Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

The Film and its Viewer - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is important in discussing the wide appeal of film. In the piece, people in the cave and confined to only viewing shadows on the cave walls. This is a comforting falsehood, therefore when someone leaves the cave, they will not be swayed because they prefer a false reality made of shadows
- - - - "“There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have.”
        
        This quote best illustrates the narrative of the film Sullivan’s Travels (Sturges, 1941). Not only does it delve into escapism of cinema discussed by the theorists, but it also discusses how filmmakers cannot depict hardships if they have never experienced difficulties. Thereby, it both encapsulates and challenges the Marxist thinking behind film
    - - High Art - done by a few under patronage system
      - Folk Art - done by the people, for the people, not for profit
      - Lowbrow - vaudeville, burlesque, by non-elites for non-elites and for profit
      - And then there is mass culture, where art becomes a product
- - - - “The disruptive gags of slapstick can be regarded as an anachronistic ‘underground’ manifestation of the cinema of attraction.” (Crafton, 359)
      - The phenomena of “The Cinema of Attractions” can be described as a magic show. The audience is meant to be aware, it is interactive, and there are moments of TA-DA
- - - - An innocent family being executed without just cause
      - A man suffering survivor’s guilt after surviving a surprise attack that left everyone else dead
      - Post-traumatic stress disorder
      - Memory repression
      - The Sabra and Shatila massacre (A massacre of 460 - 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, by the militia of the Lebanese Forces, a Maronite Christian Lebanese right-wing party, under the command of Elie Hobeika, in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon)
      - Animal abuse with the death of 26 dogs
- - - - Killer
        
        Again, Williams’ theory is VERY present in Clover’s respective theory and the two have a strong intersectionality.
      - Terrible Place
      - Weapons
      - Victims
      - Final Girl
    - - In Halloween (Carpenter, 1978), the previous quote is vital in the regards of stimulation not always being done respectively. In this scene, Annie is murdered before heading out to have sex with her boyfriend, which is undignified because she was in a vulnerable position and unprepared for an attack. The attack was “too early!”
        https://youtu.be/JtL_AZA3q0Q?t=7
- - - - Eisenstein’s symbolism by Soviet montage
      - Kracaeur’s desire to depict reality in film
      - Williams’ body genres and emotional overstimulation by “jerkers”
      - Gunning’s amusement park-esque “cinema of attractions”
  - - - That is why in The Piano (Campion, 1993), the romantic nature of the film is elevated beyond pornography because it is the intimacy of the spaces, the sound of the fabrics on the skin of the characters, the subdued music in the background, and the beauty of the set pieces that make it the perfect film for Sobchack’s affect theory
- - - - There are two scopophilic gazes that encompass the male gaze
      - Fetishistic - Builds up beauty icon and halts the narrative to give the audiences something to look at
      - Voyeuristic - Investigates and punishes person in some form, but does not stop the narrative and look is incorporated into story
      - Both looks are solutions to castration anxiety, either by making women objects of affection or objects being heavily controlled for their lack of a member.
        
        “At the extreme, it can become fixated into a perversion producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other.” (Mulvey, 434)
  - - - Mulvey is in a league of her own, because her theories do not correlate with any other. Linda Williams would not get along with her because she believes the body of the woman is the primary source of embodiment. Moreover, bell hooks understands her but questions the lack of the Black women, Carol Clover would disagree for the same reason as Williams, and clearly Mulvey is not on board with ANY male theorist on this list (maybe Munsterberg)
- - - - Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) perfectly captures the psychological aspect of apparatus theory, and the scene in which Norman (Anthony Perkins) has Marion (Janet Leigh) confined in a chair with the piercing gaze of the immobile birds and Norman. This refers to how Baudry believes forced immobility corresponds with apparatus theory.
        
        https://youtu.be/4-EwNHerlko
      - Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) is different, because it focuses more on the notion that forced immobility is not a physical notion, but it is more the fact that the spectator WANTS to look away, but they cannot. For example, if Max (James Wood) is shoving needles into Nicki’s (Debbie Harry) flesh, the image is not going to leave the screen and it’ll be an uncomfortable experience for the spectator regardless as if they close their eyes.
- - - - Throughout Strike (Eisenstein, 1925), there are sequences where the cuts are indeed visible and there is a deep meaning associated with them. These are examples of an intellectual montage, because the cuts go beyond surface understanding. One prolific example is when the workers on strike are massacred and it is intercut with a bull being killed.
        
        There are five types of montage
        
        Metric
        
        Rhythmic
        
        Emotional
        
        Overtonal
        
        Intellectual
- - - - Pornography
      - Horror
      - Melodrama
    - - The spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion
      - A focus on ecstasy
      - The body “beside itself”
      - Loss of language and recourse to inarticulate cries
      - The body of a woman is the primary site of embodiment
      - The body of the spectator is caught up in involuntary mimicry of the emotion or sensation on screen...even when there’s a gender difference
      - Success is measured in terms of viewers’ bodily responses
      - Overly manipulative: “jerkers”
- - - - “Not all black women spectators submitted to that spectacle of regression through identification. Most of the women I talked with felt that they consciously resisted identification with films—that this tension made moviegoing less than pleasurable; at times it caused pain.” (hooks, 121)
        
        hooks is another theorist that is on their own, because hooks’ notions of Black film and spectatorship does not correspond with any others and it is an aspect of film theory that highlights the nuances of POC in film.
- - - - However, this is juxtaposed by a scene where Divine is performing fellatio on another actor, because this is more anticipatory because of the way Divine flirts and talks about how sexual he is. What’s more, this character is supposed to be her biological son, so that makes the source of disgust more imagined. In any case, fellatio is not inherently a source of disgust, but it is the fact that this is supposed to be her son that makes the image and sound more emotionally foul than it is supposed to be.