CRITICAL APPROACHES Sarris, Andrew {1965}, 'Preminger's Two Periods: Studio and Solo', Film Comment, 3/3: 12-17. Schatz, Thomas (1988), The Genius of trie System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon Books). Dimer, Gregory L (1994), Heuretics: The Logic of Invention (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). WTIIemen, Paul (1994), Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural Studies and Film Theory {Bloomington: Indiana University Press; London: British Film Institute). Wollen, Poter (1993), Raiding the Icebox: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Culture {Bloomingtorj: Indiana University Press). Film and psychoanalysis Barbara Creed llljychoanalysis and the cinema were born at the end of Hje nineteenth century. They share a common histor-,social, and cultural background shaped by the llojces of modernity. Theorists commonly explore hjpw psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on the importance of desire in the life of the individual, has influenced the cinema. But the reverse is also true—the "■cinema may well have influenced psychoanalysis, plot only did Freud draw on cinematic terms to ^escribe his theories, as in 'screen memories', but a jffimber of his key ideas were developed in visual eftris—particularly the theory of castration, which is impendent upon the shock registered by a close-up :"'image of the female genitals. Further, as Freud (who jjoved Sherlock Holmes) was aware, his case histories r.unofoid very much like popular mystery novels of the ;kind that were also adopted by the cinema from its Hnception. The history of psychoanalytic film criticism is extre- mely complex—partly because it is long and uneven, "partly because the theories are difficult, and partly '■ because the evolution of psychoanalytic film theory rafter the 1970s cannot be understood without recourse to developments in separate, but related : areas, such as Althusser's theory of ideology, semiotics; j t and feminist film theory. In the 1970s psychoanalys;-ubjSai2ie_th.e.Ji;ey_.discipline called upon to expla series of diverse concepts, from the way the cim. I "functioned as an apparatus to the natu re of the screen- spectator relationship. Despite a critical reaction against psychoanalysis, in some quarters, in the 1980s and 1990s, it exerted such a profound influence that the nature and di rection of film theory and criticism has been changed in irrevocable and fundamental ways. Pre-1970s psychoanalytic film theory One of the first artistic movements to draw on psychoanalysis was the Surrealist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. In their quest for new modes of experience that transgressed the boundaries between dream and reality, the Surrealists extolled the potential of the cinema. They were deeply influenced by Freud's theory of dreams and his concept of the unconscious. To them, the cinema, with its special techniques such as the dissolve, superimposition, and slow motion, correspond to the nature of dreaming. André Breton, the founder of the movement, saw cinema as a way of entering the marvellous, that realm of love and liberation. Recent studies by writers such as Hal Foster (1993) argue that Surrealism was also I toorthd up with darker forces—explicated by Freud— such ajthe death dttue.tbe compulsion to repeat, and thMTjafcwGBi^r^tne filmBi^the^r^e^e^pTř-^ ^ —, nMmm IrlrflMfc SurreafisW lluIlMWňeMUe? *řjnv^ anda/ou, France^ J 9^8; The 5xt< 28; The IžxterminatingAngel, Mex- h triaTonhne at nltrodat.ccinvi professional CRITICAL APPROACHES FILM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS ico, 1962; and That Obscure Object of Desire, France, 1977), explore the unconscious from this perspective. Not afl theorists used Freud. Others drew on the ideas of Carl Gustáv Jung, and particularly his theory of archetypes, to understand film. The archetype is an idea or image that has been central to human existence and inherited psychically from the species by the individual. Archetypes include: the shadow or the underside of consciousness; the anima, that is the feminine aspect in men; and the animus, or the masculine aspect in women. But generally, Jungian theory has never been widely applied to the cinema. Apart from Clark Branson's Howard Hawks: A Jungian Study (1987) and John Izod's The Films of Nicolas Roeg: Myth and Mind (1992), critical works consist mainly of articles, by authors such as Albert Benderson (1979), Royal S. Brown (1980), and Don Fredericksen (1980), which analyse archetypes in the film text Writers of the 1970s who turned to Freud and Lacan—the two most influential psychoanalysts—were critical, however, of what they perceived to be an underlying essentialism in Jungian