The Contributions of Psychoanalytic Theory to Film Theory and Visual Culture in General - Essay Example

Psychoanalytic theory has been a dominant theoretical basis for debate within the multidisciplinary science of visual culture. Psychoanalytic approaches have been used to investigate how humans experience, understand, express and communicate their perceptions of the visual image. Psychoanalytic thought provides much insight into the act of "the gaze" or spectatorship. The gaze is an important concept to spectatorship, the passive activity of the viewer wherein their unconscious desires and "ideal subject" are reflected and lived through the fantasy of film. Psychoanalytic thought pointed to early films of the 1940s as examples, and stated that some of these films were aimed at particular groups of viewers/spectators, in this case women as the films of this era have become known as a genre of "women's films". The subject of women in these films was considered to provide real world women with an ideal subject in that they were the perfect spectator regardless of the meaning delivered by the film. Also the work of Foucault has been drawn upon to empahsise the use of institutional power to normalize the gaze. For example, how things are understood by a person is influenced by the society and institutions in which that person is embedded, as these social norms are presented within the visual images used by that society. In this way, visual culture becomes a body of knowledge that defines and limits what can be said about sexuality and gender relations as well as the identification of self. He considered issues of power and knowledge to be a cooperative state, not a coercive one, so that the maintenance of a dominant gendered, (i.e., male) over a subordinate one (i.e., female) was dependant on the acceptance of each gender as to the social norms that dictate such states. He considered docile bodies as presented on photographic film as conforming to the social norms of the ideal body and sexuality. Metz (1970) has characterised spectatorship as the process of the viewer suspending their disbelief of a fantasy on film and identifying with particular characters presented through the film. Especially, the spectator identifies with the underlying ideology of the film by way of identifying with the structure and visual points of view present within the film. The process of spectatorship initiates fantasy structures that are housed within the unconscious; for example, how to be the ideal woman, or to have the ideal marriage. In this way psychoanalytic theory described human functioning as a process of suppressing unconscious desires, fears and particular memories so as to maintain a socially acceptable lifestyle. In contrast to Lacan's later theories, Freud advocated that the unconscious was a phenomenon that existed within each individual and that drove current behaviours. The idea of the unconscious had a dramatic effect on how academics, philosophers and human psychology theorists approached the human psych. The reality of an unconscious deconstructed a humanist ideal that existed about the self at this time. Freud anticipated that making the knowledge of the unconscious conscious within each person that repression of desires and memories would be reduced, and so too experiences of neurosis which were seen to arise from repression. He emphasized that the "id" or unconscious would be the predominant response to life circumstances if repressed, and so replace the "I" or consciousness and self-identity. He summed this in his famous quote "Where It was, shall I be". In this sense the overall goal of Freud's psychoanalytic approach was to strengthen the "I" and to maintain a conscious and rational identity within people that could be more powerful than the unconscious. Later theories of Jaques Lancan (1978) and subjectivity, investigated film analysis of the 1970s. As such, the gaze was seen as representing a view of language and the language structures used in communication that in turn reinforce culturally-bound experiences of subjectivity. Positional gazes refer to viewing and unreturned gazes between characters in a visual image, and the relationship of these as a whole and to the viewer (spectator). As Lacan espoused, a subject defines themselves by way of the differences they see between themselves in the real world and their idealized others. A process which he believed, like Freud, is initiated during infancy when the child first realizes that certain way s of being need to be suppressed. The film sets into action the infantile "mirror phase" that has the power to bring to consciousness the repressed emotions of the unconscious. The "mirror phase" according to Lacan represents a developmental phase that all children pass through at around 18 months of age and aids in their development of a sense of self, and an understanding of their being a separate other as to other humans, such as their mother, siblings or friends. As an infant the child imagines that they have control over their body in the image as within their own body, however, they begin to understand through enculturation and socialisation that often they cannot actually physically exert this control. The result is a recognition and misrecognition of the realization that they are the same, and not-the-same as the image in the mirror. The key to this conceptualization of what it means to be human is Lacan's interpretation that the unconsciousness governs all aspects of the human experience, and it is structured much in the same way as language. Lacan drew on Saussure's relationships of signifier and signified to develop concepts of relationships relating to signifiers alone. Hence, aspects of the unconscious such as desires, wishes and images are all forms of signifiers as they tend to be expressed in a verbal way. The signifiers form a "signifying chain" wherein one signifier takes on meaning only in relation to the other signifier it is linked to. According to Lacan, there are no signified as there is nought that a signifier ultimately refers to. The gaze is the act of looking, there is a subject who looks at an object, or there is a subject that is looked at by an object, so that the experience is a sense of something other than "us", something outside of "us", creating the experience of subjectivity. In this way, the outside world can be considered to be gazing at "us" constantly, as "we" pre-exist to be seen. The act of the gaze provides an act of exchange between the subject and object, further the terms can be inverted so that each is "within", or subjective. Unlike Freud's approach to psychoanalytic thought though, Lacan thought it impossible for the ego to ever completely replace and have power over the unconscious. For Lacan the "I" was not able to empty out or control the "id" as the "I" was also a product of the unconscious and so was itself an illusion or a fantasy. As such, for Lacan, the unconscious was the breeding ground for all being of the human experience. More recent theorists who drew on psychoanalytic approaches to human perceptions of the visual image include Laura Mulvey (1994). She focused on the concept of the gaze and visual pleasure that was gained by the spectator through viewing of film. Mulvey attested that Hollywood cinema provided images that tapped into the male unconscious of the ideal subject of themselves and of women. She emphasized that cinema was male-dominated and heterosexual in that women in film were presented as erotic figures for the viewing pleasure of male characters and male spectators. She used the Freudian term "scopophilia" to describe the male focus on the pleasure from his own phallus through the pleasure he gained from looking at women on film. She