded capitalist ideology or even supported fascist politics. As succinctly put by
Walter Benjamin, Fiat ars pereat mundus says Fascism . . . Tis is evidently the
consummation of lart pour lart [i.e. formalism] . . . Tis is the situation of politics
which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.
44
3 FILM AS SIMULACRUM
While Marxists of the 1920s and neo-Marxists of the 1960s critiqued lm formal-
ism for abstracting reality and lm realism for mystifying it, they shared with the
formalists the presumption that reality is out there and that lms react to it. Tis
long held presumption came under attack with the advent of the postmodern
episteme in the 1970s. Postmodernists suggested that reality, if existent at all is
always-already present in peoples mind as textual fabrication. Moreover, if there
is something termed reality, it is preceded by models or simulations that actually
generate whatever is dened by them as reality. As Baudrillard described it, the
empirical object, to which qualities of shape, colour, matter, function and discourse
are assigned . . . is a myth . . . it is nothing but the types of relations and dierent
meanings converging and swirling around it.
45
Tis postmodern perception gradually invaded dierent disciplines. Hence, his-
torian Hayden White rejected the historians pretension to reveal humanitys past
through historical facts. Facts are in his view nothing more than texts that mediate
an always-already mediated reality. Te historian, rather than dealing with facts in an
attempt to reveal an elusive past, constructs this past to begin with according to the
structuring possibilities allowed by language or other communicative systems such
as lm.
46
A similar revolution occurred in the conception of scientic research when
the philosopher of science Tomas Kuhn argued that scientists are driven in their
research by a set of conventions and institutional directives.
47
Contrary to positions
on scientic research such as that of Karl Popper (whose ideal was the search for
truth through constant attempts at refuting scientic hypotheses, claiming that the
more a hypotheses poses conditions that may lead to its refutation the more scientic
it is), Kuhn contended that the evolution of scientic research is characterized by
the upholding of theories until there is so much contradicting data that it becomes
impossible to cling on to them. Moreover, claimed Kuhn, there is no assurance
whatsoever that the new theory is any better than the one it replaced. Te radical
questioning of our ability to know the world was further complicated by Michel
Foucaults position that the search for truth is in itself nothing more than a powerful
discourse competing with other discourses within the cultural congurations of
power. Tere is not one truth claimed Foucault, only discursive truisms.
For Baudrillard in particular there seemed to be no external reality or truth at
all. Hence, argued Baudrillard, it is not the case that somewhere beyond our faculties
there is a reality mediated to us by images, but rather that reality is an image, that
it is nothing but simulacrum. In Simulacra and Simulations
48
he argued that the
simulacrum, which was always present yet obscured, gradually came to the fore.
Whereas earlier the image was discussed in terms of its reproducing or distorting
a reality that presumably preceded it, today it seemed clear that all those early pre-
suppositions were untenable mental manipulations aimed at safeguarding the fact
that reality does not exist, thereby constituting fake hierarchies among dierent types
of simulations. He found evidence for this in his interpretation of iconoclasm (the
action of destroying sacred images) as an act aimed at preventing the revelation that
there is nothing that the image embeds. He went on to nd in dierent disciplines
strategies aimed at safeguarding them from the revelation that what they position as
the authentic component legitimizing their quest is an empty simulacrum. Hence,
in citing Molires Te Imaginary Invalid he showed how Argans illness is described
as imaginary based on the presumption that there are real illnesses. However,
asked Baudrillard, how about the hypochondriac who actually develops physical
symptoms? In what sense is his simulation dierent from the medical simulations
termed real? Likewise, he ridiculed a French military court questionnaire designed
to detect whether a soldier is feigning a mental illness, in its implication that anyone
answering the questionnaires simulation correctly is really mentally disturbed and
should be exempted from duty. Also, he recounted how a simulated replica of an
ancient tomb was placed near the real one for tourists to visit, an action aimed at
safeguarding the fake authority of the ancient simulation as origin. In discussing
Disneyland, Baudrillard wrote that Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to
make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America
surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation
. . . the real is no longer real.
49
Finally, in a curious book entitled Te Gulf War Never
Happened (1995), Baudrillard questioned the actual occurrence of the rst Gulf war.
Claiming that all of our knowledge on this war came from CNN reports showing
Tomahawk missiles being launched, explanations oered by General Schwartzkopf
on the proceeding of the war, and the use of computerized simulations, Baudrillard
suggested that the war was nothing but simulation.
Notwithstanding the far-fetched nature of some of Baudrillards claims, his
notion of simulacrum informs many contemporary lms. Wag the Dog (1998),
for instance, recalls Baudrillard in its dealing with a simulated TV war aimed at
rescuing the American president from a sex scandal before elections. In a key scene,
a Hollywood producer recruited to generate this political spin (Dustin Homan)
takes a photograph in his studio of a wretchedly dressed girl and digitally places her
in the midst of the ruins of a bombarded town in order to evoke the sympathies of
the American people for the poor Albanian refugee. Te Matrix (1999), telling the
story of a computer hacker who learns from mysterious rebels that reality is only a
huge simulation, explicitly references Baudrillard when the lms protagonist Neo
(Keanu Reeves) is seen with a copy of Baudrillards Simulacra and Simulation. Te
far-fetchedness of the lms idea that the reality experienced by humans is nothing
but a simulation programmed by machines who suck through this simulation the
human energy they need to keep their underworld going implies that neither world
nor underworld is more than a simulation. Te lms stunning digital eects make
tangible the idea of reality-as-simulation through Neos gradual empowerment to
Documentary Filmmaking: From the Photogenic to the
Simulacrum
The belief in the power of cinematographic reproduction
and editing to reveal hidden aspects of reality was
the cardinal rationale for modernist documentary
lmmaking, both by lmmakers sharing this belief,
and by those who manipulated it for ideological and
even propagandistic purposes. Whatever the aims
driving them, their cinematography and editing always
involved a conscious and subjective manipulation given
the necessity of selection and narrative deployment.
Vertovs awareness of this led him to include within
his lms the process of the lms production in its
relation to the resulting images and their editing.
In his lm Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Vertov
constantly shows himself, the camera, his cameramen
and editor as they work on the gathering and editing
of shots, emphasizing the direct relation between the
shooting and the shot, the editing and the edited. In
an emblematic sequence within the lm, his editor and
wife Svilova is shown working by the editing table as
she tries to match a shot of a child smiling with that
of an elderly woman, shifting back and forth from the
matching process to the matched result. Each result
is different rhythmically and thematically so that one
match emphasizes the difference in age while another
focuses on the similarity of the smile. This comes
through not only because of the shifting interrelations
but also from their relation to shots showing Svilova
in the process of interrelating them, as when Svilova
is shown at the editing table setting a freeze-frame of
the girl in motion and exposing her bursting smile. In
sharp contrast to Vertovs self-reexivity and awareness
stands Robert Flahertys manipulative style as found in
his poetic documentary Nanook of the North. In the
lm, Flaherty used the viewers belief in documentary
manipulate it by oating within it or by slowing, accelerating or elasticizing it. Tis
relation between the digital revolution and Baudrillards concept of the simulacrum
has often been noticed by researchers. Hence, Vivian Sobchack has suggested that
the digital device of morphing instantiates Baudrillards simulacrum in that the
morph has no origin whatsoever, since that from which it changes does not cause
or precede that to which it has changed. Te morph implies seamless reversibility
and one image is not more real, original or essentially dierent from the other. For
instance, she recapitulates Baudrillards ideas in a comparison she makes between the
pre-morph lm transformations in a montage sequence from All that Jazz (1979),
showing a mix of ethnic and gender dierentiated dancers bodies constituting one
single pirouette, to Michael Jacksons morphing of similar bodies into one another in
his Black or White videoclip (1991). She argues that whereas through cut transitions
in All that Jazz, we are still aware of their discretion and diference . . . in Black or
White . . . these racially and ethnically dierent singing heads enjoy no discretion:
images to depict an anachronistic, embellished, exotic
and faked image of Eskimo life. He did this by re-
creating through the leading Eskimo character Nanook,
the way Eskimos used to dress and hunt in the past,
a task which Nanook had no knowledge of and had
to learn and perform at great risk. The manipulation
of documentary images was also exploited for purely
propagandistic purposes in many state-subsidized lms
and reached extremely troublesome proportions as in
the Nazi lm The Eternal Jew (1940), where Jews are
equated with dirty and disgustingly presented rats by
the juxtaposition of unattering documentary images of
Jews with those of rats.
Aware of the problematic subjective import
embedded in documentary shots and editing yet still
believing in the mediums power to reveal some truth,
two main and contradictory strains of documentary
lmmaking developed during the 1960s. In the USA,
Robert Drew and others initiated the Direct Cinema
movement characterizing it as a y on the wall attitude
towards the reality recorded. They used several hand-
held cameras to cover an event, imparting a sense of
liveliness and non-intervention as evident in their multi-
camera coverage of the 1960 Democratic Convention
(Primary, 1960). In contrast, the French anthropologist
Jean Rouch initiated what he termed a cinma verit
movement (a term borrowed from Vertovs newsreel
series Kino-Pravda/Film Truth), in which the lmmaker
made himself and his subjectivity present throughout
the lm, going beyond Vertovs manifestation of the
lmmaking process by the constant interrogation of
the premises guiding the coverage of events. This
can be seen in Rouchs lm Chronicle of a Summer
(1961) where, towards the end, those interviewed in
Simulacrum
each is never itself but rather a mutable permutation of a single self-similarity [as
Jean Baudrillard writes] Division has been replaced by mere propagation.
50
Te idea that morphing is based on the propagation of inter-referring simulations
that deny meaningful categorical or hierarchical dierentiations pervades many
contemporary lms. Tis can be found in the widespread device of digital replication
and multiplication of the same character (e.g. Mr Smith the virus agent in Te
Matrix), but is also evident in the destabilization of real versus ctional characters or
environments in lms. Well-known cases include Ridley Scotts directors cut version
the lm as well as the director conduct a discussion
over the truth import and manipulations of the lm
just shown. This latter strain has developed into rst-
person documentaries as found in David Perlovs six-part
lm Diary (197383), where the pretension to reveal
objective truth is discarded to begin with in favour of a
documentation of the directors immediate surroundings
as seen through his hand-held camera. Through his
own voice-over commentary, his preferred music and
paintings, the director portrays a highly subjective and
poeticized view of his world.
The advent of the postmodern episteme and the
dominant concept of the simulacrum blurred the
distinction between fact and ction. Postmodernists
rejected the assumption maintained by both documentary
realists and formalists that reality exists beyond human
perception and can be revealed (realists) or must be
departed from (formalists). Postmodern lmmakers
presumed from the outset that while documentary and
ction are cultural categories or kinds of discourse with
different styling, their distinction does not stem from
their approach to an elusive pre-recorded reality. Hence,
postmodern lms inadvertently and seamlessly mixed
documentary and ction. Deliberate documentary-style
lies and ctional truisms abounded. For example, in Israeli
lmmaker Avi Mugrabis lm How I Learned to Overcome
my Fear and Love Arik Sharon (1997) the director
mixes a documentary following of Ariel Sharons election
campaign with a deceitful documentation of both his
slow transformation into one of Sharons devotees and
the deterioration of his marital relations, ending with
his wifes decision to leave him because of his changed
Simulacrum
of Blade Runner (1982) where Deckard, a blade runner in charge of tracking
down and terminating replicants turns out to be a replicant himself and David
Cronenbergs lm eXistenZ (1999) where a game designer creates a virtual-reality
game that taps into the players body and mind but ultimately leaves them (and
us) with the idea that the reality from which the lm started may have been just
another option within the game. Other lm researchers following Baudrillards
notion of simulacrum have noticed that contemporary lms are leaning towards
stunning spectacles on account of narrative or character depth.
political afliation. Woody Allens Zelig (1983) offers a
good illustration of the blurred postmodern distinction
between fact and ction. The lm is articulated in
various documentary styles such as the use of voice-
over commentary over jumpy edited segments of grainy
or scratched old-looking black and white archival lm
footage, inserted within modern-looking interviews in
colour. Through this style the lm tells the story of
Zelig, a human chameleon who adapts his looks and
personality to whatever period, place or circumstances
he nds himself in. Moreover, Zelig is seamlessly inserted
into famous documentary photographs and lm clips,
as when he is seen sitting among the Nazi leadership
near Hitler. Instantiating postmodern approaches to
lm, Zelig, comically blurs in both style and content
the categorical distinctions between documentary and
ction, lm and reality, different historical periods and
different identities. Postmodernism has also led to what
have been called mocumentaries, such as the Blair Witch
Project (1999) which opens with a caption reading In
October of 1994, three student lmmakers disappeared
in the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a
documentary. A year later their footage was found. The
lm uses hand-held cameras offering an unnoticed mix
of fact, ction and deliberate documentary styled lies to
fabricate its ctional mystery. The latest manipulation of
reality can be seen in the widespread Reality TV genre
(e.g. Big Brother) where ordinary people are under
surveillance by cameras recording their intimate life
while competing for some prize.
Simulacrum
Chapter Summary
For realists, the photogenic implies the cine-cameras unique ability to reveal hidden dimensions of the
photographed object.
For formalists, the photogenic is an aesthetic quality derived solely from lms stylistic transformations and
abstractions of the recorded images.
Baudrillards postmodern concept of the simulacrum implies that lm is neither a reproduction of reality
nor its formalist abstraction since reality itself is a simulation.
Realists
For Jean Epstein, the photogenic in lm evokes in the viewing subject a lyrosophical unmediated emotional
knowledge of the world by addressing the visual sense through images in motion.
Dziga Vertovs Marxist notion of lm-truth called for the exclusive use of documentary shots to decipher
societys class structure.
Andr Bazin claimed that lms calling was to reveal the worlds beauty through long deep-focused shots
and the minimal use of editing.
Neo-Marxists and psychoanalysts critiqued lm realism on the grounds that lm representations of reality
impart the notion that realitys essence is spiritual.
Cognitivists rejected the realist presumption that lm causes viewers to believe in the reality represented
since viewers are aware that the lm is a reproduction.
Formalists
Tynjanov argued that any object can become photogenic since the photogenic is a result of stylistic
transformations.
For the formalists the two main devices specic to lm were the cinematogenic (the stylistic transformation
of objects due to the cameras distortions) and the montage (the mounting or editing of lm shots).
Marxists attacked the formalist premise that lm as art is autonomous and independent from its determining
sociopolitical context.
Postmodernists
For Baudrillard, humans inhabit a virtual or hyper reality since reality is an image. The Matrix offered
stunning digital effects that made tangible the idea of reality-as-simulation.
Postmodernist lm documentarists suggest that documentary and ction are simply different kinds of
simulations and seamlessly mix documentary and ction.
2 FILM CONSTRUCTS
INTRODUCTION
Semiological and structural approaches that developed in the 1950s strove to de-
cipher some deep underlying sign system (semiology) or structure (structuralism)
able to explain or reveal the meaning of a variety of surface features. Teir methods
were used by lm analysts to explain how lms communicate meaning or the
anities between lms subsumed under the categories of author, genre and narrative.
Inuenced by the formalist school
1
and based upon the structural linguistics devel-
oped by Ferdinand de Saussure
2
and published in 1916, they began to analyse the
specic sign system underlying cinema and the specic meaning conveyed by the deep
structure of groups of lms. Tis was done according to repetitions and variations of
specic constitutive elements. Particularly productive was the semiological analysis
of classical cinemas editing system and the structural analysis of lms belonging to
the western lm genre.
From the 1970s poststructuralists began questioning the grounds upon which
semiologists or structuralists grouped lms, along with their notion of deep struct-
ures, oering instead the ideas of intertextuality, constant ux and polysemy (i.e.
the presumption that a lm conveys dierent simultaneous meanings rather than
one true meaning). Teir approach was based upon the conception of lm-system,
lm genre, auteur or narrative as open ended, not necessarily cohering processes,
interacting with subjective and identity-shifting spectators that oer dierent and
multiple readings. Tey considered their approach to be a correction to what they
perceived as a futile search on the part of semiologists and structuralists for xed
systems and groupings embedding xed meanings.
Film cognitivists on the other hand, while also turning their attention during the
1980s to how spectators interact with lms, did not forgo the lms or the spectators
striving for coherence. Tey oered instead aware viewers, actively engaged in the
cognitive construction of a lm whose various formal devices playfully puzzle or
satisfy the spectators striving for coherence. In what follows we will trace this shift-
ing conception of lm constructs.
1 SAUSSURE, SEMIOLOGY, STRUCTURALISM
AND FILM CONSTRUCTS
1.1 FERDINAND DE SAUSSURES KEY LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS
1.1.1 The Arbitrary Nature of Signs in Language. Based on the fact that in dierent lan-
guages the same object is signalled through dierent sounds, Saussure reached the
conclusion that there is no natural connection between signs or words in language
and the object or referent outside language that they stand for. He argued that the
meaning of a given word derives from the structure of the language to which it
belongs and not from its relation to whatever it references outside language. Hence,
the word chair has nothing in it that resembles a real chair. Even onomatopoeic
words, which seem to maintain some kind of sound resemblance to the sound
produced by the object they reference, did not shake his conclusion, since dierent
languages oer dierent onomatopoeic sounds to the same referent. Hence, in the
English language a dogs bark is rough whereas in Hebrew its hav, while the word
bottle is bakbuk in Hebrew. Tis led Saussure to describe the relation of spoken or
written language signs to their referents as arbitrary.
Saussure went on to distinguish within the sign between the signier (i.e. the
material graphic tracing or sound) and the signied (i.e. that which comes to mind
when we read or hear the signier). Hence, Saussure dierentiated between a signs
referent (e.g. this or that material chair in a given time and place) and its signied
(e.g. the mental representation of chair), concluding that while the signied, being
in a necessary relation to the signier, forms part of language, the object referenced
by the sign is extraneous to language. From the point of view of language, maintained
Saussure, the referent is of no consequence. Within language, however, the relation
between the representation of the object in our mind (the signied) and the way it
is written or sounds (the signier) is also arbitrary. Tere is no resemblance between
the representation that comes to our mind when we hear or read the word chair and
the sequence of letters c h a i r. If the letter c is deleted, nothing comparable drops
from the mental representation of the chair, nor is there any relation or resemblance
whatsoever between the signied chair and the signied hair that results when you
omit the c. Hence Saussure dened the sign in language as an arbitrary relation
between signier and signied. He maintained that this arbitrary relation explains the
economy of language: by combinations of a small number of signiers (e.g. letters)
we can generate an indenite number of words and sentences that forge in our minds
an indenite number of signieds.
Having insulated language signs from the external world, Saussure went on
to claim that the value and function of signs in language derives more from their
f i l m c o n s t r u c t s 31
relation to other signs in the language than to something beyond language. Tis
relation is based on a structure of mutual dierences between signs, demanding
that the sign be discrete (enclosed and dierentiated) so that its value or function
can be dened by its dierence from other signs in the language. Hence, the value
and function of the letter A derives from its dierence from all other letters in the
alphabet. Saussure applied this structural dierential model not only to signiers
but also to their signieds. Hence, the value and function of the signied dog derives
from its dierence from other signieds such as wolf or cat. For instance, cats and
wolves do not bark. Te structural principle of dierences between discrete signs was
applied by Saussure to all levels of language (letters, words and sentences). Saussures
favourite example to explain his structural linguistics, according to which the value
and function of signs derives from their mutual dierences within the system of
language, was the game of chess. In chess each piece references an object in the world
used in warfare. However, the most experienced general will not gain any knowledge
of the game from his war experiences. Tis is because the value of each piece has
nothing to do with what it references in the world and has everything to do with
how its movement diers from that of all the other pieces in the game. For example,
the diagonal move of the bishop has nothing to do with how bishops move during
battle and has everything to do with how its movement diers from the rank-and-
le move of the rook or from the knights L-shaped move.
1.1.2 Language System (Langue) and Speech (Parole). Saussure designed as language system
(langue) all the rules that determine the possible combinations of signs in language
and that allow people to generate comprehensible articulations. He went on to
claim that this system, which exists in the minds of all the competent users of a
given language, logically precedes any comprehensible speech (parole) on their part.
From a linguistic point of view, any use of language, whether through writing or
speech, is always a concrete realization at a given time and place of the rules of the
language system. Without the internalization of the language system in users minds
a communicative use of language is impossible. Moreover, a single individual cannot
change the system. I can erase the word moon but it will not disappear from the
language system. Tis conception of language implied that it is more accurate to
say that a persons world-view is constrained to what his/her language system allows
rather than the other way around.
Te relation between the language system and its realization in speech or writing
is such that the systems existence is prior to any use and it is always synchronous
to each realization. Te language systems existence, as opposed to its realization,
does not depend on a specic time and place of utterance and is therefore reversible
in time. Hence, the language system is the depth structure of language, while its
realization in speech or writing is its surface manifestation. Speech or writing on the
other hand always follow from the language system, are always uttered at a concrete
time and place, and are always diachronic and irreversible (i.e. in the ow of time).
For example, from the point of view of the language system, the sentence the dog
is chasing the cat has the same meaning today and yesterday. From the point of
view of speech, however, the meaning of the sentence shifts according to the time
and place of utterance. If I repeat the sentence the dog is chasing the cat, the dog
is chasing the cat, each utterance has a dierent meaning stemming from its unique
existence in a certain time and place (e.g. the second time around has a dierent
meaning by the very fact that it is uttered after the rst time). For Saussure, the
science of linguistics can reach scientic conclusions primarily in the study of the
language system since the study of speech or writing is fuzzy by denition because it
is dependent upon contexts that are extraneous to language (such as who utters the
sentence, under what circumstances, or when and where it is uttered).
1.1.3 Paradigm and Syntagm. Saussure argued that in order to make an utterance in
language individuals operate on two axes simultaneously. On the paradigmatic axis,
or axis of selection, a sign is chosen from the language system internalized in the
individuals mind, while on the combinatorial, or syntagmatic, axis the chosen sign
is combined with another chosen sign. Tis dual process allows the individual to
articulate words and sentences. For example, if I choose the letters D, O and G, I
can combine them as DOG or as GOD. Likewise, in a sentence like the dog chased
the cat I can perform a paradigmatic change and choose mouse instead of dog,
getting the mouse chased the cat, or I can perform a syntagmatic change and get
the cat chased the mouse. A change on either the paradigmatic or syntagmatic axes
changes the meaning of the utterance.
Te Saussurean tenet that utterances in language are formed by the axes of selection
and combination; his dierentiation between the deep structure of language and its
surface manifestation in speech; his claim that the meaning, value and functions of
language signs derive from their discreteness and from their mutual dierences; and
his principle of an arbitrary relation between the sign and what it stands for were
premises borrowed by semiologists and structuralists alike in their study of various
ways of communication that are not based on written or spoken language.
While some consider Saussurean-derived semiology and structuralism to be
identical disciplines,
3
a dierence can be traced between the two. Hence, semiologists
focus upon the arbitrary vertical relation between signier and signied, searching
for the specic language system of ways of communication that are not based on
written or spoken language (e.g. lm as sign system).
4
Structuralists, on the other
hand, overlook this split within the sign and focus upon the horizontal relations
between signs within the structure they constitute (e.g. lm genres as structures). As
stated by Lvi-Strauss, structuralism refuses to set the concrete against the abstract
and to recognize a privileged value in the latter. Form [e.g. signiers] is dened by
opposition to material other than itself [e.g. signieds]. But Structure has no distinct
content; it is content itself, apprehended in a logical organization conceived as a
property of the real.
5
1.2 SEMIOLOGICAL FILM CONSTRUCTS
Following his study of language, Saussure realized that many of his conclusions
might be applicable to sign systems other than linguistic ones. He predicted that
linguistics would become a major eld within a larger discipline that would also
study sign systems not based on written or spoken language. He called this discipline
semiology, predicting that in non-lingual sign systems, even if their signs are not
arbitrary as those of language, the conventional-arbitrary element in them will turn
out to be the basis for their meaningful articulation:
When semiology becomes organized as a science, the question will arise whether
or not it properly includes modes of expression based on completely natural
signs, such as pantomime. Supposing that the new science welcomes them,
its main concern will still be the whole group of systems grounded on the
arbitrariness of the sign . . . Polite formulas, for instance, though often imbued
with a certain natural expressiveness (as in the case of a Chinese who greets his
emperor by bowing down to the ground nine times), are nonetheless xed by
rule; it is this rule and not the intrinsic value of the gestures that obliges one to
use them. Signs that are wholly arbitrary realize better than the others the ideal
of the semiological process.
6
Saussurean-inspired semiologists turned to the study of media such as photo-
graphy and lm whose signs were not arbitrary, realizing that these signs are dicult
to isolate because of their non-discrete analogous and continuous nature. Tis posed
a problem given that the deciphering of a code demanded discrete units that could
be compared and dierentiated from each other. In what follows we will consider
two seminal attempts to deal with this problem.
1.2.1 Roland Barthess Photographic Paradox. Te analogous aspect of the photographic
sign led Roland Barthes to consider the photographic message a paradox.
7
On the
one hand, the photograph appears before our eyes as lacking any code, as an almost
direct documentation of whatever stood in front of the camera. On the other hand,
the photograph conveys a complex message to the beholder. It is ripe with mean-
ing. Terefore, since according to Barthess Saussurean premises there cannot be a
message without a code, the photograph poses a paradox. Barthes tried to decipher
all coded elements within photographs. He noticed that the composition of many
photographs has precedents in coded pictorial compositions from a certain period;
that some convey meaning through the deployment of discrete elements that form
stereotypes (e.g. a person wearing spectacles, smoking a pipe with books in the
background signals an intellectual); and that the photographs angle and distance
can be related to a decipherable code (e.g. a low-angled photograph of a person
from up close may convey the message that the person is important or threatening).
Nevertheless, argued Barthes, despite these codings there always remains a natural
uncoded element. Tis element can be fully experienced in what he called traumatic
photographs (e.g. of mutilated bodies), causing beholders to cut short their chain of
signication. Hence, the paradox resurfaces.
Tis uncoded aspect of photographs subverted Barthess attempts at codifying
them. He then oered an interesting resolution: photographs generate through
their uncoded aspects a naturalization of meaning. Tat is, photographs hide their
discrete coding in their documentary and analogous look. In this way photographs
impart the notion that the message received emanates from the real world. Tis
also explained for Barthes the manipulative persuasive power of photographs. Using
Saussures distinction between signier and signied, Barthes argued that in the
photograph two types of codes coexist in a particular relation to each other. Hence,
an analogical, denotative code (pointing to the world as its signied) in which the
signier cannot be separated from the signied becomes in turn the signier of a
connotative discrete code consisting of the meanings evoked in the viewers mind
when looking at discrete portions within the continuous photograph. Barthes
characterized this type of articulation as mythical. Myths, he said, are naturalizations
of ideologies.
8
He analysed, for instance, the cover of a French magazine guring
a black soldier saluting the French ag. On the one hand, the photograph was
analogous, undierentiated and continuous, conveying something like, this is a real
event that was documented in which a black soldier was seen saluting the French
ag. On the other hand, discrete elements such as the saluting gesture, the French
army uniform, the French ag and the black skin raised in his mind ideological
connotations conveying something like, Tird world people are loyal and respectful
to French imperialism. Tis ideological connotation seemed to emanate naturally
from the photographs denotation. It was hidden in the photograph and received as
a real, factual situation.
1.2.2 Christian Metzs Film as Language System. Te idea guiding Christian Metzs
semiological analysis of lm
9
was that the mediums utterances must have something
comparable to a language system that determines the rules of selection and
combination of its signs. Metz relied upon Saussures premise that the arbitrary-
conventional aspect of signs is what allows comprehensible utterances even if these
signs are not as arbitrary as those of written or spoken language.
Metz began by noting the fact that lms mix codes from dierent language
systems. He realized that in this lm does not dier from spoken or written lan-
guage. Like lm, the latter also combine their specic language system with other
semiological systems such as the system of intonation in speech or of calligraphy in
writing. However, while these accompanying semiological systems form part of the
meaning imparted by speech or writing, they do not impede the study of languages
specic sign system.
Tis distinction between language systems and their mixed guration in various
texts led Metz, following Saussures distinction between the language system (langue)
and speech (parole), to distinguish between two dierent types of semiological
research: one is concerned with the uncovering of the codes of specic language
systems, while the other studies the necessary mix of various semiological systems
in their actual manifestation. Te realization that manifest lm texts are evidently
a mixture of several sign systems led him to claim that, if lm has its own language
system, this system must be specic to the medium and dierent from any other sign
systems found in lm texts. Reviewing the sign system of language, he reached the
conclusion that beside principles shared by all semiological systems, what primarily
dierentiates them from each other is the nature of their signiers (e.g. mathematics
uses numbers, music uses tones, and written or spoken languages like English,
Chinese, Hebrew or Arabic have dierent signiers). Moreover, language in general
is distinguished from other semiological systems by the nature of its signiers (i.e.
letters), which allow its economy, in that through combinations of a small number
of letters an innite number of words can be formed. Hence Metz concluded that,
if lm has its own sign system, it can only result from its having unique signiers
whose combinations generate meaningful utterances. Only in such manner can lm
be considered to have a sign system of its own, independent from other sign systems
or their mixture.
In order to decipher lms specic signiers he turned to study the material base
of lm, premising that signiers are the matter of expression as dened by the
linguist Hjelmslev. Tis led him to identify the combination in lm of ve signifying
materials: (1) recorded moving image track; (2) recorded speech; (3) recorded
musical track; (4) recorded noise or eects; (5) written material (imprinted captions
or subtitles and writing within the image). Te combination of these materials allows
lm to express itself in a unique way that is dierent from all other semiological
systems. For example, the recorded image track can be identically repeated. Likewise,
the combination of a recorded music track with a recorded image track allows for
sound/image combinations that are impossible in other semiological systems. (In
this respect, it should be noted, television and computer-generated sounds and
moving images would be semiologically identical to lm.)
However, he went on, the semiological complexity of lm articulation cannot be
coded at this time on the level of the content of the moving images. Diering from
Barthes, Metz gave up upon the attempt to decipher arbitrary-conventional aspects
within the analogical, continuous and seamlessly moving lm sounds and images.
While he believed that the analogical moving sound/image lm ows are coded, he
reached the conclusion that the deciphering of such coding is extremely complex
since it must incorporate perceptual, mental and social codes. Hence he concluded
that on the level of its sound/image ow, lm doesnt seem to have something
comparable to written or spoken languages economic double articulation of letters
and words (allowing the generation of an indenite number of words from a small
number of letters).
10
He therefore turned to a level of lm articulation that is beyond the audiovisual
content, that is, to the level of the editing of recorded visuals and sounds. Metz was
probably particularly drawn to this level since editing devices such as cuts, dissolves
and fades conform to the unique and arbitrary signiers so valued by Saussure. Now,
thought Metz, if the layout of such signiers generates in spectators similar signieds,
there is good reason to presume that lm has its own sign system (that is, a set of
conventional rules on how to order these signiers). Out of the various signieds
generated by editing constructs, he found one set of signieds that he could clearly
dene. Tis was the set of signieds having to do with transitions in time and space.
It seemed to him that lms arbitrary editing signiers are arranged in some sort of
sign system that allows lms to signal a variety of temporal and spatial transitions.
Hence, Metz found that lms, particularly those pertaining to the classical American
cinema (193055), oer dierent recurring editing constructs, each comprised of
the same arrangement of signiers and imparting the same understanding of time/
space relations irrespective of the various lms diering visual and aural contents. He
called these constructs syntagms and proceeded to classify them as follows:
11
A. Non-chronological syntagms:
A1. Parallel syntagms: consist of transitions between unrelated places in
dierent and unrelated times. Tis type may be said to dominate
video-clips for example, where musical rhythm rather than time or
space interrelate the various shots.
A2. Bracket syntagms: consist of a transition, within a chronological syn-
tagm, to an autonomous segment consisting of a series of locations in
dierent times. Tese may be used to convey metaphors as in Eisensteins
lm October (1929) where, as he follows General Kerenskis entrance
to the Winter Palace, a segment is inserted consisting of shifts back
and forth from shots of General Kerenski to shots of a metal peacock,
implying that Kerenski is proud as a peacock. Te temporal and spatial
relations between Kerenski and the peacock are not specied and are
irrelevant since the intention is to create a metaphor that is out of time
and place.
B. Chronological syntagms:
B1. Descriptive syntagms: consist of transitions between dierent shots
of the same location that appear simultaneous in time. Tey often
open a lm, describing the ambiance and the location where things
will happen. Hence many lms located in Manhattan open with an
aerial long shot of the city, often cut to a closer shot of a street, a
fountain may be seen followed by birds taking o, and the window of
an apartment where the story begins may conclude the segment.
B2. Narrative syntagms: Tese dominant syntagms branch into linear
syntagms and alternate syntagms:
B2.1. Linear syntagms: consist of an overall continuity in time and
space or of a chronological chain of sequences, each in a dierent
location.
B2.2. Alternate syntagms: consist of continuity in time while alter-
nating between two or more locations. Tis syntagm is often used
to create tension and expectation as in D. W. Griths scene in
Birth of a Nation (1915) where settlers besieged by Indians await
the arrival of the cavalry. Te syntagm alternates between shots
of the distressed settlers within a cabin, shots of Indians trying
to break in, and shots of the cavalry galloping. Tis conveys
the notion that while the settlers are being attacked the cavalry
is approaching. Another impressive variation of an alternate
syntagm can be seen in Francis Ford Coppolas Godfather (1972)
where the Maa head Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino)
is seen in church as his godson is being baptized. Suddenly, as
the soundtrack of the music and dialogue within the church
continues, the image track starts alternating between ve
dierent locations showing the godfathers henchmen as they
prepare to execute Corleones rivals. Te spectator understands
that while Corleone is in church his rivals are being executed
simultaneously.
Metz showed that all these syntagms are constructed through specic and recurring
combinations of lms unique and arbitrary editing signiers, and that each time
such combination occurs in a lm segment the same comprehension of time and
space is imparted irrespective of the gured visual or aural contents. Moreover, if a
change occurs in the deployment of one of the signiers, the understanding of the
passage of time and space changes or gets confused. He instantiated this by analysing
a syntagm that he termed durative.
12
Durative syntagms are constructed as follows: (1) a periodical guration of a few
visual motifs belonging to the same location (e.g. a close up of a hand caressing a face;
a lit replace; the intertwined legs of a couple; dropping snowakes seen through a
window); (2) use of the same editing transition device throughout the syntagm (e.g.
only cuts or only dissolves); and (3) a consistent sound accompaniment (it can be
music, speech, eects or even silence so long as these start with the beginning of
the syntagm, consistently accompany it and end when the syntagm is over). As can
be seen, all the components dening the syntagm are arbitrary and unique lm
signiers. Metz claimed that each time such a combination occurs in a lm segment,
the comprehension of time and space imparted is that time seems to stand still while
the event unfolds. Tis syntagm does not render the notion that the entire event has
developed chronologically (as done by a linear narrative syntagm), but rather that
what is shown is a kind of summary of the event. Metz contended that this precise
combination is necessary for such a comprehension of time and space, because if the
deployment of one of the signiers is changed (e.g. the visual motifs do not recur;
a dissolve is inserted among cuts; the soundtrack changes in the middle), then the
understanding of the passage of time and space changes or gets confused. He stated
that in all durative editing constructs he found the comprehension of the passage of
time and space was the same irrespective of the content of the images or sounds.
A Durative Syntagm in Kurosawas Ran
A masterfully constructed durative syntagm can be
found in Akira Kurosawas lm Ran (1985). The syntagm
depicts a defeat in battle. Following a linear narrative
syntagm comprised of a combination of cinematic
signiers that impart seamless continuity of action,
time and space, a durative syntagm starts, signalled by
the fading of the realist soundtrack and its replacement
by a musical score. The music is accompanied by a
series of periodically recurring shots connected through
dissolves, showing different agonizingly dying soldiers of
the defeated side, interspersed by shots of a descending
sun. The syntagm abruptly ends when the sound of a
Given that each syntagm has a stable conguration of arbitrary lm signiers
across dierent lms, and that it imparts the same comprehension of temporal and
spatial changes irrespective of the audiovisual contents, Metz went on to dene a
syntagm as a discrete unit. He then applied Saussures principle that the meaning
of signs derives from their mutual dierences within the sign system, arguing that
spectators understand durative syntagms because of their dierence from other
lm-editing syntagms and not because they resemble time/space passages in reality
(syntagms are arbitrary in that respect). He therefore reached the conclusion that
there exists a paradigm of syntagms internalized in competent lmmakers and
spectators minds, allowing the former to communicate to the latter lm variations in
time and space. Such variations were constructed by choosing out of a paradigmatic
arsenal a discrete syntagm (e.g. durative) and combining it with another chosen
syntagm (e.g. linear), and so on.
In sum, Metz claimed to have unearthed a unique lm sign system based on
arbitrary and conventional discrete units (syntagms), comprised of recurring
combinations of lm-specic arbitrary and conventional signiers (cuts, dissolves,
wipes, etc.) through which the medium communicates time/space variations. He
based this reconstruction of a portion of the editing sign system of lm based upon
Saussures key linguistic concepts the arbitrary relation between signier and
signied; the distinction between the language system and speech; the paradigmatic
and syntagmatic axes of articulation; and the determination of sign values by their
mutual dierence from other signs.
1.2.3 Peter Wollens Trichotomic Study of Film. In Te Semiology of the Cinema
14
Peter
Wollen attempted a correction to faults he found in Saussurean-inspired approaches to
lm. His major critique concerned the Saussurean exclusive focus upon the arbitrary
shot hitting a mounted general from the back is heard,
the musical score stops and the lm returns to a
linear narrative syntagm. This powerful durative syntagm
constructs the notion that while time seems to stand
still the defeat in battle progresses. It also abstracts the
notion of tragic defeat from the specic story told, by
its use of music, its correlation of battle shots and a
descending sun, and by its summary rendition of what
went on through the use of recurring visual motifs.
13
A Durative Syntagm in Kurosawas Ran
nature of signs and the attendant dismissal of the mimetic aspects abundantly found
in semiological systems.
15
He therefore imported into lm studies Charles Sanders
Peirces semiotics. Contrary to Saussures exclusive focus upon the arbitrariness of
the sign and its disjunction from its natural referent, Peirces semiotics focused on
dierent relations signs have to their natural referents.
16
Hence, in his second trichotomy of signs Peirce divided signs into indexes, icons
and symbols:
Indexical signs relate to referents according to natural law. Signs such as baro-
meters, sundials, medical symptoms or foot imprints on sand are indexical. Te
photograph is also indexical since as Peirce described it photographs . . . are in
certain respects exactly like the objects they represent. But this resemblance is
due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that
they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature.
17
Iconic signs relate to their referents by similarity, as in gurative paintings and in
diagrams. Te similarity the photograph has to its referent can also be understood
as iconic since not all indexical signs resemble their referents (e.g. a barometer
does not resemble fever).
Symbols are signs whose relation to their referents is based on arbitrary conven-
tions. Letters, numbers, but also the scales of justice or the Christian cross are
symbols.
18
Symbols are the Peircean equivalent of Saussures arbitrary sign.
Following Peirce, Wollen divided lm into a documentary-indexical dimension,
an iconic dimension under which he subsumed lms intertextual or inter-artistic
references, and a symbolic-conventional dimension. He believed this trichotomy
could make up for what he found lacking in Saussurean-inspired semiology and in
earlier lm theories. Hence, Metzs Saussurean semiology focused on the symbolic
dimension on account of the documentary and iconic richness of lm, whereas
Bazins realism focused on the indexical aspect of lm on account of its rich means of
articulation. Also, both Metz and Bazin, he contended, oriented by the dichotomy
between nature and culture, discarded the symbolic elements within lm images.
While Bazin saw these as intrusions into natural beauty, Metz considered them to
be unstable, poor or borrowed from other media. Tus Metz mentioned that the
symbolic conventional opposition of good and bad, through the opposing white
and black shirts worn respectively by hero and villain in westerns was discarded
very early in the genre.
19
While such examples may be poor, contended Wollen,
many complex and stable audiovisual symbolizations in lm can be mentioned such
as Hitchcocks Te Birds (and, I might add, the guration of nature in westerns or
the scream and the use of o-screen space in horror lms). Bazin and Metz also
disregarded lm iconography. Tis dimension, neither symbolic nor indexical,
comprised according to Wollen a large part of the mediums means of expression. He
mentioned in this respect Von Sternbergs lms, which he found detached from the
indexical in order to conjure up a world, comprehensible by virtue of resemblances
to the natural world, yet other than it, a kind of dream world, a heterocosm.
20

