The semantic and the syntactic are two crossing points on an axis. There is the horzontal line, which is the semantic, and the vertical, which is the syntactic. The syntactic can be seen as the structure of a certain genre while the semantic is "common traits, attitudes, characters, shots, locations, sets, and the like" (Altman 183) which make up a certain genre. In his article "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre," Rick Altman argues against separating these two elements of film genre, unlike other film critics before him, and instead combines them. Taking a dual approach to genre "permits a far more accurate description of the numerous inter-generic connections typically suppressed by single-minded approaches. It is not simply possible to describe Hollywood cinema accurately without the ability to account for the numerous films that innovate by combining the syntax of one genre with the semantics of another" (185). This theory is quite evident in the film Underworld (2003, Len Wiseman), which combines the semantic gothic backdrop of the gothic style with syntactic traits of both monster movies and war movies.

In the movie Underworld, humans are not the primary targets of the monsters, Vampires and Lycans, as seen in most monster movies, but instead humans are caught in the middle of a war between the Vampires and Lycans. The gothic style backdrop just provides the scenery for this war to take place. This background is of the typical Goth fashion, a dark rainy night, tall menacing structures, and Gothic-style statues. While this background is not pertinent to the plot, it still provides the cover in which the war is waged. None of this film takes place during the day for two reasons: 1) the main protagonist is a Vampire that cannot survive during the day, and 2) if seen during the day, this war would be revealed to humans who are supposed to be blind to what is going on. The monsters in this movie are like the Frankenstein monster in the old horror genre in that they are portrayed with very human like qualities. The war-like element of this movie provides the plot that keeps the movie going forward. If they were to separate any of these semantic or syntactic elements, the movie would not be the same nor anywhere near as good.

The combination of the semantic and syntactic of the different genres that make up the film Underworld would not be able to be properly explained if these two elements were left separate.

A structural analysis of any text reveals that the text in fact is not homogenous throughout (Barthes, The Pleasue of the Text, 35). In fact, the very nature of the text changes in order to facilitate the environment that it expresses. "If you hammer a nail into a piece of wood, the wood has a different resistance according to the place you attack it: we say that wood is not isotropic. Neither is the text" (36). The seams of the story may change or tear. It is because of the texts lack of isotropic qualities that both pleasure and bliss are possible. The presence of a complete lack of structural logic creates jouissance.

The Door in the Floor (2004, Todd Williams), provides the audience with an excellent example of this lack of continuity. The story constantly circles around the idea of "a door in the floor," which is the subject of a children’s book that the protagonist has authored. The entire movie provides symbolic hints as to the nature of this door, but it is not entirely revealed. This rhetorical process creates a great amount of pleasure in the film. Subjects such as adultery, mental instability, and adultery all tug at the viewer’s cultural and symbolic nature. As Barthes describes it, "Two edges are created: an obedient, conformist, plagiarizing edge … and another edge, mobile blank … which is never anything but the site of its effect: the place where the death of language is glimpsed" (6). The tension between these two edges puts the viewer on edge (no pun intended). However, he is left in his initial state because the consistency of the text remains relatively stable. The viewer’s moral and societal being is pushed, but this is expected.

However, late in the film, The Door in the Floor reveals a great inconsistency in its structural nature. As the film comes to and end, the protagonist, who is sitting quietly on the floor (and providing substantial pleasure), literally opens a door in the floor and climbs in. It is like the experience of taking the last bite of a tender and juicy steak only to be shocked by the crunching of bone against the teeth. The viewer asks, "Did that just happen?" The event completely dismantles the context in which the film was understood. There is jouissance. The viewer does not notice the credits roll down the screen because he is still in awe at the events that have just taken place. The text suddenly becomes dense, and there is no explanation for what has transpired. Bliss is achieved through a complete breakdown of symbolic interpretation.

The theory of the Gaze illustrates the unexplainable feeling that characters of a film are being watched even though neither the audience nor the characters can actually see someone watching them. The Gaze can be defined as a permanent state in which the subject is positioned in a field of vision that allows the subject to realize that the other, or the unknown, is also a subject. It can be described as a mask looming over or around the subject, but the eyes behind the mask are hidden. The Gaze is usually identified with someone or something physically looking at the subject from an outside source, but in some cases The Gaze could appear from an internal source.

In the movie Sphere (1998, Barry Levinson), the characters come in contact with an alien spacecraft that can read their inner thoughts and desires. This extends the theory of the Gaze in that, there are no eyes hidden behind the mask to later be revealed; instead, the "eyes" that are watching them are actually inside of their minds. It is still a classical example of the Gaze because the characters still feel under surveillance in a sense, but it expands this argument because it is not just their physical actions that are under surveillance, but their inner thoughts and deepest secrets are also being monitored. This expands the influence of the Gaze upon the characters of this movie because unlike other films when only a character’s actions in the present are being observed, their entire memory bank, and thus entire life, is under the watch of some unknown subject.

The Gaze becomes the Look when the eyes behind the mask are revealed, or when the onlooker of the subject is revealed. In the case of Sphere, when would The Gaze become The Look (due to the fact that there are no "eyes" to be revealed)? The characters of the film soon discover that they are in fact being watched by something or someone because the ship begins to manifest things from their minds. For example, one character imagines that she had placed a bomb on the ship, and it is later revealed that, because she had envisioned it, the thought has actually occurred. This still might not be considered turning from the Gaze to the Look because even though her belief that someone or something was watching her has been proven correct, that "someone of something" has still not been revealed. The "eyes" in this film are never actually revealed, so it could be assumed that the characters are in a constant state of the Gaze.