theory, that is a tendency to explain sub-jectivity in unchanging, universal terms. Many of Freud's theories have been used in film theory: the unconscious; the return of the repressed; Oedipal drama; narcissism; castration; and hysteria. Possibly his most important contributions were his accounts of the unconscious, subjectivity, and sexuality. According to Freud, large parts of human thought remain unconscious; that is,thesubjectdoesnotknow a bout the content of certain troubling ideas and often much effort is needed to make them conscious. Undesirable thoughts will be repressed or kept from consciousness by the ego under the command of the super-ego, or conscience. In Freud's view, repression is the key to understanding the neuroses. Repressed thoughts can manifest themselves in dreams, nightmares, slips of the tongue, and forms of artistic activity. These ideas have also influenced film study and some psychoanalytic critics explore the 'unconscious' of the film text—referred to as the 'subtext'—analysing it for repressed contents, perverse utterances, and evidence of the workings of desire. Freud's notion of the formation of subjectivity is more complex. Two concepts are central: division and sexuality. The infantile ego is a divided entity. The ego refers to the child's sense of self; however, because the child, in its narcissistic phase, also takes itself, invests in itself, as the object of its own libidinal drives, the ego is both subject and object. The narcis- sistic ego is formed in its relationship to others. One of the earliest works influenced by Freud's theory of the double was Otto's Rank's 1925 classic The Double which was directly influenced by a famous movie of the day, The Student of Prague (Germany, 1913). In his later rewriting of Freud, Lacan took Freud's notion of the divided self as the basis of his theory of the formation of subjectivity in the mirror phase (see below), wh ich was to exert a profound influence on film theory in the 1970s. Sexuality becomes crucial during the child's Oedipus complex. Initially, the child exists in a two-way, or dyadic, relationship with the mother. But eventually, the child must leave the maternal haven and enter the domain of law and language. Asa result of the appearance of a third figure—the father—in the child's life, the child gives up its love-desire for the mother. The dyadic relationship becomes triadie. This is the moment of the Oedipal crisis. The boy represses his feelings for the mother because he fears the father will punish him, possibly even castrate him—that is, make him like his mother, whom he now realizes is not phallic. Prior to this moment the boy imagined the motherwas just like himself. On the understanding that one day he will inherit a woman of his own, the boy represses his desire for the mother. This is what Freud describes as the moment of'primal repression'; it ushers in the formation of the unconscious. The girl gives up her love forthe mother, not because she fears castration (she has nothing to lose) but because she blames the mother for not giving her a penis-phallus. She realizes that only those who possess the phallus have power. Henceforth, she transfers her love to her father, and later to the man she will marry. But, as with the boy, her repressed desire can, at any time, surface, bringing with it a problematic relationship with the mother. The individual who is unable to come to terms with his or her proper gender role (activity for boys, passivity forgirls) may become an hysteric; that is, repressed desires will manifest themselves as bodily or mental symptoms such as paralysis or amnesia. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (USA, 1960) and Mamie (USA, 1964) present powerful examplesofwhat might happen to the boy and girl respectively if they fail to resolve the Oedipus complex. Freud's theories were discussed most systematically in relation to the cinema after the post-structuralist revolution in theory during the 1970s. In particular, writers applied the Oedipal trajectory to the narrative structures of classical film texts. They pointed to the that all narratives appeared to exhibit an Oedipal t >ctory; that is, the (male) hero was confronted with a which he had to assert himself over another Japifoften a father figure) in order to achieve social fcčgnition and win the woman. In this way, film was fjerito represent the workings of patriarcha I ideology, fh'an early two-part article, 'Monsters from the ID' £9-70, 1971), which pre-dates the influences of post-ucturalist criticism, Margaret Tarratt analysed the Ifence fiction film. She argued that previous wri-,.apart from French critics, all view science fiction SÍŕŕjs. as 'reflections of society's anxiety about its ({creasing technological prowess and its responsibil-~to control the gigantic forces of destruction it Issesses' (Tarratt 1970: 38). Her aim was to iemonstrate that the genre was 'deeply involved lith concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis and seen iRrnany cases to derive their structure from if (38). Jn.particular, science fiction explores the individual's Repressed sexual desires, viewed as incompatible §|ith civilized morality. Utilizing Freud's argument Ijthat whatever is repressed will return, Tarratt discusses Oedipal desire, castration anxiety, and violent sadistic male desire. sl970s psychoanalytic theory and after iJ'One of the major differences between pre- and post-;;1970s psychoanalytic theory was thatthe latter saw the i.idnema as an institution or an apparatus. Whereas early Jipproaches, such as those of Tarratt, concentrated on t-the film text in relation to its hidden or repressed meanings, 1970s theory, as formulated by Jean-Louis Bau-"dry. Christian Metz, and Laura Mulvey, emphasized the crucial importance of the cinema as an apparatus and ; as a sign ifying practice of ideology, the viewer-screen relationsh ip, and the way in which the viewer was 'con-"strueted' as transcendental during the speetatorial 'process. Psychoanalytic film theory from the 1970s to the 1990s has travelled in at least four different, but related, directions. These should not be seen as linear progressions as they frequently overlap: The first stage was influenced by apparatus theory as proposed by Baudry and Metz. In an attempt to a&ti&t the totalizing imperative of the structuralist approai-1- ey-drew-on psychoanalysis as a way of widening theoretical base. The second development was instituted by the fern inist film theorist Lau ra Mulvey, who contested aspects of the work of Baudry and Metz by rebutting the naturalization of the filmic protagonist as an Oedipal hero, and the view of the screen-spectator relationship as a one-way process. The third stage involved a number of feminist responses to Mulvey's work. These did not all follow the saYne direction. In general, they included critical studies of the female Oedipal trajectory, masculinity and masochism, fantasy theory and spectatorship, and woman as active, sadistic monster. The fourth stage involves theorists who use psychoanalytic theory in conjunction with other critical approaches to the cinema as in post-colonial theory, queer theory, and body theory. Apparatus theory: Baudry and Metz The notion of the cinema as an institution or apparatus is central to 1970s theory. However, it is crucial to understand that Baudry, Metz, and Mulvey did not simply mean that the cinema was like a machine. As Metz explained, The cinematic institution is not just the cinema industry... it is also the mental machinery—another industry—which spectators "accustomed to the cinema" have internalized historically and which has adapted them to the consumption of films' (1975/1982: 2). Thus the term 'cinematic apparatus' refers to both an industrial machine as well as a mental or psychic apparatus. Jean-Louis Baudry was the first to draw on psychoanalytic theory to analyse the cinema as an institution. According to D. N. Rodowick, one 'cannot overestimate the impact of Baudry's work in this period' (1988: 89). Baudry's pioneering ideas were later developed by Metz, who, although critical of aspects of Baudry's theories, was in agreement with his main arguments. Baudry explored his ideas about the cinematic apparatus in two key essays. In the first, 'Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus' (1970), he argued that the cinema is ideological in that it creates an ideal, transcendental viewing subject. By this he meant that the cinema places the spectator, the 'eye-subject/(1986a: 290), at the centre of vision. Identifi-I catto'n with the camera-projector, the seamless flow of images, narratiy«*4ijglTrestore equilibrium—all of ' " " *Thff4pectetoB'^ ,senae/O^qrritjn Itmj-^nihg'upJo&rV ;d origin of meaninq' arnitropdt.corriyf n nitro ratus ensure; leOnal "Subi?^n1^ft.„^^%n1]r profeisional CRITICAL APPROACHES (1986a: 286). Further, according to Baudry, by hiding the way in which it creates an impression of realism, the cinema enables the viewer to feel that events are simply unfolding—effortlessly—before his eyes. The 'reality effect" also helps to create a viewer who is at the centre of representation. To explain the processes of identification at work in the viewing context, Baudry turned increasingly to the theories of Jacques Lacan. Baudry argued that the screen-spectator relationship activates a return to the Lacanian Imaginary, the period when the child experiences its first sense of a unified self during the mirror stage. 