To this iconic dimension Wollen also ascribed animation lms as well as the entire
arsenal of inter-lmic quotations (Brian de Palmas formal playful quotation in Te
Untouchables [1987] of Eisensteins Odessa steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin
[1927] comes to mind). Finally, having unearthed what he considered the poverty of
the Saussurean semiological approach to lm, Wollen suggested, when mentioning
the work of Jean-Luc Godard whose lms oered conceptual meaning, pictorial
beauty and documentary truth,
21
that lm should be studied in all its dimensions.
However, while Wollens critique of the application of Saussurean semiology to
lm unearthed dimensions left untapped by Metz and others, his own Peircean
semiotic approach did not go beyond Metz in explaining how lms generate meaning.
Wollen lacked any kind of structural or other systematic consideration of iconic and
indexical oriented signs that could explain their particular way of conveying meaning.
Wollen oered a typology of lm dimensions, not a method. Tis may have been
what led him to shift his interest from a search of how lms communicate meaning
to their aesthetic eects: Peirce wanted logic and a rhetoric which would be based
on all three aspects. It is only by considering the interaction of the three dierent
dimensions of the cinema that we can understand its aesthetic eect.
22
How about
lms logic and rhetoric then? How is the documentary articulation dierent from
the iconic one in terms of meaning? What type of interrelation exists between these
dimensions? Wollen is silent on these questions, as is semiology to this day.
Structuralism, another oshoot of Saussure, oered an approach to the under-
standing of how lms construct meaning based upon the concept of gross constituent
units, bypassing both the Saussurean dichotomy within the sign between signier
and signied and Peirces trichotomy of the sign.
1.3 LVI-STRAUSSS STRUCTURAL METHOD
While structuralism has dierent methods,
23
I will focus on Lvi-Strauss. Tis is
because his approach, particularly as found in Te Structural Study of Myth,
24
has
inuenced lm studies.
According to Lvi-Strauss, the method of investigation of any cultural phenom-
enon begins by the simultaneous delineation of its boundaries and the detection,
mostly through statistical recurrence, of the discrete units constituting it. Te
outlining of the phenomenons boundaries is determined by its constituent units
and vice versa.
25
As in Sassures study, the value or meaning of these constituent units
derives more from their mutual interrelations than from their relation to elements
outside the phenomenons boundaries. Tis value or meaning can be decoded by
the positioning of the constitutive units in binary oppositions to each other (i.e. each
time two units are placed one against the other, allowing their mutual understanding
by noting the similarities and dierences between them).
26
Te layout of relations
between these constituent units unearths the deep structure of the studied
phenomenon. Tat is, it unearths the structure that in turn determines the meaning
of the constituent units. Tere is no use, according to Lvi-Strauss, in studying the
connection between two constituent units pertaining to dierent deep structures
just because there is a phenomenological or natural relation between them, since
each units meaning derives from its interrelation with other units within the same
structure. For example, in a structural study of kinship in a certain society it may
turn out that the authority of the uncle on the mothers side is higher than that of
the father, whereas in a dierent society it is lower. However, this natural based
comparison would be useless since a structural study may reveal the uncles authority
in society A to be closer to that of the grandmother in society B, whereas in society B
his authority may turn out to be closer to that of the second son in society A.
In Te Structural Study of Myth Lvi-Strauss applied this approach to the study
of the dierent versions pertaining to the same myth. He likened previous attempts
to interpret myths as representing events in society or general emotions to the futile
attempts made by linguists before Saussure to nd a relation between the sounding
of a word and the object it references. Hence, if a myth gured an evil grandmother
these researchers claimed that the society where such myth was told considered
grandmothers to be evil. However, if grandmothers were not found to be evil in
society then researchers claimed that the myth represented repressed feelings towards
grandmothers. He claimed that, since myth is part of language in that it is a written
or told story, the structural linguistic method developed by Saussure has to be
applied: everybody will agree that the Saussurean principle of the arbitrary character
of linguistic signs was a prerequisite for the accession of linguistics to the scientic
level.
27
Hence, argued Lvi-Strauss, myth has to be considered as being constituted
by discrete units. Its meaning does not stem from the natural or objective meaning of
each or all units, but from the way these units are interrelated. Moreover, Lvi-Strauss
tried to apply to the study of myth Saussures distinction between the synchronic
aspects of language systems (whose components exist simultaneously in the language
users minds and are not ordered in time sequences) and the use of the system as
it is manifested in speech, a use which is always diachronic (i.e. always within an
irreversible time sequence). Accordingly, he suggested the unearthing of a presumed
deep synchronic structure in myths out of its manifestation in the many diachronic
versions of mythical stories.
28
He argued that myths intimate this approach. Hence,
he noticed that mythical stories are characterized, on the one hand, by their telling
a unique story belonging to a societys past, while, on the other, it appears as though
these stories can happen any time. Moreover, myths describe unique events that
often appear without narrative, temporal, spatial or character motivation and yet
there is a feeling that all myths are alike.
In order to instantiate his method Lvi-Strauss chose to study the dierent
versions of the Oedipus myth. While the results of his analysis are questionable, it
does oer a good example of his method.
29
In studying the various versions of the myth, Lvi-Strauss found that the same
types of relations distinctly recur within and across the various versions, without
any logical relation to the story succession. Hence he reached the conclusion that
the myth wants to draw attention to its deep structure rather than to its developing
story. He dened these types of relations recurring in the myths story as the myths
constituent units. Claiming that story is a level of language that is higher than
sentences, words and letters and yet manifests the same relational structure pertaining
to these lower levels, he decided to call these story units mythemes in their being
gross constituent units of language, that is, units of a higher order than phonemes
or monemes, yet manifesting the same relational structure.
30
He then suggested a
rearrangement of the myth in such a way that each recurring type of relation is
grouped together and yet the evolving story order of the myth is maintained.
Hence, if the story line proceeds along the following numbers (each representing
a relation in the story): 1, 2, 4, 3, 2, 4, 1, 1, 3, 2, 4, the rearrangement would render
the following layout:
1 2
4
3
2 4
1
1 3
2 4
In such a rearrangement the dierent types of relations are grouped together
in each column but, if you read from left to right and from top to bottom, the
story line is maintained. Tus a synchronic reading of the myth (i.e. by columns) is
superimposed upon its diachronically evolving story line.
Following this rearrangement of the Oedipus myth, Lvi-Strauss found the
following four types of similar relations: (1) sexual attraction between family relatives
(a brother desires a sister; a son desires his mother); (2) hostile relations between
family relatives (brothers kill each other; a son murders his father); (3) the idea that
humans are born from the earth is rejected (a strange conclusion reached by Lvi-
Strauss from the myths guration of monsters that have to be killed for humans to
be born from the earth, implying that humans may originate from dierent sources);
(4) the idea that humans are born from the earth is embraced (a conclusion reached
from the grouping of the similar meaning of names of heroes that denote some type
of deformation of the leg, believed by ancient Greeks to indicate birth from the
earth).
Having grouped the recurring types of relations into constituent units, Lvi-
Strauss proceeded to position them in binary oppositions so as to unearth the myths
deep synchronic structure. Tis revealed that the rst two columns oer contradictory
views on family relations, while the last two columns oer contradictory views
on the idea that humans originate from the earth. He then positioned columns
1 and 2 in binary opposition to columns 3 and 4 based on the issue shared by
all columns, which he found to be the origin of humans. Hence, while columns
1 and 2 reject and embrace the idea that humans originate from other humans,
columns 3 and 4 reject and embrace the idea that humans originate from the earth.
Having gone this far, Lvi-Strauss now noticed that columns 1 and 2 refer to the
Greeks life experiences, whereas columns 3 and 4 refer to their cosmology or
religion. Terefore he reached the conclusion that the main contradiction expressed
by the Oedipus myth is between the ancient Greeks life experiences (humans are
born from humans) and their religion (humans are born from the earth). He then
noticed that what the myth does is to oer a kind of solution to this irresolvable
contradiction, which probably bothered the ancient Greeks very much. Hence he
maintained that the myth resolves this contradiction between life and religion by
turning the contradiction between columns 1 and 2 (life experience) and columns 3
and 4 (religion) into an equivalence by the assertion that contradictory relationships
[i.e. between life experiences and religion] are identical inasmuch as they are both
self-contradictory in a similar way. Hence, he claimed, since in life as in religion
there are contradicting evidences as to the origin of humans, social life validates
cosmology by its similarity of structure [i.e. similar contradiction].
31
Lvi-Strauss proceeded to nd variations upon this logical procedure in dierent
myths pertaining to dierent cultures.
32
He concluded that the function of myth is
to oer a ctive solution to irresolvable contradictions on issues that are extremely
important to the society entertaining the myth. Te fact that the contradiction is
irresolvable and bothering explained in his view why new versions of myths oering
ctive solutions keep coming out. It also explained why myths seem similar to each
other across cultures. Tis was because myths are mythical because of their shared
peculiar deep structure and not because of the specic and concrete events they tell
us about.
1.4 STRUCTURAL FILM CONSTRUCTS
Lvi-Strausss structural method, particularly his structural study of myth, served as
the basis for structural analyses of groups of lms evidencing similar characteristics,
among other reasons because lms were perceived as the myths of modern secular
societies, attempting to resolve their bothering contradictions. As stated by Tomas
Schatz, the genre lm represents a distinct manifestation of contemporary societys
basic mythic impulse, its desire to confront elemental conicts inherent in modern
culture.
33
Lvi-Strausss method oered a way to map the lms recurring elements
and generate feasible explanations of the lms. Film genres, the lms of prominent
directors and lms exhibiting similar narratives were considered by structuralists to
be types of mythical articulations.
What is common to all structural lm analyses is their grouping of lms under
the categories of genre, author or narrative according to their recurring elements;
the reduction of such elements to a common denominator that reveals the lms
constitutive units; and the binary analysis of these units interrelations so as to
decode the central contradictions dealt with by these lms in their deep structure.
1.4.1 Structural Genre Constructs the Western. While structuralists studied dierent lm
genres, the Lvi-Straussean structural analysis of the western stands out because of its
characteristic recurrence of iconographic, narrative and thematic motifs. According
to Lvi-Strauss, analysis should start with an identication of the genres constituent
units. Here are some of the western genres classic and most characteristic recurring
constituent units ordered in such manner that already intimates their binary
oppositions:
Major characters and their visual representation:
Te protagonist: usually a male arriving from nature into town and returning
to nature at the end of the lm (e.g. Shane, 1953); his attire combines Indian
and cowboy motifs; highly competent in riding horses and in the use of guns;
stronger than all those around him, independent, true to himself and while
having committed some crime in the past he is honest, just and good; shot from
below to enhance his authority and in non-balanced compositions or irregular
camera motions that enhance his freedom and mobility.
Te antagonist: usually a male who arrives from nature (or from the East)
and is killed by the protagonist in a shoot-out; his attire is fancy, with elements
from the East coast along with Indian and cowboy motifs; highly competent
in riding horses and in the use of guns; stronger than all those around him
except the protagonist, independent, true to himself, criminal, evil, dishonest
and motivated by greed; shot from below to enhance his authority and in non-
balanced compositions or irregular camera motions that enhance his freedom
and mobility.
Te decent female heroine: often a teacher and blonde (e.g. High Noon, 1952);
dressed in modest clothes; honest and loyal but weak and dependent; in love
with the protagonist and morally good; often shot from above or at eye level to
emphasize her vulnerability and in balanced compositions and smooth camera
motions that enhance her goodness.
Te indecent female heroine: often a bar dancer and black haired; dressed
provocatively; independent and disloyal; in love with the protagonist, good
hearted deep inside yet morally bad; often shot from above or at eye level
to enhance her vulnerability but in non-balanced compositions and irregular
camera motions that enhance her freedom and mobility.
Te towns drunk: Usually arrived in town from the East following moral
misconduct; his Eastern US attire is worn out; weak and dependent but good
hearted; helps the protagonist; shot from above to enhance his weakness and
through irregular camera motions and non-balanced compositions that enhance
his being an outsider and drunk.
Townspeople: immobile and conned to the town; modestly dressed; weak
in comparison to protagonist, antagonist, cavalry or Indians and are often un-
armed; usually shot at eye level and in balanced compositions to enhance their
conformity and stability.
Homesteaders: immobile in their modest cabin or eld; dressed in simple work-
ing clothes unt for riding horses; in conict with both the protagonist and
the antagonist but are weaker than both and are often unarmed; honest, hard
working and good; usually shot at eye level and in balanced compositions to
enhance their conformity and stability.
Cowboys: mobile in nature; functionally dressed for horse-riding; are in conict
with the homesteaders or the town people; often dishonest; weaker than the
protagonist or antagonist but stronger than the townspeople or the homesteaders;
usually shot at eye level to enhance their commonality and in irregular camera
motions and non-balanced compositions to enhance their mobility.
Cavalry: mobile in nature, shot when galloping in orderly formation or when
enclosed within military posts; wearing uniforms; stronger than everybody except
the protagonist; usually shot from afar, at eye level and in mobile but balanced
compositions to enhance their conformity.
Indians: mobile in nature; fancifully dressed with motifs taken from nature (e.g.
feathers, leather); stronger than the townspeople or the homesteaders but weaker
than the protagonist, the antagonist and the cavalry; usually shot from afar or
in close oblique angles to enhance their common barbarity or evilness (though
there are also good Indians); and in non-balanced compositions and mobile
irregular camera movements to enhance their freedom and mobility.
Te audiovisual guration of the westerns major sites:
Te town: an isolated and undeveloped settlement threatened by forces coming
from the surrounding nature; usually consists of one main street; shot overall in
balanced compositions.
Good, benevolent nature: huge open spaces, canyons, rivers or mountain chains;
shot overall in balanced compositions to enhance the harmony of man and
nature.
Bad, arid nature: deserts populated by scorpions and snakes; shot overall in non-
balanced compositions to enhance danger.
Te bar: a lively and messy place where people drink and smoke; a place frequented
by the indecent female heroine, cowboys, the protagonist, the antagonist and the
townspeople; shot in non-balanced compositions to enhance disorder.
Te church: a place where the townspeople or homesteaders gather to pray,
but also to discuss urgent matters common to the community; shot overall in
balanced compositions to enhance conformity.
Horses:
Te protagonists and the antagonists horses: loyal, highly trained and e-
cient; diering in their uniform black or white colour; shot in non-balanced
compositions or irregular camera motions that enhance their manoeuvrability.
Te cowboys horses: loyal, brownish; shot in non-balanced compositions or
irregular camera motions that enhance their mobility.
Te Indians horses: unsaddled wild horses, often mustangs; shot in non-
balanced compositions or irregular camera motions that enhance their wildness.
Townspeoples or homesteaders horses: heavy and slow moving, often brown
carriage-horses; shot in balanced compositions that enhance their commonality.
Firearms:
Protagonist and antagonist: usually specially decorated pistols.
Cowboys: functional-looking pistols and ries.
Homesteaders: clumsy-looking large ries.
Cavalry: functional-looking pistols and ries, but also swords.
Indians: Bows and arrows, or feather-decorated ries.
Having enumerated the genres constituent units, a process of reduction to major
binary oppositions ensues. In brief, most structuralist researchers tend to agree
that one of the major binary oppositions and conicts articulated by westerns and
subsuming most of the lms constituent units is that between nature and civilization,
considered an endemic irresolvable conict of American society.
34
Tis can be seen
in the following binary opposition chart where the dominant components of each
unit are relegated to one or other column, while some of their possible oppositions
within each column and between the columns are mentioned:
Civilization vs Nature
1 Townspeople/homesteaders vs Protagonist
2 Protagonist vs Antagonist
3 Protagonist vs Indians
4 Good vs bad Indians
5 Cavalry vs Indians
6 Decent vs indecent female
heroines
7 Townspeople vs drunk
8 Town/settlement vs Arid nature
9 Benevolent vs arid nature
10 Church vs bar
11 Settlers horses and arms vs Cowboys horses and arms
12 Cowboys horses and arms vs Indians horses and arms
13 Balanced compositions vs Non-balanced compositions
14 Smooth camera movement vs Shaky camera movement
Discussion of chart: As can be seen the protagonist has been charted as being in-
between nature and civilization since he embodies elements taken from both and
moves between them. Te protagonist carries the genres contradiction within
himself: mobile but longs to settle down; his attire includes cowboy and Indian
elements; he ghts Indians and the antagonist because he has the ability to ght in
nature like they do, but he ghts them to save the townspeople or homesteaders.
On the deep structural level the conict is negotiated through the protagonists
pendulum swing between both poles. Hence, he apparently solves the conict,
since through his help nature and its representatives are subdued; but the conict
is reopened, since the protagonist himself usually returns to nature when his work
is done. Te protagonist is what Lvi-Strauss called a trickster in that he oers
a ctive solution to the conict, by equalizing it within himself.
35
However,
equalization is also achieved through the same mechanism that Lvi-Strauss detected
in the Oedipus myth. Hence, while there are contradictions between threatening
bad and arid nature and threatened civilization (number 8 in chart), there are also
contradictions of the same type within nature (such as that between good and bad
Indians (number 4)) and within civilization (such as that between the good decent
female and the morally bad and indecent one (number 6)). Terefore, it may be
concluded that there is no evident conict between nature and civilization, since
within each there are similar moral contradictions and hence nature and civilization
are alike. Since this resolution is ctive, following Lvi-Strauss it can be said that as
long as the irresolvable conict between nature and civilization bothers Americans,
more versions of the genre will be made.
Te binary oppositions between constitutive units generate complex structures
as well as dierent versions and groupings. Tis is because the value of a constituent
unit changes if the opposing unit changes. Hence the unit Cowboys horses and
arms gures under nature when opposed to Settlers horses and arms (number
11), but is charted under civilization when opposed to Indians horses and arms
(number 12).
However, there may be other columns and conicts, such as order vs chaos,
good vs bad or individualism vs collectivism, that may predominate in a
western and allow for value changes and even value reversals of constitutive units.
Tus, law and order vs anarchy and chaos, usually attributed to civilization and
nature respectively, if transposed to determine the conict between protagonist and
townspeople, such as in High Noon, may place the protagonist on the side of law
and order and the townspeople on the side of anarchy and chaos. Likewise, the
binary opposition of good vs bad enhances the fact that some units constituting
nature or civilization are good while others are bad. For example, in certain
lms or periods the unit Indians, while remaining under nature, changes its
value from being bad as in Stagecoach (1939) to being good as in Dances with
Wolves (1991). In the latter lm, barbarity is attributed to the cavalry representing
civilization, while kindness is attributed to the Indians that represent nature. Finally,
overlapping binary oppositions such as individualism and good vs collectivism and
bad reveal that units that in some lms are constituted bad (e.g. the antagonist)
shift their value when placed within such overlapped conict (the protagonist and
the antagonist are individualists and hence good), while others that are constituted
good (e.g. the homesteaders) shift to bad (the homesteaders and the Indians are
collectives, hence bad). Tis complexity allows the analysis of specic lms within
the genre, as well as tracing the genres evolution in time.
1.4.2 Structural Author Constructs. A similar analysis to that of genre was conducted
on lms subsumed under the category of author. As stated by Georey Nowell-
Smith,
Te dening characteristics of an authors work are not necessarily those which
are most readily apparent. Te purpose of criticism thus becomes to uncover
behind the supercial contrasts of subject and treatment a hard core of basic
and often recondite motifs. Te pattern formed by these motifs . . . is what
gives an authors work its particular structure, both dening it internally and
distinguishing one work from another.
36
Wollen, for example, in Te Auteur Teory
37
structurally overlapped upon the
western genres binary opposition of nature and civilization the work of prominent
western lm directors like John Ford, Howard Hawks and Budd Boetticher.
Trough their mutual binary oppositions, he claimed that they oer a diverging
approach to their shared unique concern with the contradictory aspects of heroism,
since For the hero, as an individual, death is an absolute limit which cannot be
transcended; it renders the life which preceded it meaningless, absurd. How then can
there be any meaningful individual action during life?
38
Tus, opposing John Ford
to Hawks and Boetticher, he reached the conclusion that Ford initially suggested
resolving this contradiction by placing the individual within an American society
that has transcendent values in the historic vocation of America as a nation, to
bring civilization to a savage land.
39
Tis he found in Fords early lm My Darling
Clementine (1946) where Wyatt Earp the protagonist oers an uncomplicated
passage from nature to culture.
40
However, said Wollen, the hero contradiction is
reinstated by Ford in his later lms, through a gradual and complex inversion of
the values of nature and civilization, so that Ethan Edwards in the Searchers (1956)
unlike Earp, remains a nomad throughout the lm.
41
1.4.3 Structural Narrative Constructs. One major problem with the application of Lvi-
Strausss method faced by structuralist lm researchers had to do with his neglect of
the diachronic narrative dimension of myths. Hence, while Lvi-Strauss bothered
to rearrange the myth so that it maintains its plot line as it reveals the synchronic
columns constituting its deep structure, he ultimately treated the plots evolution as
inconsequential to the myths equalizing strategies. While he justied this neglect by
arguing that such an approach was applicable to ancient myths where the logic of
the story seems to be constantly undermined (a claim complicating the application
of his method to lms), researchers found in Vladimir Propps Morphology of the
Folktale
42
an attempt to discern the structural organization of plot development in
fairy tales, which are also ancient stories exhibiting an incoherence similar to myths.
Hence, in his study, Propp focused on the sequence of events in 100 fairy tales. He
found that while the specic content may vary, they all exhibit a striking similarity
if we attend to their sequence of functions, dened as an act of a character, dened
from the point of view of its signicance for the course of the action.
43
Propp went
on to discern thirty-one functions altogether, which he abridged into single terms
such as absence, interdiction, ight, violation, donor, etc. He found that while
some of the functions may be absent in some fairy tales, sometimes because the plot
branches into two possibilities, the sequence of their appearance remains the same.
A very abridged and lacking sequence would develop as follows: an initial situation
is established followed by a character going away. Tis absence leads to some
misfortune (through the violation of an interdiction or obedience to an injunction).
Tis misfortune is related to a villain who receives information about his victim
and deceives him in order to cause him harm. Te hero receives from a donor a
gift that carries the hero away to eventually battle the villain. He achieves victory,
rescues the victim, returns and gets a reward.
44
Propp noted that while there may
be complications or repetitions, the overall sequence of actions remains the same;
there are no functions other than the thirty-one he discerned; and their ordering and
arrangement occurs with logical and aesthetic necessity.
45
Although Lvi-Strauss
properly accused Propp of formalism devoid of context, Propps structuration of a
fairy tales diachronic development addressed an omission in Lvi-Strausss synchronic
structural method. Film researchers contended that if such structuration occurs in
ancient fairy tales, it certainly occurs in lm genres, whose constituent units are laid
out within a well-thought-out and logically developing narrative.
An interesting attempt to correlate the Lvi-Straussean inspired study of the
western genres deep synchronic structure with a Proppian inspired study of the genres
diachronic plot structure was made by Will Wright in his book Sixguns and Society.
46

Contrary to Lvi-Strauss, Wright maintained that while deep structures point to the
genres recurring elements and central contradictions, diachronic narrative structures
articulate dierent resolutions to these contradictions. Furthermore, the study of the
diachronic development of lms may explain changes in the genre that stem from the
dierent narrative resolutions to the same basic conicts. Hence, in Wrights view,
constituent units change their value not only because of their being positioned in
dierent binary oppositions, as Lvi-Strauss suggests, but also because of changes in
the evolution of the story. He gives the example of a simple deep structure consisting
of a relation of unanswered love between a prince and a poor girl. Tis structure
consists of two binary oppositions: male/female and rich/poor. Hence, on the deep
structure a change in the binary opposition of the constitutive units may generate
a change in their value. Such is the case when male opposes rich and female poor,
resulting in a story of unanswered love between a rich princess and a poor boy.
However, constitutive units may also change their value in accordance with
changes in the development of the story and its resolution. Tus, we may have a
story in which a prince loves a poor girl, the girl does not answer his love and the
prince kills himself. However, we may also have a dierent narrative variation: a poor
girl loves a prince, the prince ignores her and the poor girl kills herself. While in
each case the binary oppositions are the same, the order and resolution change the
value of gender and class dierences. Wright proceeded to implement his revised
structural analysis in a study of westerns. Using a combination of the methods of
Lvi-Strauss and Vladimir Propp, he set out to trace the way westerns negotiated
through their changing types of narratives and resolutions (e.g. the revenge type
narrative) the deep-structured conict between individual and society throughout
the genres history. In his tracing these changes he showed how the genre evolved
from oering resolutions through which the individual ends up marrying, settling
down and becoming part of society, to later westerns where the individual ends up
detaching himself from society.
1.5 CRITIQUES OF SEMIOLOGY AND STRUCTURALISM
Both semiological and structural methods, along with their resulting constructs, came
under re with the emergence of poststructuralism. Te major poststructural critique
was aimed at the problematic criteria used to dene a sign systems or a structures
boundaries, a problem that also called into question the detection of constituting
units. If it is impossible ultimately to legitimize the position of a systems boundaries,
how can it be determined which units constitute the system? Which units belong
and which do not? On what grounds are units exclusively interrelated to each other
if they can actually be related to other units that were excluded from the system?
Tis also brought down the conceptual base sustaining the dierentiation between
deep and manifest structures, for how can the ultimately arbitrary positing of one set
of variables as determining another in some unfounded hierarchy be legitimized?
Also, the static nature of structural and semiological systems ultimately failed
to account for the change exhibited in textual production. Likewise, their methods
failed to explain how humans improvise and generate focalized articulations, or how
textual change and interpretational variability result from the interaction between a
text and its readers or spectators.
Tese latter omissions in structural and semiological approaches were also
addressed by the cognitivist strain of thought, whose emergence paralleled the rise
of poststructuralism. However, while both poststructuralists and cognitivists shifted
their focus away from the study of the text as such to the study of its interaction with
readers or spectators, poststructuralists ended up rejecting the objective validity of
any decoding of textual constructs. Cognitivists on the other hand, did not forgo the
notion that lm constructs are indeed in the text rather than subjectively imposed,
nor that these are usually reconstructed successfully by the minds of coherence-
seeking spectators. Te poststructural and cognitivist revolutions towards lm
constructs are the respective concern of our next two sections.
2 POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND FILM
CONSTRUCTS
Film researchers inuenced by semiology and structuralism considered lm in
general or groups of lms to be a closed autonomic system with clear boundaries
and a specic internal structure. Tis premise was accompanied by the belief that
research can decode this internal structure. While the relation between the lm
and its spectators or authors was considered secondary or irrelevant, they also had
presumptions about these extraneous factors, namely that spectator and lm author
are enclosed autonomic entities with consistent and essential identities. All these
presumptions, long pondered upon by philosophy, began to be deconstructed in
the 1960s with the emergence of what came to be termed poststructuralism in the
1980s. Poststructuralists
47
deconstructed each of these premises, their legitimacy and
methodology, in dierent elds of culture. Te consequence of the poststructural
revolution in cultural theory, similar in its logic to consequence of the shift from
modernist to postmodernist cultural production, was the turn away from the
consideration of lm texts as enclosed autonomous structures towards their open
interrelation with spectators and authors. Tey henceforth redened text, spectator,
author and reality as open, non-consistent and non-essential entities.
2.1 POSTSTRUCTURAL REDEFINITIONS OF THE CATEGORIES OF AUTHOR,
GENRE AND NARRATIVE
Poststructuralists questioned the value and legitimacy of the categories under which
lms were grouped by structuralists. Hence, asked Michel Foucault,
48
how do
you decide which texts are subsumed under an authors body of work? Why the
obviousness that his grocery store lists should not be included in his work? Anyway,
who is this author? Is it the biological entity it refers to? Is it the structural category
constructed a posteriori from a group of works carrying the name? If so, doesnt the
same body of work generate dierent author categories? Moreover, are we speaking
of the same entity across time? Is a ction author (to whom authority over the work
is ascribed) similar to a scientic author (where authority is usually denied except in
ctional mythologies of scientists)? Tis series of questions dismantled the validity
or legitimacy of the structural category of author. It led Foucault to shift his focus
of attention away from questions concerning some elusive essence of an author,
towards the study of the historically shifting discourses on what an author is; the
ideological or practical interests each discourse serves; and the consequences of these
discourses for people and for textual studies.
A similar procedure was applied by Jacques Derrida to the structural categories
of genre, text and narrative. He reached the conclusion that genre and text (the latter
designating the enclosed entities whose grouping constitutes genre), as well as the
category narrative, which imposes temporal order on texts, are nothing but ctional
constructs and meanings articially imposed upon an endless chain of signiers.
He considered these signiers to potentially emanate indenite interpretative
possibilities. Te deconstruction of these categories had deep consequences for the
structural method because if there is no possibility to dene boundaries, there is
also no place for talking about the structures constitutive units, since all units may
in principle be related to all other units. Tis also collapsed the notions of deep and
manifest structures since lacking the ability to justify unit groupings, the decision to
posit one group as determining another is lost.
Te resulting postmodern cultural creation as evident in lms such as Quentin
Tarantinos Pulp Fiction (1994) is characterized by the scrambling of temporal order,
the mixing of genres, a pastiche of quotes taken from previous lms or other cultural
forms, and a levelling of light and heavy discourses with an utter disregard for
hierarchical distinctions between high and low art. Hence, Pulp Fiction starts in the
middle, unnoticeably backtracks to the beginning of the story and reconnects back
to where the lm began while its protagonists, two hired killers, talk with the same
level of aect or seriousness about McDonalds Quarter Pounders, their last bloody
murder and the bible.
In the eld of lm research, poststructuralism engendered an approach to genre-
as-process. Tis approach, heralded by Neale, Altman, Knee and Gallagher, proposed
to dene genre not according to its recurring elements but rather according to its
constantly changing ones. According to Neale, the genre category is mixed to begin
with, since genres show mutability and variability. Hence he tried to dierentiate
genres according to their genre mix.
49
Likewise, Altman wrote that the process of
genre creation oers us not a single diachronic chart, but an always incomplete series
of superimposed generic maps.
50
For Altman, generic shifts occur because syntactic
or semantic characteristics taken from other genres are gradually incorporated.
51
A
more radical approach was oered by Adam Knee who claimed that while there are
attempts to contain genres within Iron lings held in position by the magnetic force
eld of ideology, genres by their textual nature counter static and essentialist notions.
He then dismissed previous attempts to describe generic evolution by showing that
there are so many variables (e.g. natural disasters) that it is practically impossible to
account for generic change. Finally, Gallagher dismantled attempts to describe an
evolution of the western genre, by showing that all the signs relegated exclusively to
later westerns already appeared in early ones.
2.2 POSTSTRUCTURAL INTERTEXTUALITY AND FILM
Similar to the deconstruction of structural tenets and categories, poststructuralists
like Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes (in his later writings) dismantled the attempts
to ground textual analyses on Saussurean-inspired semiology. Te struggle to discern
objective rules determining textual production was not only considered by them to be
futile but was also perceived as an ideological attempt to control cultural production.
Poststructuralists turned to the dismantling of textual xtures. Tey premised that
language and other forms of communication are polysemic and multidirectional.
Any attempt to x, stabilize or systematize the process of signication was in their
minds an attempt to control human and textual freedom and creativity. Kristevas
and Barthess notion of textual and human freedom was based upon a conception
of a mutating text and an individual: a divided subject, even a pluralized subject
that occupies not a place of enunciation, but permutable, multiple, and mobile
places.
52
Following Mikhail Bakhtins literary research, particularly his notion that
the meaning of a word in a literary text is not xed but results from its dialogical
interaction with various voices and positions within the text, between texts, and
in the readers mind, Kristeva reached the conclusion that it is impossible to apply
any deductions made from a presumed language or sign system to manifest textual
articulations. Moreover, the whole notion of language as having a priori stable
structures was questionable and irrelevant for textual understanding: Te text, is
therefore a productivity, and this means: rst, that its relationship to the language
in which it is situated is redistributive (destructive-constructive), . . . and second,
that it is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text,
several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another.
53

