Gaze
In the early 1970s, Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey separately explored aspects of the "gaze" in the cinema, Metz stressing the viewer's identification with the camera's vision, - an identification largely "constructed" by the film itself - and Mulvey the fetishistic aspects of (especially) the male viewer's regard for the onscreen female body.
The viewing subject may be offered particular identifications (usually with a leading male character) from which to watch. The theory stresses the subject's longing for a completeness which the film may appear to offer through identification with an image, although Lacanian theory also indicates that identification with the image is never anything but an illusion and the subject is always split simply by virtue of coming into existence (Aphanisis).
Read more about this topic: Psychoanalytical Film Theory
Famous quotes containing the word gaze:
“Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don’t have far to go, either.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“be a while our guests:
For stars, gaze on our eyes.
The compass love shall hourly sing,
And as he goes about the ring,
We will not miss
To tell each point he nameth with a kiss.”
—William Browne (1591–1643)