Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
A donor simply
never becomes a person. This is key
Film Theory and Enunciation virtuality and filmic textual cinematic concretion;
or, to model viewers placement (e.g., subject
because in Germany a person cannot be
perceived to die in order for someone else
positioning) within the circuitry of cinematic
Francesco Casetti, Inside the Gaze: The Fiction representation.
to live. Thus, while the organ can live
on as described in transplant rhetoric,
Film and Its Spectator, trans. by Nell Andrew No application of enunciation to cinema
the person must not (159-60). with Charles OBrien. Preface to the English passed without controversy. In a review of the
Identification of the donor is circumscribed and edition by Dudley Andrew. Introduction by applications to cinematic narration, David
prevented, then, by the identification of the Christian Metz. Bloomington: Indiana University Bordwell concludes that the challenges of
German state with stark images of power and Press, 1998. transferring enunciation from Benvenistes
inhumanity, (187) particularly in connection linguistic model to the audio-visual art of cinema
with medical uses of bodies. Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945- has never been resolved: because a film lacks
In both works dead bodies are critical 1995, trans. by Francesca Chiostri and Elizabeth equivalents for the most basic aspects of verbal
vehicles for the expression of political identities Gard Bartolini, with Thomas Kelso. Revised and activity, I suggest that we abandon the
and moral values. In Verderys work, rightful updated by the author. Austin: University of Texas enunciation account. (1986: 26) Bordwells
claims to territory are built on grave sites. Press, 1999. conclusion was retroactive. As far as English-
Although territoriality does not figure as large in language cinema studies was concerned
the identity-building aspects of Hogles work, Warren Buckland, The Cognitive Semiotics of enunciation had disappeared from its agenda by
territoriality lingers in definitions of which organs Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, the 1980s. Controversy over enunciation arose
are better for transplant. The re-identification 2000. because the complicated roles it played in film
process brought about by the unification of the criticism overburdened the concept before film
two Germanys necessarily continues repudiation Warren Buckland (ed.), The Film Spectator: semiotics had resolved basic theoretical problems.
of Nazi approaches to the nation as a social From Mind to Sign. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Critics deployed enunciation, for example, as a
body. Germany was not understood as an University Press, 1995. criterion to distinguish films that seem to occlude
integrated society until National Socialism - a time or to foreground discours. Semioticians of
that most Germans wish had never happened - By Bart Testa discourse analysis described classes of indicators
and any new nationalism under reunification must (shifters, for instance) that articulated the self-
continue to repudiate the Nazi past (188). Francesco Casettis Inside the Gaze is the reference operations of enunciation and
Both Verdery and Hogle have engaged translation of the authors Dentro lo sguardo: il differentiated such utterance as discours. Film
with a subject that is largely ignored and in some film e il suo spettore, published in 1986. Its core critics mingled this analysis with the modernist
ways, almost taboo in large parts of Western (and chapter appeared in 1983 as Looking for the concept of self-reflexivity (or self-reference) and
Westernized) society: dead bodies. Using this Spectator in Iris 2. In 1989, Dentro lo sguardo with ideological critique. Especially at Cahiers du
lesser known pathway, both writers have asked was rendered in French as Dun regard lautre: Le Cinma, critics proposed to make ideological
about the place of the dead in specific film et son spectateur. That edition included a differentiations between classical and
communities and the meanings assigned to them. collegial introduction by Christian Metz, in the progressive [film] texts (Comolli and Narboni
While this path diverges into different locations English edition, Crossing over the Alps and the 1969) on the basis of whether films revealed their
for the dead in these communities, Verdery and Pyrenees . Metz does not allude to the strong discursive properties. The criterion served in
Hogle have described and analyzed these locations criticism directed toward his Italian colleague in distinguishing mainstream narrative cinema,
with skill and in depth. Neither author has been his final book LEnonciation impersonnelle (1995), which supposedly erases enunciative marks and
stopped by disciplinary boundaries around the conclusion of a dialogue Metz conducted with poses as histoire (unmarked story), and therefore
political science (Verdery) nor anthropology Italian semioticians running since the middle of positions the spectator passively in receiving a film,
(Hogle), making both works accessible to diverse the 1960s. No full translation of LEnonciation from avant-garde (or modernist or
constituencies. Verderys work covers wider impersonnelle has appeared. However, Warren progressive) film texts that foreground discours
ground, emphasizing the role of the dead in Bucklands anthology, The Film Spectator: From and hence activate a more politically critical
providing insight into major world political Sign to Mind includes its eponymous first chapter spectator (Silverman 1983: 3-52; 194-236).
