In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai 2000)
Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg 1991)
eXistenZ (Cronenberg 1999)
Lost Highway (David Lynch 1997)
Marc Steinberg on Cinephilia.
Metz writes in reaction to the subjective, phenomenological approach to cinema (see Epstein and Bazin), that prevents critical distance. This is not to say that Metz proposes to get rid of the affective response which “gets one nowhere” (19), but to keep the cinephile “in check” in order to pursue a better understanding/knowledge of the film: its function, its ideology, etc. Interestingly, Metz likened the discourse about the cinema at the time of his writing (i.e. the Bazin school, Cahiers critics, auteur theory—all of which in one way or another simply reiterated the greatness of cinema) to “an uninterpreted dream” (19). In other words, Metz was criticizing film scholars at the time for claiming to be studying cinema, but were really simply praising it.
Steinberg’s ambivalence as to whether or not he should call himself a cinephile (whether or not in Willemen’s sense regarding the fetishizing of a particular moment in the film) relates to Metz’s idea that the identities of film scholar and cinephile should remain, not separate per se, but in balance.
Steinberg derives pleasure from seeing the scratches on screen (these marks that appear involuntarily address the material qualities of film), and this demonstrates what Metz calls “fetishism of technique” (30), which is more common in the cinema “connoisseur”.
In psychoanalytic terms, the fetish object stands in for the penis (and, for Freud, the fulfillment of the sexual act). In other words, the fetish supplants the sexual act (coitus). The fetishist derives pleasure (arousal) from something which, paradoxically, does not lead to the sexual act. But where, as Baudry claims, the spectator must forget that what he or she is watching is merely the rapid succession of still frames in order to assume the role of subject/spectator (in other words, to buy into the illusion and identify with what is shown on screen), the theoretician of the cinema finds pleasure in being aware of the apparatus.
The pleasure derived from seeing scratches on the screen calls attention to the material aspect of the film: its wear and tear, its imperfections which take viewers out of the film (supposedly making them aware that what they are watching indicates, as Steinberg says, “a residue of time”).
Further reading/key concepts:
Christian Metz “Loving the Cinema; Identification, Mirror; Disavowal, Fetishism”
Jean-Louis Baudry “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus” (1970)
Marc Steinberg on Cinephilia.
“To be a theoretician of the cinema, one should ideally no longer love the cinema and yet still love it: have loved it a lot and only have detached oneself from it by taking it up again from the other end, taking it as the target for the very same scopic drive which had made one love it” (19)
Christian Metz “Loving the Cinema” in The Imaginary Signifier (1976)Metz writes in reaction to the subjective, phenomenological approach to cinema (see Epstein and Bazin), that prevents critical distance. This is not to say that Metz proposes to get rid of the affective response which “gets one nowhere” (19), but to keep the cinephile “in check” in order to pursue a better understanding/knowledge of the film: its function, its ideology, etc. Interestingly, Metz likened the discourse about the cinema at the time of his writing (i.e. the Bazin school, Cahiers critics, auteur theory—all of which in one way or another simply reiterated the greatness of cinema) to “an uninterpreted dream” (19). In other words, Metz was criticizing film scholars at the time for claiming to be studying cinema, but were really simply praising it.
Steinberg’s ambivalence as to whether or not he should call himself a cinephile (whether or not in Willemen’s sense regarding the fetishizing of a particular moment in the film) relates to Metz’s idea that the identities of film scholar and cinephile should remain, not separate per se, but in balance.
Steinberg derives pleasure from seeing the scratches on screen (these marks that appear involuntarily address the material qualities of film), and this demonstrates what Metz calls “fetishism of technique” (30), which is more common in the cinema “connoisseur”.
In psychoanalytic terms, the fetish object stands in for the penis (and, for Freud, the fulfillment of the sexual act). In other words, the fetish supplants the sexual act (coitus). The fetishist derives pleasure (arousal) from something which, paradoxically, does not lead to the sexual act. But where, as Baudry claims, the spectator must forget that what he or she is watching is merely the rapid succession of still frames in order to assume the role of subject/spectator (in other words, to buy into the illusion and identify with what is shown on screen), the theoretician of the cinema finds pleasure in being aware of the apparatus.
The pleasure derived from seeing scratches on the screen calls attention to the material aspect of the film: its wear and tear, its imperfections which take viewers out of the film (supposedly making them aware that what they are watching indicates, as Steinberg says, “a residue of time”).
Further reading/key concepts:
Christian Metz “Loving the Cinema; Identification, Mirror; Disavowal, Fetishism”
Jean-Louis Baudry “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus” (1970)
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