Barthes also changed his mind and began to view the text as experienced only in
an activity of production . . . its constitutive movement is that of cutting across . . .
it cannot be contained in a hierarchy, even in a simple division of genres.
54
Te
early semiological view that texts result from a xed set of rules internalized in an
individuals mind and determining the meaning of the text, was exchanged for a
conception of the text as intertext: an open set of textual intersections and relations
dierently realized in each interrelation with a reader or viewer, themselves conceived
as having split, shifting identities and entertaining varying positions towards the
text. Te radical revolutionary-spirited dismantling of the Saussurean linguistic
categories used in literary and other cultural research was very productive in the
deconstruction of attempts at constituting textual meanings presumed to be reliable,
specic and objective. Te intertextual approach also generated the postmodern
type of textual production, perceived by poststructuralists as constantly evading
categorical typologies and subverting them.
Some intertextualists tried to reconstruct a typology of the possible relations
between textual segments within a given text or in between texts. Gerard Genette
for example, proposed ve types of relations: (1) intertextuality: the incorporation
within a text of direct quotes from another, plagiarism of another text or allusions
made to another text; (2) paratextuality: the relation a text has with its title (e.g.
James Joyces Ulysses), prologues or epilogues; (3) metatextuality: the criticizing of
one text by another through satire or irony; (4) architextuality: the relation a text has
to generic attributions (e.g. romantic comedy); (5) hypertextuality: the adaptation
of a text into another medium or its transformation into a dierent text.
55
Another interesting intertextual reconstructive attempt was made by Ziva Ben-
Porath, who suggested evaluating the relations between texts according to the degree
of dependence a derived text has to its originating text, in terms of the degree of
freedom or disorder that the intertextual relation allows readers or viewers.
56
Tis
Buuels Belle de jour and Intertextuality
An analysis of Louis Buuels lm Belle de jour (1967)
helps to instantiate Ben-Poraths intertextual theory. The
lm is an adaptation of Joseph Kessels book written in
1928 and carrying the same title. Buuels adaptation
would be, in Ben-Porath terms, a pseudo-metonymical
allusion to the book. That is, it is dependent on the
book in most of its formal and thematic materials, but
critiques the book by changing the code determining
the combination of materials.
The lm, like the book, tells the story of a bourgeois
woman (Catherine Deneuve) who loves her husband
(Jean Sorel) but is sexually unsatised. Following a hint
given her by one of their friends (Michel Piccoli), she
arrives at a brothel and starts working there during
the daytime hours when her husband is busy at work,
nding sexual satisfaction in a series of weird sexual
encounters with different clients. However, her guilt
feelings towards her betrayed yet beloved husband,
along with the chance encounter she has in the brothel
with the friend who told her about the place and was
surprised to see her there, lead to her having delusions
where she is punished for her sins. Things are further
complicated when a young and handsome delinquent
(Pierre Clmenti) pays a visit to the brothel and falls
in love with her. He starts demanding that they meet
outside the brothel and when she refuses he arrives at
her house. When asked to leave he decides to await
the return of her husband and shoots him, an injury
that leaves the husband mute and paralysed. Escaping,
the delinquent crashes into a car, gets into a shoot-out
led her to place dierent types of texts along a continuum stretching from highly
dependent texts, allowing little freedom in the realization of intertextual relations as
in parodies, to highly independent ones such as texts based on metaphorical allusions
to others. Among texts in between these poles it is worth mentioning her detection
of texts exhibiting an intermediate level of dependence but a high degree of freedom.
In this category, termed by her pseudo-metonymical allusions, she includes texts
that critically revise their originating text. Ben-Porath instantiates the dierence
of degree in types of intertextual relations by considering the dierence between
the sentences Diana mews like a cat and Diana resembles a cat. While in the
former sentence Diana is highly dependent upon cat and the readers freedom in
the materialization of the intertextual relation is low since only meowing is shared
by both texts, in the latter sentence the reader has more freedom since Diana can
resemble the cat in dierent ways such as her having nine lives, her being spoiled or
her being indel.
2.3 CRITIQUES OF POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Te poststructural presupposition about textual mutability wrenches away any claim
to having found valid intertextual relations. Tis is because intertexts are dened
with a police ofcer and is shot dead. Sometime later,
the friend pays a visit and tells the paralysed husband
about his wifes conduct. Following this, the woman loses
touch with reality. In the lms nal scene the husband
rises from his wheelchair and joins his wife for a drink
on the terrace from which they see a horse-drawn
carriage that gured in the womans early delusions.
The books combinatory code is based on a clear
distinction between reality and delusion, which supports
its distinction between virtuous marital love and
immoral sexual desire. Buuel dismantled the distinction
between reality and delusion, thereby collapsing the
moral distinction. This he did by unnoticed shifts
between reality and delusion. Hence, besides delusions
clearly marked as such through disjointed editing and
symbolisms, and which occur in a space different than
the Parisian milieu of the reality portions of the lm
(e.g. a disjointed edited scene where the horse-drawn
carriage drives her into the woods, she is tied half
naked to a tree, mud is thrown over her white dress,
and slurs are shouted at her), there are delusions that
occur in her regular reality Parisian milieu, edited in
continuity (e.g. a scene where the woman sits with
her husband and their friend in an outdoor caf when
all of a sudden the friend breaks a wine bottle and
crouches with the woman underneath the table. The
husband, who remains seated by the table, says he
doesnt understand their murmurings). Likewise, there
are delusions that occur in the delusional space but
are built like another continuous reality scene where
as multidirectional, shifting and polysemic on all levels. Terefore, any attribution
of this or that interrelation between texts, while being subjectively meaningful, is
objectively arbitrary. Tis is perhaps why Barthes described the intertextual process
in terms of a non-obliging game while others gave up altogether notions of truth
seeking and objectivity.
57
Overall, while poststructural approaches to genre, author, narrative and text
have proved fruitful in deconstructing structuralist or semiological certainties,
their perception of a boundless, decentred textual universe in itself generates a the-
oretical and practical labyrinth. Tis labyrinth emerges when the impulse that led
to deconstruction attempts to reconstruct the concepts it had earlier dismantled.
Hence, the above-described poststructural attempts at genre reconstruction made by
Neale or Altman are paradoxical. Tis is simply because the attempt to dierentiate
genres according to their genre mix, while claiming that genres are always-already
mixed, logically demands that they presume non-mixed portions that are then mixed.
But there arent such portions to begin with. Hence, how can someone decide what
is mixed?
In fact, any perception of texts as constantly shifting congurations of variables
is self-contradictory in that it cannot do away at every given point with determining
invariables, simply because one cannot specify a dierence unless there is something
she meets a new weird client (e.g. a realistic looking
and continuously edited scene where she meets in a
caf a client who asks her to play his dead wife but
then calls for the horse-drawn carriage that gured in
her delusions, confounding the spectators as to whether
the carriage is in reality or they are watching another
delusion). A similar confounding of reality and delusion
occurs in other registers, such as when characters say
things like the sun is black today, or when at one point,
without apparent narrative reasoning, a shot of the
womans Parisian apartment building is superimposed
upon a shot of the woods from her delusions. The nal
confusion occurs in the last scene where, as noted above,
her suddenly rehabilitated husband joins her in their
Parisian apartments terrace, but what they see below
is the horse-drawn carriage passing through the woods
from her delusions.
Buuels change of the books combinatory code
brings down the books moral and objective distinction
between virtuous asexual marital love and punishable
debased sexual desire, offering instead a non-judgemental
subjective commingling of the two in the womans
mind.
Through these changes Buuel also allows the
spectator a high degree of intertextual freedom in
what Ben-Porath would call metaphorical allusions. In
what follows, an example of my subjective intertextual
freedom is offered. Hence, Buuels unnoticed shift
between reality and delusion in the lm, bordering
on surrealism, evoked in my mind Buuels and Dalis
constant against which to measure it. Indeed, poststructural reconstructions always
posit some such invariable (e.g. Ben Poraths presupposition of an originating text
and a text derived from it), but given their basic premises of textual boundlessness
and decentralization, they have no good reason to justify its invariability. Moreover,
textual boundlessness and decentralization are themselves unjustied invariables.
Countering this widespread poststructural approach were cognitivists like David
Bordwell and Noel Carroll. Teir approach did not forgo the notion that lm
constructs are indeed in the lm rather than subjectively imposed, and that these
are usually reconstructed successfully by the minds of coherence-seeking spectators.
Cognitivist lm constructs are our next concern.
3 COGNITIVIST FILM CONSTRUCTS
Te cognitive revolution can be traced back to the 1950s, paralleling the develop-
ment of computers. Tis revolution in the comprehension of thought processes
tried to understand the way humans acquire knowledge largely by comparing
human thought to the way computers analyse and process data. Tey premised the
existence in the human mind of an autonomic level of mentation through which
humans process information by the manipulation of mental representations such as
earlier surrealist lm An Andalusian Dog (1929). This
interrelation was further consolidated in my mind by the
fact that the delusions in Belle de Jour are sporadically
accompanied on the soundtrack by cat meowing, cow
mooing, dog barking and horse neighing. These sounds
reminded me of Mauricio Kagels 1983 score for An
Andalusian Dog, which included similar animal sounds.
In following these intertextual hints, I was reminded
that An Andalusian Dog, not unlike portions of Belle
de jour, is totally organized as a dream or delusion in
its spatio-temporal leaps, symbols and metaphors, while
also dealing with anxieties and uncontrolled sexual
desires. However, while An Andalusian Dog is a very
dynamic, troubling lm, Belle de jour is overall slow
paced and Catherine Deneuves acting in both reality
and delusion is restrained and apathetic. In playing
both lms in my mind, An Andalusian Dog seemed to
be Belle de jours subconscious, laying bare for me the
troubled, anxious and turbulent desire lurking beneath
Belle de jours apathetic appearance. Finally, one can
nd in Belle de jour parody in quotations that depend
strongly on their originating text and allow for little
intertextual freedom. Hence, in the death of the lms
charming violent delinquent, Buuel seems to reference
the theatrical death in a shoot-out with the police of
the delinquent played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-
Luc Godards A bout de soufe (1960). Also, in both
lms the delinquents walk along the Champs-Elyses
while newspaper vendors call Herald Tribune, Herald
Tribune.
symbols, schemes or images, consequently incarnated in dierent specic symbolic
systems. For example, if mental representations of information are numerical,
their manipulation is through specic procedures such as multiplication, and their
consequent incarnation is in specic symbolic systems like 2 2 = 4. Te cognitivist
approach developed in dierent disciplines such as articial intelligence, computer
science, linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology and anthropology. In psychology,
for instance, cognitivists attacked the behaviourist attempt to explain how
humans acquire knowledge on the basis of reactions to stimuli. Tey claimed that
behaviourism could not explain how pianists perform since there is no possibility
that they react to each tone before playing the subsequent one. It is more feasible
to explain the pianists performance in terms of sets of tones she has arranged in her
mind and which she executes successively. In other words, the pianist has a level of
mentation autonomous of constant exterior stimulations. Likewise, they rejected the
psychoanalytic attempt to explain human manifest and normal ways of thought on
the basis of the unknown (i.e. the unconscious) and the abnormal. Te complexity
involved in the simplest of mental and perceptual processes, such as solving a
puzzle, demands research that psychoanalysis cannot provide. Tey also rejected the
psychoanalytic tendency to treat empirical evidence as secondary. Cognitivists strove
to verify their ndings through empirical research.
58
Tey premised that perceptual and cognitive processes follow similar procedures:
in general, faced with a phenomenon people raise hypotheses as to its nature based
upon previous information stored and organized in their minds, and then proceed to
validate their hypotheses. Tis process is shared by both perceptual hypotheses, which
work bottom up from sensual data to mind (and which are raised non-consciously or
automatically), and by slower, conscious thought processes that work top down from
mind to perceived phenomenon. For example, in lm, cognitivist researchers like
Virginia Brooks and Julian Hochberg studied perceptual or bottom-up automatic
hypotheses raised by spectators concerning the illusion of three-dimensionality and
lm movement, as well as their eect upon higher, top-down processes.

Brooks
researched the inuence on top-down processes resulting from spatial and rhyth-
mical disruptions stemming from the transference of live movement to lm. She
analysed lm documentations of dance performances (that deal with movement
by their nature) showing how the lm inadvertently causes accelerations, shifts in
movement and direction, and creates compositional accentuations lacking in the
live performance, disruptions stemming from lms two-dimensionality and from
editing transitions (e.g. attening the performance when a group of dancers is shot
from above or accelerating motion when cutting between two camera positions on
the same dancer). Since these disruptions occur on the perceptual level, spectators
cannot consciously control them (as they cannot avoid seeing the projected lm in
continuous motion or as three-dimensional). In being uncontrolled by spectators,
these disruptions overpower top-down intentions. Tus, slowing movement on the
perceptual level undermines a top-down intention to impart thematic urgency. Such
perceptual disruptions can be seen in the following example:
We are constantly moving forward
Nevertheless, most lm cognitivist research focused upon the top-down processes
involved in the comprehension of generic, narrative and stylistic lm dimensions. It
tried to reveal the schemes, patterns and procedures through which hypotheses are
either evoked by lms or raised by spectators, and which direct the process whereby
spectators construct the lm in their minds.
Cognitivism developed in lm studies through a critique of the presumptions
made by other approaches.
59
Carroll, for instance, rejected in particular the estab-
lished notions of a lms immersion of viewers or its suspension of disbelief in their
minds, along with the attendant idea that lms psychologically or ideologically
manipulate passive spectators.
60
Cognitivists oered instead to study the perceptual
and cognitive procedures performed by active and aware spectators in order to
comprehend the lm owing before their eyes. Two leading top-down lm construct
models will be briey considered in what follows.
3.1 NOEL CARROLLS QUESTION-AND-ANSWER FILM CONSTRUCT MODEL
Carroll oered a simple and clear model to explain the spectators way of understand-
ing lms. His model was based on the cognitivist presumption that people learn
about the world surrounding them by asking questions and searching for answers.
Film spectators are no dierent. Te power of movies, particularly Hollywood movies,
resided for him in the satisfaction spectators feel when they can phrase to themselves
in a simple and clear manner questions concerning the movie playing before them,
and receive full answers to these questions, a satisfaction they often lack in real life.
In his view, lm articulation originally developed to oer such satisfaction.
He argued that the dominant Hollywood trend is totally geared towards this
goal, explaining the international popularity of its lms. In fact, stated Carroll, the
invention of photography and the addition of the illusion of continuity created an
easily accessible and understood medium. Moviegoers do not need an arbitrary code,
as in written or spoken language, to identify objects or events. Spectators everywhere
identify these in very much the same manner that they identify things in the real
world. Hence, cinematography is not an arbitrary convention as some semiologists
would argue, but a cultural invention tted to human eyesight. Moreover, point of view
and shotcounter-shot constructs, embraced by lm as cardinal modes of articulation,
are not a complex convention but an easily comprehensible transition based on
life experiences. Hence, in life, when someone facing us glances at something, we
almost automatically look in the direction, since this was originally a way to identify
danger.
Hollywood lms, in particular, use movies and the possibilities they allow
through framing, composition and editing to raise clear questions and provide
full answers. Tey do so through three basic strategies: indexing: drawing attention
to something important in the story, as in a close-up showing the spectator that
the villain has secretly drawn a gun (why is he doing this?); scaling: changing the
relations between objects, as when the camera moves away to reveal that the villain is
standing behind the sheri (will he shoot the sheri from the back?); and bracketing:
inserting material taken from another context, as when you insert the sound of an
o-screen gunshot that kills the villain (who killed him?). In such manner, lms
also frame the answers to the questions raised, as when a subsequent shot answers
the question who killed the villain? by showing up close the sheris beloved wife
holding a smoking gun, followed by a zoom-out rescaling to reveal her standing on
a rooftop overlooking the scene. Carroll went on to specify the types of questions
and answers the lm raises on its micro-plot level and their relation to the larger
questions it raises on the macro-narrative level. While Carrolls model is refreshingly
simple and clear it has rightly been criticized for its exclusive laudation of the clarity
found in Hollywood lms at the expense of more complex or experimental avant-
garde lms. Also, his focus on lms easily identiable denoted objects or events was
accused of underestimating the complex conventionality embedded in the styling,
editing and sound/image manipulations of even the simplest of lms (e.g. identifying
a peacock in a lm-shot and a person in a subsequent shot does not explain the
viewers understanding of the concept of vanity stemming from the juxtaposition of
two such shots). Tese aspects have been addressed by other cognitivists, as will be
shown in our next section.
3.2 DAVID BORDWELLS CONSTRUCTIVIST FILM SPECTATOR
Bordwells main concern was with the strategies and procedures that allow active and
aware spectators to generate hypotheses concerning the lm screened before them,
and verify or reject these as the lm proceeds.
61
He suggested that the hypotheses
raised by spectators follow three major dierent schematic arrangements that they
have in their minds:
Prototypical schemata arrange knowledge around a prototypical example as when
birds are grouped and classied according to their degree of similarity to or
divergence from the sparrow (a chicken, for example, is on the outskirts of the
group since it cannot y).
Template schemata arrange knowledge into dierent templates such as narrative
templates that construe events in causal succession (e.g. exposition, complication,
resolution).
Procedural schemata consist of a series of consecutive actions such as the proc-
edure applied when riding a bicycle.
Bordwells presumption was that spectators strive to construct in their mind a
story and a world out of the lm screened before them by constantly raising per-
ceptual and cognitive hypotheses and trying to t the lm data into them. Film
art in his mind resides in this construction process. Te lmmaker presupposes it
and construes within the lm surprises, distractions, diversions and postponements,
which enhance the process of hypothesis generation, verication or refutation. From
this, he claimed, derives the lms appeal to spectators. Films, like other art forms,
address the cognitive faculties of their spectators and strive to allow them to build a
world and a story by realizing these faculties, a process they are hardly aware of, or
which is hardly satised in real life.
62
He maintained that the interaction between spectator and lm occurs on three
levels:
On the perceptual level, the lm imposes upon the viewer the automatic ap-
plication of perceptual schemes used in spatial or temporal orientation. Hence,
three-dimensional schemes determine the generation of hypotheses such as
whenever the object is bigger it is also closer, or if the view of an object is partly
blocked by another then the former is behind the latter. Likewise, above a certain
speed of transition between consecutive still frames with a small dierence
between what is gured in them, the viewer cannot help but generate the
perceptual hypothesis that there is continuous motion between the frames.
On the level of viewers previous knowledge and experience, the lm triggers
prototypical or linguistic schemes that allow them to recognize objects or
understand dialogues.
On the level of the lms construction and lm material, the lm triggers proto-
typical lm-schemes such as the identication of a southern American town or
a bank robbery. Also, the lm triggers stylistic lm-schemes such as following
a long shot expect a closer shot, or narrative template lm-schemes such as
exposition, complication, resolution.
According to Bordwell, spectators are encouraged by the lm to raise dierent
hypotheses concerning narrative development.
63
Following Sternbergs delineation
of such hypotheses in literature, he mentions curiosity hypotheses relating to what
has happened before the lm started or after the lm has ended, or expectation
hypotheses dealing with what will happen next. In general, viewers strive to verify
their hypotheses as the lm evolves, and tend to hold on to them or refute them
according to their plausibility. Viewers use dierent strategies concerning the
verication or refutation of hypotheses such as a wait and see strategy used when
evidence is inconclusive. Te lm on its part uses its own devices to encourage the
viewer to raise hypotheses. Suspense lms, for instance, encourage the viewer to raise
wrong hypotheses or suspend the verication of a hypothesis through intermediary
material, raising the level of suspense.
However, contends Bordwell, there are situations where viewers encounter
a component in the lm that does not t or re-t their prototypical or template
schemes at all, such as when viewers encounter a duel that has no narrative explana-
tion at the end of a western. In such cases, maintains Bordwell, they turn to gener-
ating procedural-scheme derived hypotheses. Tese aim at oering a motivation
64
for
such a component. Bordwell distinguishes between four motivational attributions:
compositional, realist, transtextual and artistic. Hence, viewers may motivate the duel
Wrong Hypothesis in The Silence of the Lambs
In a scene from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) the
viewer perceives several shots guring FBI agents hiding
outside a house where they suspect a serial killer is.
These shots are alternated with shots of the serial killer
inside a house. This triggers in the viewer the stylistic
prototype schemes parallel edited sequence and inside/
outside editing transition, leading the viewer to presume
that the whole sequence occurs at the same time in the
same location: the besieged house is the one where the
killer is. This leads the viewer to raise the hypothesis
that the FBI agents are about to break in and a
wait and see strategy ensues concerning the results
of the break-in. The viewers suspense is raised when
one of the ofcers approaches the door and presses
the doorbell, a shot cut to the killer seen reacting to
a doorbell ring from inside his house. However, when
compositionally by raising the hypothesis that the lm needs a climactic ending, or
they may motivate it realistically by saying to themselves that such is life, people start
a ght for no apparent reason. Some may oer a transtextual motivation whereby
the western genres conventions demand a duel, while others an artistic one the
duels choreography fascinated the director.
4 NEO-MARXIST AND PSYCHOANALYTIC
CRITIQUES OF COGNITIVISM
Cognitivists have been criticized by Marxists and psychoanalytic lm theoreticians
for their disregard of the ideological and emotional manipulations of spectators by
lms. Marxists blamed them for oering a conservative formalism that treats lms
(and minds) as autonomous constructs. Tey also critiqued the cognitivist support
of lms promoting in form and content the ideologies of the exploiting classes.
65

