The thesis examines the nature of the "real" in the cinema; I overview the theories that are historically used, and offer some alternative models. First, I survey how the "real" has been traditionally theorized in film theory. The realist/anti-realist debate is addressed; the psycholinguistic theory of Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard's postmodern model of the hyperreal are reexamined in light of their profound effect on film theory's model of the cinematic "real." I argue against these theories as models of spectatorship and the "real" because of their hermetic nature. / I then consider Walter Benjamin's Passagen-Werk and the "dialectical image" as an alternative approach to the problems of the "real." Benjamin's model takes into consideration both the epistemological nature of the image and the problematics of cultural context. In conclusion, I analyze the problem of mediation in any model of the cinematic "real."

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published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

During the past decade film analysis and semiotic inquiry have meshed to produce significant changes in film theory. This thesis discusses the philosophical and epistemological shift represented by this development, resulting in the creation of semiotic models (e.g. those of Christian Metz and Umberto Eco) which consistently overemphasize the textual framework for cinematic expression. As a result, problems of performance and interpretation are ignored. / The thesis proposes a radically different strategy to explain meaning in film. To solve problems of performance the new concept of projections is proposed. Projections are defined not as images or pictures, but as sites (or performance events) of signification in film. The concept marks a fundamental shift away from close textual readings in its insistence that the cinema must be analyzed as part of a complex process of communication and exchange.

This thesis examines the confusion of reality and unreality in contemporary media discourses, and focuses specifically upon the medium of cinema. The art of our time, cinema reflects the postmodern fusion between machine and culture. As such, a crucial concern of this work, which addresses the impact of digital and visual technological developments in western societies and examines how such advances have come to supersede the historical and cultural imperatives, is precisely this resultant confusion/fragmentation. The thesis analyzes how audiences interpret the current cinematic evolution, based on computer generated imagery, and how their subjectivity influences and impacts upon knowledge, ideology, culture and society as a whole. The creation of (un)realities in fictional spaces is most apparent in such concurrent places as the Internet, videogames and Virtual Reality, spaces which are certainly of interest to this thesis. However, it is also crucial to note that recent years have seen a proliferation of films based on the confusion between reality and unreality; and, further, that these have enforced a fear of being deceived by technology. Indeed, such post-classical films as Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990), The Lawnmower Man (Leonard, 1992), The Matrix (Wachowski and Wachowski, 1999) and eXistenZ (Cronenberg, 1999) materialize this fear cinematographically; a fear which is arguably then assimilated by the spectators because this fear is projected onto their lives. In this respect, it is essential to be aware of the creation of new spaces, identify related boundaries and understand our own creations in order to have control over our destiny. Concepts such as (un)reality, a hybrid of reality and fiction, are essential to refer to the inventions, contexts and information that appears in a world where atoms and a binary of 0s and 1s constitute a dual code to which our lives conform. The production of an original film, Luna (Diaz Gandasegui, 2007), works in synergy with the written text to illuminate the complexities of (un)reality and the vital influence of technology on its confusion.

