By Millie Schneider
INTRODUCTION
What makes watching a film so enjoyable? Many film theorists would say that it is spectator identification with various aspects of the film-watching experience that not only makes it enjoyable but also makes meaning possible. Without spectator identification, they say, it would be next to impossible to create meaning with the images on the screen. While many other questions stem from identification theories, such as what does this mean for avant-garde or experimental films, the scope of this report will focus on how people identify with narrative films. We will look at and compare the views of four different theorists on the subject: Jean-Louis Baudry, Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey and Teresa de Lauretis.
IDENTIFICATION MAKES MEANING
For all of them, identification is necessary for understanding. The subject (spectator) gives meaning to the object (filmic image): “Thus is articulated the relation between the continuity necessary to the constitution of meaning and the ‘subject’ which constitutes this meaning: continuity is an attribute of the subject” (Baudry, 40). The spectator, then, is the one who makes sense of the images on the screen, and his relation to the image is what gives the narrative a meaning.
De Lauretis says, “The cinematic apparatus […] binds affect and meaning to images by establishing terms of identification, orienting the movement of desire, and positioning the spectator in relation to them” (582).
All levels of identification must work together to making meaning possible. These ideas of how identification creates meaning will be discussed in a further breakdown of the various modes of the identification process in the subsequent sections.
PSYCHOANALYSIS - THE MIRROR STAGE
These theorists all relate psychoanalysis to their theories of spectatorship and identification. Common to the discussion by each Metz, Baudry and Mulvey is what Jacques Lacan coined “the mirror stage.” The mirror stage is a pivotal phase of a child’s progression. It is the time when the child recognizes its self in the reflection and forms identification with its own image. This moment of identification is when a child starts to develop the notion of the ego. The spectator experiences a very similar phenomena when watching a film. The screen now acts as the mirror and the spectator recognizes their likeness on the screen. Similar to the child, this is the first stage of identification within the subject (spectator). Each theorist acknowledges the importance of the screen-mirror and says something unique about it.
These theorists all relate psychoanalysis to their theories of spectatorship and identification. Common to the discussion by each Metz, Baudry and Mulvey is what Jacques Lacan coined “the mirror stage.” The mirror stage is a pivotal phase of a child’s progression. It is the time when the child recognizes its self in the reflection and forms identification with its own image. This moment of identification is when a child starts to develop the notion of the ego. The spectator experiences a very similar phenomena when watching a film. The screen now acts as the mirror and the spectator recognizes their likeness on the screen. Similar to the child, this is the first stage of identification within the subject (spectator). Each theorist acknowledges the importance of the screen-mirror and says something unique about it.
Baudry describes the difference between the mirror and the mirror-screen. He says, “The paradoxical nature of the cinematic mirror-screen is without doubt that it reflects images but not ‘reality’” (41). He goes on to express that both actions rely on a supremacy of vision. In this way, the screen-mirror provides an “impression of reality” (Baudry, 42), which constitutes the spectator’s formation of an imaginary self within the film world. This forms a specifically filmic “ego” on which the spectator relies for his or her sense of self in relation to the film.
The screen-mirror function is what makes, in Metz’s view, understanding possible. He says, “For he certainly has to identify: identification in its primal form has ceased to be a current necessity for him, but he continues, in the cinema - if he did not the film would become incomprehensible […] - to depend on a permanent play of identification” (23). The “primal form” Metz refers to is the recognition of the self in the mirror. He says its no longer necessary to see oneself within the mirror because the screen-mirror does not reflect the spectator’s exact replicated image. Instead, Metz says that the spectator’s identification lies with himself outside of the mirror, “because this mirror returns us everything but ourselves […] whereas the child is both in it and in front of it” (Metz, 25). Again, though differently, the mirror-screen allows for the spectator to find his/her own unique space within the film world being reflected to them.
Of the mirror stage Mulvey says it is important that, “it is an image that constitutes the matrix of the imaginary, of recognition/misrecognition and identification, and hence of the first articulation of the “I,” of subjectivity” (718). Just as in the mirror, Mulvey says that it is the image of a film which initiates spectator identification in recognition of their likeness on the screen. Mulvey, on the other hand, says that for women, the identification is with the female-object within in the mirror. She requires to be looked at and thus cannot exist outside of it.
THE CHARACTER
Identification is not a clear cut relation between spectator and image. Identification functions on many different levels. First, as the most obvious form of identification, there is identification with the character.