Psychoanalysts blamed cognitivists for their shallow, banal explorations of obvious
conscious cognitive procedures on account of the deeper subconscious and emotional
lures that lms oer spectators.
66
the killer opens the door he sees Clarice, the lms
protagonist, whom the viewer knows to be nowhere
near the house besieged by her FBI peer agents. These
are seen in turn breaking into the wrong house. The
viewers ensuing cognitive shocking surprise results from
the lms frustration of one of the editing schemes it
has triggered in the viewers mind. Hence, the lm
realized the simultaneity portion of the parallel edited
sequence scheme but not the spatial relation implied
in the inside/outside editing transition scheme. At this
point the viewer generates a new hypothesis concerning
Clarices fate, using a new wait and see strategy as to
what will happen now that Clarice has to face the serial
killer all alone and far away from the FBI ofcers.
Wrong Hypothesis in The Silence of the Lambs
Chapter Summary
Saussure, Semiology, Structuralism and Film Constructs
Film semiologists based their lm-as-signifying-system approach upon Ferdinand de Saussures key linguistic
concepts: the arbitrary relation between signier and signied; the distinction between language system
and speech; the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of articulation; and the determination of sign values
by their mutual difference from other signs.
Barthes distinguished between a photographs denotative and connotative message to resolve the photographic
paradox. He claimed that photographic articulations are mythical because they naturalize meanings.
Metz discovered a unique lm editing system based on arbitrary units (syntagms).
Wollen imported Peirces semiotics. He divided the medium into a documentary-indexical dimension, an
iconic dimension and a symbolic-conventional dimension.
Lvi-Strausss structural method served as the basis for structural analyses of lm genres, of lms of
prominent directors and of lms exhibiting similar narratives.
Structural lm analysts use a binary analysis of lms constitutive units to decode the central contradictions
dealt with by the lms in their deep structure.
Wright found in Propp a method to discern the structural organization of story developments. He correlated
Lvi-Strausss synchronic analysis with Propps diachronic analysis in his study of westerns.
Critiques of Semiology and Structuralism
Poststructuralists critiqued the criteria used by structuralists to dene lm groupings, lm constituting units
and the difference between deep and manifest structures.
Poststructuralists and cognitivists shifted their focus away from the study of the lm in itself to the study
of the interaction of lms with spectators.
Poststructuralism and Film Constructs
Poststructuralism approaches genre, author and narrative as open process.
Neale suggested that the genre category is mixed and genres show mutability.
Kristeva suggested that texts are intertexts open sets of textual intersections and relations, differently
realized by readers or viewers that have shifting identities.
Ben-Porath suggested evaluating the relations between texts according to the degree of dependence a
derived text has to its originating text.
Critiques of Poststructuralism
The poststructural perception of texts as a constantly shifting conguration of variables is self-contradictory
in that it cannot do away with determining invariables.
Cognitivist Film Constructs
Cognitivists premise the existence of an autonomic level of mentation through which humans process
information through automatic bottom-up perceptual processes and conscious top-down cognitive
processes.
Brooks and Hochberg studied lm-perceptual hypotheses concerning the illusion of three-dimensionality and
lm movement.
Carroll and Bordwell tried to reveal the schemes, patterns and procedures evoked by lms, through which
spectators construct the lm in their minds.
Critiques of Cognitivism
Cognitivism was criticized by Marxists and psychoanalytic lm theoreticians for its formalism and its disregard
of the ideological and emotional manipulations of spectators by lms.
3 DIALECTIC FILM MONTAGE
INTRODUCTION
Te concept of dialectic lm montage has been used by formalists and cognitivists
as a peculiar lm device, whose dialectic or rather asymmetrical or contradictory
lm transitions enhance the viewers attention to cinematic formal qualities and
challenge their cognitive faculties.
1
Structuralists also found anities between
dialectic lm montage and their concept of binary oppositions, often searching for
contrasting images or editing transitions as drawing attention to or instantiating
a lms oppositional binary deep structure.
2
Likewise, some of these theoreticians
presumed that cultural systems like lm develop dialectically in that new emergent
styles and themes strive to exchange those of the canonical works dominating the
centre of the system through a struggle with them (i.e. forging their style and themes
in dialectic opposition to the canon), eventually replacing the latter.
Notwithstanding these formal appropriations of the concept
3
, dialectic lm mon-
tage was originally developed as an ideological device by Sergei Eisenstein and other
Soviet avant-garde Marxist constructivist lmmakers of the 1920s. It draws upon
the Marxist idea of dialectic materialism and concerns an arrangement of lm shots
in contrasting rather than in complementing or continuous forms, so as to shake
or shock rather than appease the spectator. Originally it was aimed at achieving
eective propaganda for the Soviet revolution. During the 1960s and 1970s, dialectic
montage was used by First World neo-Marxist oriented lmmakers such as Jean-Luc
Godard to deconstruct the overall continuous and centralizing editing techniques and
narrative evolution characterizing Hollywoods lm aesthetics. Tese neo-Marxists
perceived the ideological eect of Hollywood lms to be the illusory positioning
of the spectator as centre and origin of a pseudo-realist developing lm, which, by
illusorily empowering spectators, led them to conform to the exploitative capitalist
system of production. Te concept also informs the periods parallel anti-colonial
lmmaking or radical third cinema, characterized by a desire to communicate with
the masses in ways that did not conform to First World modes of communication.
Hence, they attempted a reconstruction of radical lmmaking by trying to reconcile
the non-communicative disjointed audiovisuality and narrative of their peers in
the First World with a thematically inverted use of First World genres. Teir lms
were informed by the anti-colonial theories of Frantz Fanon, who unearthed and
reassessed sexual, ethnic and racial representations poorly addressed by Marxism.
Finally, the widespread 1980s phenomenon of postmodernism, informed by
a dialectic lm montage aimed at the decentring of text and subject, has posed a
dilemma for First World post-Marxists such as Fredric Jameson, while espoused as
subversive by parallel postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhaba.
4
Te following sections consider the evolving guration of dialectical lm montage
in the context of Marxist, neo-Marxist, anti-colonial, post-Marxist and postcolonial
theories.
1 CONSTRUCTIVIST DIALECTIC FILM
MONTAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF MARXISM
1.1 KEY MARXIST CONCEPTS
1.1.1 Dialectic Materialism. Dialectic materialism encapsulates the Marxist conception
of natural and human essence and their change.
Materialism: Contrary to idealist philosophies, according to which the essence of
the world and the power to change it derive from some spirit beyond matter or from
human consciousness, materialism maintained that matter is the worlds essence and
the sole subject of change, and that human consciousness stems from matter and
reects material changes rather than the other way around. Marxism focuses on
human material life. As put by Marx and Engels, the forefathers of Marxism:
Te way in which man produce their means of subsistence depends rst of all
on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they nd in existence and have
to reproduce. Tis mode of production must not be considered simply as being
the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a denite
form of activity of these individuals, a denite form of expressing their life, a
denite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are.
What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they
produce and with how they produce. Te nature of individuals thus depends on
the material conditions determining their production.
5
Dialectics: Every change results from a constant conict between opposites that
stems from contradictory forces found in all matter. Each material state can be
described as a thesis carrying the seeds of its own destruction. In time, these seeds
come together to form an antithesis contradicting the initial state. Tis leads to a
d i a l e c t i c f i l m m o n t a g e 71
collision resulting in a new state, which is a synthesis of the previous states. Te
synthesis is more than the sum of states that led to it because it includes the relations
between and within these earlier states. In its turn this synthesis becomes the thesis
of a new state carrying the seeds of its destruction, and so on in an ongoing and
widening dialectic process of material change.
1.1.2 Historical Materialism. Historical materialism concerns the Marxist analysis of the
evolution of human society according to the method of dialectic materialism:
Te exploitative division of human labour as a class division of labour: Humans,
from the beginning of their existence and according to nature, produce their means
of subsistence in an exploitative division of labour whereby one human uses his
power to control and exploit another human and his labour power to enjoy the fruits
of labour. Tus, in the primal family the father imposed an organization of labour
whereby his wives, children, slaves and animals were his property and laboured
for him. Tis basic primary division of labour, based on exploitation and driven
by property accumulation, characterizes the historically evolving and expanding
relations of production within and between families, tribes and societies. Hence
societies are divided by way of nature along class lines between the exploitative
organizers of labour and the exploited labouring classes. Material exploitation is the
main generator of the dialectic evolution of human history.
Te dialectic expansive evolution of modes of production: Troughout human
history people have produced their means of subsistence in dierent ways. Every
mode of production consists of the forces of production, that is, the people involved
in the production process of a societys means of subsistence; the means of production,
meaning the machinery, animals and raw materials involved in the production
process; and the relations of production that exist within the forces of production
and between them and the means of production. Tese relations of production,
by way of nature, are based on exploitation. Every mode of production, divided
as it is along class lines, is, according to the premise of the dialectic evolution of
human history, the thesis whose seeds of destruction stem from the exploited
classes. Material changes that impede societys capability to provide its people
with the necessary means of subsistence (such as demographic growth or lack of
raw materials) lead to an intensication of exploitation of the lower classes and to
the growing demand by the latter to change societys mode of production. As such
changes accumulate and exploitation intensies, the exploited classes develop a
revolutionary class consciousness that is an expression of the antithesis to the initial
increasingly repressive state of aairs. Tis eventually leads to a revolution carried
out by the exploited classes and against the exploiting classes, culminating in a new
synthesis that brings about a new mode of production (a new thesis), which, by
the way of nature, is exploitative and carries its own seeds of destruction within
the newly formed exploited classes. Since humanity is in a constant process of
demographic expansion and in need of more means of subsistence, relations between
tribes, societies and peoples evolve. Tese relations lead to the gradual expansion of
the production process so that more and more forces and means of production are
interrelated and involved in the process of production.
Base structure, superstructure and dialectic materialism: Every mode of production
is determined by the material processes of production. Tese processes comprise
the base structure of each mode of production. From this base structure stems a
superstructure, which is comprised of the dierent ways society is organized so
that it maintains and reproduces the basic structure of the production of its means
of subsistence. Te superstructure includes the dierent institutions and world-
views or ideologies needed for the regulation of such task. Tis is done by way of
force (the police, the courts, etc.) and by way of persuasion (ideology). Terefore,
according to Marxism, the superstructure is dependent upon the base structure
and its sole function is to regulate and facilitate the base structures process of the
production of societys means of subsistence. Hence, in line with the premise of
dialectic materialism that change occurs only on the level of the material existence of
humans, which nds expression in their consciousness (and not vice versa as idealists
would have it), societal change can stem only from the level of the material base
structure where exploitation and class struggle take place, and it nds expression
on the level of the superstructure. In other words, change cannot stem from the
superstructural organization and ideologies in society, since these are determined by
the base structure and are a mere expression and consequent regulation of the real
processes of change. Only material changes on the base structure engender changes
in the superstructure of society and not vice versa.
Superstructure and class struggle: Te comprehension of the superstructure as
dependent upon and aimed at the maintenance and continuation of the exploitative
base structure means that the superstructure primarily serves the interests of the
exploiting classes, since they are the ones materially beneting from this state of
aairs. Te exploited classes on the other hand, have no real material interest in the
continuation of their material exploitation. Terefore, real change can only come
from the exploited classes and one of their main targets will be the superstructural
institutions and ideologies that serve the exploiters interests.
Te dialectic and expanding evolution of the class struggle: In his study of human
history, Marx claimed to have detected a succession of class struggles that brought
about changes from one dominant mode of production to another. Te major
successive struggles were between slaves and masters, vassals and feudal lords, and
proletarians and capitalists. Marx maintained that the brutal, dynamically expanding
and alienated capitalist mode of production that replaced by necessity the previous
feudalist mode of production, will lead necessarily to an egalitarian communist
mode of production involving all of humanity in a process of production devoid of
exploitation, thus ending the long bloody history of class struggles. Te following
brief description of the shift from feudalism to capitalism and on to communism
instantiates the Marxist theses on the dialectic materialist evolution of human
history.
From feudalism to capitalism: Te feudal mode of production was primarily
agrarian and dominated by the feudal landed aristocracy, which exploited the vassals,
who were given land by the feudal lord in return for heavy taxation and allegiance
(homage). In time, mostly following epidemics and scarcity, trade developed while
many hungry vassals escaped their feudal lords and gathered around trade markets.
Tese mass gatherings of hungry people lacking any trade or know-how presup-
posed
6
the invention of industrial machines, since these could be operated by
unskilled workers and allowed for cheap mass production of goods. Industrialization
quickened the development of large cities, which threatened the feudal agrarian
mode of production. Tis process was headed by a new revolutionary class of ex-
ploiters, the bourgeoisie (city people) or capitalists, who owned the new means of
production and exploited the proletariat, a newly formed exploited class comprised
of those who worked on the capitalist-owned industrial machines for a minimal
wage. Te capitalist mode of production engendered the superstructural state
apparatus, an organizing tool able to cope with and regulate the massive, brutal and
complex nature of capitalist production. It also engendered the dominant capitalist
superstructural liberal ideology that each man is free as an individual. According
to Marxism, this ideology primarily functions to safeguard the exploiters personal
capital while persuading the exploited masses that their destiny is in their own
hands as free individuals, irrespective of their class positioning within the system of
production. Tis ideology is illusory and allows for the legitimizing of the exploiting
classes material success and the detachment of the exploited individual from his
class allegiance and solidarity, by its focus upon his/her personal responsibility
for the wretched situation they are in, while oering them a far-fetched promise
of personal freedom to gain material success. Tis new capitalist mode of mass
production is based on an unprecedented degree of segregation between the capitalist
and the proletarian, mostly due to the wage system, which frees the parties from
any mutual attachment or responsibility. Tis allows for an increasingly brutal form
of exploitation along with the development of an alienated and false consciousness
among and between the class-divided forces of production. Hence, the proletarian
is bound to the capitalist-owned means of production, is concerned with surviving
from day to day and is isolated from other proletarians. Terefore, proletarians are
alienated from the products of their labour and the real forces that oppress them
appear to them to be abstract and beyond their control. Te capitalist, in turn, does
not labour and receives the nished products of the proletarians labour. Terefore,
capitalists value these products in the abstract, that is, in terms of their exchange
value (i.e. their money worth) rather than in terms of their value for the real needs
and uses of humans. Tis situation, whereby the products of labour are abstractly
perceived as separated from the labour process, leads to the false, alienating and
inverted conception of all human faculties (senses, emotions and thoughts) as
objective commodities independent and detached from the process of production.
In fact, however, it is this specic process of production that generates such false
consciousness.
From capitalism to communism: Marx predicted that the capitalist mode of
production would lead by necessity to a communist revolution. He estimated that
the logic of capitalist production, based on the brutal dynamics of a mass mode of
production driven by a relentless competition to accumulate capital, necessitated
ever-growing exploited forces and means of production. Tis would lead to the
rapid expansion and eventual globalization of the capitalist mode of production
so that all of humanity would be incorporated into the process, while most of
humanity would sink to the ranks of the exploited, given the constant deterioration
of their means of subsistence. Tis expected deterioration, he argued, would be
due to the relentless accumulation of capital and the ownership of the means of
production by a constantly shrinking class of exploiters. Marx saw in the European
imperial expansion into the African, American and Asian continents and the harsh
exploitation of their material resources and peoples evidence of the capitalist mode
of productions brutal dynamics and eventual globalization. Several contemporary
Marxists view todays globalization processes whereby the First World exploits the
Tird World as further evidence of this process. According to Marx, this capitalist-
determined globalization, which will generate a growing disproportion in the class
division of labour and ever-harsher exploitation, will forge a revolutionary class
consciousness among the proletariat and the classes sinking to its ranks once they
realize they have nothing to lose but their chains. Tis will lead to a worldwide
revolution that will destroy the social order, eradicate private capital and institute
a truly egalitarian society. It will lead humanity to comprehend that the process of
production does not stem from forces beyond their control but is the result of their
shared power. Hence, humanitys wilful, conscious cooperation will exchange the
previously imposed interrelation. Te revolution will dissolve the alienation within
the forces of production and between them and the products of their labour, leading
to a complete emancipation of all the human qualities and senses . . . because these
qualities and senses have become human, from the subjective as well as the objective
point of view. Te eye has become a human eye when its object has become a human,
social object, created by man and destined for him.
7
1.2 MARXISM AND FILM
From the Marxist conception of dialectic materialism and of base and superstructure
the Marxist comprehension of lm can be derived.
Dialectic materialism and lm: Dialectic materialism perceives humans as being
in a constant process of material dialectic interaction and change of themselves and
of the world of which they are part, changing this world through labour to satisfy
their needs. Hence lmmaking can also be perceived as such a process of production
whereby from its subject matter or content stems its formal dialectical elaboration.
Moreover, according to Marxists, lmmaking should strive to conate theory and
praxis so as to overcome the exploitative division of labour and its attendant alienated
false consciousness.
Base structure, superstructure and dialectic montage lmmaking: Te Marxist
hierarchical division, whereby the material base structure determines the nature
and function of the organizational or ideological superstructure, positions lm
on the level of the superstructure as an ideological apparatus. Te lm apparatus,
which is symptomatic of the base structure, functions to forge an ideological world-
view that will persuade people to conform to societys mode of production. Te
1917 Bolshevik communist revolution, which led to the establishment of the
Soviet Union under the leadership of Vladimir I. Lenin, engendered the cultural
constructivist revolutionary movement in the arts and in lm. Following Lenins
dictum that lm was the most important art, Marxist lmmakers and lm theorists
of the period, who saw themselves as working within a society undergoing a change
in its mode of production towards communism, rallied to promote through dialectic
montage based lmmaking a communist revolutionary mentality. Let us consider
the guration of dialectic montage in the theories and lms of two leading Russian
revolutionary lmmakers: Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov.
1.2.1 Sergei M. Eisenstein: Dialectic Film Montage as Conict. Te basic idea informing all of
Eisensteins theory and lmmaking was conict. He considered conict to be the
mental and artistic reection of the process of dialectic materialism. He therefore
developed a theory of montage according to which the fashioning of each lm
shot and of the joining of shots in editing has to be based on conict, that is, on
opposition, contradiction or collision. He likened the conict between joined
shots to the collision between thesis and antithesis and their resulting fusion in the
spectators mind to synthesis. Eisensteins belief in the ontological truth of dialectic
materialism led him to believe that he could forge a revolutionary mentality in his
spectators minds if they processed his lms through conict. Moreover, Eisenstein
wanted to control the spectators and direct them towards his goal through conictual
montage congurations that would inuence them physiologically, psychologically
and intellectually.
Based on this, Eisenstein mounted his shots and joined them along various formal
and thematic conicting parameters, which included graphic conicts (straight-line
shots juxtaposed to diagonal ones), lighting conicts (lightened versus darkened
shots), conicts in the direction and rhythm of motion (right-to-left movement cut
to left-to-right movement), camera distance conicts (long shots cut to close-ups),
camera angle conicts (high angle cut to low angle), shot crowding (empty-looking
shots cut to crowded ones). Trough these juxtapositions of brief shots, which had a
physiological eect on viewers, Eisenstein forged emotions and ideas.
8
Eisenstein also used contrasting shots taken from dierent locations to meta-
phorically create psychological eects and intellectual ideas. Tis can be seen, for
example, in his likening the massacre of striking proletarians to the butchering of an
ox (Strike, 1925), or in the ridiculing of the megalomaniac aspirations of Kerensky
(the prime minister of the temporary government established in Russia after the
ousting of the Tsar and before the Bolshevik revolution), by likening him through
conictual montage compositions to a shining mechanical peacock spreading his
metallic feathers (October, 1929).
Te dynamic conictual character of Eisensteins lms was aimed at encourag-
ing spectators to feel that the reality alluded to in the lms was not given but con-
structed by the shared power of humans. He therefore objected to mimetic realist
Montage of Conicts in Battleship Potemkin
Eisensteins most comprehensive and effective use of
conict montage can be found in the Odessa steps
sequence of his lm Battleship Potemkin (1927). The
scene consists of a dazzling series of conicting shots
and shot editing that powerfully convey the horror that
goes on in the scene where the Tsars soldiers step
in formation down the Odessa stairs while shooting
and dispersing a protesting rally of citizens. Notable
is the graphic composition of a high-angled tracking
shot showing only the soldiers aligned and relentless
marching feet descending down the stairs (whose
horizontal layout is broken by the vertical motion
of the soldiers boots), undisturbed by their stepping
over the body of one of the citizens they shot dead,
whose graphic unbalanced positioning across several
stairs breaks the shots orderly graphic alignment of
camera movement, marching feet and stairs. Powerful
also is the series of shots showing a mother carrying
styled lms or to the American lms based on an illusory continuity and centred
upon single heroic individuals. For him, the mere mimesis of reality, the illusion of
continuity, and the focus upon individual heroes forge an anti-revolutionary false
consciousness according to which the world is given, individuals reign and this order
has been established by forces beyond human power. Eisenstein vehemently objected
to formalism in lm.
9
His conictual montage was aimed at nding the optimal
dynamic rhythm to convey the lms revolutionary content by sweeping over the
spectator physiologically, emotionally and intellectually. Mismatches between the
montage and the forged subject matter or the spectators psyche, engendered in his
view a formalist, detached experience of the lm from without.
As can be seen, the dominant concern in Eisensteins lms and theories was
his striving to control the spectators psyche. Tis aim seems sometimes to be con-
tradicted by his sporadic mention that dialectic montage forges the spectators mind
democratically since he constructs the lm out of opposing views.
10
However,
greater than Eisensteins belief in the spectators freedom of interpretation was his
belief in his power to condition their reactions through lm. Evidence for this can be
found in his interest in Pavlovian behavioural psychology according to which human
behaviour is a result of conditioned reexes, and in the evaluation of his cinematic
montage experiments almost exclusively in terms of their aective inuence on
spectators. Hence, in a discussion of the dynamization of the subject, not in the
eld of space but of psychology, i.e. emotion Eisenstein described his own harp
sequence in October (where shots of those who tried to compromise with reactionary
forces are intercut with shots of hands playing harps), as a pathological decay . . . a
purely literary parallelism that by no means dynamized the subject matter.
11
Tis
her dead son in her arms as she ascends the stairs
alone to face the descending soldiers until she is also
shot dead by them. This sequence powerfully conveys
the mothers agony, evoking pity for her and hatred
towards the machine like descending soldiers due to
its montage editing. Hence, these emotional effects are
achieved through the conictual arrangement of the
shots, which cut back and forth from the descending
soldiers moving left to right to the ascending mother
moving right to left. This alternation, which opposes the
shots movement (up vs down; right vs left) and their
guration (many white uniformed soldiers vs one black
dressed woman), also alternates shot distance and angle
by cutting from long shots of the soldiers to extreme
close-ups of the mothers face and from high-angled
shots of the soldiers feet to low-angled shots of their
raised ries as they shoot the mother, culminating in a
close-up of the bullet-wound in her eye.
Montage of Conicts in Battleship Potemkin
dominant concern can already be seen in Eisensteins early writings on lm where he
values cinematic attractions over thematic concerns, oering to forge such attractions
so that they lead the spectator in the direction desired by the director. No wonder
that Eisensteins lms were particularly favoured by Goebbels, the Nazi regimes
propaganda minister, who asked his lmmakers to produce a Nazi Potemkin.
12
1.2.2 Dziga Vertov: The Dialectics of Film-facts and Rhythmic Intervals. Vertovs neologisms
kinoks, kinoglaz (lm-eye)
13
and kinopravda (lm-truth) were used by him to
describe his lmmaking as a dialectic interaction between lmmaker, lm technique
and material social life, in order to conduct a communist decoding of reality.
14
In
Vertovs view, such decoding had to derive from Marxisms perception of humans
as being in a constant dialectic process of change (of both themselves and the
world of which they are part) through their labour and its derived types of social
interactions. Moreover, the lmmaking process had to conate theory and praxis
so as to overcome the exploitative division of labour and its attendant alienated
and false consciousness. Without such understanding it is dicult to comprehend
Vertovs lms. It informs his whole cinematic process of production.
Vertovs deciphering project led him to insist on the exclusive use of documentary
shots or lm facts as he called them, as well as on lming life unawares. Tis
was derived from his belief that only in documentary shots of real-life situations in
revolutionary societies can the revelation of truth be carried out. In this he followed
Marx and Engels, who wrote that the turning of history into world history is not
indeed a mere abstract act on the part of the self-consciousness, the world spirit or
A Communist Decoding of Reality in Man with a
Movie Camera
Vertovs themes derived from his commitment to a
communist decoding of reality, as can be seen in his
most comprehensive lm, Man with a Movie Camera.
In it, Vertov wanted to decipher the movement and
direction of history in the surface appearance of the
social life of a city, primarily through the rhythmic
interrelation of the labouring processes he documented
and their relation to various other aspects of social
life. He wanted to show in this way how Soviet society
in his time, despite some remnants of the old order,
was harmoniously and collectively producing its means
of subsistence. The harmony between workers and their
machinery is shown throughout the lm in various
sequences compiled of rhythmically accelerating shots
of different machine wheels rotating, superimposed with
shots of skilled workers happily operating the machines.
The lm also interrelates shots of heavy industry (e.g.
electric plants, coal mines) with light industry (e.g.
of any other metaphysical specter, but a quiet material, empirically veriable act, an
act the proof of which every individual furnishes as he comes and goes, eats, drinks
and clothes himself .
15
Vertov drew the line between lm fact and lm ction as
the rst dierentiation between truth and falsehood in lm. He wrote, We engage
directly in the study of the phenomena of life that surrounds us. We hold the ability
to show and elucidate life as it is, considerably higher than the occasionally diverting
doll games that people call theatre, cinema, etc. . . . and later, Stupefaction and
suggestion the art dramas basic means of inuence relate to that of religion and
enable it for a time to maintain a man in an excited unconscious state . . . Away with
the fragrant veil of kisses, murders, doves, and sleight of hand!
16
Vertov constantly
compared the ction lm to witchcraft and drugs since for him ction was nothing
but a reection of ideologies whose function was to turn the spectator away from
his awareness of the real processes of production and from truth.
17
He argued that
the use of lm to imitate life through ction was an anti-revolutionary violation
of real life. He therefore particularly disliked Eisensteins ctional re-creation of
events through documentary strategies, and called for the allocation of funds to
documentary rather than ctional lms. In shooting, Vertov preferred the use of
candid cameras in places where his presence was unnoticed (working places, battle
grounds, busy streets) and to position his cine-camera over, under or underneath
the objects photographed (as when he dug himself in a hole to shoot a rushing
train from below). Only in such manner, he believed, can the lmmaker make the
invisible visible, the unclear clear, the hidden manifest, the disguised overt, the acted
nonacted; making falsehood into truth.
18
Vertov argued, however, that his inductive
cigarette packing, weaving wheels in motion) and with
the everyday hustle and bustle of a big city (e.g. trams,
buses and pedestrians rushing around), conveying the
idea that the various activities simultaneously occurring
in different places are all part of the interdependent
material fabric of social life. He also interrelated this
social fabric to natures course by correlating the cycle
of production with the cycle of life (showing births
and deaths) and the cycle of a day (the lms passage
from morning to evening corresponds to the passage of
people from work to leisure). Within this process Vertov
inserted the lm worker as he operates his means of
production (camera, editing table) aimed not only at
deciphering the social fabric but also at inculcating a
communal, classless mentality.
A Communist Decoding of Reality in The Man with a Movie
Camera
approach could bring out the truth in the raw lm facts only if it discovered the
wider, real material dialectical processes forging each isolated lm-fact shot. He
thought that these processes could be unearthed through the lm editors search and
discovery of the precise dialectical rhythmic interval needed for the interrelation
of the lm-fact shots, to nd amidst all these mutual reactions, these mutual
attractions and repulsions of shots, the most expedient itinerary for the eye of the
viewer, to reduce this multitude of intervals (the movements between shots) to a
simple visual equation, a visual formula expressing the basic theme of the lm-object
in the best way.
19
Vertov believed that the rhythm revealed by the editor in his
shot juxtapositions embedded the forces with which societys mode of production
determines the surface photographed manifestation of social life.
20
In a way, the lm apparatus was for Vertov a true extension of the cognitive and
revelatory power of the human senses. Tis was so because he believed in Marxs
prediction that following the communist revolution (as he thought was the case
in the Soviet Union) the alienated interaction between humans and machinery is
changing into a productive and creative interaction, and that the revolutionary
process is freeing the human senses, turning them theoretical in practice. Tat is
why he constantly superimposed the human eye over the camera lenses. Tat is also
why he depicted his own labouring process within the lm in its interrelation to
other work processes.
Te dialectic conation of man and his tools of labour emblematizing the
supersession of their former alienation, found expression also in Vertovs conation
of planning and production (of theory and praxis). Tis was aimed at eacing
the exploitative division of labour and deriving form from matter rather than
extraneously imposing form over content the way formalists suggested. Hence he
constantly emphasized the need to organize, order and train lm workers to the
open-ended tasks at hand, as opposed to the precession of the shooting script in the
production of the ction lm. However, since the themes he chose for his lms
were also predetermined and since much information was gathered before shooting,
Vertov expanded the notion of documentation to all aspects of the production
process, to achieve simultaneity between the various stages of production.
Vertovs objection to work according to pre-planned scripts made it dicult for
him to make lms after Lenins death and Stalins ascent to power. Vertov criticized
the growing demand to make lms based on scripts that could be supervised by
the party apparatus, rightly seeing this as a sign of the bureaucratization of the lm
industry and of the Soviet Union in general, a trend which Vertovs open-ended
lmmaking approach to social life processes could not cope with. Vertovs fears
regarding the ctionalization of social life materialized in the rise to dominance of
the cultural policy of socialist realism under the Stalinist regime. Tis doctrine,
as dened by Gorki, Zhdanov and Stalin, demanded that artists oer a didactic,
easily understood and optimistic picture of socialist reality and the development of
the communist revolution. Its translation into practice generated conventional non-
dialectic techniques of realist storytelling, depicting social struggles carried out by
strong proletarian heroes. One of its most salient proponents was Gyrgy Lukcs,
whose views in favour of socialist realism and against experimental art forms were
heavily criticized by First World neo-Marxists, particularly by Bertolt Brecht. Te
emergence of neo-Marxism in the capitalist First World and its approach to dialectic
lm montage is our next concern.
2 DECONSTRUCTIVE DIALECTIC
FILM MONTAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF
NEO-MARXISM
Te debate between proponents of socialist realism in the Soviet bloc and neo-
Marxists in the capitalist First World helped forge the latters recognition of the
need to support the avant-garde and experimental trends in artistic production,
vis--vis what they perceived as the stiening formalization of revolutionary art in
the Soviet bloc. However, most neo-Marxists also had reservations regarding the
practice of a formalist apolitical artistic experimentation in the capitalist world,
complementing in their view the widespread popular cultural products that reected
and ideologically promoted the capitalist mode of production. Tey also recognized
a need to view artistic products and their reception in light of psychological and
ideological theories. Tese were used to explain what they perceived as a reection
of a cognitive freezing in capitalist countries, impeding the progressive revolutionary
developments that should have stemmed from changes in capitalisms base structure.
Whereas Marxism viewed superstructural and mental processes as being dependent
upon, and determined by, the material base structure of society, implying that
changes stem from the base structure and not the other way around, neo-Marxists
developed a comprehension of the superstructural organization and ideologies of the
capitalist mode of production as having an autonomous power eectively to block
changes in the base structure. Tis is the cardinal divide between Marxism and neo-
Marxism. Moreover, in viewing the superstructure of capitalism as overwhelmingly
being in the service of the exploiting classes, neo-Marxists called for its deconstruction
so as to defrost its powerful blocking of revolutionary trends. In the area of cultural
production in general and in lm in particular the constructivist thrust evident in the
dialectic montage based lms of Soviet revolutionary Marxists, gradually shifted to
a neo-Marxist deconstructive approach that called for the use of dialectic montage
strategies to lay bare and subvert the dominant capitalist ideological manipulation
of the lm medium. Te rst indication of this shift is evident in Walter Benjamins
theses on lm, as the following reading of his theses suggests.
2.1 DECONSTRUCTING FILMS FAKE AURA
In Te Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,
21
Benjamin oered
an interesting thesis on emergent trends in artistic production following the advent
of the lm medium. Adhering to Marxism, Benjamin considered these trends to
be superstructural symptoms of revolutionary sentiments brought forth by crises
in capitalisms base structure. Written in 1930s Germany, Benjamin considered
the rise of fascism and Nazism to be the extreme superstructural expression of the
capitalist mode of productions attempt to maintain the relations of property in a
society on the brink of revolution. He explained that capitalism brings forth an
accelerated development of technology that oers means of production capable
of satisfying the needs of the exploited masses. However, these technological dev-
elopments do not serve the demographically growing masses but rather intensify
their exploitation by those owning the means of production. Tis situation
generates a revolutionary demand on the part of the masses to change the rela-
tions of property. It was in response to this volatile situation that fascism aroused
and tried to channel the masses revolutionary anger to serve its own interests: it
enlisted the arts to beautify fascist politics and channelled the masses to war so as
to get rid of their excess military technology and what they perceived as expedient
human surpluses. As an emergent neo-Marxist, Benjamin considered some of the
superstructural artistic trends to autonomously and dangerously serve and support
fascist politics.
In tracing the history of society and art, Benjamin contended that the rise to
dominance of the capitalist mode of production in the sixteenth century (which
placed the entrepreneurs and capitalists as the new exploiting classes) found
superstructural ideological expression in the redenition of the individual as unique,
and in the recontextualization of art from an earlier religious ritualistic context to
a secular ritualistic one centred on beauty, the unique artist and on art as valuable
private property. However, the emergence of powerful revolutionary masses following
the technological advances in capitalism placed the individual and the arts within
the political context of the mass society. Tis new contextualization of the individual
found superstructural expression, for example, in the development of statistics, a
discipline aimed at predicting trends among the masses and implying a shift in the
conception of the individual from their being unique (if rich) or meaningless (if
poor), to their being meaningful as statistical numbers in a mass. Tis new mass
political context also presupposed and propelled the invention of lm, a new art
form based on mechanical reproduction and betting the new mass society. Tis was
because the lm, due to its power of reproduction, could be easily distributed and
presented to the masses, who now demanded it, whereas the singular and unique
work of art couldnt reach them. However, argued Benjamin, this new reproducible
art form changed the whole conception of art. He explained this change by adhering
to the Marxist idea of the determination of the superstructure by the material base.
Hence, the reproducibility of lm rendered meaningless the notion of the material
original, which was the founding concept in the evaluation of the non-reproducible
work of art. (It is a contradiction in terms to speak of an original copy.) According
to Benjamin, up until the age of mechanical reproduction in art, the work of arts
unique material existence at a certain time and place was the basis for its conception
and its authority. Values such as originality, creativity, eternity, genius and tradition,
which together built the superstructural notion of a work of arts aura (dened as an
un-crossable distance no matter how close you get), collapsed once the material base
founding this aura collapsed. For Benjamin, attempts to adhere to these outdated
values in the age of mechanical reproduction were not only faked, but, as will be
seen below, dangerous.
Benjamin found evidence of the outdating of auratic values in dierent aspects
of the lm medium. Hence, the lm actors performance is not in front of a live
audience as is that of the stage actor. Moreover, his acting is non-continuous and
determined by the needs of production rather than by the continuous logic of the
live staged play. Tus, the real aura engulng the stage actor and stemming from
his singular, continuous performance in front of a live, palpable audience is lost or
faked in the fabricated performance of the lm actor. Likewise, Benjamin compared
the cinematographer to the surgeon in their lack of aura, and dierentiated them
from the painter whose aura he likened to that of a witch-doctor. Tis, he claimed,
is because cinematographers, like surgeons, destroy their own and their subjects
aura in their crossing the auratic distance between them through their analytic,
objectifying invasion, cutting and editing of their subject. Painters, on the other
hand, like witch-doctors, work from a distance and their authoritative aura is based
upon their physical distance from their subject.
In his view, the perception of the reproducible art of lm also diered from
that of the unique work of art. Te latter pulls the viewer towards it because of
its authoritative unique existence in a certain time and place, and its appreciation
is based on detached meditative contemplation derived from such authority. Te
reproducible lm, however, lacks a unique singular existence and therefore loses its
authority and rushes towards the viewer, who often perceives it absent-mindedly.
Also, Benjamin contended that the historical depth stemming from the unique
work of art was attened in the reproducible lm due to its being a copy with no
original and its potential for projection at any time and space.
Hence, the characteristics of the lm medium freedom from time and space
constraints, instantaneousness, multiplicity and lack of authority bet the age of
the masses on the verge of revolution, who strive for freedom and equality.
However, Benjamin feared that the mass-political context leading to the emerg-
ence of lm, as well as the mediums peculiar and specic characteristics might fall
prey (against the will of the masses and lm specicity) to political movements that
object to the masses interest in changing the relations of property. According to
Benjamin, the widespread notion of art for arts sake, which evolved following the
crisis in the arts brought about by lm, was inadvertently a dangerous supporter
of such political forces, particularly of fascist politics. Tis was because the art for
arts sake profession that art is devoid of any sociopolitical context was unaware of
the compulsive political context in which art found itself in the age of mechanical
reproduction and the mass society. Terefore such a view of art not only encouraged
political disengagement that aided the interests of those who wanted to divert the
masses away from political action, but ultimately ended up serving fascism. Tis was
because this perception catered to the fascist interest in enlisting the arts to oer the
masses a way to express their frustration without serving their interest in changing
the relations of property. Fascism did so by enlisting the values of auratic art genius,
eternity, originality (values that were outdated with the advent of reproducible art)
to beautify its brutal politics. Fascism spuriously related these auratic values to
entities like race and leader through their beautication in fabricated reproductions.
Fascisms aim was to devoid the masses of what lm technology allowed: to represent
themselves and their interests. Instead, it fabricated a fake beautifying aura of a
total social order where the original people parade before the genial fascist leader.
Moreover, by particularly beautifying an eternal war, fascism channelled the
revolutionary aspirations of the masses towards their self-destruction.
Hitlers Fake Aura in Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will
Leni Riefenstahls Nazi propaganda lm Triumph of
the Will (1935) is an emblematic expression of the
aesthetization of politics practised by fascism. The lm,
documenting the Nazi party convention in Nuremberg
in 1934, repeatedly shows the orderly military march
of the Nazi legions along streets populated by large
cheering crowds. These shots are intercut with repeated
empowering low-angled images of Hitler as he
As against these trends Benjamin oered vague suggestions concerning the use of
lm for purposes that would serve the true revolutionary aspirations of the exploited
masses and would deconstruct the auratic fabrications of fascist lmmaking.
Hence, for Benjamin, the cine-cameras capability to document reality objectively
and analytically, along with its power to distribute these images on a large scale,
allowed for the representation of the life of the masses and of their surroundings. In
such ways lm could help the masses get acquainted with each other and with their
life constraints, while also showing them points at which such constraints could
be overcome. He attributed this to the lm mediums capacity to explore reality
through slow or fast motion, which he compared to psychoanalysiss revelation of
the human unconscious or to the surgeons scalpel operation on the human body.
Like Vertovs belief in the lm-eye (see p. 78), Benjamin believed that lms, in their
being unconned to a single place and time, could reveal processes hidden from the
human eye.
Benjamin also suggested that lm should be used to train the masses cognitive
abilities so that their awareness is sharpened, preparing them to face the dangers of
the complex and volatile life in the age of mechanical reproduction. He oered to
exchange the outdated auratic art paradigm of perception through contemplative
immersion, with the old architectural paradigm of absent-minded tactile perception
through skilful habitual use. Film, by its nature, conducted tactile assaults on the
viewer due to its constant jumps in camera point of view, angle, time and location.
Tis constant change could raise the viewers awareness in face of these shocking
attacks. Moreover, through its tactile attacks, lm could train the masses to develop
habits that could free their minds to face further challenges (as when you drive a
car, where you habitually perform complex operations while freeing your mind for
further activities).
Benjamins position implied that lm should enhance its jumpy nature to be
dialectically confronted by an aware viewer, and not yield to the practice of fabricated
auratic lms that strive to ease the lm transitions and overwhelm their audiences.
enthusiastically preaches to the ordered legions facing
him, or as he shakes the hands of cheering crowds in
the streets. Thus the lm centres the cheering crowds
and the legions around Hitlers charismatically fabricated
image, the same crowds and legions he will soon lead
outside the lm, in reality, to an atrocious war.
Hitlers Fake Aura in Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will
In this, Benjamins position resembles Eisensteins conictual montage theory,
although his aim was not to control the viewers mind (which is what Eisenstein
wanted in his lm-st approach) but to enhance their awareness to the machinations
of the lm apparatus.
Benjamins theses translocated Marxist theories of lm to the capitalist First
World. In the process, these theories underwent changes due to the fact that theses
about the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a
classless society would have less bearing . . . than theses about the developmental
tendencies of art under present conditions of production.
22
Benjamin, like the revolutionary Russian lmmakers, viewed lm as a super-
structural ideological expression of changes in the base structure, whose function
is to forge a revolutionary consciousness in a society on the verge of revolution.
He also viewed the First World apolitical artistic avant-garde (art for arts sake)
as promoting anti-revolutionary ideological tendencies in the same way as earlier
Marxists criticized formalism in the arts.
23
Unlike them, however, he conceived art
as having the autonomous and eective power to ideologically interpret changes in
the base structure that may contradict the progressive march of history and halt or
even change its course.
Benjamins theses formed part of the growing focus of neo-Marxists in the First
World upon the functioning of ideologies and of art as ideology in society. Te notion
that ideologies may be autonomous from the material base had serious repercussions
for the materialism that founded Marxist theory. However, neo-Marxists found it
hard to cling to the Marxist idea that ideologies are a mere reection of changes in
the material base structure.
2.2 NEO-MARXISM AND IDEOLOGICAL APPARATUSES
A central concern of neo-Marxists in the capitalist First World was the apparent fail-
ure of Marxs prediction that a world proletarian revolution would occur by necessity,
given the relentless expansion of the brutal capitalist mode of production. Stalins
policy of the containment of socialism to the Soviet bloc and the growing strength
of capitalism in the First World led them to ponder on the reasons that impeded a
communist revolution in the First World. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist
jailed by the Fascists in 1926 where he remained for twenty years (almost until his
death), developed in his Letters from Prison
24
the idea that capitalisms survival derives
foremost from the superstructural cultural-political hegemony of the ruling classes.
No social order, he maintained, can survive without social legitimacy based upon
a wide social consent. He therefore reached the conclusion that capitalism persists
not because it is not materially exploitative or brutal but because the ruling classes
manage to persuade the ruled classes that the mode of production exploiting them
is natural and even desirable. In his view, changes in the base structure that should
lead to revolution do not nd expression in the superstructure because the cultural-
political hegemony of the ruling classes brainwashes the minds of the exploited
masses. A similar conclusion was reached by members of the Frankfurt School, whose
critical theory maintained that the widespread popular culture in the capitalist West
was a culture industry pumping capitalist ideologies into the heads of the exploited.
Tis neo-Marxist approach was developed into a solid and very inuential theory of
ideology during the 1960s by French philosopher Louis Althusser.
According to Althusser, Marxism undervalued the autonomous functioning of
ideologies and understood them like the . . . dream among writers before Freud,
25

that is, as a weightless reection of material changes. Terefore, Marxists wrongly
maintained that changes in the base structure lead by necessity to homologous
superstructural changes. In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,
26
Althusser
claimed that Marxism overlooked the functioning of the superstructure in thwarting
the revolutionary process and enabling the continuation of the capitalist mode of
production. He therefore set out to explain how this occurs. He reached the con-
clusion that this happens because of the superstructural state apparatus, which
coordinates between repressive state apparatuses and ideological ones. While repress-
ive apparatuses (police, army, censorship, courts, jails, etc.) maintain the social order
through force, ideological ones (the education system, the mass communication
system, the family institution, etc.) do so by persuasion. He maintained that without
eective ideological apparatuses the social order would collapse and revolution
would ensue, mostly because repression by force would intensify given the growing
unrest of the exploited masses. Terefore Althusser reached the conclusion that the
major factor thwarting revolution is the ideological state apparatus that persuades
the exploited masses that the mode of production exploiting them is right and
necessary. Hence, as long as these apparatuses are not deconstructed, there wont
be any need for the forceful repression that will hasten revolution. Having reached
this conclusion, Althusser searched for the mechanism by which ideologies persuade
people to operate against their material interests. He started by rejecting widespread
denitions of ideology, in particular the claim that it is a twisted representation of
reality. Hence people say of others that they represent reality to themselves in a
twisted manner or, often when speaking of their past, they say, I used to have a
twisted representation of reality but now I see things clearly. Why, he asked, would
people represent to themselves their reality in a twisted manner if they assume by
that very denition that reality can be represented in a straightforward manner?
His reply to this question was that these denitions of ideology fail because they
are based on the misleading presumption that people can choose to represent their
reality in a straightforward way. He therefore reached the conclusion that ideologies
are not chosen but given to people and that their persuasive power derives from the
illusion they give people that they have chosen to believe in the reality depicted by a
given ideology and that they are the ones constituting this ideological representation
of reality of their own free will. Hence, concluded Althusser, ideologies operate by
twisting the relation that people have to their reality, a twisting having to do with the
illusion of choice. Tis illusion is what allows for ideological persuasion since if people
perceive the ideology given to them as their own choice, they willingly submit to its
representation of reality and willingly perform the duties it imposes upon them.
According to Althusser, the factor through which people are manipulated into
choosing is the notion of their being subjects. Te concept of the subject, he said,
aptly has a double meaning: on the one hand, it refers to someone who is free to
choose and take decisions; while, on the other hand, it implies submission, the
state of being subjected to something or someone else (as when we speak of a kings
subjects). Hence, ideology operates by turning people into subjects. Tis is achieved
by ideologys appropriation of a persons selfhood. In fact, said Althusser, from the
moment we have selfhood we are always-already subjects of this or that ideology.
In order to explain the conation of subject and self Althusser relied on the theory
of selfhood developed by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
27
Lacan hypothesized
that a humans rst notion of self results from his/her seeing themselves reected in
other humans or, wherever available, in their mirror image. Hence, he argued that
between the ages of six and eighteen months, when human motor coordination
lags behind a well-developed sense of sight, the child identies his/her reection in
others or in mirrors as separate, independent, whole and coordinated. Te gap or
contradiction between this initial identication with our reected image and our
decient coordination, perceived as lack, is what determines our relation to selfhood
throughout our lives. Hence, we will strive throughout our lives to ll this felt gap
between our inner sense and the full image appearing in our outer self reection.
According to Lacan, this is also the basis for our imaginary identication with others.
Of particular importance for Althusser was that this initial sense of self is based upon
a reection in our minds of a detached image that does not correspond to our sensed
material referent. Althussers claim was that ideology, in its appealing to our selves,
reconstitutes in us the sense of this imaginary self and suggests that we can attain
fullness if, as free independent subjects, we choose to emulate the fuller ideal Subject
(with capital S) oered by an ideology. In turn, our identication with this imaginary
ideal Subject suggests that if we strive to see the world from its point of view we will
attain the desired fullness in our lives. In turning individuals into subjects through
their notion of selfhood, ideology performs a reversal whereby peoples material
existence becomes abstract while their ideological imaginary becomes their reality.
At this point Althusser asked what is this ideal Subject reected in a persons mind
and making him/her strive to be its replication? His answer to this question returned
the apparent abstract discussion of ideology to Marxist materialism. Althusser
claimed that the ideal Subject is nothing more than the sum of qualities and actions
needed to be performed by concrete individuals for a given mode of production to
operate optimally. In the capitalist mode of production these attributes are geared
towards the extraction of maximum prot for the owners of the means of production.
Hence, whenever an individual is involved in a certain apparatus of production (be
it an electric plant, a supermarket or a music concert), that apparatuss ideal Subject
begins, through the individuals notion of selfhood, to gure in the individuals
mind when he performs the apparatuss rituals and actions. Identifying with the
ideal Subject and its attendant promise of self-fullment leads the individual to help
the apparatus to maximize its prots through him/her. Tus, out of self-conviction
people cooperate willingly with the production mode extracting prot from them.
Usually, said Althusser, the ideological apparatus succeeds in subjecting individuals
to willingly cooperate. However, when the ideological apparatus fails (often because
individuals may be subject to a dierent ideology), the repressive apparatus comes to
the fore to put them back in place and to restore order.
Althusser went on to say that every repressive apparatus has an ideology. Hence,
the repressive army apparatus has an ideology aimed at persuading its targets to
perform willingly duties that are normally violently imposed, and the jail system
tries to persuade convicts that good behaviour is good for them. For example, if an
individual receives a letter addressed to him/her from the internal revenue service
calling him/her for assessment, the ideal tax-payer Subject starts to gure in his/her
mind. If the individual is not subject to a dierent, opposing ideology then he/she
will strive to be a good subject and emulate the ideal tax-payer Subject by organiz-
ing his/her bills, checking expense reports and, being sure of the benets that paying
revenues bring to society, he/she will willingly pay the dues imposed upon him/her.
If the internal revenue service ideology functions, that individual will feel that it is
out of his/her choice and power that the service is instituted.
Just as repressive apparatuses that operate mostly by force have a minor ideo-
logical dimension, so ideological apparatuses that operate mainly by persuasion
have a minor repressive dimension. Hence, the state educational ideological
apparatus has punitive measures in case pupils are not persuaded to study, while
the state communication ideological apparatus imposes censorship if its creative
subjects cross moral or political lines. In sum, ideology operates by turning
individuals into subjects, thus persuading them that it is out of their own free
choice that a given production mode operates. In such manner ideology twists the
relation individuals have to their real conditions of existence. Rather than viewing
their position in society as imposed upon them, they believe that they have chosen
to be there.
Furthermore, while dierent ideologies express the material interests of dierent
classes in a given mode of production, these are subsumed under the dominant
ideology expressing the interests of the ruling classes. Tis dominant ideology
constantly and through various means and venues portrays the picture of a reality
that serves the ruling classes. Tis picture of reality is adopted by the ruling classes,
but also, in its contradictions, by the ruled classes as well. In such manner the
exploited are led to believe that each one of them is responsible for his wretched
situation, has chosen it and even constitutes it by his own free will.
Tis conception, attributing to dominant ideological apparatuses a cardinal role
in the preservation of the capitalist mode of production, led Althusser to call for the
deconstruction of the reality portrayed by its ideologies through the deconstruction
of the processes constituting the subject in these dominant ideologies.
2.3 FILM AS AN IDEOLOGICAL APPARATUS AND DIALECTIC MONTAGE AS ITS
DECONSTRUCTION
Neo-Marxist lm theoreticians and lmmakers were highly inuenced by Althussers
theory of ideology. Viewing lm as an ideological apparatus, they tried to discover
how lms turn viewers into their subjects and hence persuade them not only
that the reality portrayed is a desired one they are invited to choose as their own,
but that this reality could not exist without their own constitution of the lm.
28

Jean Louis Baudry, for example, searched for the Ideological Eects of the Basic
Cinematographic Apparatus.
29
His claim was that the invention of lm derived from
modern capitalisms need to reinstate in people the illusion of their having control
over their own lives, an illusion needed for their willing cooperation with a mode of
production that in fact has stolen away any remains of such self-control. Hence he
found in the lm apparatus itself ideological eects that constitute a transcendental
subject willing to cooperate with the capitalist mode of production.
He argued that the lm-viewing situation encourages an idealist, non-material
version of reality by likening the viewers situation to that described by Plato in his
cave metaphor. According to Plato, peoples perception of reality resembles that of
chained prisoners sitting in a darkened cave and forced to watch on the wall facing
them projected images that are a mere degraded reection of the world of true ideas,
without their being able to turn around or leave the cave (except for the philosopher).
Tis astounding Platonic premonition of the lm-viewing situation was taken by
Baudry to elucidate his claim that lms encourage a vision of a reality whose essence
is spiritual and transcendental rather than material. He then went on to show how
the dierent components of the lm apparatus further constitute this transcen-
dental subject, persuading him/her to cooperate willingly with the capitalist mode
of production. Following others, he began by arguing that the camera lenses, based
as they were on the fteenth-century Renaissance invention of linear perspective
(an invention from the beginnings of the capitalist mode of production), adapted
the ideological eects of this invention to modern capitalism. Hence, Leon Battista
Albertis invention of linear perspective (perspectiva articialis) renders an illusion
of three-dimensionality by organizing the space of a painting within a rectangular
frame so that the overall line directions converge into one point, which he termed
the vanishing point. Te location of this point in the canvas converges with that of
the eye-level of a presumed average spectator from whose point of view the painting
is to be looked at. Tus, a spectator who assumes the position prescribed by the
painter whereby his/her eye overlays the paintings vanishing point, experiences the
full illusion of depth. According to Baudry, this deployment has a clear ideological
eect since, in ideological terms, the painting organizes a homogenous, centred and
hierarchically organized space that appears to emanate from one originating point
or to converge into it. Tis originating point is that of the paintings ideal viewing
Subject, whose point of view a concrete spectator assumes. In such manner the
perspective painting constitutes its spectator as subject: he is positioned at a certain
point that lets him experience himself as the point to which all the illusory deep
space deployed converges, or as the origin from which it emanates. Baudry went on
to claim that the cine-camera, based on linear perspective, enhances this ideological
eect since the cine-cameras point of view, which the viewer identies as his own,
can move over a continuous deep space. Tis continuous movement is achieved
according to Baudry by means of another ideological manipulation that exists in the
lm-strip projection speed. Hence, because of a limitation in human vision, beyond
a certain speed the viewers eye cannot perceive the lm strips discrete images,
leaving him no choice but to experience these in an apparent continuous ow. In
such manner the ideological subject constituted by the cine-camera and projector
is further transcendentalized. Tis subject assumes the unprecedented illusory
power to perceive as his own constitution a centred, homogenous and hierarchically
organized space that he/she can now control by oating over or across it.
30
Nevertheless, Baudry contended that editing the lm shots together carries a
potential subversion of the ideological eects of the camera lenses and the lm-strip
projection, since each shot transition may make the viewer aware of the fact that
the reality depicted is not under his control and that someone or something else
is changing the set-up. Tis potential subversion was, according to Baudry, what
motivated the evolution of continuous editing. In his view, continuous editing,
whose main function is to hide shifts in camera positioning from the viewers
attention, ends up reinforcing the lms ideological eects. In order to ground this
conclusion Baudry enlists the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl.
Husserl describes a thought process that can oer a viable explanation for the way
in which continuity editing consolidates the position of the viewer as ideological
subject. According to Husserl, since our sense data provide us with mere segments
of a sensed object at any given time (e.g. we cannot simultaneously see an objects
front and behind), we derive our sense of selfhood from the partial data provided
by our senses because something has to deduce the objects fullness as it appears in
our mind. Tat something, says Husserl, cannot but be our selfhood. Terefore,
concludes Husserl, the moment we constitute the object is the moment we constitute
our selves. Baudry used Husserls theory to explain how continuity editing, in its way
of chaining together the partial data provided by shot segments, reinforces rather
than subverts the viewers sense of selfhood by the ideological illusion that she
constitutes these lm segments into a whole. Tese ideological eects of the lm
apparatus, claimed Baudry, precede and enable the secondary manipulations of a
specic ideology in a given lm or the viewers identication with the lms stars. Te
conclusion reached by Baudry, and other Althusserian lm theorists and lmmakers,
was that there was a dire need to deconstruct the subject-positioning process of the
lm apparatus, so as to subvert its manipulation of viewers into a willing acceptance
of, and desire to emulate, the ideological reality screened before them. In their view,
this could be achieved primarily by the use of the non-continuous and conictual
strategies of dialectic montage to deconstruct the illusion of continuity, centredness
and coherence constructed by lms and constituting ideological subjects. Once the
viewer becomes aware of these manipulations through such deconstructing montage
Dialectic Deconstruction in the Films of Jean-Luc Godard
The lm director who outlined the cinematic paradigm
of neo-Marxist dialectic deconstructive montage is Jean-
Luc Godard, whose dictum if you want to say something
different you have to say it differently generated an
impressive body of work, including the lms Masculine/
Feminine (1966), Made in USA (1966), La Chinoise
(1967), 2 ou 3 choses que je sais delle/Two or Three
Things I Know About Her (1967) and Weekend (1968).
Godards lms constantly destroy character, narrative,
and temporal and spatial coherence. This is coupled with
a deconstructive analysis of dominant cinema styled shots
and sequences, laying bare their presumed ideological
manipulations of beauty and of human emotions. This is
often complemented with a voice-over offering Marxist
analyses of the social structure in the capitalist First
World and its resulting cinematic image of reality. For
instance, in a scene from La Chinoise (discussed in
formalist terms in Chapter 1) the characters add a
strategies, the lm lays bare its ideological manipulations and loses its ideological
power.
Stephen Heath,
31
for example, analysed such deconstruction in Nagisa Oshimas
lm Death by Hanging (1968). In this lm, Oshima lays bare through the lms
content the ideologically based procedures of the legal system while deconstructing its
continuity through dialectic montage, thus preventing the viewers falling prey to the
lm apparatuss ideological eects. Death by Hanging tells the story of R, a murderer
sentenced to death, who has lost his identity after surviving his execution. Since R
does not know who he is, he cannot be executed again until he regains his sense of
identity, for otherwise he cannot be held responsible. Te lm follows the attempts
of correction ocers to help R regain his identity so that he can be executed again.
Te lms problematization of the concept of the legal subject through Rs amnesia
destabilizes the viewers notion of identity. However, this destabilization is mainly
achieved through the diculty viewers nd in trying to unify and make coherent
the lms spatial, temporal and narrative deployment, which Oshima constantly
dismantles.
3 RECONSTRUCTIVE DIALECTIC FILM
MONTAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF
ANTI-COLONIALISM
Te neo-Marxist conception of ideology and of lm as ideology was harshly criticized
by Tird World Marxist oriented anti-colonialist theorists and lmmakers. Teir
critique was that because of their location in the heart of capitalisms developed
romantic musical score on a gramophone to accompany
the repetition of a conversation on the politics of
language they just had. In this scene, Godard not only
makes the viewers conscious of lm form and technique
as formalists would have it, but he primarily lays bare
how dominant cinema manipulates our emotions by
showing how a political conversation loses its explicit
meaning and changes into a romantic emotional sub-
textual interchange once the musical score is added.
In another shot, showing a symmetrically arranged
French bourgeois living room, a dialectically opposed
written grafti on the wall reads We need to ght
ambiguous words with clear images, thus deconstructing
the dominant cinemas manipulation of composition and
beauty to promote its world-view.
32
Dialectic Deconstruction in the Films of Godard
countries, neo-Marxists reached a theoretical and practical dead-end and failed to
identify the palpable revolutionary trends among the peoples of the Tird World. Te
neo-Marxist deconstructive approach led, in their view, to nothing but an ongoing
sense of frustration, expressed in uncommunicative lms aimed at the intellectual
elites and totally detached from the exploited masses. As against this, anti-colonialists
saw their underdeveloped societies as being on the verge of revolutions that might or
might not be communist, but which in any case should be advanced so as to liberate
their peoples from the racist, cultural and economic repression that the colonial or
neo-colonial regimes exercised in their exploitation of those called by Frantz Fanon
Te Wretched of the Earth.
33
Tey were strongly inuenced by Fanons anti-colonial theories. He unearthed
ethnic, national and racial concepts claiming that the Marxist focus on the material
analysis of a generalized human class struggle overlooked or dismissed the signicance
of such concepts to considerations of exploitation. Fanon emphasized the need for,
and legitimizing of, a colonized spontaneous revolutionary and liberating avenging
violence stemming from Tird World peoples wretched situation. Tis led him
often to position his non-essentialist yet politically functional constructions of race,
nation and culture over and above economic material determinants. As Fanon put
it, In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. Te cause is
the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are
rich. Tat is why the Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time
we have to do with the colonial problem.
34
However, this stretching often resulted
in the over-valuation of the cultural and racial dyads of East/West or Black/White
over the First/Tird or North/South world materialist economic dyads. Hence,
Anti-colonialism in Pontecorvos Battle of Algiers
An emblematic example of the power and fallacies of
the anti-colonial approach in lm can be found in
Gillo Pontecorvos highly acclaimed lm Battle of Algiers
(1964). The lm, which depicts the ultimately successful
anti-colonial independence struggle carried out by the
Algerian Front for National Liberation (FLN) against
the French settlers and army, offers a sweeping First
World war-documentary genre depiction of the violent
and bloody struggle that went on, while siding with
the Algerians. This is achieved by inverting the usual
guration of heroes and villains in the war-documentary
genre, guring the colonized Algerians as heroes and
the French settlers and army as villains. However, in its
inverted content but straightforward use of the genre,
and probably because of it, the lm fails to couch the
struggle within the framework of an economic-political
class struggle. Instead, it ends up focusing upon the
cultural and racial differences between colonized and
colonizers as grounds for its support of the Algerian
war of liberation. This comes through, for example, in
Fanons and other anti-colonial theories often implicitly supported nationalistic and
even racist anti-colonial or anti-white revolutionary trends, whose relation to the
Marxist materialist analysis of capitalism was poorly developed. As Fanon wrote,
Decolonization unies that people by the radical decision to remove from it its
heterogeneity and by unifying it on a national, sometimes racial, basis.
35
Fanons strategy called for the identication of revolutionary trends, the exploita-
tion of the revolutionary potential found in local myths and indigenous cultures so
as to better communicate with the exploited masses, and the incorporation of the
class struggle within the struggle for national liberation and independence.
Fanons inuence is evident in the 1960s wave of anti-colonialist lms coming
out of Tird World countries or dealing with the situation from such a view-point.
36

