Suture-rific

Suture- helps humans relate, to feel "in the know" of whats going on around them.

Rothman’s discussion in- Against the system of Suture regarding the three shot (viewer, view, viewer) sequence seems to make more sense to me than the other theorists two shot view. While I think Rothman may be correct in his three view system, I don’t believe that has to negate a lot of the other interesting points brought up by the suture theorists. I would like to further discuss in class Rothman’s other point about whether or not film is meant for natural disruption? At some point, each week we discuss whether the viewer is meant to be totally lost in the story and its illusionism or whether we are supposed to be made aware of the non-realness at every point possible. Whether we see film to escape or to witness the cuts, edits, camera angels to remind us as much as possible that its not real. I like to think that most film is meant for pleasure and people go to the movies to escape and forget about their worries for a few hours. Part of me feels bad for film writers because these theorists and their ideas seem to want to determine that each script is essentially the same. I don’t want to get to the point where I go to the movies and know exactly what is going to happen after this class. The discussion of suture and sexual difference seemed to be both the most interesting and the most out there for me. Laura Mulvey discusses that “the classic film text distinguishes sharply between the male and female subjects, and that it does so on the basis of vision. The former of these is defined in terms of his capacity to look-as a voyeur and the latter in terms of her capacity to attract the male gaze- as an exhibitionist. This opposition is entirely in keeping with the dominant cultural roles assigned to men and women, since voyeurism is the active or masculine form of the scopophilic drive while exhibitionism is the passive or feminine form of the same drive” (Suture 223). She continues by discussing that the female body provides the means for representing the deprivation of the phallus and control, power and privilege. The female subject helps to define the males subject as adequate. This idea is brought together for me in the following statement “the identification of the female subject with specularity and male subject with vision does not necessarily assure the latter a dominant position. The construction of woman as fetish carriers with it certain dangers for male subjectivity” (229). Think Psycho? After reading each of this week’s readings, the last page I read seemed to make the most sense, “However, the theoreticians of suture agree that it provides the agency whereby the subject emerges within the discourse, and (at least ideally) takes up a position congruent with the existing cultural order” (Suture, 236).