"Suture" as a cinematic concept has nearly as storied a history as film theory itself. Once it was established that film is "a language of sorts" the linguistic concept of enunciation was applied and it was necessary to discover the relation of the subject to the discourse. Daniel Dayan explains Jean Pierre Oudart, in our first article: "When I occupy the place of the subject, the codes which led me to occupy this place become invisible to me. The signifiers of the presence of the subject disappear from my consciousness because they are the signifiers of my presence" (Dayan 112).
This "entrapment of the subject" focuses on the simple question of "who is watching this?" that is asked once in the viewing of a painting and hundreds of times (if not more) after each shot-change in cinema. This has serious implications for Oudart and other proponents of Suture.
Dayan writes, "The meaning of a shot is given retrospectively, it does not meet the shot on the screen, but only in the memory of the spectator" (Dayan 116). This means that the spectator is constantly being pulled back and forth in time between the signified and the signifier. The present reality is lost. I personally found this idea very intriguing and helpful in understanding why cinema is so universally beloved. It appears that the system of suture could therapeutically destroy our fear of the present. Or as Dayan concludes "Classical cinema establishes itself as the ventriloquist of ideology" (Dayan 117).
This leads to the idea of the "absent one." The simplest example of suture stitching the ideology to the subject through means of signification is the shot, reverse-shot. "...the absent-one of shot one is an element of the code that is attracted into the message by means of shot two. When shot two replaces shot one, the absent-one is transferred from the level of enunciation to the level of fiction. As a result of this, the code effectively disappears and the ideological effect of the film is thereby secured. The code, which produces an imaginary, ideological effect, is hidden by the message" (Dayan 115).
I was playing with iMovie on my Mac when I decided to do an experiment of a sequence of shots / reverse-shots in "It's a Wonderful Life." It's a 53 second series of shots from near the end of the movie. Here's how it's setup:
1. Shots of George without the reverse shots with no sound
2. Shots of George without the reverse shots but with sound
3. Shots of George with the reverse shots displayed picture-in-picture simultaneously
4. The original sequence
My point with this sequence is to draw attention to presence of the "absent-one" in the original shots. Questions for discussion:
- Is the "absent-one" resolved even without the reverse shot in the second sequence because of the sound?
- Is suture still occurring (or ever occurring) in the picture-in-picture sequence?
- Has suture finally ruined your movie-viewing experience for all time (let's all thank Professor Goldman)?
Rothman Taking No Prisoners
In our second article, Rothman decides this is all bologna (B-O-L-O-G-N-A). He thinks the absent-one is made up and probably because Oudart's mother didn't love him enough ("This ghost, who rules over the frame and robs the spectator of his pleasure, Oudart proposes to call 'the absent-one'" [Rothman 119]). He wants to re-examine whether cinema is "illusionistic" (120). Rothman points out that most shot/reverse-shots are actually setup in a three-shot sequence that gives the viewer too much information to allow for the system of suture to take place (121) and thinks reverse-shots are always an "approximation" and "unauthorized" keeping the viewer free to accept or reject the source (122). Needless to say, he was very convincing.
Along Comes Silverman
I was ready to buy into Rothman's harsh critique and then I worked through the Silverman article. Silverman greatly expands Dayan's analysis on suture in actual films. As I read, besides the great work on Psycho (Hitchcock's Shower scene from Psycho--not for the faint of heart)
I also was reminded of great shots in 2001 (Hal reading lips) and David Fincher movies echoing Hitchcock in Pyscho zooming in impossibly through walls. Silverman concludes "What Psycho obliges us to understand is that we want suture so badly that we'll take it any price, even with the fullest knowledge of what it entails--passive insertions into pre-existing discursive positions (both mythically potent and mythically impotent) threatened losses and false recoveries; and subordination to the castrating gaze of the Other." (Silverman 213). This article is dense with discussion, but I will leave you to draw your own conclusions in your blog posts. I propose a contest - whoever can summarize the definition of suture most succinctly wins a prize! You'll have to wait for Thursday to find out.
PS: Since I unsuccessfully tried to make "Watchmen" our unofficial assignment last week, I wanted to point out that because of director Zack Synder's insistence on copying panels from the graphic novel for his shots, the movie is strangely devoid of shot/reverse-shots. Here's a video on that decision:
Watchmen's Single Camera (no reverse shot) FAIL
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Suture: a psychoanalytic term used in film theory for an illusion of unity and wholeness—and the erroneous, temporary sense of recovery this allows the spectator.
ReplyDeleteSort of jumping off the Silverman quote that, “we want suture so badly that we'll take it any price, even with the fullest knowledge of what it entails--passive insertions into pre-existing discursive positions (both mythically potent and mythically impotent) threatened losses and false recoveries; and subordination to the castrating gaze of the Other" (Silverman 213), I wanted to talk about my thought about this article in generally, as well as relate it to some of the main themes of the class. I also have a bit of resentment toward psychoanalysis today, so bear with me.
To me, Silverman’s article goes back to the discussion we were having last week (or two weeks ago I guess) about the disrupted viewing experience. I guess the argument is more believable than the idea of a brief but exciting mirror-stage, repeated seemingly at will for only ten dollars, but not really that much different. I would say it is interesting to focus on the actual technical shot structure of a film instead using broad generalizations about film viewing as a whole. I also came away being struck by the idea these texts are again raising the question of what type of viewer we are considering, and how intelligent is he? Even going back to the midterm, this form of (psycho) analysis places the role of the theorist in a position of some power and prestige.
Obviously, any reading that is Freudian, or Lacanian, also involves in some way the concepts of pleasure and desire, as well as often touching on castration and loss. With that in mind, I took issue with the idea that you bring back the innocence after the realization that there is a lack through mechanical trickery and the overwhelming desire of the audience. I feel that in most psychoanalytic theory, this is impossible, not even considered, etc etc. I guess Silverman is saying the same thing—that any true covering of the lack is impossible and we are constantly seeking, and fooling ourselves into, recovering this loss.
By speaking in Freudian terms, doesn’t this concept also either force the viewer into a gender-specific gaze, either feminine or castrati? Because something is always lacking, this never happens to the male. The male only needs to kill his father. Besides, once you become aware of your own lack, or your own impotence, there is not really a clear method of recovery and, most of all, there is still a lack.
Certainly giving more information does not really seem to qualify. And even if it did, this implies the viewer is either consciously or unconsciously entirely at the mercy of the film.
Bringing the viewer back to credulity is not going to fill the lack, although I like the idea of the reverse shot. But providing information that is sufficient to complete the illusion does not cover the lack. The idea that more information is sufficient to cover this lack presumes a very impressionable reader/spectator, and that brings us full circle on the talk about how the theorist is envisioning the spectator, and alternately how the theorist is valuing his own role in the process of revelation.