'The arrangement of the different elements—projector, darkened hall, screen—in addition to reproducing in a striking way the mise-en-scene of Plato's cave. . . reconstructs the situation necessary to the release of the "mirror stage" discovered by Lacan' (1986a: 294). According to Lacan, there are three orders in the history of human development: the Imaginary, the Symbol ic, and the Real. It isthisarea of Lacanian theory, particularly the Imaginary and the Symbolic, that is central to 1970s film theory. Drawing on Freud's theories of narcissism and the divided subject, Lacan proposed his theory of subjectivity. The mirror stage, which occurs du ring the period of the Imaginary, refers to that moment when the infant first experiences the joy of seeing itself as complete, and imagines itself to be more adult, more fully formed, perfect, than it really is. The self is constructed in a moment of recognition and misrecognition. Thus, the self is split, Similarly, the spectator in the cinema identifies with the larger-than-life, or idealized, characters on the screen. Thus, as Mulvey (1975) later argued, the viewing experience, in which the spectator identifies with the glamorous star, is not unlike a re-enactment of the moment when the child acquires its first sense of selfhood orsubjectivity through identificaton with an ideal self. But, as Lacan pointed out, this is also a moment of misrecognition—the child is not really a fully formed subject. He will only see himself in this idealized way when his image is reflected back through the eyes of others. Thus, identity is always dependent on mediation. Forthe moment, the spectator in the cinema is transported back to a time when he or she experienced a sense of transcendence. But in reality, the spectator is not the point of origin, the centre of representation. Baudry argued that the comforting sense of a unified self which the viewing experience re-enacts does not emanate from the spectator but is constructed by the apparatus. Thus, the cinematic institution is complicit with ideology—and other institutions such as State and Church—whose aim is to instil in the subject a misrecognition of itself as transcendental. In his 1975 essay 'The Apparatus', Baudry drew further parallels between Plato's cave and the cinematic apparatus. The spectators in both are in a state of 'immobility', 'shackled to the screen', staring at 'images and shadows of reality1 that are not real but 'a simulacrum of it' (1986b: 303-4). Like spectators in the cinema, they mistake the shadowy figures for the real thing. According to Baudry, what Plato's prisoners-human beings desire—and what the cinema offers—is a return to a kind of psychic unity in which the boundary between subject and object is obliterated. Baudry then drew connections between Plato's cave, the cinematic apparatus, and the 'maternal womb' (1986b: 306). He argued that 'the cinematographic apparatus brings about a state of artificial regression' which leads the spectator 'back to an anterior phase of his development". The subject's desire to return to this phase is 'an early state of development with its own forms of satisfaction which may play a determining role in his desire for cinema and the pleasure he finds in it" (1986b: 313). What Baudry had in mind bythis'anteriorphase'wasan 'archaic moment of fusion' prior to the Lacanian mirror stage, 'a mode of identification, which has to do with the lack of differentiation between the subject and his environment, a dream-scene model which we find in the baby/breast relationship' (1986b: 313). After discussing the actual differences between dream and the cinema, Baudry suggested that another wish lies behind the cinema—complementary to the one at work in Plato's cave. Without necessarily being aware of it, the subject is led to construct machi nes like the cinema which 'represent his own overall functioning to him. . . unaware of the fact that he is representing to himself the very scene of the unconscious where he is' (1986b: 316-17). In 1975 Christian Metz published Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signtfier (translated in 1982), which was the first systematic book-length attempt to apply psychoanalytic theory to the cinema. Like Baudry, Mete also supported the analogy between screen and mirror and held that the spectator was positioned by the cinema machine in a moment that reactivated the pre-Oedipal moment of identifi- m Iption-^that is, the moment of imaginary unity irr< Ejiich the infantfirst perceives itself as complete. ifei-Jowever, Metz also argued that the cinema-mirror lanalbgy was flawed. Whereas a mirror reflects back ItHe spectator's own image, the cinema does not. Metz Salso pointed out that, whereas