events. While Hogles focus is somewhat and it is set beside Face to Face,1 an essay It is notable, given the ideological role
narrower, it is nonetheless rich in its historical compressing Casettis theory of enunciation. This that enunciation therefore played in film theory
and current analysis of the cultural place of dead anthology of translations, The Film Spectator, is and criticism, that Muscio and Zemignan lately
bodies in Germany. Nadia Seremetakis (1991: 14) now partnered with Bucklands expository credit Casettis work on enunciation because he
has commented that the institutions of death, account, The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, which has continued certain trends and brought into
(either burial and reburial or organ donation includes a chapter on the Metz-Casetti exchange. play an innovative thrust. (1991: 23) Their
procedures and practices) function as a critical I started by scanning the publishing praise is astonishing in its ideological neutrality.
vantage point from which to view society. history behind the books under review in order It leaves us to ask whether Casetti does assume
Verdery and Hogle have, in their respective ways to indicate two points developed in the first part the technical attitude toward enunciation they
and towards their own ends, used this vantage of this review. First, there has been a delay of attribute to him and, if so, whether it is creditable.
point well. more than a decade between initial publication Another question Muscio and Zemignan leave
of these texts and their translation, and us to ask is if Casetti successfully continues,
Rachel Ariss received her S.J.D. from University Bucklands expository book. Second, despite its revisits, or recasts a topic in a manner that
of Toronto in 2001. She currently teaches in seemingly restricted, even technical role, as a transforms its storied reputation in cinema studies.
Womens Studies at Lakehead University. semiotic model of cinematic narration, Whether and how a viewer participates in a films
enunciation has a storied career in film semiotics. text productivity or acts as peripheral bystander
References In the 1970s enunciation provided focus to a spectacle and this is the base line of
for both text semiotics in cinema and what today alternatives at which Casetti sets the problem
Duden, Barbara (1993) Disembodying Women: is termed film spectatorship. From the start, can never, hypothetically, cease to be an
Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn. which is to say in the later 1960s, when film interesting question. However, the methods
Cambridge: Harvard University Press. semioticians took over Emile Benvenistes Anglophone film scholars have used to configure
seminal formulation (1971: 205-215), the issue have, for a decade now, disconnected
Seremetakis, C. Nadia (1991) The Last Word: enunciation presented myriad challenges to film the question from enunciation. Its currency in
Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani. theory. Benvenistes original model dealt with film theory has run down to the point where
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. natural language, specifically with parole/discours. Bordwell frankly calls for abandoning it
He sited the process of producing discours in the altogether.
speech situation involving persons using verb The original dates of publication of these
tenses and he analysed special signs personal books under review run mainly through the
pronouns, and adverbs that function as indices 1980s. Film semiotics as a whole, and not just
of place and time. These specifications are doubly enunciation, was then in eclipse in Anglophone
rooted: in natural language and the real-time/ cinema studies. The translations and commentary
place of persons who meet and talk. Film Buckland offers are a slender bridge over a
semioticians adopted enunciation to cinemas yawning generational silence about semiotics of
highly flexible audio-visual representations of time cinema. He belatedly seeks to reconnect Franco-
and space and applied it variously: to model the Italian research to the Anglophone reader: The
production of cinematic texts; to analyse as Film Spectator provides sample texts, Cognitive
narrational mediation between cinemas codic Semiotics of Film provides exposition. With his
two books under review, Casetti has now reached
SRB 12.3 (2002) 7
substantial English translation but he is the only divorce between semiotics and communication fork in the road? Was post-structuralism a
Continental film semiotician to have done so in once the spectators subjectivity came to be seen deviation veering off from film semiotics, or had
a decade. Moreover, his door into Anglophone through the lens of psychoanalysis. The post-structuralism properly absorbed film
