Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema - Term Paper Example

due: The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema The topic that fascinatedme most this semester was The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema, by a theorist called Jean-Louis Baudry. Jean-Louis Baudry came up with this first approach in the development of his theory of the cinematic apparatus. This topic was exciting as it contained ideological effects of the Basic cinematographic apparatus; which is the second approach. In this paper, discussion will be made on the first approach, which is The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema. In this approach, Baudry tried to shed light on the conditions of film viewing into the domain of film theory as well as psychoanalysis. In addition, he points out that the power of illusion in cinema is more based on the content of films than in the instruments and institutions which constitute and exhibit them. An intriguing effect, explaining the vital facets in the cinema world connected to Baudry’s theory namely the issues of spectatorship, identification, subjectivity and ideology; will be the topics of concern. This sparks up a question Is Baudrys theory relevant to the cinema world? Supporting his argument, Baudry brings forth some issues to our concern. He notes that in the apparatus: metaphysical approaches to the impression of reality in cinema, there arises issues of spectatorship, identification, subjectivity as well as ideology. The four issues were adopted in the 1970s during the adoption of film’s theory, the psychoanalytical turn. In the development of the psychoanalytical film theory, Baudry borrowed heavily from the issues and assimilated them in the entire world of cinema. This way he created an impact in the growth of the cinema world. I concur with Baudry’s argument and join David Rodowick and Judith Mayne in support of Baudry’s argument. As David Rodowick, a historian of modern history puts it; the impact of Baudry’s work cannot be overestimated by anyone in this period. On her part, Judith Mayne asserts that Baudry’s apparatus model produced a lot of impact on the work of the early 1970s, and served as a source of perpetual influence (Bordwell & Noël 534). In the apparatus theory, Baudry gives the description of film experience as one organized around a disembodied subjectivity which is equally transcendental. A film dissociates the spectator from his/her own concretely embodied situation, and takes him/her to a world of fiction which temporarily serves as a world of bliss, forgetting the depressions of life (Kevin 23). According to Baudry’s theory of apparatus, the cinema acts as a machine having certain arrangement, a disposition. The spectator is on the other side placed as a transcendental gaze of the camera while the screen’s operation is regarded as the Lacanian mirror. In support of the theory, other theorists such as Christian Metz and Stephen Heath expanded on the theory. For instance, in the feminist theory, many assumptions are taken in line with the apparatus theory. The term apparatus is used in emphasizing certain attributes of the psyche. That is the capacity to transmit and transform specific energy and its subdivision into systems or agencies. The apparatus gives a specification of a series of relations, relations between spaces, operations and temporalities (Kaplan 49). Baudry’s contribution is of the essence at it makes it clear that the machinery and institutions of cinema cannot be thought of as neural transmitters of information. Instead, they should be taken as fundamental ideologies which form the social control by their design. In his argument, Baudry extends the term apparatus by making use of a number of elegant analogies. Apart from encompassing the actual hardware of filmmaking and projection, the term is also used to refer to the viewer’s psychological machinery. Baudry adds film viewing to the categories of experience which were treated as psychoanalysis and social theories, in accordance with Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis and Althusserian social theory (Bordwell & Noël 535). In his analysis, Baudry notes that the impression of reality in cinema is a subject effect which has no connection with the possibility of a comparison between the representation and the real. For instance, in the scenario of Plato’s cave, which happens in a prison setting, cinema appears to fully pre-occupy the prisoners and they seem to take a lot of pleasure in the film, to a point of forgetting their lack of freedom. They connect to the film as if their freedom will come from their watching of the cinema walls in the cave. On this note, Baudry claims that the cinema is a the machine of idealism, where the prisoners, chained since birth, are fully contented with the cinema and have got nothing else to compare with the shadows of cinema cast on the walls of the cave. The spectator will, therefore, remain in a closed space and will find themselves chained, captured and captivated. The apparatus, therefore, works like the unconscious, making the spectator remain glued to the fictional images, even when he/she has a good understanding of the technology behind the cinema. This way, the spectator is forced to surrender to the power of the unconsciousness (Bordwell & Noël 534). The spectator once carried away by the cinema, ignores the reality of the world. Whether the cinema hall is full or empty, the spectator is fully stimulated by the cinema and continues enjoying the visual works created and designed by someone else. The reaction of the spectators with the film is so high that the spectator fails to notice any other happenings in his/her environment. Baudry’s view on this is so strong such that he likens it to Plato’s cave and even with the womb. The spectator occupies a controlled environment, an environment that sustains the illusion through its physical design. In Plato’s cave, the prisoners chose to remain in the cave even when they were released to freedom. On this, Baudry gives his suggestion that the illusion-filled environment for film viewing was of much satisfaction to the prisoners than the freedom itself (Bordwell & Noël 534). Based on Baudry’s theory, we will be able to understand better the impression of reality and how the brain can be influenced by scenes in a cinema to appoint of even forgetting the happenings in the surrounding environment. For instance, the scenes in Plato’s cave represent a different way of behavior from the state of wakefulness. The happenings in the scene may sound like a dream to a person in his/her conscious way of thinking. It is almost unimaginable that someone would prefer to remain in imprisonment just for him/her to continue enjoying a scene in a cinema instead of walking out to their freedom. This draws a comparison between a dream and cinema. The projection of a cinema looks like a dream. That is the reason why someone waking up from a dream will say that he felt as if he was in the movie. He couldn’t believe that the sweet or scary dreams he had could suddenly flatten to nothing. The same is the case with episodes in the movie. A spectator will get so much carried away by the episodes in the movie only to be brought back to the world of sufferings by the end of the movie. In dealing with images in cinema, the rhythm of vision is more like in a dream. The difference between a dream and a cinema is that in the latter, the spectator has a choice to close his eyes or to leave but in a dream one does not have any choice (Bordwell & Noël 538). In justification of the argument, we see that the history of cinema is an ambiguity, directly related to the impression of reality. In the cave, Plato describes an apparatus similar to a cinema. Plato brings to us the recognition that the cinema is surrounded by a sort of ambiguity in the sense that it is circled by confusion and lacks awareness in its originality. Plato in this sense helps us in the recognition of this ambiguity. In spite of the ambiguity, he emphasizes on the artificial aspect of reality. The cinema is the apparatus creating the illusion of reality. In the apparatus theory, Baudry shows that the film viewers cannot differentiate between the world of illusion and the world of reality, simply because they are inactive subjects during the session of film watching. The viewers also remain vulnerable to ideological positioning since they tend to associate themselves with the characters in the particular film, showing how the psychology of the viewers is manipulated by the film (Bordwell & Noël 534). In the apparatus theory, there is the combination of ideological effects of The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema is a combination of ideology and ideological state apparatus. The theory concentrates on the generation of a meta-comment on the social activity of film viewing. Drawing parallels between the prisoners in the cave, Baudry is trying to relate the modern day cinema, which is quite new to an allegory of the cave which occurred thousands of years ago. In the Plato cave, he describes the viewers as pronto film viewers. The use of the analogy of Plato’s cave is to liken the cave to film audiences enjoying a movie in the theater. On the issue of spectatorship, Baudry paints film viewers as subjects of the movie world, relaxed to enjoy a movie. The exhibitions of a cinema evoke the conditions of dreaming which virtually assures the spectators that they may abandon their critical faculties and be totally carried away by the movie. They will remain immobile, unable to actualize the reality of images physically on the screen as pointed out in (Bordwell & Noël 534).The spectators are there to take pride in the unfolding events of the movie, without much thinking of what goes behind the scenes of the cinema. Just like in any game, having spectators, the movie lovers will cheer and celebrate the actor or actress whom they strongly associate with. The thrill of the movie will not allow the viewer to settle on the seat. They will keep on fidgeting from the start of the movie till the climax, where sustained suspense achieves the ultimate goal of retaining the viewer. It’s out if this fact that the prisoners in Plato’s cave could not imagine leaving their pleasure of cinema, even after been released to freedom. This is can be metaphorical of two scenes, the scene of imprisonment and the scene of freedom. They would remain glued to the cinema following the unfolding of scenes from one to another, to the extent that they did not even realize that they had been granted freedom. They would rather remain with the things which they could see distinctly, the imprisonment state, than wander in the world where their eyes would ache out of dazzling the sunlight, in the free world. The philosopher’s cave provided them with a peace haven (Bordwell & Noël 535). This aspect brings us to the conclusion that cinema can be a real entertainment media, which connects strongly with the psychology of the viewer, forcing him/her to swim fully in the bliss. Expounding the issue of ideology, Baudry emphasizes on the ideological state apparatus. He notes that the institution of cinema is can be fundamentally implicated to in ideology and that its social control is determined by its design. The prisoners in Plato’s cave have it in their conscious and unconscious mind that they are in the best place. Anyone trying to force them leaves their comfort zone risks being harmed. They are in a state of illusion, where their immobility is motivated by the power of the cinema. They are suffering from motor paralysis, where their inability to leave the cave is attributable to the cinema. They remain shackled to the screen. The position of the film viewer is ideologically constructed by the images on the screen. The viewer will simultaneously keep on recognizing and resisting the ideological effects of the images. The viewer will definitely resist the scenes where his/her god in the movie is humiliated or tormented. He/she will however triumph the victory of a favorite actor. His ideas will keep on flowing depending on the flow of the scenes in a particular movie. Out of this, even the physical positions will change, and the viewer may be seen jumping up and down or even changing facial expressions as the movie unfolds (Pezzotta 12). Subjectivity is another issue which further