Metz, Perception & "Persona"
Excerpts from two chapters, Identification, Mirror and The Passion for Perceiving, from film theorist Christian Metz’s book, The Imaginary Signifier, deal with what characterizes the process of imaginative, real and symbolic perception that makes cinema a unique signifier of human experience in art.The first section of Identification, Mirror, entitled Perception, Imaginary focuses on two distinguishing features of film: cinema incorporates more perceptual signifiers than other art forms – it paints pictures, underscored with music, framed in images like photographs – and yet at the same time cinema is actually “less perceptual” (Metz, 3) inasmuch as its perceptual effects are “false”, (Metz, 4) that is, its objects are shadows of what is real, seen only in an imaginary mirror, the screen. Therefore cinema uses all aspects of perception but inverses them into their absence, which in the end is “the only signifier present”. (Metz, 4)
The second section, The All-Perceiving Subject, more closely defines this mirror effect, comparing and contrasting it to the primary mirror in which a child first sees and recognizes himself in his mother’s arms, his first experience of Self and Other. In cinema the reflected image remains but the spectator’s body is no longer in it; “in this sense the screen is not a mirror”. (Metz, 5) Only the objects remain and the spectator is there to look at them, almost like a god, an “all-perceiving” (Metz, 5) eye and ear, in an experience that makes the viewer feel he is the one who is creating the film. The spectator thus becomes the place where the imaginary world lifts off into the symbolic: his capacity to perceive makes him a second screen in which he “identifies with himself …as a pure act of perception”. (Metz, 5)
The third section, Identification with the Camera, then compares the technical aspects of cinema with the act of perception. The spectator sees along the sight lines of the camera and later along those of the projector. This god-like seeing trains a “searchlight” (Metz, 6) which pans or tracks, and brings into consciousness, as on the screen of the viewer’s being, an imprint of what he has seen. This ‘look’ thus sweeps out over the world in projection and draws out of the shadows the objects to be seen, a process of introjection. This is the two-way stream by which the spectator is implicated in the cinematic process, drawn into the experience of being the camera eye in a chain of reflection (mirrors) that comprises both technical apparatus and mental decoding. Metz gives, as an example, the use of unusual camera angles as a way for the filmmaker to renew the spectator’s identification with the “author’s point of view”, (Metz, 8) thus waking the viewer up from his wandering perspective to follow “more precise lines of force” (Metz, 8) and to re-experience his own “presence-absence in the film”(Metz, 8). The fact that the spectator is out of the frame himself (unlike the child in the primary mirror) while looking at the screen is often doubled, in fiction films, by a character who is also out of the frame looking at the scene – thus reinforcing this travelling of lines of sight, like a journey, wherein the viewer is on a circuit of perception, seeing through others, as in an endless mirror of primary, secondary and even tertiary identifications.
The fourth section, Seeing A Film, describes the complex way we come to understand films, out of what seems the “very simple act of seeing a film” (Metz, 9). First we have to imaginatively identify with the character, bringing all of what is in us to the experience, and yet in absorbing his reality, not believe we are him (thereby recognizing what is real) in order to allow the symbolic “seeming real” (Metz, 9) to work its magic. This imaginary realm is predicated upon our having experienced the primary mirror of childhood which gave us our first ego sense of ourselves.
In the second chapter, The Passion for Perceiving, Metz brings in Freud’s sexual theories on drives, especially voyeurism, as Metz defines the drive behind the desire to see as coming from a sense of lack; “it pursues an imaginary object (a “lost object”) which is its truest object, an object that has always been lost and is always desired as such”. (Metz, 10) In cinema the perceptual drives of seeing and hearing keep this imaginary lost object at a distance, unrealizable, because film literally plays with shadows, absence, the unattainable. The voyeur must keep the longed-for object at a distance because he would be overwhelmed if the object were to come within consumable proximity – such unfulfilled desire, based on absence, is thus what film best captures through a symbolic and spatial re-enactment of the primal loss of the Other.
In the sixth and final section, The Scopic Regime of the Cinema, Metz hones in on the key signifier, linking desire and lack, that cinema represents – “the absence of the object seen”. (Metz, 11) In all other relations of voyeurism the object of desire is bodily present and therefore appears to collude or consent to being seen; there is thus “the illusion of a fullness of the object relation, of a state of desire which is not just imaginary”. (12) In cinema the actors have left the building – there is only ‘absence’ up there on the screen – and the voyeur is alone with his experience, much as the child at the keyhole is left with his vision of the primal scene of his parents coupling; he is alone with that inaccessible moment, unable to participate, only to watch. “In this respect the cinematic signifier is not only “psychoanalytic”; it is more precisely Oedipal in type.” (Metz, 11)
Since Christian Metz is known as a relatively solitary pioneer in the analysis of semiotics in film, one should approach his theories as essential to the study of what cinema signifies. However, his use of language is extremely dense and therefore difficult to criticize with any depth of understanding. Some of his observations do resonate strongly with my own knowledge and experience of film; others send me away to embrace alternate ways of seeing cinema that spring more intrinsically from my own beliefs.
Watching a film does mimic a god-like experience of being the “all-perceiving” eye, and yes, we do feel as spectators that we are co-creating the film as we are drawn in to identify with the filmmaker’s point of view. Like a camera we track his signifiers – the images, the music, the dramatic development of his characters – and thereby absorb his vision as it flows through our own sensibilities. We become Metz’s “second screen” upon which shadowy realities play, adding depth and meaning as the film echoes or triggers our own experiences. This does replicate the child’s first recognition of his own boundaries when he sees himself in the mirror with his mother – there he is, and there stands the Other. This dramatic realization is thus replayed through each decoding of a film’s imaginary world – we see it, identify with it, yet know we are separate from it. I agree with Metz’s point that this primary experience is then fractured by the absence of the spectator’s body up on the screen but it is also equally compensated by the film imprinting itself upon the invisible ‘presence’ of the spectator as the seeing eye. For me the Self and Other continue to exist in an implied relationship through this imprinting.