cinema studies was opened by scholars like Dudley consequent differences, still apparent in the semiotics? The conventional answer in
Andrew (who provided a preface, while his Casetti-Metz debate, were pronounced by Bettini Anglophone cinema studies takes the second
student Charles OBrien co-translated Inside the who cast enunciation as communication, option and is today often called contemporary
Gaze), whose attitudes toward film semiotics range embedded in the signifying materiality of the film theory. It is a quasi-mythical label that
from lukewarm to hostile. American dialogues text, in the zones occupied and formed by the enfolds the manifold of theorizing that sprang
with Casetti have been courteous but without audiovisual material that, dynamically, produces forth in the wake of post-structuralism. Inside this
signs that his writings place semiotics back on the there a series of acts of signification. (1979; cited construct, Metzs intense production of the
cinema studies agenda.2 in Muscio and Zemignan: 29-30) structuralist phase of code semiotics is an
While the topic of Inside the Gaze is not Italian semioticians, then, developed obsolete canon but the site from which
influential, Casettis theory is not enunciation as early a critique of French semiotics bound to contemporary film theory arose. Represented this
it appeared in the 1970s. What is the right context linguistic structuralism and did not need to way in many encyclopedias and compendia of film
in which to read Casetti, then? The Cognitive discover cognitivism as an alternative theoretical theory (Mast, Cohen and Baudry 1992; Stam,
Semiotics of Film situates Casetti and Metzs base twenty years later. The Italians likewise Flitterman-Lewis 1992), Metzs first semiotics
critique of him within Continental semiotic developed a principled immunity to post- is cryogenically preserved. A similar fate
research that Buckland takes still to be structuralism that is nowhere more evident than eventually befell post-structuralist film theory, and
contemporary. The validity of his in Ecos The Limits of Interpretation (1990). The contemporary film theory ended its run by the
contextualisation faces obstacles. First, the texts complicated transalpine semiotics history late 1980s. Its half-life today can be attributable
in question are no less than twenty years old. suggests why Italian critics were quarantined from largely to the efforts of its opponents, American
Further, behind Casetti lies Italian film semiotics. some of the headiest theoretical fashions of 1970s film theorists committed to cognitivism and
Bucklands book makes a case for contemporary film theory. This same history allows plausible analytical philosophy (Bordwell 1988; 1989;
relevance of the work he explores because it reasons for Casettis emergence as a late Carroll 1988; Allen 1995; Allen and Smith 1997).
manifests the rise of cognitivism in French film innovator with respect to enunciation and for They regard contemporary film theory as an
semiotics that he places in counterpoint to him potentially coming into some kind of academically installed consensus. That is true
American film studies contemporary (i.e., 1980s- mediating dialogue with American film theory. enough but it is a consensus undefended when
1990s) engagement with cognitivism, as This could have been Bucklands case for attacked. Embarrassment attended Nol Carrolls
exemplified by Bordwell (1986) and others. including Casetti in Cognitive Semiotics of Film Address of the Heathen (1982: 89-163), a
Casetti does not fit snugly into either group of but, as a promoter of cognitivism everywhere, lengthy and radically corrosive review of Stephen
researchers. Italian semioticians do not ordinarily Buckland does not make it. However, Casetti Heaths Questions of Cinema, when none of the
make direct appeals to cognitive theories. does make a case on his own behalf in his Theories erstwhile enthusiasts for Heaths exemplary post-
Instead, since the 1960s, and spearheaded by Eco of Cinema, 1945-1995. structuralist approach to film offered more than
(1976), Italians turned toward Peircean semiotics. token defense. Subsequently, Carroll consolidated
They argued, from the onset of Italian film Post-Structuralisms Challenge to Film Semiotics his position to the extent that he and Bordwell
semiotics (Eco 1977) against what Pasolini called could declare an era of post-theory (Bordwell
the images irrationality,3 and that Barthes On the matter of French developments, and Carroll 1996) with a good measure of
(1977:15-31) and Metz (1974a: 3-15) held back Cognitive Semiotics of Film has much of value to confidence.
from visual semiotics the photo-filmic image as offer. The post-structuralist impulses that took over The contemporary low point of film
phenomenological object. The Italians film semiotics in the 1970s, giving rise to semiotics might, however, prove opportune.
