Psychoanalysis in Cinema, Art, and Society

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper 1942

"(...the function of the sexual instincts, the second of ego libido...) 

Both are formative structures, mechanisms not meaning. In themselves they have no signification, they have to be attached to an idealization. Both pursue aims in indifference to perceptual reality, creating the imagized, eroticized concept of the world that forms the perception of the subject and makes a mockery of empirical objectivity." 

On Psychoanalysis, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey

I find the psychoanalytic theory - phallocentrism in the patriarchal society - so very critical in coming to understand not only the cinema but also arts and society. It is quite fascinating to examine its significance; the idea of phallocentrism serves as an essence that underlies as well as connects two separate films (for example Rear Window and King Kong), various different genres of cinema (Ceddo of the Third Cinema and mainstream films), a vast range of arts (cinema and visual art - painting, sculpture, and music - salsa), and disparate aspects of society. 

While the cinematic theories and examinations are intriguing (voyeurism - fetishism, optical colonialism, three looks, etc.), the underlying fundamental - psychoanalysis - serves as an origin from and to which one comes back to understand the audience's perspective, the director's choice of the camera's views and of the characters' actions. For me, when I tried to decode the metaphors and suggested meanings of the props used in the Rear Window (for example, paintings on the wall, broken camera) or of the angles of the shots, characters' manners and presentation (Jeff versus Lisa), I rather stepped back and tried looking at the bigger picture and what may lie in the foundation - the concept of sexual instincts and ego libido. 

I would like to suggest - regard the painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942. (Rear Window was produced in 1955) Obviously there are certain magics, wonders, and depth that only cinema could achieve as argued by many. However, I think it's worth viewing this particular piece in relation to Rear Window; many of the ideas discussed for the film are resonant in the piece such as voyeurism, interaction between opposite sex, situation in urban setting, the female character's unequivocally distracting presence (or outstanding?), solitude ("lonely hearts" of Rear Window), the role of lights, and not to mention, windows. Also note that the "three looks" discussed in Mulvey's article can be also applied to this piece as well: the look of a viewer (audience), the frame shot as if it is a moment stopped or captured in continuous flow of events (camera), and an artist who chooses the manner in which the actions are carried, the ambience is created - sexuality, politics, society-, and message is delivered (director). 

Gazes in Rear Window

In Mulvey's analysis of gazes in film, she says that in classic Hollywood women are the objects of gazes rather than simply the subjects, and that the viewer engages in scopophilia when viewing women on film. She looks for ways that the pleasure of scopophilia in viewing film can be destroyed. Rear Window presents a possibility of achieving this that is similar to Roland Barthes' suggestion on how to destroy myth. Barthes says that the only way to destroy a myth is to mythify it, that is, to use it as the signifier for a higher level myth. In the transformation of Lisa from the object of the gaze in Rear Window to one of the gazers, something similar is accomplished.

When Lisa first arrives in Rear Window, she is basically the center of attention. Jeffries has his neighbors to look at, but at this point their actions are generally mundane and uninteresting. Both the viewer and the camera would prefer to focus on Lisa rather than anything else. This is then a scopophilic gaze where Lisa is the object. In relation to myth, the camera, Jeffries and the viewer are one side and Lisa is the other, forming a gaze.

Eventually, Jeffries convinces Lisa that something fishy is going on with his neighbor, and they decied to investigate it together. At this point Lisa changes from being the object of the gaze, to, along with Jefferies and the viewer, being the gazer of something more important. Like a higher level myth, all the participants of the first gaze become simply the viewers in a higher gaze, in which the mysterious and bizarre actions of Thorwald are the new images to be viewed. In this way, Lisa has escaped from being the object of the gaze, just as one myth can lose its history by becoming the signifier in a higher myth. This suggests that a spectacle or something out of the ordinary can destroy the scopophilic gaze of the viewer by offering a gaze of a higher level.

Private Optical Colonialism

Something that really interested me with Rear Window was a tension between the public and the private, or perhaps more accurately, a tension between what we perceive as public and what we perceive as private. Doyle accosts Jeff for his voyeurism:

“That’s a secret and private world you’re looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private that they couldn’t explain in public.”