Most of these lms, each in its peculiar way and within its specic national con-
text, tried to channel the portrayal of the harsh living conditions of the poor and
their cultural myths towards revolution. Ousmane Sembenes Xala (1975), for
instance, gured an indigenous curse that causes sexual impotence called Xala as a
revolutionary agent. Xala is used to critique and punish a Senegalese political leader
who becomes an accomplice of First World neo-colonialism, and who uses the
bribes he receives from French ocials to gain nancial and sexual privileges from
the poor. Te Xala curse put upon him causes him sexual humiliation vis--vis the
second young wife he takes, leading to his rolling in the streets asking bystanders to
urinate on him so that he can get rid of the curse.
On the level of form, the anti-colonial lmmakers attempts to follow Fanon
and conate the essentially Marxist anti-nationalist class struggle with national
independence struggles, translated into a mixing of dialectically disjointed
a scene where three women belonging to the FLN are
making preparations to cross over into the French
part of the city of Algiers to plant bombs in different
civilian locations, as an act of retaliation for an earlier
bomb detonated by the French in the besieged Kasbah
(the Arab Quarter in the city). In the scene we see
the women in front of a mirror, shedding their veils,
cutting or dying their hair to look French and putting
on Western-looking dresses. The scene is based on a
dialectic montage editing of shots of the women taken
from different angles, accompanied by accelerating
Arab-style drumbeats. What transpires, however, in
this montage edited process of deconstruction and
reconstruction of the womens identity is the radically
different physiognomy of the women that still remains
accentuated after they disguise as French, hence
insinuating that the bloody national liberation struggle
stems from cultural and racial discrimination rather
than from economic-political exploitation.
37
Anti-Colonialism in Pontecorvos Battle of Algiers
audiovisuality and narrative with a contradictory trend aimed at reconstructing the
highly ecient and manipulative First World lm genres.
Tis is particularly evident in Glauber Rochas Brazilian lms. Rocha developed
the notion of a cinema of hunger, claiming that lms with poor production values
and disjointed audiovisuality homologously replicate the wretched life conditions
and confused mentality of the exploited poor. In his lm Anthony of the Dead
(1968), for example, he tells the story of a legendary professional killer, hired by a
landowner to eliminate messianically driven rebelling peasants, who ultimately turns
against the landowners. Te lm is an intentionally badly made rendition of an
American western (a genre popular in Brazil), using slow-paced disjointed sequences
guring symbolic gures representing dierent classes, whose acting and dialogues
are in quoted Brechtian style, and referencing popular mythical Brazilian gures
and indigenous rituals. However, Rochas use of the popular American western
genre and indigenous myths to articulate a revolutionary class struggle that will
presumably communicate with the exploited masses subverted his own intention.
By using the western genre in a Godardian deconstructive style, Rocha laid bare
the genres ideological manipulations but also destroyed the appeal of the lm to its
intended audience. Te lm was also somewhat misguided in its presentation of the
messianically driven peasants as doomed ignorant victims led by delirious leaders,
who need the violent intervention of a mercenary whose actions stem solely from a
desire for revenge against his former masters.
Postmodern Split Narrative in Lonzes Adaptation
Postmodernist levelling of different ideological positions
can be seen in the split narrative of Spike Lonzes
lm Adaptation (2002). The lm develops as a stream
of consciousness, disjointedly edited lm, telling the
story of Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) who is a
screenwriter repelled by the way he looks and extremely
unsure of himself. He has a twin brother, Donald, who
is his opposite. Donald is self-assured and when he
decides to become a screenwriter like his brother, he
comes out with a script loved by Charlies lm agent.
Whereas insecure, repelling Charlie is interested in a
non-eventful stream-of-consciousness lm like the one
the viewers are watching, Donald is interested in the
generic, causal, conventional development of a story,
with protagonists who evolve and change throughout
the lm following their overcoming of a difcult task
involving action, drama and tension. Charlie, contracted
to adapt a book into a lm gets lost in the labyrinth
4 DECENTRED DIALECTIC FILM MONTAGE:
POSTMODERNISM, POST-MARXISM,
POSTCOLONIALISM
Te ascent of postmodernism to cultural dominance during the 1980s challenged
neo-Marxist theories of deconstruction. Te attributes of the postmodern text
segmentation, character split, spatial and temporal decentring perceived by
1960s and 1970s neo-Marxists as revolutionary tropes leading to textual free-
dom and social equality, suddenly became the dominant trend in First World
capitalist cultural production. In the 1980s, post-Marxists began to realize that the
postmodern shattering of hierarchies and boundaries between high and low art, the
levelling of dierent styles and historical periods, and the understanding of the text
as an intersection of endless textual references, do not lead to more real freedom and
equality. Tey reached the conclusion that the cultural pluralism of the postmodern
text was not a progressive expression in the superstructure of changes in the base,
but rather a regressive superstructural expression of the base structure of globaliz-
ing capitalism. To paraphrase Walter Benjamins view on fascism, post-Marxists
view postmodernism as a new strategy to allow the masses cultural expression with-
out serving their real, material interests. Hence, the shifting late-capitalist global
decentred congurations of exploitation are actually supported by postmodern
superstructural ideological and textual decentring strategies. Tese level and mix
demanded by the type of stream-of-consciousness lm
he tries to develop and asks Donald to rescue his
script. Once he asks his brother to help him and
Donald starts taking things into his perspective, the
lm itself turns into an action lm lled with drugs,
chases and murders. Hence, Adaptation is not only
split into two protagonists but also into two respective
thematic and stylistic developments. However, when the
lm shifts from Charlies stream-of-consciousness lm to
his brothers action lm the spectator is pulled out of
the involvement he had when following the former and
pushed towards the latter, which starts suddenly without
serious earlier development and out of materials that
have been differently contextualized. This perspective
shift and narrative split relativizes and neutralizes both
world-views. In such ways, postmodern lms level and
neutralize different positions, rendering the socially
potent ones as yet another unprivileged position.
Postmodern Split Narrative in Lonzes Adaptation
various positions, whereby the potent ones appear as yet another unprivileged
position among others, all being apparently even.
Te revitalization and globalization of the capitalist mode of production in a
time of postmodern cultural decentring has posed a dilemma for First World
post-Marxists such as Fredric Jameson and David Harvey.
38
Tey understood the
postmodern text a simulacrum or copy devoid of origin yet perceived as real, or a
pastiche of styles and periods to be an index of globalizing capitalism. In Harveys
view, late capitalisms mode of exible accumulation, in which shifting ows of
capital cross the globe irrespective of national boundaries, often leading to stock
market crises and the sudden collapse of Tird World economies, translates on the
level of cultural production into an unprecedented mutability of the cultural text.
According to Jameson, the relentless expansion of globalizing capitalism leads to a
reication of human aesthetic and emotive faculties that earlier still resisted capitalist
reication. Moreover, the postmodern deconstruction of the imaginary ideal subject
(presumed by Althusser and Baudry to hasten the crumbling of the ideological
apparatuss blocking of a revolutionary mentality) leads to peoples loss of identity,
direction, and to their experiencing life through reied disjointed moments. Lost in
the postmodern schizophrenic maze, humans fail to cohere time, space and identity,
experiencing the non-cohering moments of their lives as a series of temporary and
shallow spectacles. Desires and memories are experienced as intense reied sensual
excitements or as exchangeable objects that can be bought and sold. Tese processes
are expressed in nostalgic lms alluding to an intangible past,
39
in dazzling cinematic
spectacles lacking depth or logic, or in television where advertising structures an
endless ow of images. Hence, Jameson called for a cognitive remapping of the social,
economic, political and cultural terrains through the reconstitution of disparate
segments into a continuous act of narration, conceived of as historical revision and
future redirection, helping people to reorient themselves in the global maze where
they aimlessly move around.
Postcolonial Segmentation in Neshats Fervor
In her split-into-two-screens lm Fervor (2000), Neshat
offers variations upon a constantly frustrated mutual
blind desire between a man and a woman, who do
not seem to have seen or known each other and
yet long for each others felt presence. In one scene,
for example, we see on each screen only one of the
protagonists as they each look, or rather blindly search,
in the direction of the other in their respective screen.
In another sequence they are seen, each alone on a
different screen and from respectively opposing points
In face of the First World postmodern co-option of dialectic montage and text-
ual disjunction, Jameson seems to turn his back on these textual strategies. Unlike
him, however, postcolonial theorists like Hommi Bhabha embrace postmodernism
as a subversive strategy for Tird world cultural production. Bhabhas postmodern/
postcolonial notion of the mimicry of First World discourses performed by Tird
World people, as well as the latters constant in-between situation stemming from
their colonially determined hybrid and split identities, were perceived as destabilizing
subversive strategies that constantly dismantle First World attempts to consolidate
the ideologies supporting the global congurations of power.
40
Tus, in Bhabhas
view, postmodernism is not the dominant ideology of globalizing capitalism as post-
Marxists like Jameson think, but rather the expression of its constant destabilization
by the hybridity built into the postcolonial situation.
A most interesting articulation of such postmodern/postcolonial destabilizing
and unsettling subversion can be found in the work of Iranian-born American
artist Shirin Neshat. While her work does not target the First World but rather
fundamentalist Iran, her hybrid strategies are exemplary. Hence, in a 1996 untitled
photograph we see the ngers of a hand tattooed with Koranic inscriptions silencing
the lips of a woman, while at the same the gesture implies that the ngers are
being kissed by the lips. Te photographs troubling ambivalence of sensuality and
sacredness with no apparent resolution conveys a sense of an impending implosion.
Another disruption of power congurations in a postcolonial lm can be seen
in Ilia Suleimans Divine Intervention (2002). Te lm, which tells the story of
the insurmountable diculties faced by a Palestinian couple divided by the Israeli
occupation, resorts to ironic fantasies of potency that presumably disrupt the power
of the Israeli occupying army. Tus, one scene shows a balloon on which Arafats
face is imprinted oating over an Israeli roadblock, leading the confused and
fearful Israeli soldiers to shoot at it ineectively. In another scene, a Ninja-looking
Palestinian confronted by Israeli soldiers suddenly leaps high in the air, swirls and,
of view, as they walk towards each other along the
same road. However, they do not meet upon arriving in
their respective screens at the presumed place of their
encounter, as would have happened if they had been
seen together on one screen. Hence Neshat, through
split-screen strategies that emblematize postcolonial/
postmodern segmentation, comments on frustrated
desires in fundamentalist, gender-segregated Iran. Her
split-screen lm revolves around the entangled dialectic
of desire and political repression.
Postcolonial Segmentation in Neshats Fervor
as he evades the bullets coming from the amazed soldiers pistols, he kills them one
after the other.
It is arguable whether postcolonial theories and lms oer eective postmodern
subversions of the First World congurations of power. It is also questionable
whether Jamesons suggestion to resort to what amounts to a traditional continuous
reorienting narration has any revolutionary import. It may well be that the co-option
of dialectic montage and formal disjunction by the postmodern dominant cultural
production of the First World is an index of the crumbling of Marxism, while its
postmodern appropriation by postcolonialists indicates the impotence of the Tird
World in the face of globalizing capitalism. On the other hand, in Marxist terms,
the spread of postmodernism as the superstructural expression of the process of
capitalist globalization may signal the approach of the communist world revolution
envisaged by Marx. As Marx predicted, world revolution will come about only after
(and because of ) the globalization of the capitalist mode of production.
Chapter Summary
Marxism
Dialectic materialism encapsulates the Marxist conception of natural and human essence as material
rather than spiritual and their change as dialectical (i.e. a thesis collides with an antithesis resulting in a
synthesis).
Historical materialism is the Marxist analysis of the evolution of human society according to the method
of dialectic materialism.
Marxist Film Constructivism
The concept of dialectic lm montage was coined by Soviet avant-garde Marxist constructivist lmmakers
of the 1920s as an ideological lm device. It draws upon the Marxist idea of dialectic materialism and
concerns an arrangement of lm shots in contrasting rather than in complementing or continuous forms,
so as to shake or shock rather than appease the spectator.
The basic idea informing Eisenstein was conict on all levels of shots and shot editing (thematic, graphic,
etc.).
Vertov insisted on the exclusive use of documentary shots. The Marxist truth could be brought out through
the lm editors discovery of the dialectical rhythmic interval in shot juxtapositions.
Deconstructive Neo-Marxism and Film
Neo-Marxist lm deconstruction was based on the use of dialectic montage strategies to lay bare and
subvert the dominant capitalist ideological manipulations of the lm medium.
According to Benjamin, in the age of mechanical reproduction the aura of art collapses. Fascism forces
the lm medium to offer a fake beautication of lm stars and leaders while hiding their brutal politics.
Revolutionary lmmakers should use the lm to enhance awareness.
Althusser argued that ideology twists the relation individuals have to their real conditions of existence,
persuading them that they have chosen to be where they were in fact placed.
Baudry searched for the Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus and found these in
the viewing situation; the cine-camera lenses; the lm strip; and the continuous editing style. Like Godard
in his lm, Baudry suggested deconstructing the lms illusion of continuity, centredness and coherence by
the use of non-continuous and disjointing dialectic montage strategies.
Anti-colonialist Filmmakers
Inuenced by Fanons theses, anti-colonialist lmmakers suggested that lms should nd ways to better
communicate with the Third World exploited masses and incite them to revolution.
Postmodernism, Post-Marxism and Postcolonialism
The attributes of the postmodern text segmentation, character split, spatial and temporal decentring
became the dominant trend in First World capitalist cultural production.
For Jameson, the postmodern deconstruction of the centred subject does not lead to revolution as earlier
maintained, but leads to peoples loss of identity and direction.
For postcolonial theorists like Bhabha postmodernist notions of mimicry and hybridity are subversive
strategies that dismantle First World attempts at consolidating its ideologies.
4 IMAGINARY SIGNIFIERS/
VOYEURISTIC PLEASURES
INTRODUCTION
Te psychological eects of lms on spectators have intrigued theoreticians since
the mediums inception. Two major psychological approaches to lm can be dis-
cerned. One focuses upon the conscious perceptual and cognitive processes through
which lms are made and comprehended by viewers. Hugo Munstenberg, one of
Gestalt psychologys early forerunners, already in 1916 described lm as the art of
subjectivity. In his view, rather than merely copying reality, lm aesthetically projects
a reality forged according to psychological processes of perception, attention,
memory and imagination. Gestalt psychologist Rudolph Arnheim continued
this trend, basing his lm theory upon the human striving to make lms partial
formal congurations cohere through perceptual principles of simplicity, harmony
and regularity.
1
More recent cognitivist lm theories (see Chapter 2) followed this
trajectory, focusing upon how consciously active and coherence-striving viewers
construct the story and world of a lm owing in front of them.
2
Alongside this trajectory another evolved, largely focusing upon the unconscious
eects that moving images have on the human psyche, particularly upon human
emotions. Hence, as discussed in Chapter 1, Jean Epstein developed an associational
theory of emotions, according to which moving images are tightly connected to
emotions, which in turn oer humans an intuitive and unmediated knowledge
of the world, as opposed to the knowledge achieved through rational processes
of cognition. Film was for him a psychological apparatus.
3
Sergei Eisenstein also
considered lm images to evoke unconscious primordial pre-linguistic thoughts
and feelings in viewers. Based upon Pavlovs materialist psychology, according to
which human behaviour is a result of conditioned reexes, he believed that lms,
given the primordial eects of moving images, can powerfully condition spectators
through the shock instigated by dialectic montage (see Chapter 3). Tis latter ap-
proach, implying powerful unconscious and emotional manipulations of viewers
because of the peculiar nature of moving lm images, was further developed as we
have seen by Althusserian-oriented neo-Marxists. Tey based their understanding
of the ideological eects of dominant continuity editing lms upon psychoanalytic
theses concerning the psychic manipulations conducted by such lms upon viewers.
Te psychoanalytic portion of what came to be termed the AlthusserianLacanian
paradigm in lm studies is the concern of the rst half of this chapter. It deals with
the psychic lures and manipulations of lms imaginary signiers.
Te concept of imaginary signiers, a term coined by Christian Metz, brings
together the semiotic aspect of lm and the psychological eects generated by its
unique evocative images and narrative deployment. While following his earlier
Saussurean-inspired semiological approach to lm (see Chapter 2), Metz shifted his
focus of attention to study the psychological eects of lms unique moving images
or imaginary signiers. He enquired how lms lure spectators; how lms evoke,
regulate or channel unconscious desires, notions of identity and the spectators
identication with the lms protagonists.
Metz and others noticed the anities between moving images projected upon a
screen, the reection of mirrors and the inner means of representation in dreams.
4

In lm, mirror and dream, reections of things perceived as tangible but lacking
materiality appear before our eyes or are projected
5
in our minds. Moreover, it
seemed that the lm spectators watching conditions sitting immobile in a darkened
theatre, isolated from their surroundings, stimulated only in sight and hearing by
the lms owing images and sounds encourages in them a hypnotic state.
Psychoanalysis, a discipline that extensively studied dreams as key to the human
unconscious and the psychological eects of mirrors on identity formation, was
taken to explain these lm-viewing processes. Sigmund Freuds Te Interpretation of
Dreams
6
and Jacques Lacans Te Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the
I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
7
were two psychoanalytic studies that
particularly inuenced researchers studying these aspects of lm.
1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FILM
1.1 FREUDS DREAM WORK
In Te Interpretation of Dreams Freud rejected previous attempts at explaining
dreams as future premonitions, vague and inconsequential residues of daily experi-
ences, or symptoms of bodily sensations. According to Freud, dreams were the
key to deciphering the dreamers psyche since they resulted from the interrelation
between conscious and unconscious processes. He viewed conscious processes
as the inhibition, elaboration and displacement of desires, impulses, instincts
and wishes stemming from an inaccessible unconscious, and their channelling
towards venues that allow individuals to lead social lives and face daily reality.
i m a g i n a r y s i g n i f i e r s / v o y e u r i s t i c p l e a s u r e s 105
Without such conscious elaboration he maintained, societal and individual life
may be threatened by the raw energetic impulses, instincts and wishes stem-
ming from the unconscious. Freud claimed that there was often a disproportion
between unconscious impulses and their conscious elaboration, leading to the
repression of such impulses and the individuals consequent need to discharge
these. He considered slips of the tongue and other mental disruptions of daily
life as evidence of the need of repressed impulses to break loose from conscious
barriers. Hence, Freud maintained that dreams were one of the major means by
which individuals can relieve themselves of these repressed impulses and wishes
without threatening their well-being and their mental equilibrium. Terefore,
Freud considered the interpretation of dreams to be the key to the unconscious
impulses and desires threatening an individuals mental well-being. Te need for
interpretation stemmed from the fact that the dreams images and voices were
scrambled enigmatic manifestations of latent dream thoughts through which these
repressed impulses and wishes expressed themselves. Dreams were like that because
they resulted from an internal mental tension between the individuals need to
relieve the repressed impulses as far as possible and their need to maintain mental
equilibrium. Although, when dreaming, individuals are immobilized and allow
themselves to experience events that due to their unreality cannot endanger them,
a censorship mechanism is nevertheless instituted to prevent the uninhibited
impulses from threatening mental equilibrium: dreams are given their shape
in individual human beings by the operation of two psychical forces . . .; one of
these forces constructs the wish which is expressed by the dream, while the other
exercises a censorship upon this dream-wish and, by the use of that censorship,
forcibly brings about a distortion in the expression of the wish.
8
Freud maintained that the dream work (as he termed the process leading to the
dreams enigmatic appearance at awakening) consists of four main psychic proc-
edures by which dreamers manage to discharge their repressed impulses and hidden
wishes without destabilizing their mental equilibrium: condensation, displacement,
symbolization and secondary elaboration.
9
Condensation allows the dreamer to cram into few complex images several latent
dream thoughts. Freud claimed that evidence of this procedure can be found in those
images remembered by the dreamer that are vague or sensed as evading identication.
Condensation proceeds by joining together recurring components found in dierent
dream thoughts. It forges new entities composed of dierent people or complex
structures condensed by the imposition of a common denominator.
10
He claimed
that the psychoanalyst strives in such cases to unpack the condensed image into its
dierent dream thoughts such as the guration within a condensed image of the
dreamer or someone who threatens him/her.
Displacement procedures aim at shifting the dreamers attention away from
threatening impulses and wishes towards secondary and inconsequential images.
Hence, when the dreamer distinctly remembers a certain image, Freud suspects that
this distinctness may be evidence of a process of displacement, leading him to search
for that which has been obscured by that which appears distinct. For instance, if
I remember from my dream the image of a beautiful woman I sat next to on bus
number 3, Freud might focus upon the bus number rather than upon the distinct
image of the girl.
Symbolization in dreams is also a way to express impulses and concealed wishes.
Freud cautions against simplistic interpretations of symbols and the inclination to
build a dream-symbol dictionary, since the same symbol can mean dierent things
in an individuals dierent dreams or for dierent dreamers. Nevertheless Freud
identies recurrent meanings in the same symbols:
Te Emperor and Empress (or the King and Queen) as a rule really represent
the dreamers parents; and a Prince or Princess represents the dreamer himself or
herself . . . all elongated objects, such as sticks, tree trunks and umbrellas (the
opening of these last being comparable to an erection) may stand for the male
organ . . . as well as all long, sharp weapons, such as knives, daggers and pikes
. . . Boxes, cases, chests, cupboards and ovens represent the uterus, and also
hollow objects, ships, and vessels of all kinds. Rooms in dreams are usually
women.
11
Secondary Elaboration consists of an attempt on the part of censorship at re-
conguring the dream components into a causal chain within an ordered forward-
moving story. Tis procedure, characterizing conscious operational modes conducted
while awake, is imposed upon the dream matter near the moment of awakening
from the dream and it is also dominant in daydreams. Secondary elaboration also
appears in the midst of dreams, for example, when dreamers, faced with a threatening
thought tell themselves, without waking up, that it is only a dream. Te secondary
elaboration is intended to shift the dreamers attention from the depth axis leading
from dierent manifest dream materials to their underlying dream thoughts, towards
a causal developmental axis that leads the dreamer to ascribe meanings that are as far
removed as possible from their true signicance.
12
1.2 FILM AS DREAM
Film researchers, particularly during the 1960s, tried to transpose Freuds under-
standing of dreams and dream processes to their research on the processes undergone
by a viewer when watching a lm. Tey legitimized this transposition by noting the
similarity between lms imaginary signiers and dream signiers, and the similarities
in the physical position of lm viewer and dreamer. Tey maintained that in both
cases dreamers and viewers are in a state of psychic regression, as Freud termed the
return and rehearsal by humans of deeper and earlier psychic stages.
13
According
to Freud, regression is enabled in dreams because of the loosening of censorship,
mainly due to the dreamers motor paralysis during sleep.
14
Tis allows dreamers to
entertain forbidden thoughts as real yet unthreatening, since imaginary. Likewise,
lm viewers sit immobile in a darkened space, exposed to tangible yet imaginary
events that cannot hurt them. Tese similarities led lm researchers to consider
the resemblances between the dream and the lms psychic functions and modes of
articulation. While warning that lms are not dreams, they nevertheless proposed
that viewers and dreamers enter similar mental states. Hence, lm viewers also lessen
censorship and allow themselves to raise concealed wishes and regress to earlier
psychic states. In this sense, lms, while external to the viewer, allow viewers to
cathect
15
their hidden thoughts with the lm images and sounds and safely discharge
their unconscious impulses and hidden wishes. Tis may explain the vast amount of
sexual and violent imagery pervading lms, which according to Freud are the main
contents of hidden wishes. It may also explain attempts at lm censorship in its
anities to psychic censorship.
16
Beyond such generalized similarities, lm researchers focused upon the relation
between dream procedures and lm articulation. Hence, attempts were made to
decipher symbolization in lms according to Freuds interpretations, such as viewing
the pistol in the western as a phallic symbol. Likewise displacement was compared
to editing transitions between shots or to change of emphasis within a shot (e.g.
through shift of focus), while condensation was compared to lm dissolves and
superimpositions. Tese resemblances in devices of articulation found application,
for example, in attempts made at viewing opening or key lm scenes as condensed
dreams that the rest of the lm unpacks.
Beyond these secondary technical similarities (as Metz called them), which relate
to conventional modes of audiovisual articulations shared by both lm and dream,

Metz spoke of primary similar psychic functions. Hence,
Te device [of lap-dissolve] doesnt simply plot out some relationship between
two segments . . . it combines their signiers physically, exactly as in the Freudian
denition of the means of representation which characterize dreams . . . Tus
it suggests to us a kind of relationship . . . which has to do with the fusion of
elements, magical transmutation, mystical ecacy (= the all-powerfulness of
thought).
17
Hence, Metz referred to the psychical function of the lm equivalents to dis-
placements and condensations as imparting a feeling of potency to the spectator
in their bypassing logical, temporal and spatial constraints. Te eects of the lms
imposition of such magical elasticity upon the gured reality is not unlike Freuds
claim that dreams often express the dreamers concealed infantile wish to overcome
reality constraints. Similar psychic functions can be found in the tendency of classical
lms to cut or move the camera away from a violent or sexually disturbing event
towards a safe place, such as when moving the camera away from guring a sexual
intercourse to a lit replace, or when tilting up the camera away from the guration
of a violent murder towards the sky.
Metz found Freuds notion of secondary elaboration to be the dominant aspect
shared by lm and dream, which also claried the dierence between the two.
According to Metz, the lms narrative is closer to the functioning of secondary
elaboration in daydreams. Freud positioned daydreams between dreaming and
being awake, dierentiating daydreams from dreams by the saliency of secondary
elaboration in the former and by its reversed functioning. Hence, while in dreams
secondary elaborations aim at diverting the dreamers attention away from the
relation between dream material and dream thoughts by imposing a causal narrative
upon the dream segments, in daydreams their function is to insulate the partly
awake individual from external reality. Tus, through an apparently logical, owing
and continuous narrative, daydreamers enter a dreamy state allowing them the
discharging of unconscious impulses. According to Metz, lm narratives function
like secondary elaborations in daydreams. Tey immerse viewers into lms through
their owing narratives. Te lms imposition of narrative upon its images and
sounds allows viewers to discharge their repressed impulses and wishes through the
images and sounds of the lm. Te lm viewer enters through the narrative into the
semi-conscious situation characterizing the daydreamer.
Film as Dream: An Andalusian Dog
The afnities between lm and dream have led many
lmmakers to include within their lms dream sequences
or construct their lm as dream. Buuels and Dalis
surrealist lm An Andalusian Dog is consciously informed
by Freuds dream theory.
18
The lm includes powerful
symbols such as ants crawling out of the palm of a
hand; condensations such as a complex image of the
lms protagonist attempting to drag a grand piano with
two dead bleeding donkeys on top and two live priests
tied to the back; displacements such as the cut from a
blade about to slash a womans eyeball to an analogous
crossing of a bright moon by a blade-shaped dark cloud
(but Buuel and Dali nevertheless return in a shocking
shot to the eyeball being slashed). The lm however,
1.3 LACANS MIRROR STAGE
In Te Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I, the psychoanalyst Lacan
introduced the hypothesis that our rst notion of identity, occurring between the
ages of six and eighteen months, is based upon a mere reection of ourselves. Tis
self-reection, either in mirrors or by deduction from seeing our kind through a
highly developed sense of sight, appears coherent, whole and continuous. It counters
our inner sensation of being disjointed and incoherent due to our undeveloped
motor coordination: Te fact is that the total form of the body by which the subject
anticipates in a mirage the maturation of his power is given to him only as Gestalt,
that is to say, in an exteriority in which this form is certainly more constituent than
constituted.
20
Important for Lacan was that this intangible homogeneous reection
positions the I [ego] in a ctional direction, which will always remain irreducible
for the individual.
21
Tis reection, responsible for our initial sense of self, also
introduces an insurmountable lack between its full homogeneous appearance and
our inner sense of self, a lack we will futilely strive to ll throughout our lives.
22

Lacan likened this initial sense of selfhood to Freuds Ideal ego.
23
in the sense that
we strive to identify with this self-image, a striving also informing our secondary
identication with others. Tis process of identication should be understood as the
transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image.
24
According to Lacan, this initial reection-induced sense of self occurs at the
intersection between two cardinal modes of cognition. He hypothesized that before
the mirror stage humans perceive their surroundings within what he called the
imaginary mode of cognition, in which there is no apprehension of a dierence
between an inside and an outside (perceived as continuous and undierentiated
much like the way the world appears through our sense of sight). Tis corresponds
neutralizes Freuds concept of secondary elaboration in
that narrative connections between the lm segments
are disjointed. In that, as Metz would have it, the lm,
despite its powerful and fascinating images reveals the
difference between lm and dream. This is because its
disjointed nature causes the viewer to be aware and
interpretative rather than enter a dreamy atmosphere.
According to Metz then, the common narrative lm
better induces in viewers the semi-conscious mode that
immerses them in the lm world by using the narrative
ow to avoid their conscious minds wandering away
and pondering upon the lms construction.
19
Film as Dream: An Andalusian Dog
to Freuds claim that during this stage human infants identify with their mothers
on whom they are totally dependent and whom they perceive as an extension of
themselves. Lacan hypothesized that it is during the mirror stage that the imaginary
order of cognition is overlain by the rise to consciousness of the symbolic order, char-
acterized by the ability to perceive discrete units and dierentiate between them.
Te rise to consciousness of the symbolic order, which structures the unconscious
like a language according to Lacan, is the basis for the acquisition of language. As
he mentions, Freud also detected this transition in the Fort-Da! game played by
infants at this stage, where they enjoy the appearance and disappearance of objects,
indicating their comprehension of discreteness and dierence.
25
Te Lacanian
symbolic order precedes and is the precondition for the infants dierentiation
between male and female during the Oedipal stage.
26
1.4 FILM AND THE MIRROR STAGE
Several psychoanalytically inclined lm researchers presumed that it is possible to
derive an understanding of the processes of identication undergone by lm viewers
from Lacans mirror-stage theory. Tey based this on the apparent similarities be-
tween lm signiers and the reection in mirrors; on a certain comparison between
the infants physical condition during the mirror stage and the adult viewer facing
a lm; and on the notion that the lm-viewing situation induces in viewers a regres-
sion and rehearsal of earlier psychic stages. Hence, the lm viewer sits in a darkened
theatre, enhancing eyesight, which is also the most developed sense during the
mirror stage. Also, lm images ow before the viewer without coordination to the
viewers sitting position, in a way that is reminiscent of the infants uncoordinated
relation to the reection in the mirror. Finally, the owing lms imaginary signiers
correspond to the imaginary order of cognition dominant during the mirror stage
when infants develop their initial sense of self. Although lm is not a mirror, and
the viewer, unlike the mirror-stage infant, has a developed sense of identity, the
regression induced in the viewer by the lm, and the fact that lm reects whatever
stood in front of it, left for these researchers reason to presume that the viewer in
some way rehearses the mirror-stage experience. What characterizes this experience
is a feeling of joy noticed by Lacan each time an infant approached a mirror. Lacan
related this joy to the infants self-perception through its reection as a coordinated,
whole and continuous body. As mentioned, following this initial joy the unbridge-
able gap between this full reected image and the infants inner feeling develops.
Film researchers suggested that one of lms major appeals to viewers stems from
their rehearsal of the feeling of joy felt in front of their reection during the mirror
stage, a feeling they long for all their lives. How do lms generate such a rehearsal?
Te answer provided by lm Lacanians derived precisely from the dierence between
the adult viewer and the mirror-stage infant, as well as from the fact that viewers
do not see their own reection in the lm. Teir claim was that the viewers rst
identication is not with the characters or any other objects gured within the lm
reections, but rather with the point of view of the camera. Tis identication, of
which viewers are usually made unaware, enables the reinforcement of their sense of
identity because it gives them an illusion that they originate the images owing before
their eyes, and that without their presence these images would lack the fullness and
continuity characterizing them. Tey argued that this stems from the structure of
the camera lenses and from other devices that create most lms continuous three-
dimensional imaginary ow. As noticed already,
27
the camera creates a centred space
converging into the viewers eye whereby there occurs a simultaneous centring of
space and viewer. According to these theorists, this dual centring is responsible for
the viewers self-perception as origin of the lm so long as viewers are not consciously
aware of the cameras presence. Terefore, for instance, the dominant ction-lm
rule that the lm protagonists never look into the camera lenses (for otherwise the
viewers identication with the cameras point of view may collapse). Moreover, they
argued that camera movements and the seamless continuity editing of shots further
reinforce the viewers sense of omnipotence over a owing reality made by them
and designed for them.
Tese premises served as the basis for many variations on the identication
processes undergone by lm viewers. Metz, for instance, studied the lms
inducement of the mirror stage in viewers and its eects upon their positioning as
peeping Toms in dominant continuity-styled lmmaking.
28
He maintained that
spectators are positioned as peeping Toms or voyeurs by lms where actors behave
as if nobody is watching them. Although in theatre the same rule usually applies,
an exhibitionist component is always present in the live encounter of actor and
spectator, so that both parties are aware of each others presence. In lm, however,
the exhibitionism present in theatre is lacking since the spectator peeps upon a
world that is visually tangible but which he knows is absent. Tis peeping Tom,
with no fear of getting caught, who identies with the cameras point of view and
who is immersed in the ctional reality of the lm, loses his self-awareness as a
separate entity since:
Tat which is seen does not know that it is seen . . . and its lack of awareness
allows the voyeur to be himself unaware that he is a voyeur. All that remains is
the brute fact of seeing: the seeing of an outlaw, of an Id unrelated to any Ego,
a seeing which has no features or position, as vicarious as the narrator-God or
the spectator-God.
29
Hence, in Metzs variation, the viewers identication with the camera does not
empower their sense of self as dierent from the lm, but rather reinforces their
imaginary mode of cognition in which their point of view, which is that of the
camera, is an omnipotent transcendental entity projecting the lms owing images.
Daniel Dayan oered another variation on the mirror-stage resonances in lm
viewers.
30
He was concerned with the eects of continuity editing on the viewer. In
his view, continuity editing transitions, particularly in shotreverse-shot constructs,
are based on the suturing of the viewers consciousness into the lm. Shotreverse-
shot constructs consist of a sequence of shots in which the viewer watches character
B from the point of view of character A, followed by a shot showing the reverse angle
in which A is seen from Bs point of view (and so on). Dayan claimed that in the rst
shot (showing character B) the spectators fully identify with the cameras point of
view and sense themselves as originating the image. However, in the transition to the
reverse shot the imaginary continuity may be broken due to the change in camera
angle and guration, potentially raising in the viewers minds the question of who
is showing them the event, a question threatening to lay bare the lm apparatus and
destroy the illusion and the spectators attendant joyful empowerment. However,
according to Dayan, the shotreverse-shot construct manipulates the potential
raising of such a question to serve its needs. Tis is because the reverse shot oers
a retroactive answer to the viewers question, whereby it was character A that was
watching character B. Tus the lm diverts the answer to the viewers question from
the level of the lm apparatus (i.e. the question raises the awareness to how the lm
is made), to the ctional level suggesting something like it was the character that you
see now that was watching the character you just saw. Trough such manipulations
(termed by Dayan the tutor code of cinema), viewers minds are sutured into the
lm and their illusionary empowerment is not only reinstated but reinforced.
31
Te Lacanian-derived ideas on the visual imaginary of lm were also extended
to the rather neglected auditory lm channel. Altman, for instance, raised the
possibility that lm sound may aect spectators the way Lacanians presumed lm
images aected them: Even the Greeks, however, knew that the story of Narcissus is
incomplete without that of Echo.
32
Te audio mirror completes the video mirror.
33