followed Eco in developing an iconic semiotics influential Lacanian-Althusserian film theory, Casettis project of restarting a discussion of
(under the rubric of pansemioticism) and in generated powerful schools of interpretation. These enunciation which sounds more correct than
regarding the photo-filmic image as a semiotic impulses spread semiotics throughout innovation might even be an indirect effect
object. (Muscio and Zemignan 1991) Anglophone cinema studies. The post- of post-theory. Certainly Casettis pragmatics
The Italians accept an aesthetic object structuralist movement also had the effect of approach to enunciation fits the tendency that
that is heterogeneous with respect to language expending film semiotics reserves of Bordwell and Carroll term piecemeal theory, a
whereas Metzian film semiotics enfolds the image methodological patience, conceptual modeling, technical problem-solving approach to theorizing
in quasi-grammatical signifying architectures analytical precision, and its solid base in structural about cinema. For his part, Buckland is persuaded
designed from models of structural linguistics and linguistics. Post-structuralism, which had a good that an opportunity for film semiotics lies in the
materially manifested in narrative editing and its long run in cinema studies, both promoted and rise of cognitivism. The received wisdom, that
supplements (like sound), while denying the film dissipated the semiotics project in the Metzian film semiotics founded contemporary film
image itself possesses a language-like character. Anglophone film academy. To take a signature theory, is a partial truth at best. Buckland widens
The differences in approach between French and instance directly involving enunciation: post- the perspectives by taking up study of French
Italian semiotics provided the occasion for the structural semiotics in French film theory was semioticians of film who joined Metz (Dominique
famous debates between Metz and Eco conducted exported, largely through translations and the Chateau, Michel Colin, Franois Jost, Roger
in the mid-1960s (Moretti 1998: 66-68). This expository efforts of the journal Screen, into Odin, Andr Gaudreault, et al) but did not follow
occasioned Ecos severing of semiology and English-speaking film study where, among other him into post-structuralism.5 Buckland shows
semiotics and led to his suggestion that the latter, things, it became the theoretical armature of them reconfiguring the first Metzian semiotics
meaning the Italian approach, would be a feminist film criticism (a process documented in by moving out into cognitivism. The texts
translinguistic domain that could encompass the American feminist journal Camera Obscura). assembled in The Film Spectator indicate the
artistic (that is, pluricodic or heterogeneous) Laura Mulvey (1975) reconfigured post-structural cogency and high quality of the enterprise and
texts. French film semiotics would remain tied to film theory to feminist critical themes and its striking independence from contemporary film
structural linguistics and Metzian film semiotics semiotics was directed into interpretation. In theory. Bucklands expositions make a further case
would not cross into the territory of non-verbal particular, enunciation was reformatted and for the theoretical depth and sustained direction
languages. The principle difference that the gendered. The narrative cinemas point-of-view of this semiotic work. Cognitive Semiotics is the
severance entailed was that Italian semioticians shot figuration, which always figured prominently story, propelled by Chateau, Colin, and by Roger
utilized aesthetics to study iconism and this led in discussions of enunciation, became, following Odin, of how the base of Metzs model of
Gianfranco Bettini and Eco to tilt toward Mulveys detours into a psychoanalytical etiology narrative film, established in his formulations
Peircean semiotics and to claim that film images and feminist iconology, the male gaze. Its object between 1964 and 1974, was retained by French
possess a plurisemiotic dimension. The main became the to-be-looked-at-ness of women on film semioticians as enduring taxonomic
consequence is that Italian film semiotics shifted screen. In this reformatting of enunciation, film discoveries (embodied famously in the grande
from large-scale taxonomic studies (Metzs thrust) semiotics served as necessary scaffolding and was syntagmatique, closely reconsidered by Colin) and
to analysis of the production of meaning (or then removed, rather than elaborated; what arose refitted to models stemming from Transformative
semiosis). Ecos concerns with the nature of was a critical practice of a different kind and no Generative Grammar. Metzs initial theoretical
semiotic communication and the Italian regard longer film semiotics. base, structural linguistics, which seemed to offer
for communication as a social function meant that Few Anglophone scholars after 1980 promise of a homogeneous formal logic of cinema,
aesthetics, communication and interpretation directed attention back toward the base that had comes to be replaced by models derived from Noam
retain mutual currency in Italian film semiotics underwritten such developments, namely Metzs Chomsky and his school. One strength of
and generate a set of problems quite different from classic formulations (1974a).4 Fewer still, until Cognitive Semiotics lies in distinguishing the
the French emphasis on narrative film analysis. Buckland, asked what had happened afterwards schools of cognitivism at work in this writing (1-
In France, the eventual recession of structural inside French film semiotics. Had there been a 55), another is in detailing its grammatical
linguistics, Metzs original base, led to a further
SRB 12.3 (2002) 8
principles and applicability to film semiotics (77- of a logical design of narrative cinemas code the third stage in his argument arises from his
140) and another is Bucklands focused following (hence this is the period of code semiotics). belief that film semiotics research is tangent with
of the thread rewoven by French film scholars. In When he defines its project in 1964 with narratology. This is a notion Metz licensed at the
his commentaries, which expand on the story, Cinema: Language or Language System? start of film semiotics but that his post-structuralist
Buckland proceeds through a careful account of (1974a: 31-91), a new problematic is being born. successors resisted.8 Casetti takes narratological
the models adopted and the way the adoption of Metzs ideal of the homogeneous cinematic object work to be more than just tangent with modern
cognitivism to film semiotics occurs. The path instanced by the narrative code prevailed, and it film theory and this marks his main departure from
taken was different from that of the American displaced aesthetic theories; semiotics of the the Italian school. This is also the main direction
scholars like Bordwell, Thompson, and Branigan. cinema quickly, for example, demoted so-called in which Casetti extends film semiotics and it
However, the road toward comparison lies open. impressionist film criticism that one read in reaches toward his own moment as an
Esprit, Cahiers du Cinma, Sight and Sound, Film enunciation theorist.