When Doyle delivered this line, all I could think of was the stipulation in the Fourth Amendment about objects in plain view, and my high school government teacher’s subsequent (and slightly sarcastic) warning against any attempt to grow marijuana in our backyards if we had low fences.

Rear Window seems to explore the possibilities of what happens when a variety of seemingly private actions occur in plain view; does plain view constitute as public? Either way, this ambiguity seems of particular relevance to documentary film, television news and photography in general, if we are reading Jeff’s voyeurism as Hitchcock’s commentary on the nature of cinema itself. In documentaries, news, and images of people rather than images of characters, what is being preyed on and peered into is reality itself. What are the boundaries of a camera’s freedom? The camera has the ability to capture images and events that transcend its own physical presence - in that a lens can capture and reveal very distant places and things - and to reveal these images and events to individuals who were elsewhere. The camera transforms the voyeurism of one into the voyeurism of a thousand, well, more than a thousand, but I don't know the exact number of spectators in the world.

The phrase “optical colonialism” from Sneads’ article is of particular relevance. As spectators, we follow the camera’s venturing to and from distant lands and relish in the foreign visual souvenirs it has collected. To what extent should the camera enter private lands, however? Doyle would undoubtedly say to no extent whatsoever. But the law, while not condoning trespassing, would probably support the documentation of whatever is in plain view. A camera allows us to trespass without ourselves physically trespassing; it essentially allows us to legally trespass. When a scandal occurs, we tend to think and question less of how the news came to be and more of the news or the scandal itself.

As a completely different topic, the concreteness and absolute terms got me searching for a contradiction. I was thinking of Ceddo in particular; how do you think Mulvey would perceive Dior? She belongs to a patriarchal society, she more or less effectively castrates a man (by killing him). I'm not quite sure I understand where she fits into Mulvey's theories.

Looking at Anne

Throughout King Kong, the portrayal of Anne as a helpless, sub-human character really disturbed me. Anne is nothing more than a pretty girl. Her beauty is essential to the story, yes, but her mind is essentially non-existent. Anne, it seems, has no capability to speak for herself, or even to simply stand up and run when Kong is pulling her near. During her first encounter with Jack, she does not find his immediate slap in the face at all perturbing. She laughs it off and says something cute, for fear of breaking the to-be-looked-at-ness that is so essential to her character.

After watching the movie, I was comforted by a few things. Firstly, King Kong is an old movie, released in 1933. This was a very long time ago... perhaps this caricature is not still applicaple... secondly, it is only a movie-- and Anne was, like I said, a caricature. Anne's lack of identity--her unability to express herself in any way-- is necessary to juxtapose with Kongs forceful, larger-than-life-like presence.

However, this to-be-looked-at-ness still exsists, and is in full-force today in modern cinema. We are often told that "sex sells", and this seems to be true. The public is often unwilling to participate in a viewing if they do not have something beautiful to look at. I wonder if the camera as a window helps to create this iconic relationship between beauty and helplessness. I also wonder if we are anywhere closer to abolishing this strict to-be-looked-at-ness-- that strips the woman down and objectifies her-- than we were in the first half of the 20th century.

Grace Kelly is To-Be-Looked-At.

Charlotte’s post mentioned some confusion about how and why Lisa became a subject only after appearing in the neighbor's window, when the separation of the window turned all of the neighbors into objects. I had some difficulty with the subjective/objective thing myself, but interpreted the Lisa issue as follows: when Lisa was behaving like his girlfriend, showing up at his apartment in pretty dresses, he was unable to identify with her. She was only something perfect to look at—perfect not only in physical appearance, but in social appearance as well, because she is successful, well-liked, well-mannered, and she always seems to know how to create the perfect evening. He sees her only as an object, and not really as a person.

It was not just the act of appearing in the window that granted Lisa subjectivity—she was behaving as the protagonist, the (usually male) hero of the film that was being acted out in the window before Jeff’s eyes. He himself was immobilized and could not investigate the salesman’s apartment. So Lisa did it for him. Much in the same way as when we watch a traditional detective film, we ourselves cannot leave our seats in the auditorium to investigate the scene of the crime, so we identify with the detective as he does it for us. By assuming this (traditionally male) role of detective, Lisa became a subject to Jeff.

