The idea of the Lacanian Gaze in film usually evokes thoughts of abandoned houses and horror films—instances in which the Gaze is clearly demonstrated or represented in film. The Gaze is easy to spot in Hitchcock or Halloween. Is Michael behind that bush? Is Bates’ mother in the house? Although these things are beneficial in terms of better understanding what the Gaze is, they are merely cinematic examples. In order to better understand aesthetics and how they operate within the context of culture, however, it is necessary to contemplate the Gaze at the level of apparatus. How can a film be the source of the Gaze for a viewer? How can it be experienced rather than merely represented?

An important genre of film in understanding this principle is the experimental film. In analyzing these films, specifically several of the short experimental films of modern American director Su Friedrich [Hide and Seek (1996), The Odds of Recovery (2002), Head of a Pin (2004)], a better understanding of the interactivity of this Gaze can be found. The most important question in regards to this concept is, “how is the relationship between the viewer and the film important in understanding how the Gaze operates?” The viewer has two relationships to the film: first as an outside observer, a participator in the presentation of an art form; and second as a passive and internal spectator, an unidentified character watching within the frame of the narrative world. At which level is the Gaze actually experienced? This question can be answered through a close engagement with the selected texts and a thorough understanding of the theory at hand.

The dependence of the American studio system upon stars and “star image” has forced some interesting paradoxes throughout the history of cinema. Formerly, film scholars and theorists were challenged by human performances and their intricacies—Marlon Brando’s role in On the Waterfront (1954) is the subject of an extensive study of “method acting” by James Naremore. A new realm was opened with the increasing popularity of animated films in the 1930s and 1940s. New “stars” like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Yosemite Sam, and Donald Duck developed their own distinct star images, using their popularity to make audiences laugh, comment on social issues, and even strike down World War II enemies (most notoriously in the Walt Disney shorts of the 1940s).

A new corner was turned in the 1990s with the emergence of computer-generated animation within live action films. First used mainly to animate inhuman or semi-human subjects, such as the T-1000 killing machine in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and the Tyrannosaurus Rex of Jurassic Park (1993), computer technology now allows a much more profound juxtaposition of real and “CG.” Undoubtedly, the most extensive use of this occurs in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), in which a major dramatic character, Gollum, is completely computer-generated. Gollum has become recognizable even outside of his diegetic context, prompting an intriguing question: is it possible to apply “star image theory” to the digital creation of a team of computer artists and animators? Due to the extensive documentation of the creation of Gollum, it is possible to confidently answer this question. While Gollum is not an actor per se, the principles of performance, consistency, and star image still largely apply, predicting new applications and contexts for “characters by committee” in the future.

Star Wars: Republic Commando (Lucas Arts Video Games, 2005) uses vibrations in the player’s controller during its expository scenes (in which the player is limited to only “watching” the action) to denote that huge explosions or intense firefights are happening off screen. Star Wars: Episode II (George Lucas, 2002) uses three dimensional sound to create the sense that a light saber is whirring past Yoda’s green little head. In both cases, the audience in placed in a passive relationship to the action, yet they are engaged in several active sense modes. Michel Chion describes sound as having the ability to create “rapid auditory punctuation” in which the definite image associated with the sound can be extended into the auditory sense. This can be taken further with relation to the vibrating video game controller. Rapid physical punctuation extends the off screen world to the threatening proposition of physical danger; this is further intensified by the player’s inability to take action on such dangers.

Passive interactivity is used in such "vibrating cotroller games" to persuade the audience that action is almost possible. This creates an objet a relationship between the subject and the text.

Jacques Lacan's 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. This 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" becomes "The Look" when the eyes behind the mask are revealed, or when the onlooker of the subject is unveiled. This theoretical concept is relevant in almost (if not all) horror/thriller films, because it allows a film to elicit an eerie, or creepy mood even before the killer is revealed.

However, some horror films seem to leave the audience in a permanent state of "The Gaze" because the eyes behind the mask are never shown. How does this not ruin the entire film? A slasher movie that never shows the slasher? The small amount of films that have been able to pull off never revealing a set of eyes behind the mask consist of those rare few that touch on the religious beliefs of the audience. Movies such as The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin, USA) Stigmata (1999, Rupert Wainwright, USA) , and Exorcist: The Beginning (2004, Renny Harlin, USA) work only because "The Gaze" is present—the Devil’s omniscient ability to see and hear all without ever showing his evil horns allows filmmakers to produce movies in which the audience is made aware of the Devil’s constant presence, but is never shown his actual face. The actual eyes behind the mask are never revealed in these movies, but the mask used to cover these eyes is sometimes another set of eyes—a human body—that within has been possessed by this elusive Devil.