Casettis Revisionist History of Post-War Quarterly, or The Nation beneath a new academic In its post-structuralist phase, film theory
Film Theory genre: the semiotic film analysis. The narrative became adamantly anti-narrative. Critics in the
code subsumed the unresolved problematic of the 1970s regarded narrative as the Gargantua that
It looks at first to be another, if also film image into an ideal structural object, the devoured cinema on behalf of bourgeois ideology.
unusually detailed, theory textbook. However, homologous cinematic paradigm, or syntagmatique. Theorys task is to expose the digestive mechanism
Casettis Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995 offers a Metzs realized grande syntagmatique of the image (Burch 1969; McCabe 1985; Heath 1981;
revisionist account and develops a distinct track initiated a fresh cycle of debates and research, Mulvey1975) and that entails writing a good deal
argument, at least to a reader willing to tease it including Metzs own further work into textuality, about narrative in cinema, but the spirit of this
out from the authors prolixity. An update and systems and codes, and then into enunciation political modernism (Rodowick 1994) was
translation of his Teorie del cinema, 1945-1990 (1974b). Having so many precursors, Metz had overall as defamatory as it was analytical. Carroll
(1993),6 its treatment of post-war film theory interlocutors, too. In his dilation of film semiotics (1988) argues that film theory developed an
departs from most English-language surveys theoretical moment, Casetti includes Italian essentialism in the 1970s that, no less than Bazins
(Lapsley and Westlake 1988; Stam 1998). This semioticians, who did not accept Metzs realist ontology of cinema, inclined to totalize
departure comes in several stages. The familiar abandonment of the film image, or its exclusion narrative cinema as an ideological apparatus (in
custom is to model histories of film theory as a set as a semiotic object, or what Della Volpe called the Althusserian sense) that bent the film medium
of sharp ruptures, for example, between Andr its conceptual-rational force and that Eco to political purposes. To defame dominant
Bazins realist film aesthetic taken as final phase elaborated as the cinematic code. It was the narrative cinema, and to pose against it the small
of classical theory - and Metzs film semiotics denial of the film image as a semiotic object, as voice of avant-garde filmmaking instanced by
taken as the foundation of contemporary film noted earlier, that brought Metz into debate with Godard and Straub-Huillet, was one important
theory. In most film theory histories, high-relief Italian semioticians who elevated the aesthetic way to attack the totality of cinema as a bourgeois-
theoretical positions do noisy battle. The older object to the rank of semiotic object while...[they] patriarchal institution.
ones crash and burn, the newer ones prevail. underlined the constitutional heterogeneity of the Jean-Louis Baudrys (1980) apparatus
Casetti mutes the war stories and listens to a quieter artistic object. (Muscio and Zemignan 1991: 26) theory exemplifies such tendencies. Baudry
continuum of research underneath. Instead of Two traditions of film semiotics sprang from this develops a genealogy of cinematic illusionism.