The other thing that struck me about Lisa (I mean, the other academic thing, because mostly what struck me about Lisa was that she looked fantastic in every scene, which, I suppose, is a point in and of itself) was that she very literally interrupts the narrative with her to-be-looked-at-ness. On the evening when the dog dies, Jeff has spent almost all of their evening together staring out the window, and nothing she says can distract him. Until she comes out dressed in her nightgown. That one moment in which he is distracted by her beauty is precisely the moment when the woman across the way screams because her dog has been killed. Lisa distracted the eyes of both Jeff and the audience from an important development in the plot.

Jeff's Massive Camera is Sketchy

Along the lines of what Jason said, I noticed too that Jeff's switch to a camera view was rather awkward, but in line with Mulvey's theories it's kind of hilarious. If you think about the castration complex, Jeff, in a sense, becomes symbolically castrated by his encasement. Throughout the film it is this sense of vision, seeing without being seen, that becomes power and dominance...and what else can Jeff do but whip out his massive camera and put it on his crotch to compensate for loss of phallocentricity...

I wish, too that we had compared Rear Window with Keeney's readings only because the correlations are so obvious, but the panopticon image again popped into my head, I think I had mentioned my theory of the reverse panopticon in which the jailer himself could be locked in and therefore be in the same situation as the prisoners...I think Jeff's predicament is the prime example of this because he himself has all the power but at the same time is incapable of wielding it.

But more to the topic, the women in the films fit Mulvey's theories perfectly. Though Jeff is emasculated and imobile, Stella is in a state of servitude, she is an object, a tool for the recovery of Jeff, a tool of investigation, and in a literal sense a comedic tool. Lisa, too is an object though in a more concealed sense. She is a model, her profession is to be looked at, to be beautiful and ultimately be an object to the world, whereas in direct contrast, Jeff is a photographer, his job is to objectify subjects. And the showcase of Torso is rather obvious. Hitchcock uses Jeff's condition to switch gender roles, Lisa becomes the hero when she gets the balls to go into the salesman's apartment and gather the evidence inflamed by her love for Jeff and thus earning his love in the end(totally reversed right?), she becomes "uncastrated" in a sense? In this way it is not her being seen that makes her subjective but her switching from the scopophilic object to the (typically male) ego.

In King Kong, women are gifts to what can easily be interpreted as the greatest symbol, the mirror, of masculinity and Anne becomes his one and only weakness, she metaphorically strips him of his power and he dies due to his obsession with the castrated, guilty object(who constantly needs saving because of her beauty). King Kong is the embodiment of male ego and Anne is the Scopophilis object (this changes only once in the film, when they show him at the theatre, but switches back when he escapes), this is especially obvious when Kong de-clothes her suddenly for no reason what so ever which directly supports Mulvey's statement:

"The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation"(203).

 Anne is only a device for the pleasure of the audience, and that Kong dies because of her almost indicate that women are the inevitable destruction of male ego and should be treated as such...

So I guess my question why is it that in all types of cinema, woman is an image and man is always the bearer of the look with extremely small exceptions? 

I agree with Jason that Rear Window is significantly more interesting when approached from a theoretical standpoint rather than from a passive one.  This is probably because it is so reflexive, being largely a film about film, and if you aren't reading it in that way, there is not much going on.  I do not think the vignettes which Jeff looks at are particularly interesting in and of themselves, not even the salesman/wife killer story.  The problem with the scenes in the apartments is that the residents lack subjectivity, as they are mere spectacles for Jeff and for us, the audience.  We do not identify with them, even if we sympathize.

This question of subjectivity vs. objectivity was confusing to me in Jeff's relationship with Lisa. The problem in their relationship is that she is an object to Jeff, who appears perfect and therefore somewhat undesirable and uninteresting.  How is it that when she is seen through the window, she acquires subjectivity, even though no one else as seen through the window does?

Bringing in the castration complex now, is it possible that Lisa possessed a kind of subjectivity within Jeff's apartment that threatened him and made him not want to marry her, but through the window she was merely an object, over whom Jeff had power and would thus not feel threatened by?

