Film Theory Goes to the Movies: After Post Structuralism...

Film Theory Goes to the Movies: After Post Structuralism... Phenomenology

Eye Contact - Barker, J.M

• Touch is a 'style of being'

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Discussion

• He confirmed the importance of Phenomenology in relation to language and perception

Activity

• Not specific to the 'touch' of skin - refers to the entire body

Cognitivsm

• Language holds the notion of sensation

Phenomenology

Film of the Week:

• Sensory perception is different from factual perception and so a mind/body split is created

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

• Research tradition originating in the 1980s

• We experience the world through our body, and so our perception of the world is embodied perception

• Tactility is shared at the movies both by the spectator and the film

• Starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston

• Phenomenology is the study of lived experience

• Follows the romantic relationship between vampires, Adam and Eve

• Critique of the psychoanalytic semiotic theoretical framework that previously dominated the discipline

• it analyses the conflict between formal logic and psychological thought processes

• Tactile behaviors that can be experienced through film - startling, grasping, embracing...

Ida, 2013

Director, Pawel Pawlikowski

• Juxtaposition of characters essentially Adam and Eve are polar opposites

References

Barker, J. (2009). The tactile eye. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Beauvoir, S. (1953). The second sex. New York: Knopf.

• Intimacy - a strong theme throughout the film

• Looks at different elements of the viewing experience film referring to cognitive science and analytic philosophy

• Edmund Husserl was one of the first to analyse formal logical philosophically along with Heidegger, Sarte and Merleau-Ponty.

Bright Star. (2009). [film].

Carroll, N. (1998). Interpreting the moving image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Phenomenology of touch

Ida. (2015). [film].

• we 'exist' and 'emerge' in the contact between our own bodies as the spectator and the body of the film

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology Of Perception. Hoboken: Routledge.

Mirror. (1975). [film].

Only Lovers Left Alive. (2013). [film].

Robbins, D. (2011). Phenomenology. Edinburgh University Press.

• the role of cognitive processes as opposed to unconscious processes

Schmicking, D., Gallagher, S. (2010). Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. SpringerLink

Sobchack, V. (1987). Address of the eye. a semiotic phenomenology of cinematic embodiment. Ann arbor, mich.

Under The Skin. (2013). [film].

• A number of academics rejected the theory, believing it to be too reliant on science

Under the Skin

Mirror

Bright Star (2009)

Discussion

• Starring Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975

Johnathon Glazer, 2013

• Biographical fiction and romantic drama based on the the poet John Keats and his relationship with Fanny Bawne

• Melodramatic narrative

Vivian Sobchak

Only Lovers Left Alive, 2013

Director: Jim Jarmusch

• American cinema and media theorist

• Major contributor to the field of phenomenology

• The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (1992)

Cognitivsm

Engaging the Moving Image, 2003, Carroll, N.

• Associates herself with Merleau-Ponty's existential and embodied approach

• The film is an 'eye', extending to the spectator and subject

"[looks] for alternative answers to many of the questions addressed by or raised by psychoanalytic film theories in terms of cognitive and rational processes rather than unconscious or irrational ones"

Barkers Textural Analysis

• We see 'through' a microscope but we see 'with' a film

• Builds on Merleau-Pontys Embodied perception and applies to film in the form in the form of a textural analysis

• Textural analysis features 3 concepts: The Haptic, The Kinetic and the Rythmic.

• The combination of these concepts allows for film to create a skin for the world we live in and then presents this skin back to the viewers.

• Tactility as a 'mode of being'

Simone de Beauvoir

• French writer, philosopher, political activist, feminist & social theorist

• Beauvoir uses principles of phenomenology to ground her existentialism

• Focuses on the relationship of consciousness with others

• 'The Second Sex' - first investigation into the sexed/gendered body from a phenomenological perspective

• 'The Second Sex' exposed oppressive patriarchal structures which alienated women from their embodied capacities

By Anna & Zoe