localized realist-contemporary oppositions basic disagreement. For example, he places the cinematic long take
Casetti discerns wider differences between Metz also found successors. Not all these firmly inside the originating bourgeois visual
aesthetic-essentialist theories and scientific- follow Metz into post-structuralism and Casetti model of pictorial illusionism, Renaissance
methodological theories.7 He depicts the shift accordingly follows his chapter on the first perspective. Baudry argues that a film viewer
from one set of theories to another as cumulative semiotics with a chapter on cognitive and Gestalt always suffers from incomprehension of the
rather than conflictual. There are battles theories that, at first, moved only along the edge material conditions behind filmic illusion, even
represented in his account, but lasting of film theory debates. It is here, in this second in cases like Dziga Vertovs Man with a Movie
consequences come of tectonic shifts of method stage of his books covert argument, that Casettis Camera, when a films project is to enucleate its
rather than the eruptions of theoretical polemics. history dovetails with Bucklands project. own construction. In contrast to historians of
While producing a veritable cascade of too- Casettis scope is wider than Bucklands but his film theory who hasten to explain Baudrys
fragmentary expositions (i.e., Albert Laffay and argument is diffusive. Psychological theories of position as the proper outgrowth of Metzian
Galvano Della Volpe, Jean Mitry, Alberto perception and image processing, besides semiotics (i.e., the cinematic code gains its
Abruzzese, Edgar Morin, Pierre Sorlin, etc.), psychoanalysis, belong to very diverse eras of film ideological genealogy), Casetti diffuses that
Casetti nonetheless conveys to an attentive reader theory. Early Gestalt models served Munsterberg account by devoting numerous pages to writers,
developments percolating underneath well before (1916/1971) at the dawn of narrative cinema, like Nick Browne and Edward Branigan, who
bubbling over into debates. Arnheim (1934) at the threshold of sound films, seek to deal with finer points of narrational and
Casettis procedure is also a prejudice, and and Merleau-Ponty (1948/1964: 48-62) at the first point-of-view procedures. In fact, he devotes
a covert argument. He gives preference to stage of the European art film. Cognitivist almost as many pages to them as he does to Baudry,
methodological theories by granting them theorists of the 1980s and 1990s seem to appear, or to the suture theorists Jean-Pierre Oudart and
teleological accumulation. Method develops then, along a broken but historic continuum of Daniel Dayan who, with Baudry, defined the
continuously; theoretical positions seem film theory. Casetti can point, for instance, to theoretical parameters within which enunciation
epiphenomenal. Theorists who famously take Jacques Aumonts LImage (1990) as belonging to was discussed in the 1970s.
energy from the political or ethical currents of the long lineage without paradox or distortion; Browne and Branigan are interested in
ambient film culture - as did the morally indeed, Aumonts book is an important work of narration as a complex procedure of filmic
galvanized Bazin and Kracauer in the 1950s, and synthesis. Casetti can, then, discern cognitivism articulations that guide narrative
the politically electrified Cahiers du Cinma and on film theorys horizon in many places and site comprehension. (Branigan 1992) What they
Screen theorists did after 1968 diminish in size. it early within film semiotics as well with Sol take from Metz is the modeling of cinematic codes
In this account, the high-water mark of film Worths efforts to bring Chomsky into semiotics as narrational procedures and they devise a
realists critical influence, the 1950s and early of cinema (1969). Without really saying so, pragmatics of narration as their topos. It follows
1960s, was also a period when their base Casetti is proposing a widened, catholic that Brownes (1982) analysis of John Fords
disintegrated and the floor was laid for structuralist cognitivism complementing the narrower-band Stagecoach bears little resemblance to Cahiers du
semiotics of cinema. Readers of Metz, so Cognitive Semiotics of Film. Of course, Casetti, Cinmas collective analysis of the same directors
conscientious in recapitulating his precursors, may writing in the 1990s, is aware that the American Young Mr. Lincoln (in Browne 1990). Oudart and
find Casettis account unremarkable in this respect. branch of cognitivist film theory had become more Dayan, like Baudry, contribute models of viewing
Nonetheless, the decision to decelerate film theory than a little triumphalist. a narrative film as a matter of subject positioning,
should be taken seriously. Underlining To appreciate this scale of Casettis second drawing on Lacans mirror stage. Using this
modulations at work well before Metz does show major move in his book, it is only necessary to psychoanalytical model, Oudart and Dayan
scientific-methodological territory expanding, its note that he delays, and for fifty pages, discussing theorize cinematic narration as an oscillation
terminology hardening into ordnance, and its what theory historians habitually rush to explain, apparatus that moves the viewer between
imperialism rising toward that moment when film namely, how Lacanian psychoanalysis completed plenitude (fullness of the image) and lack (the
semiotics capitalizes on the differentiation between Metzs film semiotics. Although he delivers an anxious threat of the reverse field) that can only
aesthetics and science to form a new film adequate exposition of post-structuralisms various arrive at alienation and fetishization.9 In contrast,
theory paradigm. strands, he intently then goes on to write past taking it that the spectator enters into the film-
It follows that Casetti exploits the diversity post-structuralism for hundreds more pages. What text actively, Browne analyses a point of view
of the period of Metzs first semiotics. What Metz does he do with all these pages? Several things, passage from a sequence of Stagecoach in detail to
derived directly from structuralism was the ideal but the most consistent use of them and this is demonstrate the narrations distribution of the
viewers plural identificatory attachments, and the
SRB 12.3 (2002) 9 viewers gradual comprehension, modulated by
both fields in a shot-counter-shot/point-of-view methodological development. There is still a Franois Jost, Edward Branigan, David
montage array, of a subtle dramaturgy. semiotic through-line that compensates for the Bordwell, Andr Gardies, and with
contributions by the trio Lagny-Ropars-
Differences between suture theorys model confusions wrought by the aftermath of Sorlin. From narrative analysis one
of effects of image reception and film editing and contemporary film theory. The book particularly inevitably slides into the study of
Brownes micro-analyses of a films narrational changes our picture of Metz. Metzian semiotics enunciation (Metz in Casetti 1996: xi-xii).