Henry Krips says, "To be specific, in putting itself forward as a substitute, the objet a creates the false impression that there was something—an original lacking object…for which it acts as a substitute." (21)

In Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1970) shots of gore are presented as fictive substitutes, but in such a way that it is not the gore that represents the objet a, but instead the point of view. The audience is put in the position of the objet a by the camera. Lewis does this by establishing a camera point of view that is pointedly different than that of the audience. When gore shots take place during a magic show, the audience's point of view is initially established with no gore present—the tricks of cutting girls in half are old hat and bloodless. Then, from an obviously different camera position, Lewis shows the gore. This differentiation between audience and cinematic view happens often in the back stage Busby Berkeley-type musicals. The camera shows the dancers classically on stage from an audience point of view but then might show an over head shot of the girls dancing in a circle like a kaleidoscope. This, like the gore, is a view that only the cinematic audience can see; it is a fictitious point of view creating a spectacle for the cinematic audience while the "real" audience sees the fixed view of the audience.

This use of the camera shows what the "audience" can’t see (as in musicals) from many different angles. It goes beyond the fixed view of the audience to show more. The shots of gore in Wizard of Gore go beyond showing more to showing all. The gore shots are similar to what Linda Williams and the porn industry call the "money shot." This shot's goal is to show what in normal circumstances can’t be seen (the male orgasm). It brings this inside occurrence out. Gore too, in a way, brings what is inside out. Williams says, "As a substitute for what cannot be seen, the money shot can be viewed as yet another form of cinematic perversion" (Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible", 95). The cinematic audience is presented something they know can’t be real from a point of view established as not real. The gore shots are put forward as a substitute for the view of the audience in the narrative that is shown. The cinematic audience of Wizard of Gore is given a substitute view in which they see gore and so "see it all". The camera and gore position the cinematic audience as a substitute audience, or the objet a.

Using the movies Suture (1993, Scott McGehee) and the 1997 TV version of Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, I plan to point out how exnomination is apparent in both of these films even though they both have a multiracial cast. I also want to draw examples from the television series Kojak (2005)—whereas in the original series the main character was played by a white actor, in the newer version the main character was cast as a black actor. I want to compare these films to a film where race is a major issue, such as Men of Honor (2000). I would also like to answer the question, what would happen to a film like Men of Honor if the racial roles were reversed?

It is impossible for mainstream Hollywood cinematic creations to be purely feminist? Either by accident or design most of the films that are produced in Hollywood subject women to being mere objects of desire. The fact that the film industry is dominated by men adds to the difficulty of making a feminist film. Even films that are written by women, for example Thelma and Louise (written by Callie Khouri, but directed by Ridley Scott) fail in their attempts to raise the status or power of women in film. By concentrating on Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Cynthia Freeland’s “Feminist Film Theory,” Terje Steinulfsson Skjerdal’s “Laura Mulvey Against the Grain: A Critical Assessment of the Psychoanalytic Feminist Approach to Film,” and Michel Chion’s “Projections of Sound on Image,” it will be seen how certain elements prevent the capability of women to be portrayed in film in any way other than objects. Films such as Thelma and Louise and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and a breakdown of different feminist viewpoints, will be used to further show the dominance of men in film and the absence of a true feminist superpower.

Revisiting Roland Barthes' text on Pleasure, or plaisir, yields intriguing
and interesting informaiton regarding implementation approaches to horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, as compared to modern films of the late 1990s and the early years of the millenium. Older films such as Alien, The Fog, The Howling, and Friday the 13th use manual techniques to inspire the feeling of pleasure in ways that could never sell against today's high-tech films. Modern films such as The Haunting, An American Warewolf in Paris, What Lies Beneath, and The Blair Witch Project approach pleasure with with much more shocking scenes than ever before. By way of modern special effects, fimmakers of today deliver the powerful punch that satiates the masses which ever require new and innovative ways to deliver the pleasure they desire.

In the 1990s, a phenomenon happened. The slasher-monster genre was unofficially declared dead with thanks to such films as Scream (Wes Craven, 1996, USA) that pointed out the flaws of the sub-genre. By destroying itself, the horror genre market also hurt itself because it lacked a successful style of horror to replace the slasher monster sub-genre. By the end of the nineties the genre was saved by The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999, USA) which the general public considered innovative. In reality, however, the film’s only innovation was reintroducing Freudian’s theory of “The Uncanny” into a setting with contemporary technology.

By bringing back “The Uncanny,” the horror genre has returned to being one of the most innovative and unique genres existing today; especially in Japan where ideas of “The Uncanny” have caught on better then in the U.S.A. with films such as Ringu (aka "The Ring," Hideo Nakata, 1998, Japan), Ju-On (aka "The Grudge," Takashi Shimizu, 2003, Japan), and Wo Zou Yan Jian Dao Gui (aka "My Left Eye Sees Ghosts," Johnny To, 2002, Hong Kong). These Japanese and Hong Kong films, along with others, use modern or contemporary technologies to captivate “The Uncanny” in a fashion that is redefining the horror genre.