the cinema is essert-Mially a symbolic system, a signifying practice that ifriediates between the spectator and the outside ipSrtd, the theory of the mirror stage refers to the ^re-symbolic, the period when the infant is without |feriguage. |fe Nevertheless, Metz advocated the crucial impor-ftancc of Lacanian psychoanalytic theoryforthe cinema jfand stressed the need to theorize the screen-spectator &j-eiatibnship—not just in the context of the Imaginary, . but also in relation to the Symbolic. To address this 'issue, Metz introduced the notion of voyeurism. He E^rgued that the viewing process is voyeuristic in that -there is always a distance maintained, in the cinema, 'Ibetween the viewing subject and its object. The cine-irriatic scene cannot return the spectator's gaze. jjyjetz also introduced a further notion which became the subtitle of his book: the imaginary signifier. The '-cinema, he argued, makes present what is absent. The screen might offer images that suggest complete-•■ ness, but this is purely imaginary. Because the spectator is aware thattheofferof unity isonly imaginary, he is forced to deal with asenseof lackthatisan inescapable part of the viewing process. Metz drew an analogy between this process and the experience of the (male) child in the mirror phase. (Metz assumes the spectator is male.) When the boy - looks in the mirror and identifies for the first time with himself as a unified being he is also made aware of his difference from the mother. She lacks the penis he once thought she possessed. Entry into the Symbolic also involves repression of desire for the mother and the constitution of the unconscious in response to that repression. (Here, Lacan reworks Freud's theories of the phallus and castration.) Along with repression of desire for the mother comes the birth of desire: forthe speaking subject now begins a lifelong search for the lost object—the other, the little 'o' of the Imaginary, the mother he relinquished in order to acquire a social identity. As the child enters the Symbolic it acquiresQsn-rfti guage. However, it must also succumb to the 'law :he-fatheri(the laws of society) which governs the bolic order. Entry into the Symbolic is entry into I language, and loss—concepts which are inextricably FILM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS bound together. Thus, entry into the Symbolic entails an awareness of sexual difference and of the 'self as fragmented. The very concept of 'I' entails lack and loss. When the boy mistakenly imagines his mother (sisters, woman) is castrated,-his immediate response is to disayow what he has seen; he thinks she has been castrated, but he simultaneously knows that this is not true. Two courses of action are open to the boy. He can accept herdifference and repress his desire for unification with the mother on the understanding that one day he will inherit a woman of his own. He can refuse to accept herdifference and continue to believe that the mother is phallic. Rather than think of her lack, the fetishist will conjure up a reassuring image of another part of her body such as her breasts or her legs. He will also phallicize her body, imagining it in conjunction with phallic images such as long spiky high heels. Hence, film theorists have drawn on the theory of the phallic woman to explain the femme fatale of film noir {Double Indemnity, USA, 1944; Body Heat, USA, 1981; The Last Seduction, USA, 1994), who is depicted as dangerously phallic. E. Anne Kaplan's edited collection Women in Film Noir (1978) proved extremely influential in this context. The Oedipal trajectory, Metz argued, is re-enacted in the cinema in relation not only to the Oedipal nature of narrative, but, most importantly, within the spectator-screen relationship. Narrative is characteristically Oedipal in that it almost always contains a male protagonist who, after resolving a crisis and overcoming a 'lack', then comes to identify with the law of the father, while successfully containing or controlling the female figure, demystifying her threat, or achieving union with her. The concept of 'lack' is crucial to narrative in another context. According to the Russian Formalist Tzvetan Todorov, the aim of all narratives is to solve a riddle, to find an answer to an enigma, to fill a lack. All stories begin with a situation in which the status quo is upset and the hero or heroine must—in general terms—solve a problem in order for equilibrium to be restored. This approach sees the structures of narrative as being in the service of the subjects desire to overcome lack. i v.'iltlirthermore, the processes of disavowal andfetish- lipal crisis are—according to . "trpmtesSDnal of what was represented onthe screen yet also knows , downk