reinforces Baudry’s theory. He portrays film viewers as subjects to the film. The film will dictate the duration of time the viewer will remain glued to the screen and also the reactions (Bielecki 10). It is in the light of this matter that a cinema is likened to a dream whereby the viewer feels as if he was on a dream after an interesting piece of cinema ends. Freud got concerned with understanding why a dream will be almost close to the reality. A dream, according to Freud, is a feature of reality belonging to the perception of the external world. In the meta-psychological order, a dream involves the construction and construction of a psychical apparatus, just like in a movie where the viewer deeply connects with the film, to a point of forgetting the existing world. In the Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema, Baudry extends the aspect of psychological identification of the viewer to the cinema (Bordwell & Noël 546). One’s identification with the images on the screen results in various temporary behavior of the viewer. As noted by Freud, the identification with the film may go to the extent of the viewer dreaming with the characters he/she identifies with. This drives the person from the world of reality to the world of fiction. Film examples supporting the theory The aim of Baudry’s theory was basically to mobilize a critique of the accepted styles of film, such as the Hollywood style. The techniques used on the Hollywood style of cinema are the one Baudry attributes to the theory of cinematographic apparatus. Baudry refers to this style of cinema as ideological. According to Baudry, the cinema in its Hollywood form is an ideological state apparatus. It is an apparatus upholding the power and as well as the privileges of ruling. Ideology is in this case gives the suggestion that reality is seen as if through an imaginary filter by individuals. Baudry applies ideology in the film to illustrate how the camera, the projector and the screen act as the main methods by which real conditions of existence get represented in the cinema. This way, Baudry’s argument gives an imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence, making the apparatus fundamentally ideological in nature. Baudry points out that the screen of a cinema offers representations of the reality than the reality itself by providing the spectators with images instead of reality. For better illustration, we shall use an example of the movie titled Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Based on the Hollywood system, Baudry would criticize the movie as ideological; unlike many others who would regard the movie as non-ideological at first glance. The movie can be seen as an effective demonstration of the various ways in which film-makers can successfully make films that ensure signifier’s success (Rushton & Gary 50). The Young Mr. Lincoln is another film we shall for this discussion. This film is classic realist in style but offers moments of subversion, meaning it offers various settings. The movie also allows Baudry to offer his critique of the cinematographic apparatus. He emphasizes on the necessity of showing cinematic production in various settings, to allow the spectators get the feeling of reality in a rather fictitious world (Rushton & Gary 58). Based on the two film examples above, we can see how the cinema achieves its function of retaining the spectators to the screen of a cinema. This is possible by the ability of the cinema to create suspense which keeps the spectator in anticipation of the events of a scene after scene. Out of this effect, Baudry is able to explain his critique of the ideological nature of a film. In conclusion, exploring the four main issues, that is spectatorship, identification, subjectivity and ideology in The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema, we reach to the conclusion that the four issues are strongly inter-linked. In his argument, Baudry emphasizes on the complication of the cinema by taking a tour of the real world and the fictitious world, in an effort to show the comparison of the two worlds. What happens in a certain film produces numerous psychological effects on the viewer, resulting in different reactions. In his argument, he explains the need for understanding cinema as an extension of the real world. The theory is designed for demonstration of the experience of the film viewer in an entire movie session and provides a strong basis for the psychological behavior by the viewer. By employing the allegory of the cave for his demonstration, he shows the undisputed strong effect of the cinema. He likens the cave to a movie hall where the viewers’ tend to remain ignorant of the happenings in the surrounding, with their minds focused to the cinema, the same way the prisoners in Plato’s cave behaved. Thus, one’s interaction with the audience in the cinema hall is important as it provides identification with fictions displayed on the screen. Spectators, on the other hand, tend to retreat to a primitive narcissism. He, therefore, described this as the reason why people will gather in a movie projector from those early days up to this time. He argued that there exists a useful distinction between theoretical spectator and empirical spectator who is understood as a separate domain of historians. The apparatus theory, therefore, is justifiable as it creates a model unlimited to a particular historical period. Works cited Bielecki, Paul M. Rethinking Baudrys Apparatus Theory In Light Of DVD Technology. Diss. Ohio University, 2007. Bordwell, David, and Noel Carroll. Post-theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Internet resource. E. Ann Kaplan. Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Routledge, 2013 Kevin B. Fisher. Intimate Elsewheres: Altered States of Consciousness in Post WWII American Cinema. University of California, Los Angeles. ProQuest, 2008 Pezzotta, Elisa. Film Analysis: A Comparison among Criticism, Interpretation, Analysis and Close Analysis. Wide Screen 2.1 (2010). Rushton, Richard, and Gary Bettinson. What Is Film Theory?: An Introduction to Contemporary Debates. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press, 2010. Print. Read More