Metz and Baudry speak similarly about these different levels, including the first involving character. They both agree that first, identification “derives from the character portrayed as a center of secondary identifications” (Baudry, 42). It is the initial identification with image itself. This is only a very basic form of identification, and more important levels will be explained following this sections. Character identification is insufficient firstly because it does not account for sequences in film in which no character or even human representation is present (Metz, 24). As well it is inadequate because, “identification with the human form appearing on the screen, even when it occurs, still tells us nothing about the place of the spectator’s ego in the inauguration of the signifier” (Metz, 24). Furthering the notions of the screen-mirror, the spectator therefore identifies with himself on a deeper level outside of the narrative, now as “all-perceiving.”
Mulvey also agrees that there is identification with specifically the male character as bearer of the look. She says, “A woman performs within the narrative, the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude” (720). In this way, the spectator’s look is inherently male and inseparable from that of the male character on screen. The female does not have the possession of the look whatsoever, and is only able to be looked at. So what does this mean for the female spectator?
De Lauretis answers this by abandoning old notions of masculinity and femininity in film. She doesn’t speak of character so much as the idea of a “narrative image.” On her first level of identification, she does recognize the traditional masculine/active gaze/look identification with the camera, and the feminine/passive identification with the image (de Lauretis, 587). However, because, as Mulvey discussed, the female character is represented as a passive object, it is impossible for an active female viewer to identify with her. Therefore, she must identify with her narrative image instead. This will be considered in detail in the last section of this report.
- WATCH HITCHCOCK’S VERTIGO AS AN EXPLORATION OF SCOPOPHILIA AND VOYEURISM HERE . In this film the look is explicitly controlled by the male character, Scottie. He is obsessed with the image of the female character Madeline, and tries to recreate her image in the completely different female/object Judy.
THE LOOK
All of our theorists say that the spectator identifies with the “look.” By look they mean the act of looking itself. Widely discussed are the three separate looks involved in cinema: the look of the camera, the look of the spectator himself and the looks between the characters on screen. How the spectator identifies with these different looks is interpreted in different ways.
Metz says that in this identification with the look, the spectator is really identifying with himself. He says, “the spectator identifies with himself as a pure act of perception” (Metz, 25). Metz says that the spectator recognizes his own value in the film as viewer, without himself there would be no film. The spectator’s role functions thusly: “At the cinema, it is always the other who is on the screen; as for meI am there to look at him” (Metz, 24). As the perceiver, the spectator has found the position of his own ego which could not be found within character identification. Because of this identification with look, Metz says the spectator naturally identifies with the camera. This is discussed further under the next heading, “Apparatus.”
Mulvey points out that the look is implicitly male. Mulvey is concerned with pleasure and narrative film, and thus this identification with looking is also scopophilia (pleasure in looking itself), “associated […] with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey, 717). She says that women are bound to the symbolic and speaks of her “place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Mulvey, 716). Therefore the spectator identifies with the male gaze, and the male character on the screen, both looking at the female object. The male character becomes the “spectator’s surrogate” (Mulvey, 724), as both the spectator and the male character are active lookers. Mulvey says that the identification with the look, both as spectator and through the looks of the male protagonist, places the viewer in a position of power: “By means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her [the female image as object] too” (Mulvey, 721). For her, the spectator then identifies with the holder of the look, which is always masculine, so that he may hold along with it power over the images he sees.
De Lauretis talks about “the centrality of the system of the look in cinematic representation” (583). She mentions the triple action of looks within in a film as a “complex system that structures vision and meaning” (583). However, she also knows that this look places woman as object. “The woman is framed by the look of the camera as icon, or object of the gaze: an image made to be looked at by the spectator, whose look is relayed by the look of the male character(s)” (de Lauretis 584). She agree with Mulvey in that, in previous identification theories, identification with the male character has placed the spectator in a position of control over the images/female.
THE APPARATUS
- WATCH VERTOV'S MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA. It serves as a flaw in in spectator identification with the camera because, according to Baudry, in order for this identification to be possible the apparatus must remain invisible.