unfolding illustrate the divided ways that film is not framed as a cryogenically frozen episode, or We should start with what Casetti takes
theory regarded narrative processes. If apparatus as a springboard for theory after the mid-1970s. enunciation to be. Although overly elastic given
and suture theories underwrote denunciation of Metzs first semiotics seems again the crucial what his book will accomplish, Casettis version
narrative filmmaking, in doing so they also interval that has been mistakenly abandoned, or of enunciation is not heterodox. He brings
predetermined how enunciation developed in misrecognized, as the origin of post-structuralism. enunciation back to Benvenistes linguistic model
post-structural theorizing and allowed little need The Cognitive Semiotics of Film makes the same and back to the issue of discourse. Enunciation is
for film analysts to converse with narratologists point and does it very well within its specific an act, Casetti remarks, by which a person uses
making fine-grain distinctions among narration purview. Theories of Cinema opens wider to disclose the possibilities of language to realize a discourse;
procedures in which viewers became participants film semiotics not just as an interval between two it performs the shift from virtuality to
in cinematic representation. Writers like Browne moments, aesthetic theory and post- manifestation. He accordingly applies three
and Branigan did hold these conversations, and structuralism, but as a nexus for ongoing, even features to film: enunciation allows a film (1) to
sought to analyse the viewers activity in processing continuous developments that have been largely take form and manifest itself; (2) to present itself
visual images as/into narrative information. ignored but that reach down to the present. This as text and to offer this specific text; and (3) to
Casetti inserts his discussion of Browne historical account validates Casettis emergence offer this specific text in a specific situation
and others out of historical order, backdating them as a restarter of the application of enunciation to (Theories 155).
by almost a decade to underline a lineage of film film. Cinema is a virtuality that, through
analysis that started with Metz. 10 Casetti enunciation, is actualized as a filmic text.
undeniably distorts strict chronology to imply that The Return of Enunciation Enunciation explains how cinema turns into a
post-structuralism is a deviation from film semiotics film. This is enunciation as text production.
and not its destined outcome. This is the third But does Inside the Gaze advance the What lies ahead of the virtual and the realized,
stage of his covert argument, and the place where Metzian problematic of film semiotics? Is Casettis however, are the two further features Casetti
the polemical intent of Casettis history of film reconsideration of enunciation the right gesture? attributes to film and these are Inside the Gazes
theory comes into plain view, or at least relatively Metz responded very critically to it and the utility chief concern: first, a relationship between a set
plainer view, since the truth is that Casetti remains and rightness of his model of enunciation remains of possibilities and, second, the choices that lead
reticent to the point of obscuring the point of his in question. In Theories of Cinema, Casetti writes: to every realization of a film in its situation of
discussion. His implied claim, nevertheless, is, at The 1970s witnessed fierce criticism of both the speaking with the spectator (240). This
a minimum, that narratology is as valid a resource dominant forms and the very concept of relationship is not an empty channel or a matter
for film theory as psychoanalysis, a position that representation. In the 1980s, he says, of a textual arena with the viewer on its periphery.
held little sway in the period of post-structuralist representation came back, and to study its current Rather, the realized filmic text marks the
theory, though this was changing by the early purpose ... to unmask representation was now appearance of elements that do not exist in the
1980s. What directly connects Casetti to added an interest in its forms. (Theories 272-273) virtual dimension. These are an agency, and an
Bucklands Cognitive Semiotics, and that allows The both-and attitude, typical of Casettis address to the spectator, and a specific time and place
him to be grafted on to a branch of cognitivist reluctance to take a stand, undermines interest the spectator occupies. Casetti models these
film theory, more than the interpolation of in film analysis he claims is renewed by Aumont elements on the speech situation, and he equips
Browne or inclusion of Chateau and Corin, are and Vernet and which shapes the context of his them with persons and personal pronouns that
some of Casettis other insertions, for example, own work. Enunciation returns, Casetti is certain, have their direct filmic analogues.