also described women characters experiences of "exhibitionism" as they gained pleasure by being looked at on film. Mulvey also wrote about "voyeurism", the pleasure that spectators received through viewing for pleasure whilst not being seen themselves. These concepts conveyed the sense of power the voyeurs, scopophiles, and exhibitionists achieve through the act of gazing or of being gazed upon. Especially, Mulvey emphases that the cinema camera was a tool for voyeurism and power as it disempowered those who were gazed upon. As Mulvey approached the issue, women in film are to be viewed for pleasure and this viewing is also threatening. A woman's lack of a phallus would represent the male spectator fear of castration. In this way she expounded that spectator fascination with films stemmed from and was reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination within the spectator and the socio-cultural forces that had en-culturated these patterns of pleasure. As such film reflects, reveals and maintains the heterosexual and socially acceptable interpretation of sexual differences which determine images, erotic ways of looking at these images, and of the spectator viewing a "spectacle"; in this way psychoanalysis approaches film as the representation of the unconscious of patriarchal society. The "paradox of phallocentrism" is dependant though on the image of women as being "castrated" to organize and give meaning to this film world, and subsequently the industrialised world it is meant to reflect or represent. It is the concept of woman that is the key to the entire culture on film, as her lack of a phallus is a symbolic presence and it is considered by Mulvey that the woman character's desire to make good the lack of the phallus, that the phallus actually signifies. Further, the theorist argues that not enough has been written about how important it is to consider the representation of the female form in this symbolic way. So that the woman should be considered more carefully in the way that she symbolizes castration, and that this is her entire role within the film. As such, male -dominated viewing brings to mind for the psychoanalytic approach the idea of a certain gaze, one which is sensualised and sexualized. The male gaze reflects social and economic norms of the industrialized world which is seen as the dominant force determining the direction of art, so that woman are used as objects to fulfill male fantasies as the spectator and hence, the more powerful individual in society. As men can gaze upon a woman with desire and not experience consequences they are able to take on power as a spectator, not only over the woman in the film, but over all women. However, Mulvey points out that this process requires men to give up some part of themselves in regards to agency, for example they must be seated within a dark theatre that presents them as a "non-being". As noted in this relationship, the spectator remains a passive observer, and the relationship is a static one to the image on the screen. As such the spectator is a voyeur and it is the unconscious psych and ideological processes that drive their motivation to view the film. The screen was a mirror that framed spectator interpretations and cultural understandings of gender relations, power and identity, as well as the spectators place within the patriarchy that was still the social norm at the time. This is turn contributed to the construction of themselves as subjective beings. In the words of Jean-Louis Baudry, the audience becomes reduced to a child-like state wherein they have an illusory sense of owning the body that they gaze upon in the film. However, more recent psychoanalytic approaches acknowledge the heavy reliance of male-dominated and heterosexist hierarchy of the gaze in film. For example, explicitly gay representations are relatively absent from the Hollywood screen. In this way Hollywood maintains its tradition of a male and heterosexual gaze, however it film is starting to be more open about voyeuristic and fetishistic gaze directed by male characters at other male characters, and vice versa for female characters. 'Queer viewing' still remains under-represented as a heterosexual and patriarchal society maintains a social norm wherein the male body is not to be identified explicitly as an erotic object by another male. However, it is becoming evident in 21st century cinema that male dominated gaze is no longer the norm, as males are being sexualized on film, and being presented as an erotic object to female spectators. Ultimately the concept of spectatorship as it pertains to the gaze suggests that visual texts of an idealized subject is preferred to that of actual people due to unconscious desires and fantasies. Hence, film and other visual representations serve to help a person suspend their individual attitudes and to engage in an "ideal" that does not actually exist in the real world. A person may think that they are viewing a movie as a pleasurably leisure experience, however, the scenes before them "mirrored" on the screen direct the spectator to "become" the idealized subject of their unconscious desires. As such, this is attributed to infantile regression and the subsequent processes of fantasy. As such, more recent feminist theorists have used psychoanalytic thought to explore the female gaze, so that even the issue of pornography which has been the domain of the male gaze, is interpreted as being a gaze for female purposes also. The ongoing pornography debate has been that women are against pornography and are demeaned by it and have unequal power in the sex-power relationships of the genre. However, there is a growing body of feminists against censorship such as would be required for pornography. In this way pornography as a visual culture is seen as coming to represent woman's alternative forms of sexuality. In this way a binary approach to gender gazes becomes de-emphasised, especially when concepts such as ethnicity enter the picture and provide a range of subject positions. Berger advocates that there is a changing concept of the gaze due to women being increasing defined by their occupation and career as well as by their appearance. Also that men are increasingly expected to abide by new and evolving norms of appearance that were once soeley expected of women. As such, the pleasure of the female and the rise of the female gaze has occurred in film and in other forms of visual representation. With the initiation of the "counter-gaze" conceptualization of the viewer as not being more powerful than the subject of the gaze is more accepted by modern psychoanalytic thought. In this way women are seen as having power in that they are also able to use gaze, however, it is also evident that many men and films made by men remain steadfast in their with to refuse to acknowledge the presence of woman or of their gaze. It is evident that across time that women and their social role has become one of gaining power and equalizing the distance of power and knowledge between the genders, and that this state of affairs is reflected through visual culture. Although women are still acting on their bodies to improve them, they are active in the choices that they make in the control they take over these decisions. Further, the social pressures of the 21st century also expect men to act upon their bodies to improve their lives. This change in expectations is represented to a wide degree in current visual culture; and there is the growing acceptance of homosexuality as a human experience. As concluded by the authors in Practices of Looking, "just as images are both representations and producers of the ideologies of their time, they are also factors of relations of power". Read More