I guess I have two questions: 1) why does being looked at grant Lisa subjectivity, and 2) how does this supposed possession of subjectivity make her more attractive and LESS threatening to Jeff?

King Kong

Reading Snead's article about King Kong, I was struck by a few things.  His article made many assumptions, one of which I find to be particularly important because I feel that most of the articles on film we have read so far rely on this assumption: that of a viewer who enjoys and is engaged in the film, but who does not watch it critically.  In the instance of King Kong, Snead makes many arguments that rest on this assumption--such as his assertion that we identify with Denham despite his negative qualities, and are thus implicated in his optical colonialism (and later, his abduction of Kong).  Watching the movie, I did not feel an ounce of sympathy or identification with Denham--I found him to be a rather unlikeable person, and one who I very much did despise.  

In addition, another problem I have with Snead's argument is that he does not address the fact that the white male characters in the movies, and not just the "others" he speaks of, are complete stereotypes.  Denham is the embodiment of capitalistic greed, and a desire for adventure.  Driscoll is the archetypal man, heroic and brave, but emotionally immature and rather sexist.  While the stereotypes of the black tribespeople, Ann, and Charlie are more apparent because they are so blatantly offensive and negative in nature, in reality, the white characters in the movie are no less stereotypes--they just happen to be positive, or at least not negative, stereotypes.  

These two ideas are rather connected: the reason Snead does not recognize characters such as Denham or Driscoll as being stereotypes is because he assumes a viewer who has internalized the mainstream myths.  If the viewer indeed does identify with these archetypal roles, then these characters will not seem like one-dimensional stereotypes, but rather as the embodiment of the "hero."  I guess the problem I had in general was that Snead made an implicit assumption that the viewer agrees with the standard social myths--and while that may be true in many cases, it is not necessarily, and I feel like Snead ignores that fact.  Granted, he does mention that a black viewer would probably be more inclined to identify with Kong--however, in that statement, I feel he was making the same error he accused the movie of making: he is making an assumption about black viewers.  Now, that assumption does make a lot of sense, as it would be far more likely for a black viewer to notice the racism and hypocrisy of the movie.  However, it is not the person's race that determined their negative reaction to the movie, but rather their lack of acceptance of the standardized societal myths.  Black people, being an "other" in our society, often find that these standardized myths are detrimental to them, and are therefore far more likely to reject them.  The fact they black people are more likely to identify with Kong is a larger result of the fact that they have rejected the social norms, not of their blackness itself .  Thus, it could be said that any viewer who is critical and does not necessarily accept social norms will identify with Kong more than say Driscoll--a fact which Snead ignores.

Spectators

"Oh dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes, sir. How's that for a bit of home-spun philosophy?"--Stella in Rear Window

I must begin by saying that this week's screenings were very enjoyable. (Despite the fact that I completely forgot two movies meant almost four hours). My favorite connection among them was the character's prying curiosity mixed with the need for visual pleasure. As Cowie says, “[it] invokes the specifically sexual pleasure of looking that is identified as exemplary of classical Hollywood." (492)

It's true we love watching other people and sometimes for no good reason. Jeff had been sitting in his apartment for six weeks and considering that he nicknamed all his neighbors, he must have done nothing but look out that window. Looking gave him a pleasure that hypnotized him one way or another.

"Rear Window explores the limitations such voyeurism produces in our relations to others. Instead, it demands that we recognize our implication, and pleasure, in voyeuristic looking and what this makes us blind to." (492)

This visual pleasure does blind us to our surroundings. Take for example the scene where King Kong is being photographed by reporters. The audience just loved looking at the drama and did not become aware of the danger they were in.* Or just Carl’s curiosity about King Kong, and how that led to him capturing King Kong, despite the fact that King Kong had killed half the crew.

Which this all just leads my mind to Third Cinema. If we weren’t yearning for more drama then maybe we’d realized that those stories are based on real facts that need to be solved.




*(Did King Kong's rage at being photograph not remind anyone of Britney Spears and her umbrella?)

Panoptic Neighborhoods

So I haven't gotten to the response readings yet, but I want to talk about a few thoughts on my mind coming from tonight's screening. I'm going to mostly focus on Rear Window, but I've got a few things to say about King Kong too (outside of smarmy humorous remarks).