So, according to Metz and Baudry, the spectator does not identify as much with the characters on the screen but with the film apparatus itself. This means that they identify with the camera and projector more than anything they actually see on the screen. Baudry speaks of a “transcendental subject whose place is taken by the camera which constitutes and rules objects in this [film] ‘world’” (42). He (the spectator) identifies less with the spectacle/image than what makes the image itself. Baudry says that the mirror recognition of self and the transcendence of the camera work together to as the “giver of unifying meaning” and are thus both necessary in spectator identification. Additionally, Baudry says that “this substitution [of identification with the camera] is only possible on the condition that the instrumentation itself be hidden or repressed” (43). A film like Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera breaks “narrative and makes the invisible visible” (Baudry, 43). While slightly outside the scope of this report, Baudry talks about how this film makes the camera known, and breaks the “suturing” of spectator and camera that occurs when watching a narrative film. In his words, a film like this removes “Both specular tranquillity and the assurance of one’s own identity” (43).
For Metz, the spectator’s identification with the look is simultaneous with identification with the camera. So, “it is true that as he identifies with himself as look, the spectator can do no other than identify with the camera, too, which has looked before him at what he is now looking” (Metz, 25). Furthermore, Metz explains an identification with the projector as well due to the physical absence of the camera in the film-viewing experience. In identifying with the camera, Metz too speaks of the spectator’s transcendence. Without it, the movement of images on the screen without the movement of the spectator in the theatre could not be understood. He says, “his identification with the movement of the camera being that of a transcendental, not an empirical subject” (Metz, 26). The camera, in both theorists’ view, therefore places the spectator in a place above any of the characters in the film. In identifying with the camera, the spectator places himself in a position of power over the film.
WHAT ABOUT WOMEN SPECTATORS?
Thus far, the spectator has been recognized as male. Both Baudry and Metz refer to the spectator as “he” in their writings. However, how does this assumption affect the female viewer, especially when one takes into account Mulvey’s theory of the woman as object? If the woman’s purpose in film is to be looked at, then how can a female spectator be an active viewer and identify with her likeness on the screen? Mulvey establishes the problem in this. De Lauretis sets out to solve it. De Lauretis says that the female spectator’s identification cannot alternate between both the subject/looker and object/image because then she becomes stuck in limbo between the two (586). Instead. she abandons the differentiation between masculine and feminine spectatorship because otherwise identification is always “entirely masculine” (587) and not possible for a female to participate in. However, as we have seen, the spectator must participate in some form of identification for the film to have meaning. So, de Lauretis proposes “the identification (of oneself) with something other (than oneself)” (585). Here, she introduces her second level of identification, that with the narrative image. The narrative image is the combination between story and image, the role the woman plays within the narrative versus an image of her without any context (584). This identification, de Lauretis says, is figural, “[consisting] of the double identification with the figure of narrative movement, the mythical subject, and with the figure of narrative closer, the narrative image” (587). By this she means that the female spectator identifies with both her specific feminine likeness on the screen and with the active look previously attributed to men only. Her identification exists in what de Lauretis refers to as the movement of narrative discourse itself. She recognizes herself as an integral part of the progression of the narrative, acting as more than an image. In this way, she is both passive and active, instead of trapped between the rigidity of male/subject female/object identification codes.
In the last scene of Stella Dallas, a mother is actively watching her daughter’s wedding through the window. In this scene, the female character is controlling the look, while admittedly still at another female. However, can’t a female spectator finally identify with both the look and the looker in this case? This is what de Lauretis says the female spectator must identify with. This is a film which breaks the masculine/active look vs feminine/passive object rule, and allows for female spectators to find identification with an active feminine look.
So, as we can see, there are many different forms of spectator identification. It is a very complex but necessary part of film. Different spectators identify in different ways, and no one theory on identification is completely appropriate for every spectator. Identification, however, is necessary both for the spectator to create meaning from the images, as spectatorship is necessary for the film to exist.
FURTHER READING
For further reading on the subject:
Inside the Gaze: The Fiction Film and Its Spectator by Francesco Casetti, intro by Christian Metz
Primitive Cinema - A Frame-up? or The Trick's on Us by Tom Gunning
Works Cited
Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 34-44.
De Lauretis, Teresa. “Desire in Narrative.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 575-593.
Metz, Christina. “From The Imaginary Signifier: Loving the Cinema; Identification, Mirror; Disavowal, Fetishism.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 17-33.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White and Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 713-723.
Filmography
Man With a Movie Camera. Dir. Vertov, Dziga. 1929.
Stella Dallas. Dir. Vidor, King. 1937.
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