I also agree with Metz’s analysis of the voyeuristic aspect of film. We are watching at a distance a desired world that we can never possess. The moment we close our eyes, it disappears and yet it lingers in our minds as an alluring object that takes us away into another world of ‘seeming reality’ often more real than our own. Alone in the theatre, buffered by the distance between the screen and our solitary selves, we can identify with characters who do not know we are watching – and hence the seduction of the intimate moment.
Here, however, I part company with Metz as he brings in Freud’s theory of drives. I understand the magnetic power of the voyeur’s “passion for perception” but I relate more to Jung’s concept of life as a quest to understand our own individual path. Cinema becomes then a proving ground for being, a place where we can experience states of imaginary reality that we only intuit inside us but can see played out on the screen. This takes us to the archetypal realm –film as connected to the eternal myths that flow through us all, not limited to sexual drives or appetite drives or the hunger of the voyeur for the absent, disappearing object – but to the shadowy realm that encompasses all that it means to be human, played out in imagery that speaks to our collective unconscious. The child looking through the keyhole at the Oedipal moment does not speak to me. Rather the quest of the individual for his true identity that draws into himself the truths of the journey as portrayed by others – this for me is the essence of the cinematic experience: the inner understanding of Self and Other gained through exposure to the archetypal drama of the screen.
The film, Persona (1966), by legendary Swedish filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, illustrates several points in Metz’s argument. In the opening section where he talks about how cinema comprises more perceptual signifiers than any other art form, we can instantly identify such key signifiers in Persona – literary where it ‘reads’ like a novel, photographic in the black and white ‘still life’ portraits of Alma and Elisabeth that dominate so many frames, and theatrical in the explosive dramatic conflicts that punctuate their relationship. Even the music comes in to underscore the natural silence of many scenes. The best example of a powerful perceptual signifier is the incredible novel-like confessional monologue by Alma detailing her sexual escapade on the beach. As Robin Wood points out, “it is important that there is no recourse to flash-back illustration and that much of the monologue is filmed in medium or medium-long shot” (150) as we are locked in by her shame-filled and yet ecstatic disclosure: her words drive the scene and we imagine the rest.
Metz’s observation of the two-way stream, in which the spectator’s “all-perceiving” eye flows out toward the screen, creating the story as it unfolds, in concert with his own inner resonances, and then, in return, flowing back from the screen to imprint the filmmaker’s vision on the viewer’s psyche – this observation is a perfect replica of the relationship between Alma and Elisabeth where the perceptions of each character begin to interconnect and merge their identities. This in turn reinforces the voyeuristic aspect of watching such an intimate relationship as the spectator is drawn inside the complex, shadowy interplay of Alma’s and Elisabeth’s inner lives – most dramatically revealed when Alma discloses the dark, repressed truth of Elisabeth’s life: her rejection of her son. The camera is trained first on Elisabeth with an over-the shoulder shot from Alma’s perspective, moving incrementally closer and closer as the painful details are revealed; then the whole monologue is replayed with the camera trained on Alma, over Elisabeth’s shoulder, tightening closer and closer on Alma’s face as she speaks. The raw vulnerability of this drama is so relentless that the spectator is right up against it, almost stripped of the necessary distance a voyeuristic desire would prefer – there is no choice, we cannot turn away.
For who wants to face such a devastated persona? The movie explores questions of identity in what feels to me a Jungian intermingling of dream and reality where the Shadow Self lurks behind all the carefully constructed masks the characters wear. Alma first presents herself as a cheerful, twenty-five year old, newly engaged, loving her nursing job – terms that subsequent disclosures will completely undermine. Elisabeth is the renowned actress capable of playing many roles except the one her gender would proclaim the most natural – that of the loving mother. These masks are stripped away, leaving the spectator faced with his own bad faith towards his true identity – the who am I, am I living my own life, am I hostage to the life of another or to a false self who imprisons me and gives the lie to all my gestures? Where is the path to authenticity? Are we, as Freud would say, and as Metz implies, programmed by our basic drives, unable to differentiate where we begin and leave off when faced with the seemingly more powerful Other? Are we all subsumed in another’s identity when the heat is on? I would prefer to think that through facing our deepest fears, voicing our lost selves, we would come to some kind of clarity and embark on our own journeys with a new sense of enlightenment and maturity – when we, like Alma, finally get on the bus, alone.
The film is book-ended with the child raising his delicate hand to the veiled faces behind the screen – us? his mother? the dual identity of Alma-Elisabeth? Here again Metz’s observation of the two way mirror or flow of perception that comprises a film is in operation. As Wood says, “The identifying of spectator with characters is complex: we are not only what the boy sees, we are the boy seeing.” (158) Returning to Metz reference to the Oedipal moment, this boy could also be read from a Freudian perspective – the unrequited, desperate love of the Child for the lost beloved Mother. But again he could be emblematic of the wound that begins every life, that sets every life on its journey of separation to find the true face that belongs to him. We all begin in loss. The fractured, speeded up frames that open and close the film portray the confusion and multi-layered course we must run through Reality – so be it. This is life. Decode it. Take the imprint and carry it forward into your own story, your own journey. Is this not the essence of introspective film-making?
Works Cited
Metz, Christian. "The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema". Indiana UP, 1982. Print