I'm wondering why we didn't screen Rear Window against Keenan's article, except that it's extremely relevant to Mulvey's work too (but than again, what movie isn't?). The window in Rear Window sets up various displays, frames, narratives; the lives of the people inside are given narratives by their framing, a sort of cinematic Mulveyian display. The people become a sort of language, their actions carrying meaning to the spying LB. Barthes talked about how images signify on the level of connotation; in Rear Window the lives of LB's neighbors become images to be seen and received as language. That image only exists if light passes from within the window to the outside (the darkened window or room carries no meaning, a projector that is not turned on). That language of window images transmit troubling information, and if anything Rear Window demonstrates a panopticon where it's inhabitants do not realize that they are being watched.

Honestly the first time I saw Rear Window it bored me out of my mind. Now, I still enjoy all the other Hitchcock films I've seen so far more (doesn't mean they are better), but Rear Window is much more interesting to me now, just because of my theoretical background maybe. Perhaps what is exciting to most people who see the film didn't excite me, which is watching an audience construct a narrative out of performances happening outside their own encapsulated private world. It was only when LB's world transgressed upon the private home of another, and when the Salesman transgressed onto LB's home was a really interested the first time I saw the film. And any sort of transgression or travel outside of LB's home is done by females. The first time I saw LB pull out his camera lens I couldn't help but notice how he lay it right down on his crotch. Rear Window is almost (or perhaps just outright is) parodying the way phallus is tied to vouyerism, yet it is female bodies that must perform actions for the male. Although this includes making him a sandwich in the kitchen, this also includes investigating, bringing about justice, and doing things that LB is powerless to do. In a sense, he is emasculated. After all, with that huge cast covering his crotch I imagine sex is very hard to do.

These are my scattered thoughts about the film (it's almost 3AM so perhaps I'm not in the best of shape to be replying currently) but I want to see what people think. The fun thing about King Kong was that at the time it was a film of technical brilliance, and the fun of the film was to try and almost figure out the apparatus behind the picture, to see how it was made. Now it's quite obvious how that works, but it removes a level of reading that can be made, which is when we realize that the actors really are "standing in front of and watching a screen" during sequences where stop-motion occurs in the background and live action in the foreground. Again, windows stare out at King Kong, and King Kong has the power to break past those windows and reach into the private domain for his woman. In short, the questions I want to ask are these: In what ways does this film support or deny Keenan's thesis? To what extent is the window also a cinematic screen - in both Rear Window and King Kong? At first in King Kong, we objectify the women, tribals, and monsters but is there a moment perhaps where we empathize with each of them, or resist the classic notions of cinema? In Rear Window, the woman is clearly in the position of the to-be-gazed according to Mulvey's theories, but at the same time that awareness is made clear through the woman inserting herself into the narratives behind the windows LB watches, and also as a sort of physical extension of the man (just as the camera lens, wheelchair, flash bulb, and binoculars become mechanical/cyborg extensions of LB). Does Rear Window somehow resist classic cinema portrayals or reinscribe them in a new way?

If I have any responses to the readings I will post those also.

Mandabi by Ousmane Sembène, 1968

For any of you who is interested in Sembène's works, Mandabi is a good film to try - perhaps a bit more accessible and relatable, in my opinion. Sembène, the Senegalese filmmaker who passed away just an year ago, is often said to be "the father of African cinema." He was a significant figure not only in post-colonial cultural awakening, but also in the Négritude as a radical, uncompromising critic. (*a literary and political movement developed among the Francophone African world to promote black heritage against French intellectual domination.) I watched this film for a french literature course last year titled The Francophone World; the film, compared to Ceddo, is a bit more modest in delivering its narrative and in addressing issues that may be slightly more relevant to the general audience. (largely in regarding social injustice, post-colonial political issues, gender issues, etc.) 

Mandabi ("Money Order") 1968

Quite humorous, powerful and effective in its message and aesthetics. Enjoy!

"A Filmmaker Who Found Africa's Voice"

The New York Times article on Ousmane Sembène, June 12 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/movies/12semb.html