The movie ends with the characters deciding to manifest that they have forgotten completely about the alien spacecraft and the being(s) that have been watching them. Upon acting this out, the Gaze that the audience had experienced turns into the Look, because they observe that the characters can no longer manifest images from their minds, and thus realize that whatever was watching the characters is now gone. This is the closest moment to be tied to the revealing of the "eyes" because it proves positively to the audience that there was something present, because now it is definitely gone; howevre, the Look never occurs for the characters of the film. They were in a constant state of the Gaze because they chose to forget the presence of something watching them, thus they do not experience the Look because they have forgotten they were experiencing the Gaze in the first place—they do not undergo the realization that whomever or whatever was watching them is now gone.

In the first three minutes of Shall We Dance? (Peter Chelsom, 2004), the audience is introduced to the almost-perfect marriage of John and Beverly Clark (Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon). The only problem—John’s boredom. Although he cannot think of anything he wants “in a box” that his wife can buy him for his birthday, something is still missing. The ride home from work soon further exacerbates this problem.

Within the third and seventh minutes of the film, the view John has from his nightly window seat on the Chicago subway shows Miss Mitzi’s Dance School three times. The first night, it appears to be a pretty, simple scene—something aesthetically pleasing during his daily mundane ride home. But then he notices that there is a woman staring out the window of Miss Mitzi’s. Seemingly, she stares back at him. But the tram moves along and it is apparent that she, like Lacan’s sardine can, does not—he is not that important, nor lucky. Knowing now that Miss Mitzi’s exists, he is ready for it the second night. This time around, the woman is closer to the window she stands in, and with her arms bracing its frame, it seems that she is staring right into the subway car at John. This fools him into giving her a half-wave…a gesture that she, sure enough, does not notice. Third time’s a charm. The slower music depicting the curiosity of the first two trysts is replaced by an upbeat, mysterious tempo—one of action instead of simple intrigue. And as he finds that the woman is now busy dancing inside, he musters up the courage to leap through the screen (or out of the tram) and into her seemingly more interesting and exciting story.

It is at these moments that John experiences what we as the audience of the film experience—a confrontation with the Other as subject, and a desire to understand himself through that Other. The subway window out of which he gazes is his glass—not the mirror of his Imaginary phase. According to Christian Metz: "[F]ilm is like the mirror. But it differs from the primordial mirror in one essential point: although, as in the latter, everything may come to be projected, there is one thing, and one thing only that is never reflected in it: the spectator’s own body. In a certain emplacement, the mirror suddenly becomes clear glass," (410). For us, the film is the screen, and John and the woman (Paulina, played by Jennifer Lopez) are the characters we watch and desire to know. For John, the window of Miss Mitzi’s Dance School is the screen he watches and Paulina is the character of which he desires to know. "You looked on the outside the way I was feeling on the inside," John tells her later—and her craft of dance is ultimately what he desires to experience.

As creatures who have passed through the Imaginary and are currently living in the Symbolic, we now look more often to film instead of the mirror to see a reflection of ourselves. Or, as in John’s case, we look to anywhere outside of ourselves. Although lacking the apparatus of film, John’s subway experience mirrors (no pun intended) the same kind of experience he would get if Paulina were not looking back at him from behind a movie screen.

Blood? Check. Guts? Check. Muscle? Check. Guns? Check. Illegal aliens? Check. Actual intergalactic aliens? Hmmm...

Clearly, John McTiernan’s Predator (1987) completely tweaked the sub-genre of the 1980’s adrenaline action flick. The first 45 minutes of the film are uneventful (as action films go); actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Jesse Ventura butt heads, make wisecracks, and destroy straw huts in spectacular fashion. However, a viewer entering the film a mere thirty seconds late misses the film’s true inciting incident: from an outer space perspective, we see a spaceship enter Earth’s orbit and disappear into the atmosphere. Given this premise, (Rambo meets Alien, a truly shallow combination), it might come as a surprise that the film actually exploits two Lacanian premises extremely well--that of the Gaze and the objet a.

The gimmick that makes Predator memorable to this day (as well as netting a special effects Oscar nomination) is its "infra-red" vision technique. For the majority of the film, the viewer never sees the "Predator"—an eight-foot tall galactic bounty hunter, complete with invisibility camouflage and high-tech weaponry. However, the audience is made aware very early that something is watching. Throughout the prolonged second act of the film, the camera shifts into a multi-colored, pixelated view of Schwarzenegger and his companions. As this film proves, the "spooky forest" Gaze effect works just as well in a jungle environment—we never know exactly where the Predator watches from, but we are always aware of its presence. The fact that the Predator is invisible increases its terror factor, as does the exotic nature of its "hunting vision"—these character traits, plus the endlessly-labyrinthine environment, create a palpable sense of the Gaze.

In addition, McTiernan constantly teases the viewer with the riddle of the Predator’s appearance, giving us glimpses throughout act one and two. At first, only a glimmer of an outline appears, and after that, only a two-second glimpse (but with its full armor equipped). Even well into act three, the beast’s face remains hidden. However, when the Predator finally removes his mask (complete with an absolutely perfect hissing sound), its hideous visage still manages to 'shock and awe.' As Schwarzenegger’s character says, "[It’s] one ugly motherf@&!ker"-- a slimy, spotted membrane-flesh is stretched over a beetle-like head, complete with a gnawing mandible and beady little eyes.

This tactic of withholding its appearance until the very end works better than one might expect; however, the sequel to Predator—the cleverly-titled Predator 2 (1990)—inherently suffers because of this. That is, since the threat is definite (assuming one has seen the first film), the power of Predator 2 to frighten is exponentially weakened. Without the mystery of the alien’s appearance in the audience’s mind, the threats of its incredibly violent power ring hollow, and once again prove the applicability of Lacan’s objet a.

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Last update: 2/22/2005