Psychoanalytic film theory
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"we confront this nightmarish dimension of an autonomous partial object. Like in the well-known adventure of Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, where the cat disappears, the smile remains. [...] "The fascinating thing about partial objects, in the sense of organs without bodies, is that they embody what Freud called “death drive”."--The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) |
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The concepts of psychoanalysis have been applied to film theory in various ways. However, the 1970s and 1980s saw the development of theory that took concepts developed by the French psychoanalyst and writer Jacques Lacan and applied them to the experience of watching a film.
The film viewer is seen as the subject of a "gaze" that is largely "constructed" by the film itself, where what is on screen becomes the object of that subject's desire.
The viewing subject may be offered particular identifications (usually with a leading male character) from which to watch. The theory stresses the subject's longing for a completeness which the film may appear to offer through identification with an image; in fact, according to Lacanian theory, identification with the image is never anything but an illusion and the subject is always split simply by virtue of coming into existence.
See also
- Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
- David Bordwell vs Slavoj Žižek
- The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
- Psychoanalytic literary criticism
- Oneiric film theory