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This analysis of the narrative/anti-narrative debate in avant-garde film theory and praxis is contextualized in terms of the developments in Modernism in the visual and plastic arts. The problems raised by the aesthetic strategies formal autonomy versus narrative appropriation are explored by examining several discrete historical paradigms rather than following a strict linear historical chronology of the development of Modernism and avant-garde practices. Therefore the late 1930's East/West debates between the four writers associated with the Frankfurt school were discussed because their discourses reveal a spectrum of possibilities which span each end of this polarized autonomy/efficacy argument. The discourses look at the issues of production aesthetics and reception aesthetics also. Within the parameters of East/West debates, the positioning of the subject in terms of "distracted habit" or "praxis" are critical considerations to a reception aesthetic. Another historical paradigm for this debate was the writing and film practice which emerged from the nexus of the events of May 1968. The East/West debates informed this writing and the development of the aesthetic questions raised by Peter Wollen in the "Two Avant-Gardes." Here the important issues of materialism, ontology, and the development of human perception are raised. The return to narrative is represented by the "second" avant-garde's film practice (Godard, Straub etc.) and informs the issues of new narrative in feminist film practices. This is narrative with a difference however. Here questions of language and the production of culture are critically examined and naturally the narrative/anti-narrative debate continues. Finally, these issues are brought foreword to the contemporary context and related specifically to the production of avant-garde film in Canada. One can see this contemporary debate in light of the past, however, the conclusions drawn by the thesis do not presume to resolve the narrative/anti-narrative debate or prescribe one particular approach, since this will arise from actual practice. The intention of the study is to introduce the central issues raised by social commitment/artistic autonomy and contribute to a better understanding of theoretical and practical implications of the debate over the use of narrative. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (MDram (Drama))—University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Spectatorship is an essential aspect of the film industry, and hence a key facet of film studies. In film studies, however, the notion of subjectivity is marginalized in a preference for broad generalizations. This is because any consideration of subjectivity leads to indeterminate results. Such research is consequently of no use to filmmakers in guiding them on how best to accommodate mainstream consumer preferences, which is most often the objective of spectatorship studies. However, apart from this, subjectivity is a key component in film reception as every human being views ‘reality’ subjectively and therefore films also. Although the outcome of studies that include the notion of the ‘subjective individual’ will be indefinite, it is an important aspect of any study of spectatorship. The notion of the ‘subjective individual’, as opposed to the generalized notions of ‘audience’ and ‘spectator’, is thus crucial and consequently underlies my entire discussion. In an attempt to demonstrate the importance of subjectivity in film spectatorship studies, I address three primary notions in film reception studies – the text’s structure, cultural complications and psychological satisfactions. In doing so, I consider how each of these notions significantly involves the ‘subjective individual’. In addressing the first notion – the text’s structure – I examine the role of the spectator in relation to the film text, particularly during the reception process. I show how codes function, are organized, and are very specifically encoded into the text by the filmmakers. I then examine how the spectator – the recipient of the communication, who is positioned by the text (interpellated) to receive the narrative – decodes the text’s message. This process thus involves not only subjectivity in the filmmakers’ choices, but also in the ‘reading’ position that the spectator adopts, according to his/her personal interpretation of the text. The second notion – cultural complication – involves the aspects which condition both the encoding and decoding processes of film, namely: ideology, polysemy, the overlapping ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres, and the unconscious desires of spectators. Each aspect has a profound affect on spectator response and, consequently, on the study of spectatorship. Moreover, each aspect entails the notion of the ‘subjective individual’. The third notion – psychological satisfaction – deals with unconscious desires and thus addresses subjectivity in spectatorship in its most intense form. Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’ theory and Freud’s work on dream analysis demonstrate how personal the desires motivating the viewing of films are, again revealing subjectivity as a key aspect in film spectatorship study. In amalgamating these ideas, I draw on the phenomenon of celebrity. The film celebrity, originally an ‘object’ of the film text, has become central to popular culture for reasons of psychological satisfaction. I explore how spectatorship and what generates it – the film industry – have co-created the film celebrity and, in turn, how this phenomenon moulds popular culture and affects ideology; subsequently affecting the “theory of ‘reality’” by which we, as individuals in society, live. Since this “theory of ‘reality’”, although constituted by the dominant ideology, is personal and conditions the way we (as human beings and film spectators) view everything, spectatorship studies cannot ignore spectators as ‘real’ people – ‘subjective individuals’.

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In my thesis I develop a theory of our mental, physiological and emotional involvement with motion pictures that accounts for the distinct role of perception in our cinematic experiences. In particular, I present a (limited) resemblance view of cinematic perception and depiction that begins with an analysis of motion picture screenings as events in the world to which audience members share perceptual access and to which we can attribute complex visual and auditory properties. By understanding the precise nature of these properties and by understanding the mind's rich and dynamic relationship to visual and auditory stimuli, we can meet the demand of explaining the essential contribution of perception to our cinematic experiences. This positive theory is introduced through a philosophical and empirical critique of the work of several contemporary "cognitivist" film theorists who can been faulted for (i) falling into the traps of traditional illusion accounts, (ii) failing to account for the perceptual nature of our film experiences, or (iii) incorrectly characterizing the nature of our perceptual relationship to cinematic content.