Mary Ann Doane also elaborated upon this notion of sound in lm, claiming that it
enhances the viewers immersion. She argued that the subjection of sound to image
in the dominant continuity edited lm illusorily enlarges the visual space beyond
the rectangular screen into the theatre, engulng the spectator. Te multidirectional
spreading of sound along with the imaginary eects of the visual track enhances the
lms mirror-stage eects upon spectators.
1.5 CRITIQUES OF THE ANALOGIES FILM AS DREAM AND FILM AS MIRROR
Notwithstanding the evocative comparisons of lms to dreams or mirrors there
seems to be a suturing of the striking dierences between these,
34
particularly of the
fact that lm is a conscious activity, external to the viewer and probably consumed
consciously. Cognitivists in particular attacked this psychoanalytic approach to
lm. Carroll tried to dismantle one after another the key concepts used in such
theories.
35
For instance, he rejected the idea concerning the viewers identication
with the camera or with protagonists in the lm. What identication basically
implies, contended Carroll, is that individuals are made to think that they are the
camera or the protagonist and are therefore immersed in the lm or think they
author it. Considering these ideas far-fetched, Carroll proposed that viewers can get
involved with a lm or its protagonists by presuming the lms to oer if this was
to happen type propositions. Likewise, Carroll claimed that the dierence between
lms and dreams is greater than their similarity. For example, he rejected the
presumed similarity of dream motor paralysis with the immobility of lm viewers
on the veriable ground that spectators, unlike dreamers, can look back towards the
projector at any moment. Furthermore, if viewers are late, they can slowly walk to
their seats while watching the movie, and can even get up and touch the screen in
case they have doubts about whether what they are watching is not there. He also
rejected the notion of lm suture on the grounds that it presupposes a far-fetched
process whereby the viewer undergoes several dierent consecutive mental states
(I think I am the origin of the image, then I think for a moment that I am not,
then I think again that I am the origin since I concluded that the character, rather
than anyone else, is watching the shot I am seeing now). Cognitivists in general
rejected psychoanalytic approaches to lms because of their bypassing of the viewers
conscious activities.
Te semioticpsychoanalytic approach to processes of identication in lms
was also attacked by feminist and queer lm theorists. While they espoused many
of the teachings of psychoanalysis (and neo-Marxism), they claimed that semiotic
psychoanalysts failed to address the dierent eects that imaginary signiers have
on dierent spectators. Tey also suspected that the positioning of a generalized
non-gendered spectator, even though often articulated from a neo-Marxist critical
perspective, ultimately conformed to a white-male-heterosexual dominated social
order. Films, they claimed, are perceived dierently by, and dierently aect dierent
people.
2 VARYING VOYEURISTIC PLEASURES
Feminists, post-feminists and queer theorists strove to ll the major omissions im-
plied in the AlthusserianLacanian positioning of a generalized subject by studying
the voyeuristic pleasures and displeasures oered by lms to both genders (feminists)
or to non-heterosexuals (queer theorists). Nevertheless, 1980s feminists, while
exchanging capitalism and class struggle for patriarchy and the repression of women,
tended to accept the AlthusserianLacanian conception of the dominant continuity
edited lm as psychic-ideological manipulation and its deconstruction as an eective
strategy to open the medium to the concerns of women. Post-feminists and queer
theorists of the 1990s, on the other hand, attacked deconstructive feminism for its
dead-end conception of lm deconstruction and its binary conception of gender
that neglected non-heterosexual sensibilities. Tey oered instead a poststructural
conception of gender as a uid rather than a xed identity, focusing on how
spectators bend any lm, whether continuous or not, to serve their unstable and
shifting identities.
2.1 FEMINIST DECONSTRUCTION OF FILMS (MALE) VOYEURISTIC PLEASURES
Te term feminism, denoting womens social struggle surfaced by the end of the
nineteenth century and gained currency through the writings of Virginia Woolf
and Simone de Beauvoir. In the 1960s feminism became widespread as the social
struggle for women rights and their emancipation, particularly in the USA, as part
of the wider student revolution and the struggle for human rights. According to
feminist historians, 1960s feminism was essentialist and largely derived the dier-
ences between the sexes from biological dierences. It claimed that in patriarchal
societies the female essence is repressed. Tis repressed essence, characterized
as receptive, passive, altruist, and striving for social equality and solidarity was
opposed to a dominant male essence characterized by invasiveness, aggressiveness,
competitiveness, egocentricity and individualism. Dierent feminist positions strove
during the 1960s and early 1970s to nd ways in which the female essence might
better society. Tus liberal feminism joined the ranks of the human rights movement
so as to better the situation of women as a repressed minority, to give women freedom
of expression and to equalize their status with that of men in the workplace and in
government. Marxist-oriented feminists dened the ideas of equality and solidarity
as essentially female and capitalism as essentially male. Tey tried to overlap gender
and class struggles, claiming that women, although spread across dierent social
classes, form an exploited group within each class. Radical feminists, on the other
hand, inuenced by hippie culture, tried to develop alternative ways of life such as
female communities organized around the values stemming from the female essence.
While these early essentialist feminist positions lacked a serious lm approach and
focused on content analysis of gender representations, the mid-1970s emergence
of a deconstructive anti-essentialist feminism, in its focus upon cultural constructs,
generated an interesting body of lm theory.
Deconstructive anti-essentialist feminism evolved from a criticism of the 1960s
feminist biological determinism and essentialism. Rather than basing gender
dierences upon biology, deconstructive feminists conceived the dierences between
the sexes and the characteristics ascribed to each as institutionalized and structured
by culture, particularly by language and other forms of communication. Tis
approach led them to lay bare and deconstruct the cultural structuring of gender,
presuming that this would lead to new conceptions of gender and to a re-evaluation
and redenition of ascribed values and functions. Psychoanalysis, conceived of as
a theory stemming from patriarchy and focused on human sexuality, was taken
to reveal the patriarchal unconscious conception of women that informed the
dominant cultural constructs discriminating against women and promoting their
subjugation.
Laura Mulveys groundbreaking article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
36

introduced a gendered split in the generalized spectator assumed by the Althusserian
Lacanian paradigm. Mulveys major presumption was that lms were a product of
the patriarchal unconscious and therefore served the patriarchal social order by
replicating and reinforcing gender patterns that discriminated against women. Psycho-
analysis, which she considered to reveal the patriarchal unconscious, was particularly
apt for laying bare the ways by which lms discriminate. Mulvey found the source
of this discrimination in Freuds analysis of the Oedipus complex. Freud placed the
Oedipal phase during which boys and girls forge a dened sexual identity at the core
of the unconscious. Mulvey claimed that Freuds sloppy or partial description of the
girls sexual identity formation and of what Freud termed the positive case of the
boys sexual formation
37
stemmed from Freuds own patriarchal unconscious and
revealed the source of discrimination of women in patriarchal society.
According to Freud, during the pre-Oedipal stage human infants feel fullled: the
mother takes care of all their needs and is perceived by infants as their extension. Tis
stage, as mentioned in the preceding section, conforms to Lacans imaginary order of
cognition. At a certain point, claimed Freud, the infant realizes that his/her mother is
not always present to cater to her/his needs. Tis enrages and frustrates her/him. Te
conclusion the infant reaches is that the reason for the mothers absence is the father,
a conclusion leading him/her to want to get rid of the father so as to reunite with the
mother. Freud even presumed that the primeval father was actually murdered by his
sons. Te desire to get rid of the father engenders in the infant a great fear from what
the father might do to him/her for entertaining such thoughts. Te infant nds
the answer to what the father might do in the biological dierence between male
and female. (According to Freud, the realization of a dierence between the sexes
introduces the infant into language, which is based on the ability to conduct binary
distinctions. Lacan termed this the symbolic order of cognition, which he claimed
originated during the mirror stage that pre-dates the Oedipus complex.) According
to Freud, the infant interprets the dierence between the sexes as a lack of penis in
the mother. Tis leads to the perception of the mother as someone who has already
been punished for a sin she committed in the past. Henceforth, the infants fear of
being castrated by the father, as probably happened to the mother, leads the boy to
identify with the authoritative, punitive gure of the father. Te girl, in a symmetrical
inversion, begins to suer from a penis envy. Tis results in her identication with
the mother and her developing an erotic love for the father stemming from her wish
to nd completion through his penis.
Te boys process of identication out of fear internalizes in the boys mind the
father gure as his superego, representing patriarchal law and ethics. Te girl, on the
other hand, due to social sanctions, transfers her completion-derived erotic love of
the father towards real or symbolic substitutes. Giving birth to a boy and raising him
into the patriarchal order is one such symbolic completion.
Te Freudian patriarchal analysis of the Oedipus complex has dire consequences
for women. According to it, women are perceived as having committed a primal sin
evident in their bleeding wound, as Freud described it. Woman is also conceived as
lacking the ability to fully internalize patriarchal societal ethics and law, relegating
her to the function of non-male. Tis conception allows the social construction of
the male as bearer of law and meaning, and of woman as bearer of children and their
raising into the patriarchal order. Woman remains in mans mind as a memory of
pre-Oedipal fullness and hence his desire for her; or as post-Oedipal lack, and hence
as symbolizing his fear of castration.
Mulvey, considering lms to be a product of the patriarchal unconscious, searched
in Freuds interpretation of the Oedipus complex for an explanation of the way lms
reinforce and spread the patriarchal conception of the genders. She started by asking
why people like to watch movies, a question that led her to enquire why people like to
watch at all. Tis is because lms, according to Mulvey, cater to peoples scopophilia
or love of watching. It pleasures the viewers gaze while channelling it towards its
needs. She found in Freuds writings two dierent sources for scopophilia: erotic and
narcissistic scopophilia. While erotic scopophilia stems from sexual desire towards
another, in narcissistic scopophilia we gaze at others because they are like ourselves
(narcissistic scopophilia corresponds to Lacans mirror stage when infants nd in
the anthropomorphic form of others a reinforcement of their sense of selfhood).
Mulvey found a contradiction between the two types of scopophilia. While
erotic scopophilia is based upon a dierence between the seeing and the seen, the
narcissistic gaze looks for sameness. According to Mulvey, classical lm developed
two dominant modes of articulation, each catering to a dierent scopophilic urge.
Hence, in the spectacular portions of lm, the human gure is there to be looked at
erotically from anothers point of view. Spectacle is therefore static, and the human
gure is restricted in its spatial movement, usually seen within a attened image. Te
directionally evolving narrative, on the other hand, caters to our narcissistic urge. It
revolves around a gure with which viewers identify. Tis identication is achieved
by correlating the viewers point of view with that of a character who is placed at
the centre of a three-dimensional space that it controls and whose actions drive the
narrative development. Te viewers sense of self is reinforced through the ident-
ication of their point of view with that of this larger than life protagonist (who
nevertheless resembles the viewer).
Mulvey pointed out that since classical lms express the patriarchal unconscious,
women usually gure in the spectacular portion of lms while men control the lms
narrative space. Hence women are positioned as erotic objects for the viewers gaze,
lacking their own point of view and gured in an enclosed or attened space which
they inhabit passively and statically. Men, on the other hand, are there to be identied
with. Trough their point of view the viewer watches how they change the course of
events while dynamically moving within their controlled three-dimensional narrative
space. Often, said Mulvey, a tension develops between the two-dimensional static
space of spectacle and the three-dimensional dynamic narrative space. One of lms
major strategies to overcome this spatial tension is through the overlap of the viewers
and the male heros points of view upon the spectacle and the woman gured within
it. Tus woman is gured as an erotic object for both the male protagonist and the
viewer. According to Mulvey, these modes of articulation reproduce and reinforce
the gender gurations and functions ascribed by patriarchal society.
Mulvey then turned to Freuds contention that woman symbolizes for the male, in
her sexual presence, his fear of castration. Filmmakers, claimed Mulvey, found ways
to neutralize this fear within each mode of articulation. Hence, in the spectacle mode,
catering to erotic scopophilia, the neutralization of the fear of castration is achieved
by the fetishization of the womans gure. According to Freud, fetishism is a process
whereby the desire for the forbidden and threatening sexual organ is transferred
to substitutes. For instance, instead of raising the gaze towards the forbidden and
threatening sex organ, the gaze is xated upon the shoe, which becomes the desired
fetish. Mulvey found in Von Sternbergs spectacle-dominated lms a fetishization
of the gure of Marlene Dietrich (e.g. Morocco, 1930). Not only did he obsessively
shoot Dietrich from overlapping angles and within static situations on account
of narrative development, but he used dierent lters or cloths over the camera
lenses, as well as disjointing her body through close-ups of her dierent body parts,
thereby attempting to neutralize her threatening sexuality. Tus, concluded Mulvey,
Sternberg exchanged Dietrichs threatening sexual presence for an exalted, lofty
fetishized beauty, and fetishized parts of her body by disjointing her full image.
While Von Sternberg represented for Mulvey the spectacular strategy of fet-
ishization, Hitchcock was taken by her to represent the use of a sadistic strategy
in narrative dominated lms to neutralize womans symbolization of the castration
threat. Mulvey identied in Hitchcock an erotically driven sadistic attitude towards
his female heroines.
38
Hitchcock deals in several of his lms with a male protagonist
who is on the side of the law, who gets into trouble because of a woman suspected
of a crime or somehow tied to it. Te male hero conducts a sadistic investigation
of the woman, aimed at revealing the reasons for the crime she is tied to and save
her once he establishes her innocence. Mulvey found Hitchcocks lms (e.g. Rear
Window, 1954 and Marny, 1964) to follow a male protagonist who moved in a
three-dimensional space and through whose point of view the suspected female was
looked at in an erotic/scrutinizing way. She saw in the mans following of the woman
and in his investigation/interrogation of her a sadistic process aimed at revealing
her primal sin and exposing her innocence or guilt, thus neutralizing the fear of
castration she symbolized.
Mulveys conclusion was that the dominant type of lmmaking (mostly from
Hollywood) mainly addressed the male spectator whose scopophilic gaze it
pleasured. It allowed him to identify with the male protagonist controlling the
narrative and reinforced his sense of identity. It also allowed him to gaze erotically
at the female protagonist who inhabited the spectacle portions of the lm. Mulvey
Fetishism and Sadism in Buuels Belle de jour
A brief scene from Buuels Belle de jour aptly illustrates
Mulveys contentions (see p. 56 for a summary of
the lms plot). In the scene we are shown an erotic
fetishist/sadist interaction between a young and
handsome delinquent (Pierre Clmenti) and the lms
female protagonist (Catherine Deneuve) whom the young
man considers to be a mysterious, beautiful looking
whore. From the delinquents point of view, we see the
woman as she lies naked on a bed in the brothel where
she works. The handsome young man dressed in black
leather stands over her, questioning her about where
she lives and what else she does while scrutinizing her
perfect-looking body. The castration fear underlining
this erotic fetishist/sadist interaction surfaces when the
concluded that female spectators have no real place in the theatre. In order to enjoy
the movie, they must adopt the male gaze, which leads them to watch their kind
as erotic object. Tis schizophrenic positioning of women spectators led Mulvey
to call for a deconstruction of these patriarchal lm constructs. She suggested, for
example, deconstructing the conation of the spectators, the cameras and the male
protagonists point of view so as to liberate the spectator and the camera from the
lms imposition of female discrimination. Nevertheless, Mulvey didnt think such
deconstructive strategies could lead to an alternative type of lmmaking, given
that patriarchal discrimination against woman is institutionalized in all venues of
communication. Terefore she found attempts at inverting the lms positioning
of genders to be misleading since, given the larger social patriarchal structure of
discrimination, such attempts are perceived as either absurd or as clothing women in
mans clothes.
40
A brief look from Mulveys point of view at lms that intend such
a strategy of inversion, such as Silence of the Lambs or Telma and Louise (1991),
reveals that their positioning of women in the centre of the lms narrative trajectory
does not lend them the power aorded to similarly positioned men. Hence, the
placing of FBI apprentice Clarice Sterling (Judy Foster) at the centre of the narrative
in Silence of the Lambs, and her apparent control of the narrative through her search
for a serial killer of women, results in an asexual character ultimately driven by male
characters (Hannibal Lecter, the incarcerated cannibal who guides her through
hints to the serial killer and her FBI patronizing boss) and by an uncontrolled
psychological urge to quiet the bleating of the lambs pounding in her head since
childhood. Likewise, Telma and Louise, once they kill a guy who has raped one
of them and begin their ight from the police, start to shed their initial femininity
and gradually intertextually reference two male cowboy outlaws on the run. Teir
young man commands the woman to turn around. When
she does, he suddenly retreats, repelled by a birthmark
he sees on her skin. He tells her to get dressed. The
tainting of the womans beautiful perfect fetishized
body by a birthmark enhances her sexual presence and
his fear of castration. The narcissism involved in this
sadistic interaction is made explicit when, as the woman
gets dressed and tells the young man she likes him, he
arrogantly replies that it is normal. He then smiles at
her, revealing he has missing teeth. This offers the nal
evidence of his castration fear since losing ones teeth
is taken by Freud to symbolize castration.
39
Fetishism and Sadism in Buuels Belle de jour
transgendering is reinforced by the traditional guration of other female characters
in the lm, and is rejected in their nal punishment by the lms narrative that
has them both committing suicide. It is this apparent dead-end situation that led
Mulvey to reject altogether the dominant type of narrative lms, calling for constant
deconstruction: Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this
end, cannot view the decline of the traditional lm form with anything much more
than sentimental regret.
41
Mulvey herself, along with Peter Wollen, tried to put her theory into practice
in their lm Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) where they audiovisually investigated and
deconstructed the codes of narrative cinema in an attempt to evoke an alternative
mode of articulation through which to render female representations in lm. Hence,
the lm breaks the conventional fetishized representation of females by conveying
Louise, the lms female protagonist, through fragmented imagery and soundtrack,
consisting of multiple female voices and viewpoints. Tese generated ambiguous
meanings that deconstructed stable and accepted gurations and symbolizations of
women in lm and society.
Mulveys theory inspired a barrage of feminist lm research but also drew
criticism. A major criticism was that she did not actually address the female spec-
tators evident pleasure. Particularly interesting was Gaylin Studlars suggestion
Masquerading in Yentl and Boys Dont Cry
The most salient examples of masquerading are evident
in lms where female actors cross-dress, as in Yentl
(1983) or in Boys Dont Cry (1999). While these lms
offer different grounds for cross-dressing and belong to
different genres, in both clothing masks the shape of the
female body, thereby uctuating between its spectacled
eroticization and its narrative agency. These lms offer
the woman protagonist true agency and point of view,
while disjointing the usual conation of the cameras
point of view with that of the male protagonist upon
the woman as object of desire. This strategy opens up
a space where female spectators can identify with the
female protagonists agency without assuming a male
sadist point of view, while also deriving voyeuristic
pleasure from watching the male protagonist as object
of desire through the point of view of the masked
female protagonist. Hence Yentl (Barbra Streisand), who
disguises herself as a boy to study the Torah in a yeshiva,
a forbidden activity for women in an East European
Jewish town at the beginning of the twentieth century,
befriends Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), another student in
the yeshiva, on intellectual grounds. This initially deates
their mutual looks from eroticism and later inverts the
traditional roles when he is seen erotically from Yentls
point of view. Likewise, in Boys Dont Cry, Teena Brandon
(Hilary Swank) on the run from the law cross-dresses
that the understanding of the spectators pleasure be based upon the psycho-
analytic concept of masochism as opposed to Mulveys reliance upon sadism. Te
masochistic model rejects a stance that has emphasized the phallic phase and the
pleasure of control or mastery and therefore oers an alternative to strict Freudian
models that have proven a dead end for feminist-psychoanalytic theory.
42
Maso-
chism, claimed Studlar (following Deleuze), originates in the pre-Oedipal stage
and is dominated by the desire to reunite with the mother gure and rehearse the
feeling of plenitude. It seemed, therefore, more apt to deal with the imaginary
plenitude that lms articulate. Te masochistic model emphasized fantasy,
disavowal, fetishism, and suspense,
43
traits that are particularly characteristic
of the genre of melodrama, which is popular with female spectators. However,
while this model elaborated upon masochistically derived pleasures, it ultimately
reinforced Mulveys claim that female spectators are left to identify themselves with
their being objects of desire.
In a later article, entitled Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema inspired by Duel in the Sun,
44
Mulvey herself tried to address the pleasures
of the female spectator. She found in Freuds later writings the contention that
femininity is forged by the repression of male traits present during the pre-Oedipal
stage, mainly the repression in the girl of the perception of the ego as free, superior
as Brandon Teena in a Nebraska town, where he/she
hangs out with a group of boys and dates beautiful Lana
(Chlo Sevigny). The lm both destabilizes the natural
masculinity of the other boys, whose drinking or cursing
are estranged and assume a degree of playfulness
due to her presence among them, and deates the
homoeroticism implied in the relationship between
Brandon and Lana due to the discordance between Lanas
traditional femininity and Brandons male sensitivity.
However, the subversion implied in masquerading often
fails due to its overriding reappropriation into the
common patriarchal representation of woman as object
of desire. This happens in cross-dressing lms once the
secret is revealed, leading to a forceful return of the
repressed. Hence, in Yentl, it takes the form of enhanced
romanticism and eroticization of the female body, as in
the scene depicting Yentls love affair with Avigdor once
her secret is revealed. In Boys Dont Cry, the revelation
of the secret leads to tragic sadistic consequences for
Teena who is betrayed, humiliated, raped and murdered
by her former buddies. This return of the repressed
creates such emotional luring or distress that the gap
opened by the masquerade is tightly reinstated, leading
female spectators to succumb through their identication
with the female protagonist to a retrogressive position
leaving them again with no options.
Masquerading in Yentl and Boys Dont Cry
and invulnerable. She then concluded that female spectators can identify with the
male protagonist in its representing this freedom of the ego, thus unloading their
repressed ego freedom. Mulvey rejected of course Freuds unfounded bias in his
tagging of traits belonging to the pre-Oedipal stage, when the infant does not feel
gendered yet, as male or female. Nevertheless, the reinforcement of the ego fantasy
occurs in the adult female spectator out of identication with a male gure, and this
generates again a split female spectator.
Other deconstructivist feminists, such as Mary Ann Doane, tried to oer a way
out from Mulveys dead-end by suggesting the notion of masquerading as a subversive
strategy on the part of women performers and spectators in lms: Masquerade . . .
constitutes an acknowledgment that it is femininity itself which is constructed
as mask as the decorative layer which conceals a non-identity.
45
Moreover, by
exaggerating femininity, female spectators can create the critical distance between
the guration of women in patriarchal lms and their viewing it. Tis distance is
however lacking for females in non-masqueraded performances or spectatorship
because For the female spectator there is a certain over-presence of the image
she is the image.
46
Terefore, according to Doane, female spectators, unless
using the masquerading strategy, are left with two choices: the masochism of over-
identication or the narcissism entailed in becoming ones own object of desire . . .
Te aectivity of masquerade lies precisely in its potential to manufacture a distance
from the image, to generate a problematic within which the image is manipulable,
producible, and readable by the woman.
47
Doanes notion of masquerade informed the emergence of post-feminism. Post-
feminists criticized deconstructive feminisms dead-end. In line with poststructural
and postcolonial positions, post-feminists oered an understanding of femininity as
a uid rather than xed identity. Tis opened the way for, or coalesced with, queer
theories that addressed a variety of always unstable gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender
and even straight sensibilities.
2.2 POST-FEMINIST AND QUEER THEORIES OF VOYEURISTIC PLEASURES
Te poststructural revolution (see Chapter 2) informed the growing criticism of
deconstructive feminism. Michel Foucault critiqued psychoanalysis as a widespread
discourse on sexuality carried out within social congurations of power and lacking a
critique or redenition of these. He also suggested that such critique and redenition
could and should stem from a discussion of the body and its guration in dierent
discourses. Tis inspired post-feminists like Luce Irigaray to look again at the female
body in search of the possibility of instituting a dierent discourse on femininity.
Irigaray claimed that women have sex organs more or less everywhere.
48
According
to her, the multiple erogenous zones of the female body evoke a plurality of pleasures
which are decentred and incoherent. Tis sexuality is also reected in a non-male
approach to language, a polysemic and shifting relation to it that constantly subverts
the patriarchal notion of a stable, centred identity. While uncomfortable with
Irigarays implied essentialism, Doane nevertheless suggested that using the body
as clothes-hanger on which the discussion of the relation of the body to processes
of signication can be hung allows for the development of a new denition of
femininity within the power struggles among discourses on sexuality, without the
need to resort to biological essentialism.
49
Irigarays and Doanes evolving post-
feminism shared the poststructural perception of the split subject that replaced the
centred structuralist subject.
Te post-feminist understanding of femininity as a uid rather than xed ident-
ity opened the way or coalesced with queer theories that addressed in such manner
all sexual and gender identities, particularly those of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and
transgendered people. As stated by Doty, Queer theory shares with feminism an
interest in non-straight normative expressions of gender and with lesbian, gay, and
bisexual studies a concern with non-straight expressions of sexuality and gender.
50

However, queer theory goes beyond these perspectives in that it focuses upon trans-
gressions of established gender or sexual identities, be they straight, gay or lesbian.
Hence, rather than presuming a xed or essentialist stable identity, even if this ident-
ity is xed-as-uid the way post-feminists often characterized femininity, queer
theory presumes all sexual and gender identities to be hybrid and in a potential or
actual uid state.
Queer theory, however, critiqued the long-held binary opposition of male to
female identities that still resonated in the writings of post-feminists. Tey argued
that this binary opposition was designed to exclude varied sexual and social subjects
assuming gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identities, since the latter, when
viewed from the point of view of the male/female divide, were considered abnormal
digressions.
Judith Butlers Gender Trouble
51
expanded the post-feminist position on femin-
inity as diverse, split, shifting and polysemic to characterize all sexual identities.
Butlers queer theory argued that not only deconstructive feminism, in its exchange
of biological essentialism with a no-less determining binary cultural determinism,
but also the post-feminists return to the body as grounds for grouping women,
ultimately led to a dead-end. Feminism was altogether wrong in its presumption
that women or men are groups with clear gender attributes. In her mind, biological
sexual dierences do not determine gender characteristics or imply a desire for the
other sex. While bodies matter, as she claimed, gender and sexual desire are seen by
her as variables that may change in dierent contexts. She proposed to view gender
as something both assigned to and assumed by people, as a performance on their part
rather than as an inextricably xed, essential or inescapably culturally determined
identity. As she put it: Tere is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender;
. . . identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be
its results.
52
Moreover, Butler suggested that the dominant binary performance of
male/female genders, which relegates to the periphery other performances labelled
as queer, is a relational conguration of power that can and must be challenged
politically and destabilized by the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual groups
it stigmatized and excluded. Te latter, in turn, must also destabilize their own
stabilizations and exclusions of gender identities so as to further democratize and
mobilize these. In this respect queer theory seems to dier from post-feminist and
established gay or lesbian approaches in that it emphasizes the constant potential or
actual bending or queering of sexual and gender orientations, rather than being an
umbrella term for non-straight and post-feminist approaches.
Tis trajectory can be traced in lm studies starting from Doanes notion of the
masquerade, which informed the emergence of post-feminism. Contrary to Mulveys
contention that womans visual presence is a dead-end for women spectators and
her insistence that womans only viable yet poor venue for voyeuristic pleasure and
identication can be found in the male-protagonist-dominated narrative trajectory,
Doanes masquerade, while still framed within Mulveys claim that women gure
in lms mostly to be looked at, focused attention nevertheless upon the possible
pleasures that womans visual presence aorded women spectators. Moreover, as
explained by Patricia White, for some theorists, if the womans visual presence
tends to work against the development of a story line . . . then it could be argued
that spectacle itself could be understood as a weak link in the totalizing patriarchal
regime Mulvey delineated and used as a way of interrupting narrative closure and its
presumed conrmation of [male] spectatorial mastery.
53
Hence, the growing post-
feminist focus upon the spectacular aspect of lm began to displace deconstructive
feminist theories insistence upon the domination of narrative trajectories and the
attendant need to deconstruct these, a project perceived by post-feminists as leading
to a dead-end.
Doanes post-feminist notion of the masquerade and the growing attention to
lms spectacular portions coalesced with Butlers queer theory notion of perform-
ativity and performance and with the dierent strategies used by non-straight
viewers to derive voyeuristic pleasure from lms, strategies whose shared focus was
upon the spectacular aspect of lms. As pointed out by Patricia White, Te musical
genres subordination of narrative codes to performance and spectacle might resist
ideological containment, and this is possibly one source of its appeal to female and
gay audiences.
54
Hence, the lms narrative vectorial thrust was perceived as being
constantly dismantled by the voyeuristic pleasures derived by dierently gendered
spectators from the polysemic and multidirectional nature of the lm spectacle.
Tis focus upon spectacle engendered the growing attention to the spectacular
lm-star gure described by Richard Dyer as, unstable, never at a point of rest or
equilibrium, constantly lurching from one formulation of what being human is to
another.
55
Te multifaceted and polysemic phenomenon of lm stars as complex con-
gurations who operate beyond the connes of a lms narrative trajectory through
their various intertextual references, and who apparently transgress the lm-textual
universe into the lm stars real life, easily lends itself to a variety of voyeuristic
pleasures for a variety of viewers gender, sexual and ideological sensibilities.
Tis approach also opened the way to ethnographic and historical audience re-
search of the simultaneous yet dierent decoding of the same lm spectacle by real
spectators of diering mixes of gender, ethnic and national attributes. Tis trend
converged with the growing critique of lm-text or lm-as-apparatus oriented
theories that postulated an abstract generalized viewer. In this respect, Stuart Halls
article Encoding/Decoding oered the most powerful exposition of heterogeneous
processes of textual decoding. In his analysis, the process whereby a message is
produced or encoded in a text and the process whereby the text is decoded by the
recipient are not univocal or complementary. In fact, it is possible for a viewer
perfectly to understand both the literal and the connotative inection given by a
discourse but to decode the message in a globally contrary way. He/she detotalizes
the message in the preferred code in order to retotalize the message within some
alternative framework of reference.
56
In line with this approach, queer lm theory began viewing lm spectacles as the
intersection or combination of more than one established non-straight sexuality
or gender position in a spectator, a text, or a personality.
57
Te focus upon lm as spectacle and the attendant diversication of lm spectators
within post-feminist and queer theories revealed a variety of often contradicting
voyeuristic pleasures. Hence, the pleasure derived by Doanes critical woman viewers
masquerading strategy may arguably apply to heterosexual women (since it presumes
that women cannot enjoy their own image as object of desire and therefore need the
critical distance aorded by masquerading), but it certainly does not apply to lesbian
viewers much of whose voyeuristic pleasure derives precisely from viewing women as
objects of desire. As noted by White, Lesbian spectatorship has posed a particularly
revealing challenge to psychoanalytic theorys seeming equation of sexual dierence
with heterosexual complementarity the presumption that women cannot desire
the image because they are the image.
58
Moreover, queer theory further detached
voyeuristic pleasures from the long-held belief in a bond between the sexual or
gender orientation of the viewer and that of the lm protagonists in suggesting that
viewers, no matter what their stated gender and sexuality identities, often position
themselves queerly that is, position themselves within gender and sexuality spaces
other than those with which they publicly identify.
59
Queer theory found in lm a major site of gender-performance propagation. Te
notion of gender as something unstable and uid focused attention upon gender
transgression or gender crises in lms, while the notion of gender as performance
drew attention to the lm devices of irony, play and parody.
60
2.3 FROM GENDER BENDING TO CYBORGS
Judith Butlers queer theory notion of gender and sexuality as oating signiers
not determined by the biological bodies they inhabit or by an essential-identity
referent, logically coalesces with the computer-revolution-derived notion of the
cyborg. As dened by Haraway, A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of
machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of ction.
61

