Better late than never...

This week’s readings swiftly kicked me back into “film theory” mode after an extended absence for Army training. I had forgotten what a joy some of these theorists were (←-sarcasm).

Rothman opened up a lot of holes in the Dayan theories…many of which I think I tend to agree with. Dayan seemed to have this attitude about suture as a coercive figure out to “lie” to the viewer…and this causes the viewer to have an unpleasant experience because s/he knows they are being lied to and deceived. “The viewer discovers that the camera is hiding things, and therefore distrusts it and the frame itself” (119). He believed that the viewer was aware that there were things outside the range of the film that s/he was not allowed to see.

Rothman, however, said this was not the case. The different parts of the film were not trying to say anything, so how could they be telling lies? The film as a whole is a statement and the shots and series of shots are nothing more than sentences syntagmatically connected. “Again, it seems to me that it is the film and not the sequence that constitutes the statement (if the film makes a statement)” (123).

I also love how Dayan (and Oudart, according to the reading) believe that the “system is an intrinsically tyrannical one” (119). Like the creation of film is set to restrict the ideological exposure of the viewer in an evil or monstrous way. I never knew we were such victims!
Silverman does a good job of comparing the different theorists on either side of the “suture” argument, in specific relation the comparison and of film sequences and semiological discourses.
“Lacan indicates that the signification cannot be considered apart from the subject” (195). I find this statement interesting when you think about it terms of a series of shots (specifically, shot/reverse shot/shot) in that each shot alone is not enough to convey the connection to the viewer. We need to see the reverse shot in order to understand the first shot and vice versa. Just as words in a sentence lack the connection and meaning when they stand alone and require the words around them to form the relationship that we need to understand it, film needs those shots, in a specific order, in order to convey what it’s trying to convey. “’I’ derives its value from ‘you,’ and ‘here’ from ‘there,’ just as ‘black’ refers to ‘white,’ or ‘male’ to ‘female’ (196). The value of each scene in a film is derived those around it…so they function as a whole. And he even points out the Benveniste agrees - “Benveniste never loses sight of the fact that subjectivity is constructed within discourse” (199).

The Silverman article also goes back to the ideas brought up by Rothman about how the construction of the shots serve as a sort of language for the viewer. “Shot relationships are seen as the equivalent of syntactic ones in linguistic discourse, as the agency whereby meaning emerges and a subject-position is constructed for the viewer” (201).

Dayan’s argument is furthered weakened by the Silverman article when he explains the logical set of rules for cinematic expression. Dayan was saying the viewer feels robbed because they cannot see everything and they know there is something else outside the view of the camera (“tyrant”). Silverman says the 180 degree rule makes this impossible. According to the rule, a camera cannot cover more than 180 deg in a single shot. And further “a complete camera revolution would be ‘unrealistic’” (201).