Taking Out the Stiches - An Evaluation of Suture

This is going to be a long, drawn-out description of suture, rather than a succinct one. But, I am an English student, and brevity is on my short list. Sorry, Jason…

The concept of suture in cinema is deceptively easy. Silverman summarizes it as “the name given to the procedure by means of which cinematic texts confer subjectivity upon their viewers,” a definition that I think only makes sense after the rest of his article is read (195). The way I understand Silverman’s sketch of the process is essentially as a disruption and subsequent resumption in the film-watching experience. Assuming that a subject starts his film-viewing experience happily and trustingly, he will accept the authority of the production/the camera. However, it at some point becomes apparent to the viewer that the narrative is being orchestrated, and that certain information the viewer for some reason desires to know is omitted. This is most often a matter of perspective, by which I mean that the viewing subject might like to see “what is outside the shot” (even though the outside is inherently always only implied). Both Silverman and Dayan refer to the view as “questioning” (however explicitly) the tactical decisions made by the directors: e.g., “why am I looking at this and not at this?” or “what are they hiding from me?” When the viewing subject begins to question the tactics of the filmmaker, he is no longer in the position of the “viewing subject,” that is, he has removed himself from the proper state of mind to watch films. These questions tie back to our favorite Freudian idea of the lack, whereby the viewing subject is made uncomfortable by a clear absence. In order to prevent a permanent dissociation from that state of mind, the film-maker has to employ a tactic to bring the viewer back to credulity, so that he might once again accept the fiction of the film, rather than question its technical machinations.

Here is where the certain theorists bring in the “reverse shot,” although this is only one example. (Regardless of whether we believe that it can be accomplished solely through the shot /reverse-shot couplet, it is evident that certain cinematic techniques are capable of producing and are often used to produce this suture effect.) The reverse shot covers this lack, this uncomfortable gap in our understanding, by providing information that is sufficient to allow our resumption of credulity. If our problem were one of perspective, a different shot might allow us to “see” the missing spaces we wondered about before. Moreover, we “see” those spaces through the view point of another character – and here is where we understand that we are not only seeing the movie as a spectator, but as a participant who has a specific vantage point inside the filmic world. At this point the subject re-identifies with the film, or re-assimilates into the fictive world of the cinematic narrative. Silverman explains that the success of the reverse shot as a healing tactic “depends upon the subject’s willingness to become absent to itself by permitting a fictional character to “stand in” for it, or by allowing a particular point of view to define what it sees” (205). Thus, “suture…[is] that moment when the subject inserts itself into the symbolic register in the guise of the signifier, and in so doing gains meaning at the expense of being” (200). That is, by moving to stand in for something else (for that lack), the subject then no longer signifies itself but that lack. In some sense, then, we allow ourselves to be pulled into the fictive world of the film because we cannot bear the pain of knowing the film to be at all fictive. By submitting to this technique, we both subject ourselves to the power of the filmic world (and its message) and sustain the myth of cinema.

Given that it seems all I have done thus far is summarize my own understanding of the concept, I suppose it behooves me to make some sort of independent claim(s), which I will do by asking (and then attempting to answer) some questions that probably no one but me is interested in. A few things I am curious about:

We’re all talking about analyzing these particular scenes and picking apart the shots and sequences that depict suture, but isn’t the mark of a good suture one where we don’t see the marks? Just as the assumption of a fetish to cover a lack is not a purposeful or conscious decision, so, too, should the re-integration into the filmic imagination not be a noticeable shift. Our momentary discomfort should be undetectable (not even manifest by what I’m picturing like those little moments of discomfort we see in the Fight Club cinema scenes), psychological, subconscious. Not even film critics watch every film looking for points of dissociation or identification. Thus, the intense pleasure that we supposedly feel upon the resolution of that earlier “moment of unpleasure” (really, Silverman?) ought to not even be noticeable (204).

I’m more intrigued by Dayan’s concern with the political ramifications of the techniques of suture, and the ways in which these techniques leave the audience vulnerable to ideological and psychological manipulation. By obliging the viewer to identify with a particular character, the film-maker is forcing the viewer to relinquish autonomy – he no longer has the freedom to make independent decisions about the veracity of the scene, the text, or the message – because he is only able to perceive the film through the perspective into which he has been shunted as this “other” character. In essence, suture can make the viewing subject believe he is someone other than who he truly is. This, my friends, is a dangerous state of being. Dayan’s “cinematic code,” which I am taking to mean the traceable technical processes by which film works, is elided through suture (215). Our autonomy as viewers-of-film is severely questionable. (AN: I’m not sure if we’re to understand this process as unethical or if ethics should even play a role in understanding film…)

By extension, I’m also interested in how this relates to our psychological understanding and valuation of “enjoying” a film. Are we lackeys and fools if we enjoy a film that endeavors to mass-market ideological effects (nefarious or otherwise)? Or do we view this as an opportunity for film-makers to enact real, meaningful art? Compare this with Brecht – if art-as-political is only effective by disrupting our identification with the fictive cinema, then isn’t suture inherently anti-political? If the entire purpose of suture is to heal those gaps in our comfort with the film, then suture by nature is designed to minimize and even erase disruption, to make us completely unaware that what we are watching is at any point orchestrated.