Haraway found this mythical gure, with no clear origin or gender, embryonically
materialized in each of us, given our species evolving mutation through mechanical
Gender as Performance in Some Like it Hot
Some Like it Hot (1959), an emblematic lm for queer
theory, evidences the theorys attention to gender
transgression or gender crises in lms, as well as its
notion of gender as performance through devices of
irony, play and parody. The lm tells the story of Joe
and Jerry, two musicians on the run from the mob after
witnessing the killing of several gangsters by their rivals
in 1929 Chicago, leading them to dress as women and
join an all-female jazz band performing in Miami. Once
there, Joe (Tony Curtis), masquerading as Josephine, is
attracted to Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), a musician in the
band in search of a millionaire to marry. On the other
hand, Jerry (Jack Lemon), masquerading as Daphne, is
courted by Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), an aging
playboy millionaire living on a yacht offshore. Joe poses
as a millionaire and invites Sugar to his yacht once he
arranges for Jerry/Daphne to spend the night dancing
with Osgood at a nightclub. While Daphna tangos with
Osgood on the shore, we see in crosscutting Jerry
seducing Sugar on Osgoods yacht by telling her he
has lost all interest in women, leading Sugar to try to
re-arouse his interest by kissing him deeply. Following
a series of digressions and misunderstandings, Sugar
nally learns of Jerrys true identity but they remain
in love anyway. Daphne, on board Osgoods speedboat
with them, reveals to Osgood that she is a he, to
which Osgood, undisturbed and in love replies, Well,
nobodys perfect.
As can be seen, this comedy focuses upon deceptive
identities, reversed sex roles and cross-dressing. In this
it propagates a performative approach to gender. This
comes through not only in the delight enjoyed by Joe
or animal implants. Born of the revolutionary conceptual impact brought about by
computers and by the deciphering of the human genome, she detected its eects in
the contemporary dismantling of the nuclear, biologically based model of the family.
Now, when organs can be cloned and the cloning of humans is not very far o, the
arbitrariness of gender attributions becomes more evident according to Haraway.
Tis does not mean, however, as implied by Michael Heim in his account of
our fascination with computers, that cyborgs do not oer spectators voyeuristic
pleasures:
Our love aair with computers, computer graphics, and computer networks
runs deeper than aesthetic fascination and deeper that the play of the senses.
We are searching for a home for the mind and heart . . . Te computers allure
is more than utilitarian or aesthetic; it is erotic . . . our aair with information
machines announces a symbiotic relationship and ultimately a mental marriage
to technology.
62
However, while Heim discussed technology in erotic terms and Haraway proposed
to consider the post-human cyborg as a liberating, even socialist-feminist myth, its
and Jerry in their wearing female dresses, but is also
enhanced through Jerrys shifts from female dress to
millionaire dress, consisting of a yachting jacket and
cap, the reading of the Wall Street Journal, and his
speaking in an accent comically denoting sophistication.
Moreover, while Sugars highly sexualized guration
positions her as the ultimate erotic object of desire
for both the viewers and the cross-dressed males (e.g.
during the show, Sugar sings I Want to Be Loved
By You wearing a see-through dress as her breasts,
partly shadowed by a spotlight move back and forth
into the light), her appearance is also performatized
and somewhat desexualized due to the surrounding
gender performances. This comes through particularly
in the yacht scene, where Jerrys fake frigidity when
Sugar kisses him again and again, conveys a dissonance
between her overowing sexuality and Jerrys persuasive
apathy. The lm also deals comically with moments of
gender transgression and crisis through the evolving
relation between Jerry/Daphne and Osgood. This comes
forth in particular during the scene following their tango
night. Hence, once back in his room, Jerry, enchanted by
his feminine performance and swept away by Osgoods
marriage proposal (to which he agreed), is confronted
by Joe who tells him it cannot be done since both Jerry
and Osgood are males. At that point, Jerry, slowly coming
to his senses, loses his equilibrium and as he sits down
on the bed, the following dialogue ensues:
Joe: Just keep telling yourself youre a boy. Youre a boy.
Jerry: Im a boy.
Joe: Thats the boy.
Gender as Performance in Some like it Hot
widespread lm guration in lms like Blade Runner, Strange Days (1995), Dark City
(1998) or the Terminator trilogy (1984, 1991, 2002) was usually couched in terms of
the conservative opposition between humans and machines, oering technophobic
and dystopic visions rather than liberating spectators from psychological constrains
concerning gender or human-machine interaction.
2.4 A POST-MARXIST CRITIQUE OF QUEER AND CYBORG THEORIES
It seems that lms lag behind the conceptual and aesthetic possibilities opened up by
the emergent notion of the cyborg. On the other hand, from a post-Marxist point
of view, it may well be that the human body, its materiality and ensuing desire, so
tangibly communicated by lms, is something we cannot, or should not give up.
Tis tangible lm presence and guration subverts the abstractions that queer theory
and the cyborg myth, through their respective notions of performance and machine,
propagate. It may also subvert the far-fetched evenness implied in their notion
of performance (e.g. a millionaire, a woman, a computer, or a poor man, for
that matter), a notion that ultimately obscures the real unevenness in the current
globalizing capitalist congurations of power.
Chapter Summary
Semiotic Psychoanalysis and Film
The concept of imaginary signiers brings together the semiotic aspect of lm and its psychological
effects.
Metz noticed that lm, mirror and dream are reections of things perceived as tangible but lacking
materiality.
Metz applied Freuds four dream work psychic procedures (condensation, displacement, symbolization and
secondary elaboration) to lm articulation.
Complementing the neo-Marxist Althusserian notion of ideology with Lacanian psychoanalysis, Metz and
others argued that lms offer viewers an illusion of empowerment by leading them to rehearse the joyful
infantile mirror stage suggested by Lacan.
Metz noted the viewers identication with the point of view of a moving camera that creates a centred
space converging into the viewers eye.
Dayan argued that the shotcounter-shot editing strategy sutures the spectators psyche to the lm.
Deconstructive Feminism and Film
Deconstructive feminists reacted against the 1960s feminist biological essentialism by claiming that gender
is structured by culture.
Mulvey used Freuds psychoanalytic study of scopophilia to argue that male spectators identify with the male
protagonist that leads the narrative and nd erotic pleasure in watching the passive females that populate
the spectacular portions of lms, concluding that female spectators have no place in the theatre.
Studlar suggested an altogether different explanation for female viewing pleasure based on masochism.
Doane found the perception of female protagonists as masquerading femininity to be an effective way of
opening a distance from the female image, turning it manipulable by women spectators.
Post-feminist and Queer Theory
Post-feminists offered an understanding of femininity as a uid rather than xed identity. This coalesced
with queer theories that addressed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sensibilities, while criticizing the
long-held binary opposition of male to female identities.
Judith Butler dened gender as performance rather than as an inextricably xed identity.
Post-feminism and queer theories focused upon the multifaceted characteristic of the lm spectacle and
its opening to different gender and sexual sensibilities on account of the previous focus upon lms linear
narrative trajectory and the presumption of a generalized abstract viewer.
The research of the lm spectacle engendered the study of spectacular lm stars who open the lm to
coincidental readings by viewers with different gender and sexual orientations, leading also to specic
ethnographic and historical research of different constituents of the viewing audiences.
The queer theory notion of gender coalesces with the computer-revolution-derived notion of the cyborg as
dened by Haraway, a mythical half-human/half-machine gure with no clear origin or gender.
QUESTIONS FOR ESSAYS AND
CLASS DISCUSSION
1 FROM THE PHOTOGENIC TO THE
SIMULACRUM
1. Can lms reveal hidden aspects of the reality they record? Discuss the dierent
answers provided to this question by Epstein, Vertov and Baudrillard.
2. What is the relation of the photogenic to lm art? Discuss how Bazins con-
ception of this relation diers from that of Tynjanov.
3. On what grounds did Marxists critique Bazins realism and Tynjanovs
formalism?
4. How does the digital revolution in lm, evident in lms like Andy and Larry
Wachowskis Te Matrix (1999), aect the cinematic conception of reality?
5. Discuss the documentary and ctional aspects of Michael Moores lm
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).
2 FILM CONSTRUCTS
1. What is the nature of lm signs? Discuss the dierent answers provided to this
question by Barthes, Metz and Wollen.
2. Do lms have deep structures? Discuss the structural and poststructural
positions on this question, particularly as they relate to the notion of lm
genres.
3. How is meaning construed in the interaction between lm and spectator?
Compare Ben-Poraths intertextual method to Bordwells cognitive approach.
4. Using Noel Carrolls question-and-answer model, can you explain how
Christopher Nolans lm Memento (2000) cues the spectator to construct in
his/her mind its temporal construction?
132 q u e s t i o n s f o r e s s a y s a n d c l a s s d i s c u s s i o n
5. Discern and discuss the fairy-tale intertextual relations in Andrew Adamsons
and Vicky Jensons lm Shrek (2001).
1. Do lms manipulate spectators ideologically? Compare the formalist and cog-
nitivist positions on this question to the Marxist one.
2. Why is dialectic lm montage an eective ideological manipulation according
to Eisenstein?
3. What is the nature of aura in lm according to Benjamin? Discuss the aura of
lm stars such as Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts.
4. How do continuity edited lms manipulate spectators according to Baudry or
Heath?
5. In Jamesons terms, is David Finchers lm Fight Club (1999) a postmodern
lm? Is it a progressive or regressive lm according to Jameson?
4 IMAGINARY SIGNIFIERS/VOYEURISTIC
PLEASURES
1. On what basis are lms compared to dreams or mirrors? Discuss the presumed
dreamlike or mirror-like inuences of lms on spectators.
2. Why did Mulvey claim that classical narrative lms discriminate against
women?
3. Is female masquerading in lms a subversive strategy?
4. Is gender natural or performed? In what sense do lms support Butlers notion
of gender as performance?
5. In queer theory terms, what spectatorial positions can be assumed when
watching Ang Lees lm Brokeback Mountain (2005)?
NOTES
1 FROM THE PHOTOGENIC TO THE SIMULACRUM
1. Rudolph Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp.
523.
2. See a similar position in Noel Burch, Teory of Film Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1981).
3. Stuart E. Liebman, Jean Epsteins Early Film Teory, 19201922 (New York University Dissertation,
Ann Arbor, MI: University Microlms International, 1983), p. 132.
4. Liebman, Jean Epsteins Early Film Teory, p. 117.
7. Roland Barthes, Te Photographic Message, in Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill and Wang,
1978), pp. 301. Barthess semiology is discussed in Chapter 2.
8. Balazs oers an emblematic example of the realists presupposition of mystery in his description
of the facial close-up where we can see there is something there that we cant see. See Bela Balazs,
Teory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art (New York: Dover Publications, 1970),
p. 76.
9. A detailed analysis of Vertovs theory appears in Chapter 3.
10. Liebman addresses the relation between Epsteins photogenie and Benjamins aura (Liebman, Jean
Epsteins Early Film Teory, pp. 2312). On Benjamins reections on lm, see Chapter 3.
11. Walter Benjamin, Te Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in H. Arendt (ed.),
Illuminations (New York: Shocken Books, 1969), p. 236.
12. Andr Bazin, Te Ontology of the Photographic Image, in What is Cinema? Volume I (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967), pp. 916.
13. Andr Bazin, Te Evolution of the Language of Cinema, in What is Cinema? pp. 2340.
14. Bazin, Ontology of the Photographic Image, p. 12.
19. Bazin, Evolution of the Language of Cinema, p. 24.
23. James Roy MacBean, Vent dest or Godard and Rocha at the Crossroads, in B. Nichols (ed.),
Movies and Methods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 956.
134 n o t e s
24. On Althusser and neo-Marxist lm theory, see Chapter 3.
25. On Noel Carroll and cognitivist lm theory, see Chapter 2.
26. See Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (London: University
of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 12. Victor Shklovsky along with Boris Eichenbaum were two of the
leading gures who founded the rst formalist group Opoyaz (which stands in Russian for Te
Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in St Petersburg in 1914, followed by the Moscow
Linguistic Circle, which included Roman Jacobson and Boris Tomashevsky. Teir main focus was
literature.
27. Y. Tynjanov, Te Foundations of Cinema, in H. Eagle (ed.), Russian Formalist Film Teory (Ann
Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1981), pp. 978.
28. Boris Kazanskij, Te Nature of Cinema, in H. Eagle (ed.), Russian Formalist Film Teory (Ann
Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1981), p. 103.
29. Hence, Eichenbaum dealt with lm style; Tynjanov with the foundations of cinema; Kazanskij
compares lm to other arts; Piotrovskij writes on lm genres and Shklovsky on poetry and prose in
cinema.
30. Tynjanov, Foundations of Cinema, pp. 81100.
31. Tynjanov, Foundations of Cinema, p. 81.
39. Tere have been powerful cinematic historical dramas, such as Oliver Hirschbiegels recent lm Te
Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Tird Reich (2004) where Bruno Ganz establishes a resemblance
to Hitler while powerfully conveying Hitlers murderous politics. Tis may be due, in Tynjanovs
terms, to a loosened attribution of truth to referential lm images in the age of digitization.
40. Tynjanov, Foundations of Cinema, p. 100. Tynjanovs Russian formalist consideration of lm
genres was further explored by Piotrovskij who oered a typology of genres in his time based upon
the degree of their stemming from specic lm devices. Hence, he valued silent comedies due to
their being based upon fragmentation and upon play with props as actors, and rejected psychological
dramas due to their being based upon non-visual complex psychological motivations.
41. While Eisenstein was referring to Vertovs lm Man with a Movie Camera, which he didnt really
understand (see A. Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye, the Writings of Dziga Vertov , Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1984, pp. xxxxiii), his type of critique seems more appropriate to Walther
Ruttmans lm Berlin, symphony of a city (1927), a lm which like Vertovs focused on the rhythms
of the modern city, but unlike it, dealt with rhythmical abstractions irrespective of sociopolitical
considerations.
42. Burch, Teory of Film Practice, p. vi.
43. We will consider the positions of the Marxist-oriented thinkers of the Frankfurt School on form-
alism in Chapter 2.
44. Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, p. 242.
45. Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (St. Louis, MO: Telos, 1981),
p. 155.
n o t e s 135
46. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, 1978).
47. See Tomas S. Kuhn, Te Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970).
48. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, in M. Poster (ed.), Selected Writings (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 16684.
49. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, pp. 1801.
50. Vivian Sobchack, At the Still Point of the Turning World in V. Sobchack (ed.), Meta-Morphing
(Minnesota: Minnesota University Press, 2000), p. 142.
2 FILM CONSTRUCTS
1. Two basic formalist principles were highly inuential in the development of structural semiology
and structuralism: the principle concerning the shift from the ordinary, natural context to the
artistic one was incorporated into these theories attempts at typologizing the mediums ways of
conveying meaning in their assumption that the value of lm components derived less from their
extra-cinematic origin and more from their mutual structural interrelation in groups of lms, or
from their interrelation in cinemas specic sign system. Tis latter semiological premise was derived
from the formalists idea that each art form has its own specic means of production, a premise
leading semiologists such as Christian Metz to base their search after cinemas specic sign system
on the sole basis of their particular, unique material signiers such as recorded images coupled with
recorded sounds imparting motion, and specic editing signiers such as cuts and dissolves.
2. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).
3. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 6, writes in
this excellent survey of structuralism, that It would not be wrong to suggest that structuralism and
semiology are identical.
4. For a survey of Saussures principles and their semiological development see R. Barthes, Elements of
Semiology (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964).
5. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Structure and Form: Reections on a Work by Vladimir Propp, in Structural
Anthropology, Volume 2 (Chicago: Te University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 115. While Lvi-Strauss
here addresses Propps Formalism, his comments are applicable to what he would have considered to
be a similarly unwarranted dierentiation within the sign between the privileged signier (i.e. form)
and its arbitrarily related signied (i.e. content). For Lvi-Strauss signs are inseparable form-content
units. While letters are forms without content, words are not, and while the relation between
signier and signied in a word may be arbitrary, it is constant and inseparable within the structure
of language.
6. Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, p. 68.
7. Barthes, Elements of Semiology, pp. 4051.
8. Roland Barthes, Myth Today, in Mythologies (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972). Neo-Marxists based
their critique of lm upon the premise that lm naturalizes ideology. See Chapter 3.
9. See Christian Metzs Film Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974) and his On the
Notion of Cinematographic Language, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1976).
10. Umberto Eco suggested that lm images consist of a triple articulation: the rst level of articulation
consists in his view of discrete graphic signs such as circular or straight lines. Tese are combined
136 n o t e s
into more complex discrete iconic signs such as an eye, formed by circular combinations. Te
combination of these iconic signs generates, on a third level of articulation, meaningful units
(semes) such as when you put one eye to the side of another, a nose beneath and in-between the
eyes, and a mouth right below the nose. Te complexity involved in triple articulations was taken
by Eco to explain the apparent analogical fullness perceived in photographs. He went on to suggest
that lms connect these synchronic images diachronically to create complex articulations through
motion. Umberto Eco, Articulations of the Cinematic Code, in Nichols, Movies and Methods,
pp. 590607.
11. Metz, Film Language, p. 146.
12. Metz, Cinematographic Language, pp. 5878.
13. Metz himself oers an example of a durative syntagm describing the tenuous crossing of a dessert in
a western lm (Cinematographic Language, pp. 5878).
14. Peter Wollen, Te Semiology of the Cinema, in Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (Bloomington,
Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972), pp. 11654.
15. Wollen, Semiology of the Cinema, pp. 1413. Wollen, following Roman Jacobson, detailed a
variety of instances in language where utterances mimic natural order. Not only onomatopoeias
evidence such mimicry, but traces can also be found in the fact that most languages use more letters
in the plural, and in their including stable linguistic idioms like veni, vidi, vici that follow the
sequence of events in the world. Moreover, argued Wollen, it is almost impossible to understand
linguistic utterances without knowing who speaks, when and where, a knowledge that cannot be
solely derived from Saussures insulated language system.
16. Te American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce developed his semiotic theory at around the same
time that Saussure developed his structural linguistics.
17. J. Buchler (ed.), Philosophical Writings of Peirce (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955),
p. 106. Peirce oered ten trichotomies of the sign but his second trichotomy is considered his most
important contribution and is the one that most inuenced lm studies.
18. Wollen, Semiology of the Cinema, p. 123.
23. Culler in Structuralist Poetics oers a critical evaluation of major structuralists including Saussure,
Claude Lvi-Strauss and Tzvetan Todorov. Jean Piaget, however, is mentioned by Culler in one
single footnote.
24. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Te Structural Study of Myth, in Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic
Books Inc., 1963), pp. 20631.
25. Tis bounding principle was the major site of attack by poststructuralists. As will be seen in Chapter
2, section 2, it is very dicult to legitimize the delineation of boundaries to a cultural system. Lvi-
Strauss himself conceded this to be a problem.
26. Te binary principle was considered by Lvi-Strauss as well as by Saussure and other structuralists
as a central logical and practical faculty of language. Lvi-Strauss considered it to be the major way
humans think. Te Russian formalist Tynjanov (see Chapter 1) also insinuated binary oppositions
when claiming that choosing the things to be seen in lm derives from stylistic-semantic
considerations based on the contrastive and dierential mutual characteristics of the objects or
actors chosen rather than from their social or other extra-lmic consideration. Nevertheless, neither
Tynjanov nor other formalists developed this premise systematically.
n o t e s 137
27. Lvi-Strauss, Reections on a Work by Vladimir Propp, p. 115.
28. He likened this to the reconstruction of the synchronic pack of cards used by fortune-tellers through
the statistical recurrence of their diachronic predictions (Lvi-Strauss, Structural Study of Myth,
p. 212).
29. Lvi-Strauss confessed to not being an expert in Greek mythology and likened his work to that of a
street peddler whose aim is not to achieve a concrete result, but to explain, as succinctly as possible,
the functioning of the mechanical toy which he is trying to sell to the on-lookers (Structural Study
of Myth, p. 213).
30. While Lvi-Strauss likens his gross constituent units to lower language levels comprised of signiers
without signieds (e.g. phonemes), he bypasses Saussures vertical signier/signied split within
the sign and maintains only the similarity on the horizontal relational structure. Tis is his main
divergence from semiologists like Metz who gave up on studying such gross units on the level of
the lms image contents since he couldnt nd this vertical split in their continuous and analogous
articulation.
31. Lvi-Strauss, Structural Study of Myth, p. 216.
32. In studying the versions of the North American Zui tribe myth dealing with the irresolvable
contradiction between life and death, Lvi-Strauss discerned another mythical operation whereby
units representing death (e.g. carnivorous animals) gure within the same column above units
representing life (vegetarian animals), but then converge into a column consisting of one unit that
includes both (an animal both carnivorous and vegetarian). Tis unit, which he called the trickster,
inverts the poles of life and death so that in the next column the positions of life units appear above
those representing death. Tus, the myth, by inverting the columns ends up saying that life and
death are not opposed to each other since we nd that life representing units mutate to death ones
and that life inhabits death. As will be seen, the western genre protagonist is such a trickster unit
in-between civilization and nature.
33. Tomas Schatz, Te structural Inuence: New Directions in Film Genre Study, in B. K. Grant
(ed.), Film Genre Reader II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), p. 99. See also in Schatz an
overview of structural approaches to lm.
34. Te rst to have noticed this conict was probably Henry Nash Smith in his book Virgin Land
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), where he unearths this contradiction in the
writings of James Fennimore Cooper.
35. See above, note 32.
36. Wollen, Te Auteur Teory, in Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1972), p. 80.
37. Wollen, Auteur Teory, pp. 72115.
38. Wollen, Auteur Teory, p. 81.
42. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, ed. L. Wagner (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1968).
43. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, pp. 201.
44. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, pp. 114, 128.
45. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 54.
46. Will Wright, Sixguns and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
138 n o t e s
47. Te term poststructuralism subsumes a wide range of positions some of them even contradict-
ing. Te following discussion focuses upon premises more or less shared by dierent leading
poststructuralists.
48. See Michel Foucaults Truth and Power, in P. Rabinow (ed.), Te Foucault Reader (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 1012.
49. Steve Neal, Questions of Genre, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader II (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1995), pp. 15983.
50. Rick Altman, A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre, in Grant, Film Genre Reader II,
p. 34.
51. Altman, Semantic/Syntactic Approach, pp. 2641.
52. See Julia Kristeva, Te Bounded Text, in Desire in Language (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1980), p. 111.
53. Kristeva, Te Bounded Text, p. 36.
54. See Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (Glasgow: Fontana, 1977), p 157.
55. See Gerard Genette, Palimpsestes, La Litterature au Second Degre (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1982).
56. Ziva Ben-Porath, Intertextuality in Hassifrut, 1983 (34), 2 [Hebrew].
57. Noel Carroll critiques this widespread poststructural attitude towards truth and objectivity.
58. See Noel Carroll, Mystifying Movies, Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Teory (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 18899.
59. For example, Carroll, Mystifying Movies. His critique is reviewed in Chapters 3 and 4.
60. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, pp. 13847, 17081, 199212.
61. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985),
pp. 2947.
62. Bordwell, as well as other cognitivists, was inuenced in this denition of lms enjoyment by the
formalist premise that the function of art is to challenge and play with the perceivers cognitive
activities. From early precursors of cognitive lm theory such as Rudolph Arnheim to David
Bordwell the search for the viewers cognitive processes while watching a lm was premised upon
lms posing of cognitive challenges to the viewers, leading them to construct the lm in their
minds. Moreover, for cognitivists as for the formalists, the viewers aesthetic enjoyment of lm
derived from these perceptual and cognitive challenges.
63. Edward Brannigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film (London: Routledge, 1992) oers the most
elaborated cognitivist theory of narrative.
64. Bordwell borrowed the term from the Russian formalists. He also borrowed from them the
dierentiation between story and plot formations as well as the relation between style, plot and
genre (see Chapter 1). Unlike the formalists, however, Bordwell did not use these concepts to
explain an insulated lm, but to explain the dynamic interaction whereby dierent lm genres help
the viewers to construct a lms narrative in their mind.
65. For Carrolls counter-critique of neo-Marxism, see Chapter 3.
66. Film cognitivists conceded that their approach initially disregarded emotions. However, Carroll as
well as others have since then tried to implement in lm studies cognitive theories of emotion.
1. For example, Noel Burch, Teory of Film Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
While Burch explicitly founded his neo-formalist lm aesthetic upon dialectic congurations,
n o t e s 139
dialectic lm montage corresponds in some of its aspects to the formalist notion of estrangement or
unfamiliarity in art.
2. Wollen, for example, mentions John Fords image in Te Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) of a
cactus rose which encapsulates the antinomy between desert and garden. See Te Auteur Teory,
in Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1972), p. 96.
3. I describe them as formal because they consider the dialectic as a peculiar property of works of art
or cultural systems, excluding extra-cultural or artistic factors.
4. As will be noticed, the trajectory traced from a Marxist constructivist dialectic lm montage to a
decentred postmodernism, overlaps the shift from structural to poststructural theory delineated in
Chapter 2.
5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Te German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947),
p. 42.
6. Marx & Engels, Te German Ideology, p. 73.
7. See Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in Early Writings (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1975), p. 351.
8. Sergei M. Eisenstein, A Dialectic Approach to Film Form, in Film Form (New York: HBJ Books,
1949), pp. 4564.
9. From a Marxist point of view, art has always a social function. Formalism in the arts, in its attempts
to exclude sociopolitical concerns from the study of art was not only turning away from arts
(necessary) social function but was also encouraging a-social behaviour, conforming to the abstract
mentality of the exploiting classes. Te Marxist critiques of formalism are discussed throughout this
chapter.
10. Eisenstein, Dialectic Approach, p. 48.
11. Eisenstein, Dialectic Approach, pp. 578.
12. Goebbels is quoted by Siegfried Kracauer in his book From Caligari to Hitler, a Psychological History
of the German Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947, pp. 28990) in the context of
a comparison between Eisensteins lm and Leni Riefenstahls Nazi propaganda lm Triumph of the
Will (1935).
13. Eisenstein described his lmmaking in opposition to Vertovs kinoglaz (lm-eye) as a lm-st. His
focus was upon dialectic process he presumed to be eectively rehearsed in the interaction between
spectator and a cinematic montage of conicts. Vertov on the other hand focused less on this
interaction and more in the cinematic research of reality.
14. See Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye, the Writings of Dziga Vertov (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), p. xxx. Tis exposition of Vertovs positions is partly indebted to Annette
Michelsons introduction to her book on Vertov.
15. Marx & Engels, Te German Ideology, p. 58.
16. Michelson, Kino-Eye, pp. 47, 66.
17. Te notion of lm as a Truth Machine is widespread during the 1920s. See the discussion of the
photogenic in Chapter 1.
18. Michelson, Kino-Eye, p. 41.
19. Michelson, Kino-Eye, p. 91.
20. Tis conception of rhythm was shared by many at the time, particularly by Soviet constructivists as
can be found in Mayakovskis poetry or in Vladimir Tatlins model of the Monument for the Tird
International, which was intended as a huge spirally revolving construction described by Shklovsky
as made of iron, glass and revolution. See Michelson, Kino-Eye, p. xxxiii.
140 n o t e s
21. Walter Benjamin, Te Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in H. Arendt (ed.),
Illuminations (New York: Shocken Books, 1969), pp. 21752.
22. Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, p. 218.
23. Benjamins position that the artistic avant-garde ends up serving fascism was rejected by several
Frankfurt School members such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. Adorno rejected his detection
of revolutionary trends in popular culture (e.g. in Chaplins lms). For Adorno and Horkheimer,
popular culture in the capitalist world was a culture industry pumping capitalist ideology into
the exploited masses minds. See Teodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Te Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in Dialectics of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1986), pp.
12067. Also, contrary to the traditional Marxist position on formalism adhered to by Benjamin,
they did nd in the artistic avant-gardes constant search for new forms of expression an attempt to
defrost aesthetic and mental xations, thereby inadvertently promoting a revolutionary mentality.
24. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart).
25. Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, in Lenin and Philosophy (New York:
MRP, 1971), p. 159.
26. Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, pp. 12788.
27. Jacques Lacan, Te Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I, in Ecrits, a Selection (New
York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977). For more on Lacan, see Chapter 4.
28. Cognitivists harshly critiqued what Noel Carroll has termed the AlthusserianLacanian paradigm
in lm studies. Carroll dismisses Althussers notion of ideology as too encompassing and conated
with the wider concept of culture. Tis conception doesnt leave any way out of the ideological
immersion people are presumed to be in nor does it allow for any meaningful rejection of an
ideology. He therefore suggests a return to the simple denition according to which ideology is
a conscious manipulation. Tis allows for a clearer demarcation between ideology in a lm and
non-ideological aspects in lm. Moreover, asks Carroll, in what sense has Althusser gone beyond
classical Marxism if the latter actually provides a simple answer to why the exploited do not revolt?
Doesnt it make more sense, he suggests, to presume that the exploited do not revolt because they
are afraid to lose their jobs or lives? Why is there a need to develop complex theories of ideological
manipulation? See Noel Carroll, Mystifying Movies, Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Teory
(New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 5388.
29. Jean Louis Baudry, Ideological Eects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus, in Bill Nichols
(ed.), Movies and Methods Volume II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 53142.
30. For a non-ideological reading of linear (and synthetic) perspective in relation to lm, see David
Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp.
57. Cognitivists like Carroll rejected the notion that spectators identify with the camera leading
them to feel that they originate the movie. If such was the case, asks Carroll, how can it be that the
spectator is in a state of suspense concerning future developments? Why should they guess about
something they originate? Likewise Carroll rejects the neo-Marxist notion that the homogenized,
centred space positions a centred subject that cannot help but yield to ideological manipulations.
Even presuming that the space is centred and that the spectator perceives it as such, says Carroll,
it does not follow that he must accept the image of reality represented. Spectators can perceive a
centred space and reject the reality represented. Te spectator, contends Carroll, is not a simple
eect of the lm. Carroll rejects the whole notion that linear perspective creates a fraudulent illusion.
While it does oer an illusion of three-dimensionality, this illusion is not an ideological convention
that colonized culture (a notion implying there could be as easily other forms of representation).
Linear perspective, says Carroll, is a rather useful cultural invention tted to human sight. It allows
us to learn about the real world around us. See Carroll, Mystifying Movies, pp. 5388.
n o t e s 141
31. Stephen Heath, Narrative Space in Questions of Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 1981), pp. 1975.
32. Further examples of Godards deconstructive strategies can be found in James Roy MacBean, Vent
dest or Godard and Rocha at the Crossroads, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985), pp. 91110.
33. Frantz Fanon, Te Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1967).
34. Fanon, Te Wretched of the Earth, p. 40.
35. Fanon, Te Wretched of the Earth, p. 46.
36. For example, Fernando Solanass and Octavio Getinos Argentine lm Hour of the Furnaces (1968);
Tomas Gutierrez Aleas Cuban lm Memories of underdevelopment (1968), Yucef Shahins Egyptian
lm Te Sparrow (1973) or Ousmane Sembenes Senegalese lm Xala (1975).
37. See a reading of this scene and of the lm as a whole from an anti-colonial perspective in Robert
Stam and Louis Spence, Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction, in Bill
Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
38. Fredric Jameson, Post-Modernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1991); David Harvey, Te Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
2001).
39. A good example is Austin Powers, the Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), which oers a nostalgic return
to an idealized, explicitly fake image of the 1960s period through intertextual references to James
Bond lms.
40. Homi K. Bhaba, Te Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
4 IMAGINARY SIGNIFIERS/VOYEURISTIC PLEASURES
1. Rudolph Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), p. 3.
2. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Noel
Carroll, Mystifying Movies, Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Teory (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988).
3. Stuart E. Liebman, Jean Epsteins Early Film Teory, 19201922 (New York University Dissertation,
Ann Arbor, MI: University Microlms International, 1983), p. 55.
4. Te likening of lms to dreams has accompanied the medium since its inception. See Charles F.
Altman, Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Te Imaginary Discourse, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and
Methods Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 5246.
5. Freud described how dreams appear to us using the metaphor of lm projection, as quoted in Jean
Louis Baudry, Ideological Eects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus, in Bill Nichols (ed.),
Movies and Methods Volume II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 532.
6. Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Avon Books, 1965).
7. Jacques Lacan, Te Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I, in Ecrits, a Selection (New
York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977), pp. 18.
8. Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, p. 177.
9. Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 311546.
142 n o t e s
15. Te term cathexis was used by Freud to describe the process whereby a dreamer concentrates in an
idea or thought charged with psychical energy (Interpretation of Dreams, p. 210, fn. 1).
16. Freud himself oers this correlation when comparing dream censorship to the social censorship of
art (Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 1757).
17. Te psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan hypothesized that the unconscious is built like a language. Hence
he maintained that the linguistic devices of metaphor and metonymy are to be compared or
understood as Freud understood condensations and displacements in dreams (compared by Metz
respectively to lm dissolves and cuts). See Christian Metz, Te Imaginary Signier (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 28192.
18. Surrealists, claiming there is no ontological dierence between dream and reality, relied heavily
upon Freuds psychoanalytic theory of dreams. Tey also valued the medium of lm because it
allowed them to place real-looking objects in congurations that were impossible in reality, as they
also practised in painting such as Ren Magrittes painting of a train rushing out of a cemented
replace or Salvador Dalis drawings of melting clocks.
19. Tis same premise underlines neo-Marxist critiques of narrative continuous lms as sweeping
spectators away through their apparent continuity and henceforth eectively inculcating in them
their ideology (see Chapter 3).
20. Lacan, Mirror Stage, p. 2.
22. Tis is one of the sources of human desire. Te notion of frustrated desires is cardinal to Lacans