In his essay “White,” critic Richard Dyer comments upon the predominant ideology of race in mainstream culture, asserting that to be white is to be part of the “norm.” He declares that belonging to another race immediately marks a person as somehow unique to the rest of society, stating, “Black people are marked as black (as not just ‘people’) in representation that has made it relatively easy to analyse their representation, whereas white people—not there as a category and everywhere everything as a fact—are difficult, if not impossible, to analyse qua white” (735). Therefore, society’s reigning ideology isolates minorities from the stereotypical image of what a normal person should look like. This special treatment occurs often in the casting decisions in many films. Many roles are cast specifically for whites, because to substitute black actors in their place would wholly alter the film’s theme. Thus, our society is unconsciously and somewhat unwittingly racist. However, one black actor seems to defy mainstream ideology, playing roles one would assume to be reserved for whites. In the films Se7en, Deep Impact, The Shawshank Redemption and Bruce Almighty, Morgan Freeman transcends society’s racial boundaries, playing characters that appear to be white in the film’s script. This paper will analyze the attributes of this actor that enable him to defy racial ideology, explaining the many methods used to make Morgan Freeman appear colorless to the vast majority of audiences.

I am going to examine the connection between camp and genre in science fiction films of the 1980's. Namely, the idea that a certain amount of camp is necessary for these films to maintain generic verisimilitude. The films that will be used as examples will include The Last Starfighter (1984), Masters of the Universe (1987), Escape from New York (1981), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982) and Dune (1984).

Following the current conception of Apparatus Theory and Jacques Lacan’s idea of The Gaze, the world presented on the film screen appears to the viewer as an Imago, a mirrored yet perfect reality. This relationship supposedly creates a feeling of lack, not due to the fact that the audience wants to make reality like the film world, but because they realize there is a gap between the two and the goal becomes discovering what that gap is. Applying this concept to cinema involving representations of clones reveals a somewhat twisted logic. Through these observations it becomes apparent that in many films, such as Single White Female (1992), the viewer very often gets put into the position of the film’s Imago by identifying with the protagonist. A film like A.I. (2001) gives the other prominent example being that of a scientific creation, usually a robot, questing to become real. These consistent examples give the impression that it is the audience who actually holds the position of the Imago while the screen, or film machinery, strives to be reality. This theory helps account for the current idea that the audience does not directly absorb the film’s ideology but they instead exist in a take-it-or-leave-it relationship—the screen imposes its views in an attempt to bridge the gap.

In Henry Krips' article on fetishism, he states that in fetishism a subject gives up on his own desire and instead dedicates himself perversely to abetting the objet a in its function as impediment to desire. (28) The fetishist revels in the pursuit and desire itself, instead of the object from which that desire stems. In Luis Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire (1976, France), the film attempts to gratify both the fetishist and normal viewer with its surrealist portrayal of the female lead, Conchita, by two completely different actresses, each symbolizing the different identities varying in sexual desire within the character. The film’s use of one actress (Carole Bouquet) more throughout the first half of the film establishes her as the object of desire. As the film progresses, Ángela Molina is used in more and more scenes, especially those with higher sexual tension. In That Obscure Object of Desire, the fetishist’s desire is fulfilled by replacing the object of desire, Bouquet’s Conchita, with another actress, while those without a fetish have their desire fulfilled with the revelation of Molina’s Conchita.

As humans who speak, we are unable to experience a climax, or a ‘come-ance,’ that never ends. Human beings are, however, able to collect moments of jouissance or bliss. Although simple in its meaning and easy to understand, bliss is difficult to contain, for it can be different with each individual. There are a wide variety of films that provide audience members with this experience. Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch, France/USA), Abre los ojos (1997, Andro Amenabar, Spain) and Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982, Alan Parker, UK) are three that scintillate moments of bliss. By focusing on these three films and their filmmakers one can distinguish what makes a blissful movie experience, and how it is determined.

For my term paper, I intend to study the development of the American ideologies concerning young women over the past 20 years using semiotics and Jacques Lacan's theories of the imaginary and the imago. Since this could very well proliferate into a broader topic, I will narrow my study to two comedies about college girls: 1989's How I Got Into College and 2001's Legally Blonde. My aim is to study the roles of the women in these particular films in order to learn about American culture and society at the times they were made, and how they can be viewed through the Lacanian terms of the symbolic and imaginary. Consciously or not, women are affected by films that are about women in a particularly pointed way. According to Lacan, watching a film is an act of confrontation with the Other as subject, and we do so partly due to our innate desire to understand ourselves through that Other. More than anything, this paper will be one of historical commentary spliced with theoretical insight.

The notion that silent comedy is devoid of sound is untrue. It relied
heavily on sound. And though known mainly for the inter-titles that
spell-out dialogue and emotion, silent film actors convey a wide range
of expressions and sayings with no microphones to capture their words.
The human mind still perceives the diegesis at play in these films.
Using often overlooked comedic shorts as the subject, this paper will
show the many auditory factors at work to make any one scene funny, as well as make it human.

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