Christian Metz - The Imaginary Signifier Flashcards

Christian Metz: 'The Imaginary Signifier'

Core Idea

• Psychoanalysis (Freudian & Lacanian) informs our understanding of the cinematic signifier.

Theatre vs. Cinema

• Theatre: Real objects (actors, props) refer to fictional ones.
• Cinema: Fictional objects (images) refer to fictional objects (story).
  • Cinema is imaginary from its inception as a signifier.
  • 'Every film is a fiction film.'

Presence vs. Absence

• Theatre: Presence (actors) refers to absence (play's actions).
• Cinema: Absence (light on screen) invokes absence (film's actions).

Spectator Identification

• Film is like a mirror, phantom-mirroring objects but not the spectator.
• Spectator identifies with himself as pure perception.
• The spectator identifies with the camera's viewpoint establishing the vanishing point.

Scopic Regime of Cinema

• Cinema relies on the desire to see: scopophilia, voyeurism.
• Distance is key, both literal and the absence of the object.
• Cinema is a primordial 'elsewhere,' desirable because unattainable.

Voyeurism

• Cinematic voyeurism is 'unauthorized' scopophilia.
• Actors don't look at the camera.
• Spectator's solitude in the cinema.
• Segregation of screen and auditorium.
• 'Hole' in social cloth - loophole opening on to something slightly more crazy.

Fetishism (Freud)

• Fetish requires contradictory beliefs: belief vs. knowledge.
• Fetish signifies the absent penis (mother's lack).

Spectator's Belief

• Spectator knows the screen action is imaginary but believes it on another level ('willing suspension of disbelief').
• Fetishism proper: 'I know very well the mother does not have a penis, but all the same the fetish object allows me to believe that she does have a penis’

Cinematic Fetishism

• 'I know very well that what is before me are mere images projected onto a screen, but all the same I am going to believe in the images I see before me.'
• Disrespecting make-belief results in a poorly made film.