The Cinema Ideal - An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Studies of the Film Spectator

This study explores the model derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, via Marxism and semiotics, of looking at film. It retraces the steps of film theory from ideological criticism of the late '60s to spectator studies in 1988 when the book was originally published. Psychoanalysis enables a discussion of the cinema's role as a social and political force and this book enters a discourse of the politics of representation. Reconstructing discussion of basic issues, the book addresses our instincts and defences in reacting to cinema, the similarity between mental processes and cinematic technique, narrative techniques and the 'cinematic apparatus'. Importantly, the book concerns itself with the concept of ideology and how the filmviewing experience engages the spectator in a complex net of stimuli presenting representations of an ideal world and the effect of this within film studies.

List of contents

Preface 1. Idols of the Theater 2. Cinema and the Psychic Apparatus 3. Perception of the Image 4. The Willing Suspension of Disbelief 5. Participation: Group or Individual 6. Film and Phantasy 7. The Cinema Ideal/ The Ideal Cinema

About the author

Harriet E. Margolis

Product details

• Authors: Harriet E Margolis, Harriet E. Margolis, Margolis Harriet E.
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.11.2015
• EAN: 9781138988897
• ISBN: 978-1-138-98889-7
• No. of pages: 328
• Weight: 453 g
• Series: Routledge Library Editions: Cinema
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Films, cinema, Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / General, Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology), PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Psychoanalysis