psychoanalysis.
23. Lacan had reservations concerning the Freudian understanding of the Ideal Ego (see Lacan, Mirror
Stage, p. 7 fn. 1). Hence, whereas Lacan attributes the initial formation of the Ideal Ego already to
the mirror stage, Freud attributed it to the Oedipal stage during which humans acquire a sense of
gender and the boy in particular internalizes the gure of the father as Ideal Ego or superego (see on
the Oedipus complex in the section dealing with Laura Mulvey).
25. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, a Selection (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977), pp. 1034.
26. On Lacans modes of cognition and their relation to Freudian stages of maturation see Lacan, Ecrits,
pp. ixxi; Metz, Imaginary Signier, pp. 812, fn. 9.
27. See Chapter 3. See also Baudry, Ideological Eects; Heath, Narrative Space.
28. Christian Metz, Story/Discourse: Notes on Two Kinds of Voyeurism, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies
and Methods Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 5439.
29. Metz, Story/Discourse, pp. 5489. Te concepts mentioned belong to Freuds mapping of the
human psyche into the ego, the superego and the id. It overlaps Freuds other mapping of the
psyche into the conscious and the unconscious. Te id is the unconscious, the source of instinctual
energies.
30. Daniel Dayan, Te Tutor Code of Classical Cinema, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 43851.
31. Te notion that editing transitions threaten the lms illusion and the attendant disruption of lms
manipulation of viewers has also generated dierent variations. See the discussion of Baudrys and
Heaths positions in Chapter 3, where it is also shown how Lacanian-derived psychoanalytic theories
of lm informed Althusserian neo-Marxist lm research.
32. In Greek mythology the nymph Echo had the power to generate speech, but was punished by
jealous Juno who relegated her to the reproduction of sounds made by others.
n o t e s 143
33. Altman, Psychoanalysis and Cinema, pp. 5289.
34. Altman, Psychoanalysis and Cinema, pp. 5301.
35. Carroll, Mystifying Movies.
36. Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods
Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 30314.
37. Freuds discussion of the Oedipus complex has several variations stemming from his claim that
both genders have a bisexual component in their identity. All these versions however revolve around
what he saw as the positive case of the Oedipus complex resolution. On Mulveys critical review of
Freuds conception of femininity, see her Visual Pleasure.
38. Sadism, according to Freud, originates in Tanatos (the death instinct, as opposed to Eros, the
sexual libidinal instinct driving fetishization), which nevertheless merges into sexual instincts
through which it is discharged.
39. For example, Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, p. 422, fn.1.
40. Mulvey, Visual Pleasure, p. 315, fn. 1.
41. Mulvey, Visual Pleasure, p. 315.
42. G. Studlar, Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures in the Cinema, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and
Methods Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 605.
43. Studlar, Masochism, p. 605.
44. Mulvey, Visual Pleasure.
45. Mary Ann Doane, Film and the Masquerade: Teorizing the Female Spectator, in Screen, 23
(1982), p. 81.
46. Doane, Film and the Masquerade, p. 78.
47. Doane, Film and the Masquerade, p. 87.
48. See Luce Irigaray, Tis Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985),
p. 28.
49. Doane, Film and the Masquerade.
50. Alexander Doty, Queer Teory, in J. Hill, P. C. Gibson, R. Dyer, E. A. Kaplan and P. Willemen
(eds.), Te Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 148.
51. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York and London: Routledge, 1990).
52. Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 25.
53. Patricia White, Feminism and Film, in Hill et al., Te Oxford Guide to Film Studies, p. 120.
54. White, Feminism and Film, p. 120.
55. In Richard Dyers Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (British Film Institute, 1986), p. 18.
56. Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding, in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds.), Culture,
Media, Language (London: Hutchinson Press, 1980), p. 138.
57. Doty, Queer Teory, p. 149.
58. White, Feminism and Film, p. 121.
59. Doty, Queer Teory, p. 151.
60. E.g. Chris Straayer, Redressing the Natural: Te Temporary Transvestite Film, in B. K. Grant
(ed.), Film Genre Reader II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), pp. 40227.
61. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: Te Reinvention of Nature (New York:
Routledge, 1991), p. 149.
62. See Michael Heim, Te Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace, in M. Benedikt (ed.), Cyberspace: First
Steps (Cambridge, MA: Te MIT Press, 1991), p. 61.
ANNOTATED GUIDE FOR
FURTHER READING
1 FROM THE PHOTOGENIC TO THE SIMULACRUM
Arnheim, R. (1957), Film as Art, Berkeley: University of California Press.
A Gestalt psychological approach to lm that focuses on how lms diverge from our visual
perception of the real world.
Baudrillard, J. (1988), Simulacra and Simulations, in M. Poster (ed.), Selected Writings,
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
In this seminal essay Baudrillard suggests that the distinction between the simulation and
the simulated is arbitrary, masking the fact that they are both simulations without origin.
Bazin, A. (1967a), Te Evolution of the Language of Cinema, in What is Cinema? Volume I,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Te processes of lm articulation should be aimed at conveying the beauty in natures
spatial depth, in its owing temporality and in human existence.
Bazin, A. (1967b), Te Ontology of the Photographic Image, in What is Cinema? Volume I,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Te photograph, due to its unique way of reproduction, can reveal the worlds beauty.
Liebman, S. E. (1983), Jean Epsteins Early Film Teory, 19201922, New York University
Dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microlms International.
In this dissertation Liebman oers a comprehensive and detailed exposition of Jean
Epsteins lm theory.
Michelson, A. (ed.) (1984), Kino-Eye, the Writings of Dziga Vertov, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
A collection of Dziga Vertovs writings preceded by Michelsons excellent introduction that
places Vertovs work in the context of Marxism and the constructivist movement.
Sobchack, V. (2000), At the Still Point of the Turning World in V. Sobchack (ed.), Meta-
Morphing, Minnesota: Minnesota University Press.
Sobchack explores the conception of change implied in morphing.
Tynjanov, Y. (1981), the Foundations of Cinema, in H. Eagle (ed.), Russian Formalist Film
Teory, Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.
Tynjanov argues here that cinematogenicity and montage are the two specic and unique
aspects of the lm medium that turn it into an art.
a n n o t a t e d g u i d e f o r f u r t h e r r e a d i n g 145
2 FILM CONSTRUCTS
Altman, R. (1995), A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre, in B. K. Grant (ed.),
Film Genre Reader II, Austin: University of Texas Press.
In this paper Altman suggests that the process of genre creation oers us not a single
diachronic chart, but an always incomplete series of superimposed generic maps.
Barthes, R. (1964), Elements of Semiology, New York: Hill and Wang.
Barthes oers an excellent brief exposition of structural linguistics and semiology that
includes Barthess own contribution to the eld.
Barthes, R. (1972), Myth Today, Mythologies, Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Barthes here denes myths as articulations that naturalize ideologies.
Barthes, R. (1978), Te Photographic Message, in Image, Music, Text, New York: Hill and
Wang.
Barthes here discusses the photographic paradox within a book whose thirteen essays
oer semiological analyses of lm, music and writing.
Bordwell, D. (1985), Narration in the Fiction Film, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press.
Te book oers a cognitive top-down model for the analysis of lm narrative, style and
viewing.
Carroll, N. (1988), Mystifying Movies, Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Teory, New
York: Columbia University Press.
A systematic dismantling of the AlthusserianLacanian paradigm in lm studies, with a
counter-proposal of Carrolls own cognitivist lm theory.
Lvi-Strauss, C. (1963), Te Structural Study of Myth, in Structural Anthropology, New
York: Basic Books Inc.
In this seminal article, Lvi-Strauss applies his structural method to the study of the
dierent versions of the Oedipus myth.
Metz, C. (1976), On the Notion of Cinematographic Language, in Bill Nichols (ed.),
Movies and Methods, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Metz claims here to have unearthed a unique lm editing system based on arbitrary and
conventional discrete units (syntagms) comprised of recurring combinations of lm-
specic signiers (cuts, dissolves, wipes, etc.), through which the medium communicates
time/space variations.
Neal, S. (1995), Questions of Genre, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader II, Austin:
University of Texas Press.
According to Neale, lm genres are mixed, mutable and variable to begin with.
Schatz, T. (1995), Te structural Inuence: New Directions in Film Genre Study, in B. K.
Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader II, Austin: University of Texas Press.
Schatz suggests structuralism to be the most productive approach to genres.
Wollen, P. (1972a), Te Auteur Teory, in Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Wollen structurally overlaps upon the western genres binary opposition of nature and
civilization the work of prominent western lm directors John Ford, Howard Hawks and
Budd Boetticher.
146 a n n o t a t e d g u i d e f o r f u r t h e r r e a d i n g
Wollen, P. (1972b), Te Semiology of the Cinema, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Wollen attempts a correction of Saussurean semiological approaches to lm by importing
Peirces semiotics, dividing the medium into a documentary-indexical dimension, an
iconic dimension and a symbolic-conventional dimension.
Wright, W. (1975), Sixguns and Society, Berkeley: California University Press.
Wright oers a structural study of the evolution of the western lm in its sociopolitical
context, focusing upon its shifting narrative congurations.
Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1986), Te Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception, in Dialectics of Enlightenment, London: Verso.
In this seminal essay Adorno and Horkheimer argue that popular culture in the capitalist
world is a culture industry pumping capitalist ideology into the exploited masses minds.
Althusser, L. (1971), Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, in Lenin and Philosophy,
New York: MRP.
Althusser suggests a clear and powerful explanation of how ideology persuades people, and
how dominant ideologies form part of the state apparatus.
Baudry, J. L. (1985), Ideological Eects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus, in
B. Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods Volume II, Berkeley: University of California Press.
An Althusserian-inspired critique of lm as an ideological apparatus.
Benjamin, W. (1969), Te Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in H.
Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, New York: Shocken Books.
Films reproducibility and jumpiness should be used to promote a Marxist revolution
rather than produce a fake aura for the brutal politics of fascism.
Eisenstein, S. M. (1949), A Dialectic Approach to Film Form, Film Form, New York: HBJ
Books.
In this seminal article Eisenstein presents his dialectic montage doctrine exemplied
mostly through an analysis of segments from his own lms.
Heath, S. (1981), Narrative Space in Questions of Cinema, Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Claiming that narrative lms submit special compositions to action (events take place),
Heath traces the ideologically driven evolution of narrative lms from a neo-Marxist
perspective while analysing alternatives.
Jameson, F. (1991), Post-Modernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Jameson critiques postmodern schizophrenia as symptom of late capitalism reication of
emotions and aesthetic sensibilities.
a n n o t a t e d g u i d e f o r f u r t h e r r e a d i n g 147
MacBean, J. R. (1985), Vent dest or Godard and Rocha at the Crossroads, in Bill Nichols
(ed.), Movies and Methods, Berkeley: University of California Press.
MacBean discusses Godards deconstruction of dominant lms manipulations of reality
and beauty as against the loss of direction he nds in Glauber Rochas lmmaking.
Michelson, A. (ed.) (1984), Kino-Eye, the Writings of Dziga Vertov, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
A collection of Dziga Vertovs writings preceded by Michelsons excellent introduction that
places Vertovs work in the context of Marxism and the constructivist movement.
Stam, R. and Spense, L. (1985), Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction,
in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods Vol. 2, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stam and Spense criticize the portrayals of the colonized in mainstream lms while
suggesting alternatives.
4 IMAGINARY SIGNIFIERS/VOYEURISTIC PLEASURES
Altman, C. F. (1985), Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Te Imaginary Discourse, in Bill Nichols
(ed.), Movies and Methods Vol. 2, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Altman critically surveys the lm as dream and lm as mirror metaphors used in
psychoanalytic studies of lm.
Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble, New York and London: Routledge.
Butler oers a denition of gender as performance rather than essence; as a diverse, split
and shifting identity.
Dayan, D. (1976), Te Tutor Code of Classical Cinema, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and
Methods, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dayans Lacanian psychoanalytical study analyses the shotreverse-shot lm constructs
arguing that they suture the viewers consciousness into the lm.
Doane, M. A. (1982), Film and the Masquerade: Teorizing the Female Spectator, in
Screen, 23: 7488.
Doane suggests that by viewing femininity as masquerade female spectators can create a
critical distance between the guration of women in patriarchal lms and their viewing it.
Doty, A. (1998), Queer Teory, in J. Hill, P. C. Gibson, R. Dyer, E. A. Kaplan and P.
Willemen (eds.), Te Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Doty oers an excellent introductory overview of the evolution of Queer studies and its
major concerns.
Freud, S. (1965), Te Interpretation of Dreams, New York: Avon Books.
In this extensive and fascinating study, Freud advances through many examples his thesis
that dreams are a major venue allowing individuals to relieve themselves of repressed
impulses and wishes without threatening their well-being and their mental equilibrium.
Hall, S. (1980), Encoding/Decoding, in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds.),
Culture, Media, Language, London: Hutchinson Press.
Halls groundbreaking article identies in the process of communication how the
producers encoding of a message undergoes changes in its decoding by the receiver.
148 a n n o t a t e d g u i d e f o r f u r t h e r r e a d i n g
Haraway, D. (1991), A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in
the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: Te Reinvention of Nature,
New York: Routledge.
Haraway explores the revolutionary potential of the hybrid machine/organism cyborg
myth.
Lacan, J. (1977), Te Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I, in Ecrits, a
Selection, New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Lacans seminal thesis deals with infants rst notion of self as resulting from their
identifying themselves as whole and coordinated in their mirror reection.
Metz, C. (1985), Story/Discourse: Notes on Two Kinds of Voyeurism, in Bill Nichols (ed.),
Movies and Methods Vol. 2, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Metz argues here that the lms inducement of the mirror stage in viewers positions them
as peeping Toms in relation to lms, where actors behave as if nobody is watching them.
Mulvey, L. (1985), Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and
Methods Vol. 2, Berkeley: University of California Press.
In this groundbreaking article Mulvey suggests that mainstream lmmaking reects the
patriarchal unconscious, replicating and reinforcing through its modes of articulation
and gender gurations patterns that discriminate against women.
Mulvey, L. (1989), Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema inspired by
King Vidors Duel in the Sun, in Visual and Other Pleasures, London: Macmillan.
Mulvey argues that female spectators may identify with the male protagonist in its
representing their repressed freedom of ego.
Straayer, C. (1995), Redressing the Natural: Te Temporary Transvestite Film, in B. K.
Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader II, Austin: University of Texas Press.
Construing lms dealing with transvestism as a genre, Straayer analyses the genres
rhetorical strategies.
i n d e x 149
INDEX
author, 29, 45, 50, 53, 58, 113
avant-garde, 5, 62
artistic, see art for arts sake
political, 69, 100
see also Eisenstein, Vertov, Godard
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 55
Balazs, Bela, 133n8
Barthes, Roland, 7, 33, 34, 36, 55, 58, 145
base structure, 72, 75, 86, 97
capitalist, 812
neo-Marxist conception of, 83, 87
Battle of Algiers (1964), 94
Battleship Potemkin (1927), 41, 76
Baudrillard, Jean, 5, 223, 131, 144
lms inuenced by, 238
see also simulacrum
Baudry, Jean Louis, 902, 98, 101, 132, 146
Bazin, Andr, 4, 913, 131, 144
critique of, 1415, 40
Beauvoir, Simone de, 114
Belle de jour (1967)
intertextual analysis, 569
psychoanalytic analysis, 11819
Benjamin, Walter, 8, 826 passim, 132, 133n10,
146
fascism and, 22, 82, 97, 101, 140n23
see also aura
Ben-Porath, Ziva, 569, 66, 131
Bergson, Henri, 6, 7
Berlin, Symphony of a City (1927), 137n41
Bhaba, Homi, 70
Bicycle Tieves (1948), 13
binary oppositions, 42, 445, 69, 136n26
lm, 4852
gender, 123, 124, 129
see also Lvi-Strauss, structuralism
Birds, Te (1963), 40
Birth of a Nation (1915), 37
Black or White (1991), 25
A bout de soue (1960), 59
abstraction
formalism, 35, 7, 1521, 28
see also formalism (Marxist critique of )
Marxism, 74, 78, 89, 128, 134n41, 139n9
realism, 4, 9, 14
structuralism/semiology, 33, 39
Accatone (1961), 13
Adamson, Andrew, 132
Adaptation (2002), 967
Adorno, Teodor, 140n23, 146
Alea, Tomas Gutierrez, 141n36
alienation, 74, 80
All that Jazz (1979), 25
Allen, Woody, 27
Althusser, Louis, 15, 98, 128, 142n31, 146
cognitivist critique of, 140n28
ideology as dened by, 8790
Althusserian-Lacanian paradigm, 104, 11415,
140n28, 145
Altman, Charles, 112, 141n4, 147
Altman, Rick, 54, 58, 145
An Andalusian Dog (1929), 59, 1089
Angelopolous, Teo, 12
Anthony of the Dead (1968), 96
anti-colonialism, 2, 934
anti-naturalism, 18, 19
a-political art, see art for arts sake
arbitrariness of signs,
cognitivist critique of, 612
lm semiology, 359, 40
language, 303
structuralism, 42, 135n5
Arnheim, Rudolph, 3, 103, 138n62, 144
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896), 4
art for arts sake, 16, 22, 81, 84, 86, 140n23
attractions see lm attractions
aura, 8, 825, 133n10
Austin Powers, Te Spy Who Shagged Me (1999),
141n39
150 i n d e x
Blade Runner (1982), 27, 128
Blair Witch Project (1999), 27
Boetticher, Budd, 50, 145
Bordwell, David, 59, 624, 131, 138n62n64,
140n30, 145
bottom-up analysis, 60, 67
see also top-down analysis
Boys Dont Cry (1999), 1201
bracketing, 62
see also Carroll
Brannigan, Edward, 138n63
Brecht, Bertold, 81, 96
Brokeback Mountain (2005), 132
Brooks, Virginia, 60
Buuel, Luis, 14
see also Belle de jour, An Andalusian Dog
Burch, Noel, 212, 133n2, 138n1
Butler, Judith, 1234, 126, 129, 132, 147
Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919), 11
capitalism
anti-colonialism and, 945
feminism and, 114
lm and, 15, 22, 901
First World, 812, 867, 92
globalizing, 97100, 128
Marxism and, 724
neo-Marxism and, 812, 867, 8990
capitalist mode of production, see capitalism
Carroll, Noel, 59, 67, 138n66, 145
critiques made by, 15, 61, 113, 140n28, 140n30
question and answer model of, 612, 131,
138n57, 138n65
castration fear, 11619 passim
cathexis, 107, 142n15
cave lm metaphor, 90
censorship
dream, 1057 passim, 142n16
state, 87, 89
Chaplin, Charles, 140n23
Chronicle of a Summer (1961), 25
cinma verit, 25
cinematogenic, 3, 1819, 28, 144
see also photogenic
Citizen Kane (1941), 12
class struggle, 723, 114
anti-colonial, 946
close-up
cognitivism on, 623
Eisenstein, 767
Epstein, 7
feminism on, 118
formalism on, 16, 19
realist aesthetic on, 1113, 133n8
semiology on, 34, 378
Vertov, 8
Coeur Fidele (1923), 6
cognition, 5, 29, 63, 65, 103
Marxist lm theory on, 80, 85, 98, 181
cognitivism, 2, 5961, 103, 138n63n66
critique by, 15, 113, 140n28n30
critique of, 65
dialectic montage and, 69
poststructuralists vs., 29, 523
see also Bordwell, Carroll
communism, 22, 73, 74, 75
see also Marxism
condensation, 13, 105, 107, 108, 142n17
see also dream
connotation, 34
consciousness, 60, 65, 67, 93, 113, 142n29
cognitivism and, 113
Marxism and, 70, 72
false, 73, 74, 75, 77
revolutionary, 71, 86
psychoanalysis and, 10310 passim
constituent unit
lm, 45, 4852
gross, 41, 43, 137n30
myth, 424, 137n32
poststructural critique of, 52, 54
semiology, 29
value of, 412
see also deep structure, discreet unit, Lvi-Strauss
Contempt (1963), 20
continuity editing, 12, 20, 37, 38, 57, 58
Marxist and neo-Marxist critiques of, 69, 77,
912, 142n9
psychoanalysis and, 104, 11114 passim
Coppola, Francis Ford, 37
Cronenberg, David, 27
Culler, Jonathan, 135n3, 137n23
cultural invention, 62, 140n30
cutting
bottom-up eect of, 60
censorship through, 108
crosscut, 126
displacement and, 142n17
Eisensteins use of, 76, 77
formalist approach to, 19
intercut, 77, 84
morphing vs., 25
realist approach to, 1133 passim
semiological approach to, 369 passim, 135n1
surprising or shocking use of, 64, 108
cyborg, 2, 1269, 148
i n d e x 151
Dali, Salvador, 58, 108, 142n18
Dances with Wolves (1991), 49
Dark City (1998), 128
Dayan, Daniel, 112, 128, 147
daydream, 106, 108
De Palma, Brian, 41
De Sica, Vittorio, 13
Death by Hanging (1968), 93
deconstruction, 2
anti-colonialism on, 94, 95
feminist, 11415, 119, 120, 122
queer critique of, 123, 124
neo-Marxist, 15, 812
lm aura, 82, 85
lm subject positioning, 90, 92
subject, 87, 90
Godard and, 92, 147
poststructural, 538 passim
postmodern, 978
deep focus, see depth of eld
deep structure, 29, 31, 32
critique of, 52, 54, 66
genres and, 48, 131
language, 425
see also binary oppositions, constituent unit,
structuralism
Deleuze, Gilles, 7, 121
Deneuve, Catherine, 56, 59, 118
denotation, 34
depth of eld, 1214 passim, 28, 91
Derrida, Jacques, 54
diachrony
genre, 501, 54
image, 136n10,
language, 32
myth, 423, 137n28
see also synchrony
dialectic lm montage, 2, 21, 6970, 132, 138n1
anti-colonial, 93, 95
Marxist, 75, 77, 78, 801, 139n4n13
neo-Marxist, 812, 85, 90, 92, 93, 103
postmodern, 97, 99, 100
dialectic materialism, 6972, 75, 100
Diary (197383), 26
Dietrich, Marlene, 117, 118
direct cinema, 25
discrete unit, 39, 41, 42, 110
see also constituent unit
displacement, 1048 passim, 128, 142n17
see also dream
dissolve, 13, 19, 36, 38, 39, 135n1
psychoanalysis and, 107, 142n17
Divine Intervention (2002), 99
Doane, Mary Ann, 112, 1225, 129, 147
documentary, 247, 85
formalism on, 4
see also Tynjanov
postmodernist, 4
Wollen and, 401
see also Battle of Algiers, Flaherty, Land without
Bread, Lumire brothers, photogenic,
photography, Triumph of the Will, Vertov
Doty, Alexander, 123, 147
Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Tird Reich
(2004), 134n39
dream, 59, 87, 1045
dream work, 1056
lm as, 1068, 113, 141n4n5, 142n17
see also An Andalusian Dog, imaginary signier
surrealism and, 142n18
see also daydream
Drew, Robert, 25
Dryer, Carl Teodor, 11
durative syntagm, 389, 136n13
see also syntagmatic/paradigmatic
Dyer, Richard, 125
Eco, Umberto, 1356n10
ego, 109, 111, 114, 1212, 142n29
Eichenbaum, Boris, 134n26, 134n29
Eisenstein, Sergei M., 11, 21, 36, 41, 78, 103,
146
Benjamin and, 86
formalism, 21, 77, 134n41
dialectic montage, 69, 757, 100, 132
Vertov and, 79, 139n13
see also Battleship Potemkin
Engels, Friedrich, 70, 78
Epstein, Jean, 131, 144
Benjamin and, 133n10
epistemology, 6, 103
lirosophy, 6, 103
photogenic in lm, 3, 57
Vertov and, 8
see also photogenic
estrangement, 16, 139n1
Eternal Jew (1940), 25
exhibitionism, 111
eXistenZ (1999), 27
fairy tale, 501, 132
Fall of the House of Usher, Te (1928), 6
Fanon, Frantz, 70, 945, 101
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), 131
152 i n d e x
feminism, 2, 113, 11415, 129
lm, 114, 1201
queer theory critique of, 123
see also Mulvey, Doane, post-feminism
Fervor (2000), 989
fetishism, 11721 passim, 143n38
Fight Club (1999), 132
lm and other arts, 63, 86, 134n29, 135n1,
138n62, 139n1n9
Bazin on, 910, 11
formalists on, 34, 8, 1517, 20
Benjamin on, 825
lm attractions, 78, 80
see also Eisenstein
lm cognitivism, see cognitivism, Bordwell, Carroll
lm feminism, see feminism, Mulvey
lm formalism, see formalism, Tynjanov
lm Marxism, see Marxism, Eisenstein, Vertov,
Baudry
lm realism, see realism, Bazin
lm star, 92, 101, 125, 129, 132
Fincher, David, 132
Flaherty, Robert, 11, 24
Ford, John, 50, 139n2, 145
formalism, 17, 21, 134n26n40
cognitivism and, 15, 69, 138n62n64
Frankfurt School and, 140n23
Marxist critique, 212, 77, 801, 86, 139n9
postmodernism and, 26
realist/formalist debate, 1, 3, 4, 18
semiology/structuralism and, 29, 135n1n5,
136n26
see also Tynjanov, abstraction
Foster, Judy, 119
Foucault, Michel, 23, 534, 101
Frankfurt School, 22, 87, 140n23
see also Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin
Freud, Sigmund, 87, 141n5, 142n29, 147
Lacan and, 10910, 142n23n26
feminism and, 11518, 1212
see also dream, Mulvey, scopophilia, Oedipus
complex, fetishism, sadism
Gallagher, Tag, 54, 55
Ganz, Bruno, 134n39
gender, 2, 25, 52, 99, 113, 114
see also Mulvey, Butler, Doty, Oedipus complex,
cyborg
Genette, Gerard, 56
genre
anti-colonial lm and, 70, 94, 96
formalist approach to, 201, 134n29n40, 138n64
melodrama and musical, 124
process, 535, 58
structural approach to, 29, 33, 45, 512
see also western lm genre
gestalt psychology, 103
see also Arnheim, cognitivism
Getino, Octavio, 141n36
Godard, Jean-Luc, 41, 69, 923, 96, 101, 142n32
see also Contempt, La Chinoise, bout de soue
Godfather, Te (1972), 37
Gorki, Maxim, 81
Gramsci, Antonio, 86
Grith, D.W., 11, 37
Hall, Stuart, 125, 147
Haraway, Donna, 1267, 129, 148
Harvey, David, 98, 141n38
Hawks, Howard, 50
Heath, Stephen, 93, 132, 142n31, 146
Heim, Michael, 127
High Noon (1952), 46, 49
historical materialism, 71, 100
see also Marxism
Hitchcock, Alfred, 40, 118
Hirschbiegel, Oliver, 134n39
Hochberg, Julian, 60, 67
Hollywood movies, 24, 612, 69, 118
Horkheimer, Max, 140n23, 146
see also Frankfurt School
Hour of the Furnaces (1968), 141n36
How I Learned to Overcome my Fear and Love Arik
Sharon (1997), 26
Husserl, Edmund, 92
icon, 401, 136n10
id, 142n29
see also unconscious
identication, see identity
identication of viewer with lm camera and actors,
see identity
identity
feminism, 115, 120, 1213
see also Oedipus complex, scopophilia
neo-Marxism, 89, 913
critique of , 113, 140n30
postcolonial theory, 989, 101
post-Marxism, 989, 101
poststructuralism, 27, 29, 55
psychoanalysis, 88, 104
critique of , 113, 140n30
see also mirror stage, Oedipus complex
queer theory, 114, 120, 1236, 129
i n d e x 153
ideological apparatus, see ideology
ideology
apparatus of, 867, 89, 90, 98
lm as, 903, 112, 125
lm as ideology, 75, 79
lm viewer as subject to, 903
see also identity, Althusser, Baudry,
Heath
naturalization of, 34, 135n8
self as subject to, 8890, 98, 140n30
imaginary
ideology, 15, 88
mode (or order) of cognition, 15, 10910, 112,
115, 121, 142n26
self (or subject, or ideal subject), 88, 98
signier, 2, 1034, 106, 110, 112, 113, 128
simulation as, 23
imaginary signier, see imaginary
immersion, 61, 85, 112, 140n28
index
photographic image as, 401, 66, 146
cultural production as, 98, 100
indexing, 62
intertextuality, 29, 40
Austin Powers, Te Spy Who Shagged Me,
141n39
Belle de jour, 569
Ben-Porath, 56, 57, 131
critique of, 578
lm star, 125
Genette, 56
Kristeva, 55, 66
Shrek, 132
Telma and Louis, 119
Irigaray, Luce, 1223
Jacobson, Roman, 134n26, 136n15
Jameson, Fredric, 70, 98100, 101, 132, 146
Jenson, Vicky, 132
Joyce, James, 56
Kazanskij, Boris, 16, 134n29
Kino (lm)
st, 139n13
glaz (eye), 78, 139n13, 144
Poetika (poetics), 17, 21
pravda (truth), 28, 78
Knee, Adam, 54
Kracauer, Siegfried, 3, 139n12
Kristeva, Julia, 55, 66
Kuhn, Tomas, 22
Kurosawa, Akira, 389
La Chinoise (1967), 20, 92
Lacan, Jacques, 88, 115116, 128, 142n17n22n31,
147, 148
see also Freud (Lacan and), mirror stage,
AlthusserianLacanian paradigm
Land without Bread (1932), 14
Landscape in the Mist (1988), 1213
language, 17, 22
arbitrary nature, 30, 136n26
binary principle, 136n26
cinematic, 9, 10
dierential principle, 31
economy, 30
lm dierence from, 35, 36, 61
gender politics, 115, 123
myth as, 423
poststructural approach, 55
psychoanalysis, 110, 116, 142n17
signs, 302, 135n5, 136n15, 137n30
speech (parole), 313
system, 313, 145
system in lm, 346
see also paradigm, syntagm, semiology
language system (langue), see language
lart pour lart, see art for arts sake
Lee, Ang, 132
Lenin, Vladimir I., 75, 80
Lvi-Strauss, Claude
binary oppositions, 51, 136n26
lm structures and, 45, 49, 50, 66
Oedipus myth study, 424, 137n29, 137n32
Propp and, 512, 66, 135n5
semiology and, 137n30
structural method, 33, 412, 45, 136n25,
137n28, 145
see also structuralism, western lm genre
Liebman, Stuart, 6, 133n10, 144
linear perspective, 9, 11, 14, 91, 140n30
lyrosophy, 67, 28
see also Epstein, Jean
Little Match Girl (1928), 12
Lonze, Spike, 967
Lukcs, Gyrgy, 81
Lumire brothers (Auguste and Louis), 4
MacBean, James Roy, 14, 141n32, 147
Made in USA (1966), 92
Magritte, Ren, 142n18
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Te (1962), 139n2
Man with a Movie Camera (1929), 11, 24, 789
Marcuse, Herbert, 140n23
Marny (1964), 118
154 i n d e x
Marx, Karl, 70, 72, 74, 86, 100
Marxism
Althusser, 87, 89
Benjamin, 823, 86, 146
cognitivism and, 140n28, 140n30
Eisenstein, 69, 7581
Fanon, 945
feminism and, 114
lm and, 2, 8, 75, 92
formalism critiqued by, 212, 28, 139n9
Frankfurt School, 81, 140n23
theory, 705, 100
Vertov, 28, 69, 7880, 144, 147
see also neo-Marxism, post-Marxism
Masculine/Feminine (1966), 92
masochism and lm, 1212, 129
masquerade, 1212, 124, 147
Matrix, Te (1999), 24, 26, 28, 131
Mayakovski, Vladimir, 139n20
Mlis, George, 4
Memento (2000), 131
Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), 141n36
mentation, 5960, 67
Metz, Christian
lm psychoanalysis, 104, 107, 109, 11112, 128,
142n17, 148
lm semiology, 145
lm signiers, 36, 131, 135n1, 137n30
lm syntagms, 369, 66, 136n13
language system of, 345
Wollen on, 401
Michelson, Annette, vii, 134n41, 139n14n20, 144
mirror stage, 88, 104, 10910, 116, 142n23, 148
lm and, 104, 11013, 128, 132, 147, 148
mocumentaries, 27
mode of production, 70, 715, 80, 87, 8990
see also capitalism
modernism, 4, 24, 53
montage, 10, 1921, 25, 28, 144
see also dialectic lm montage, Eisenstein
montage of conicts, see dialectic lm montage,
Eisenstein
Moore, Michael, 131
morphing, 20, 256, 144
Morocco (1930), 117
Moscow Linguistic Circle, 134n26
Mother (1926), 19
motivation, 16, 17, 1920, 645, 134n40
Mugrabi, Avi, 26
Mulvey, Laura,
visual pleasure, 1202, 142n23, 143n37, 148
afterthoughts on visual pleasure, 1202, 124
Munstenberg, Hugo, 103
Murnau, W. F., 11, 12
My Darling Clementine (1946), 50
myth
anti-colonialism and, 956
Baudrillard and, 22
cyborg, 2, 1269 passim
lm as, 45, 50
semiological approach, 34, 66, 135n8, 145, 148
structural approach, 29, 414, 137n32
see also Oedipus myth, western genre
Nanook of the North (1922), 11, 24
narrative
deconstruction of, 69, 70, 92, 93, 96
lm, 27, 51, 145, 146
poststructural conception of, 29, 53, 54, 58, 66
realism and, 4, 13, 24
spectators construction of, 614, 138n63
split, 967
structural analysis of, 29, 43, 45, 50, 66
syntagms, 37, 38, 39
western lm genre, 52, 146
nazi lm, 25, 78, 84
Neale, Steve, 54, 58, 66, 145
neo-formalism, see Burch
neo-Marxism
anti-colonialism and, 70, 934
Benjamin, 82, 86
cognitivist critique of, 15, 65, 67, 140n30
feminism and, 113
lm and, 2, 142n19, 142n31, 146
formalism and, 22
Marxism and, 81
post-Marxism and, 97
realism in lm critiqued by, 15, 28
see also Althusser, Baudry, dialectic lm montage,
Godard, Heath
neorealism, 13
Neshat, Shirin, 989
Nolan, Christopher, 131
Nowell-Smith, Georey, 50
Nosferatu (1922), 11
October (1929), 37, 767
Oedipal stage, 110, 115, 142n23
pre, 115, 116, 121, 122
post, 116
Oedipus complex, 115, 116, 142n23, 143n37
Oedipus myth, 434, 49, 145
onomatopoeia, 30, 136n15
Opoyaz (Society for the Study of Poetic Language),
134n26
Oshima, Nagisa, 93
i n d e x 155
Paisan (1946), 13
paradigm/syntagm, see syntagm/paradigm
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 13
Passion of Joan of Arc, Te (1928), 11
pastiche, 54, 98
patriarchal unconscious, 11517, 148
Pavlov, Ivan, 77, 103
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 401, 66, 136n16n17, 146
Perlov, David, 26
perspective, see linear perspective
photogenic, 1, 3, 24, 28, 131
beauty, 9, 14
formalism, 15, 17, 18
truth, 58, 139n17
see also cinematogenic
photography
Bazin, 911, 14, 144
Carrol, 61
Eco, 136n10
Epstein, 6, 7
icon, 40
index, 3, 28, 40
paradox, 7, 334, 66, 145,
simulation, 24, 27
Tynjanov, 3, 1719, 20
Vertov, 7980
see also photogenic
Piotrovskij, A., 134n29, 134n40
Plato, 90
point of view
Benjamin on, 85
cognitivism on, 62
gendered, 11720
ideological eect of, 91, 112
psychological eect of, 11112, 128
Tynjanov on, 19
Wings of Desire, 14
Pontecorvo, Gillo, 945
Popper, Karl, 22
postcolonialism, 2, 97, 101
post-feminism, 114, 1225
see also Doane, feminism, Mulvey
post-Marxism, 2, 70, 979, 101, 128
postmodernism, 1, 5, 22, 53, 70
critique of, 967
documentary lm and, 268
intertextuality and, 54, 56
post-colonialism, Bhaba and, 99101
post-Marxism, Jameson and, 98, 132, 139n4, 146
see also Adaptation, Neshat Shirin, Pulp Fiction
poststructuralism, 138n47
critiques of, 579, 66, 67, 138n57
gender, 114, 1223
genre, 54, 66
intertextuality, 556, 66
structuralism and, 1, 29, 523, 131, 136n25,
139n4
Prague Linguistic Circle, 21
Primary (1960), 25
Propp, Vladimir, 502, 66, 135n5
psychoanalysis, 15, 28, 65, 67, 85, 147
critique of, 60, 113, 122
feminist, 115, 121, 125
see also Mulvey
semiotic, 128
see also dream, Freud, Lacan, mirror stage,
Oedipus complex
Pudovkin, Vsevolod, 19, 21
Pulp Fiction (1994), 54
queer theory, 2
critique made by, 113, 114
critique of, 128
gender as performance, 124, 126
post-feminism and, 122, 123, 129
voyeuristic diversication, 1256
see also Butler, Doty, Some Like it Hot, Brokeback
Mountain
Ran (1985), 389
realism
aesthetic, 913, 49
see also Bazin
cognitivism on, 645
critiques of, 5, 14, 28, 69, 76, 131
formalist position on, 1720
photogenicity and, 3, 28
postmodernism on, 1, 22, 26
socialist, see socialist realism
see also realist/formalist debate, formalism
reality
Bazin and, 11, 13, 14, 15
documentaries and, 247, 28
lm manipulation of, 147
formalism on lm and, 34, 16, 17, 18
ideology and, 8792, 111
illusion of, 140n30
Marxism on lm and, 85, 76, 77, 789, 85,
139n13
postmodernism and, 224, 53
psychoanalysis and, 108
virtual, 27
reality TV, 27
Rear Window (1954), 118
referent, 40
regression, 107, 110
156 i n d e x
reication, 98
relations of production, 71
Renoir, Jean, 12
revelatory power of lm, 131
Bazin on, 913, 28, 144
Benjamin on, 85
documentary, 246
Epstein on, 3, 68
feminism on, 115
formalism on, 14, 18
Vertov on, 8, 9, 80
see also formalism
Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), 120
Riefenstahl, Leni, 845, 139n12
Roberts, Julia, 132
Rocha, Glauber, 96, 147
Rosselini, Roberto, 13
Rouch, Jean, 25
Ruttman, Walther, 134n41
sadism, 11819, 121, 143n38
Saussure, Fredinand de,
arbitrary nature of signs, 30
binarism in, 136n26
critique of structural linguistics of, 556
discrete signs, 31
Piercean semiotics and, 40
semiology, 32, 336, 39, 40, 66, 104
structural linguistics of, 29
structuralism, 41,42, 66
Wollen on, 40, 41, 136n15, 146
see also language, semiology, paradigm/syntagm,
signier/signied
scaling, 62
Schatz, Tomas, 45, 137n33, 145
schemata, see scheme
scheme, 6067 passim
scopophilia, 11618
Scott, Ridley, 26
seamless editing, see continuity editing
Searchers, Te (1956), 50
secondary elaboration, 105, 106, 108, 109, 128
Sembene, Ousmane, 95
semiology, 53, 58, 66, 29
cognitive critique of, 62, 113
formalism and, 135n1
poststructural critique of, 29, 523, 5, 66
structuralism and, 1, 29, 30, 135n3, 137n30
see also imaginary signier, Barthes, Metz, Pierce,
Saussure, Wollen
Shahin, Yucef, 141n36
Shane, 1953, 45
Shklovsky, Victor, 16, 134n26, 134n29
shotcounter-shot, 62, 112, 128, 147
shotreverse-shot, see shotcounter-shot
Shrek (2001), 132
sign trichotomy, 401, 136n17
see also Peirce, Wollen
signied/signier, see signier/signied
signier/signied, 303, 41
arbitrary relation in lm, 356, 3840, 145
arbitrary relation in language, 30, 32, 33, 42,
66
Derrida on, 54
lm, 356, 389, 66, 135n1, 145
gender as, 126
Lvi-Strauss on, 33, 135n5, 137n30
photography, 34
Silence of the Lambs (1991), 645, 119
simulacrum, 1, 5, 228 passim, 98, 131
Smith, Henry Nash, 137
Snow, Michael, 1213
Sobchack, Vivian, 25, 144
socialist realism, 21, 801
Solanas, Fernando, 141n36
Some Like it Hot (1959), 1267
soundtrack, 20, 59, 62, 112, 120, 135n1, 142n32
image and, 21, 368
Sparrow, Te (1973), 141n36
spectacle, 27, 98, 11718, 120, 1245, 129
spectator
abstract, 125, 129,
active, 15, 29, 61, 62, 103
speech, see language
Spence, Louis, 141n37
Stagecoach (1939), 49
Stalin, Joseph, 21, 80, 81, 86
Stam, Robert, 141n37, 147
state apparatus, 73, 75, 87, 146
see also Althusser, ideological apparatus
Sternberg, Meir, 64
Strange Days (1995), 128
Strike (1925), 76
structuralism
lm author and, 50
lm genre and, 4549
lm narrative and, 502
formalism and, 135n1
poststructuralism and, 139n4
postructural critique of, 29, 524, 58, 66
semiology and, 323, 135n3
see also binary oppositions, deep structures,
Lvi-Strauss, Saussure, western lm genre
Studlar, Gaylin, 1201, 129
i n d e x 157
subject, 8893, 101
ideal, 98
critique of, 140n30
Lacans, 109
split, 55, 70, 123
see also Althusser, AlthusserianLacanian
paradigm, Lacan
Suleiman, Ilia, 99
superego (ideal ego), 116, 142n23, 142n29
superstructure, 72
Benjamin, 82
capitalism, 75
Fanon, 94
lm and, 75, 83
neo-Marxism, 81, 867
post-Marxism, 97, 100
see also base structure, Marxism, neo-Marxism,
Althusser
surrealism, 589, 108, 133n8, 156n18, 142n18
suspension of disbelief, 15, 61
suture, 11213, 128, 147
see also Dayan
symbolic order, 110, 116
see also Lacan
symbolic sign, 40, 66
formalist, 1920
symbolization in dreams, 57, 59, 1058 passim, 128
see also dreams, Freud
synchrony
Eco, 136n10
Godard, 20
language, 31
structure, 424, 501, 66, 137n28
see also diachrony
syntagmatic/paradigmatic, 32, 369, 66
see also durative syntagm, Metz, Saussure
synthesis, 71, 75, 100
see also dialectic lm montage, dialectic
materialism
Tarantino, Quentin, 54
Tatlin, Vladimir, 139n20
Terminator trilogy (1984, 1991, 2002), 128
Telma and Louise (1991), 119
third cinema, 69
see also anti-colonialism
three-dimensionality in lm, 12, 13, 19, 601, 63,
67
feminism on, 118
see also Mulvey
ideology of, 91, 111, 117
Tomashevsky, Boris, 134n26
top-down analysis, 601, 67, 145
see also bottom-up analysis
Trip to the Moon, A (1902), 4
Triumph of the Will (1935), 845, 139n12
Trotsky, Leon, 21
truth, 256, 41, 75, 79
lm machine of, 5, 8, 9, 15, 21, 28, 139n17
see also Epstein, Vertov
Two or Tree Tings I Know About Her (1967), 92
Tynjanov, Yuri
abstraction in art, 4
close-up, 19
colour and sound, 20
lm genres, 21
Gogols the nose, 16,
montage, 19, 20
photogenicity and cinematogenicity, 3, 18, 28,
131
photography, 17
realism, 17
Ulysses (1922), 56
unconsciousness, 8, 60, 85, 142n17n29
psychoanalysis and, 103110
see also patriarchal unconscious
Untouchables, Te (1987), 41
vanishing point, 91
Vertov, Dziga,
Bazin and, 9, 11
Benjamin and, 8, 85
ction, 79
lm facts, 78, 79, 100
lm production, 80
lming unawares and candid camera use by, 78,
79
formalism and, 21
neo-Marxism and, 15
revelatory power of lm, 8, 28, 80, 131
rhythm in lm, 78, 80, 134n41
see also documentary, Kino, Man with a Movie
Camera, Marxism, Michelson
viewer, see spectator
Virgin Land (1950), 137n34,
virtual reality, 27, 28
von Sternberg, Josef, 41, 11718
von Stroheim, Erich, 1112
voyeurism, 2, 131
cyborg, 127
feminist, 114
lm psychoanalytic, 111, 148
lm star, 125
158 i n d e x
post-feminism, 120, 122, 124
queer, 125
Wachowski, Andy and Larry, 131
Wag the Dog (1998), 23
Wavelength (1967), 1213
Weekend (1968), 92
Welles, Orson, 12
Wenders, Wim, 14
western lm genre,
conventions, 40, 64, 65, 136n13
pistol as phallic symbol, 107
structural analysis, 29, 459
see also Anthony of the Dead, Gallagher, Wright
White, Hayden, 22
White, Patricia, 12425
Wiene, Robert, 11
Willis, Bruce, 132
Wings of Desire (1987), 14
Wollen, Peter
authorship, 50, 139n2
semiotics, 3941, 66, 131
see also Riddles of the Sphinx
Woolf, Virginia, 114
Wright, Will, 512
Xala (1975), 95
Yentl (1983), 1201
Zelig (1983), 27
Zhdanov, Andrey, 81

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