Worths early attempt to graft Chomsky onto film but where and with weight does it return? His One set of differentiations involving
semiotics. short answer is that enunciation returns us to the enunciation that figured in the 1970s, between
Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995 shows that site of cinematic representation, what Casetti will texts that openly bear the signs of enunciation
the later career of film semiotics is not as limited boldly insist is no different from cinematic (discours) and those that cause them to disappear
or as linear as it is portrayed by the standard communication, which decisively puts him on (histoire), carry over into Casetti but with a crucial
received history. This has methodological the opposite side to those who deeply suspect the modification. In the 1970s, the distinction was
consequences beyond the academic nicety of very concept of representation. used to differentiate types of films, whereas when
refining film theorys history.11 Cinema studies is Although much shorter, it is no less a prolix Casetti again distinguishes discours and histoire,
concerned with cinema as a general and confusing book than Theories of Cinema. Yet he means moments of films that manifest
phenomenon. From time to time, the academic one thing is clear about Inside the Gaze: Casettis themselves in the act of representing and those
study of film has faced threats of methodological enunciation is not the post-structuralist edition moments that represent the world directly
incoherence because of its outward topical of the concept re-costumed nor does it serve to (histoire). These distinctions Casetti condenses
plurality. One crucial juncture of the kind came defame narrative cinema. Metz himself makes the into three main elements: constitution (or
in the late 1960s when the then-emerging first aspect this clear when offering a compressed construction), situation (or placement), and
discipline required a method and theory in order chronology of developments in his preface: possible self-referentiality. Casetti expends much
to clear confusions, borne of enthusiasms for film, Enunciation was first studied from a of Inside the Gaze unfolding this set of condensed
and become founded as an academic enterprise.12 psychoanalytical perspective. It was in the
1970s, on the heels of issue 23 of the
definitions and analyzing specific moments of
Semiotics appeared just at this fateful moment to journal Communications,edited by their manifestation. However, he is chiefly
promise cinema studies an organized Raymond Bellour, Thierry Kuntzel and concerned with the latter two and with proposing
scientificity. We can readily cull such an myself. The Freudian approach, while it formal cinematic usages, and his applications
historical thesis from the early chapters of Theories concerns the films text and its internal through analysis-exemplifications of sequences
of Cinema, 1945-1995. But the books later modes of figuration, also had an
additional effect quite understandably
(never whole films), to develop a schema whose
chapters also speak to a similar problem today. of making film theory more sensitive to torsion of combinations and permutations fill out
Semiotics appeared as a breakthrough for cinema the psychological position of the spectator. the book.
studies because it promised to unify a new cultural Here is the spectator, oscillating between As he says of the collection Metz cites
science. Casetti takes this as a given and belief and disbelief, between awareness above, Communications 38 (1983) represented the
elaborates on it. Semiotics then suffered in the and oblivion in front of the spectacle,
between complete alertness and a state
new round in enunciation studies in the 1980s
1970s what Casetti terms dispersion ; quoting of reverie, a very particular reverie, piloted and it reopened the discussion of cinematic
Gian Piero Brunetta, he further suggests semiotics by real perceptions. enunciation in a linguistic register. Casettis
suffered from theoretic consumerism. (144) The But we had to wait until the discussion of this new initiative clarifies some
methodological weakness of the theoretical following decade, the 1980s, for filmic general practical points of his own position. He
pretensions of the 1970s was obscured by the enunciation to be approached from a more
formal, more linguistic (or more
believes that these writers follow Jean-Paul Simon
proliferation of theories and by political urgency, pragmatic), angle. Here again, the classic (Theories 240-242) who analyses passages in the
but eventually post-structuralism threatened problem of the marks of enunciation was Marx Brothers movies where enunciation seems
cinema studies with a new incoherence, taken up. That is, the issue of perceptible to tear the fabric of the nonc. 13 Grouchos famed
particularly when it began to mutate into traces visible or audible in the cinemas asides to the viewers, for instance, do not occur
postmodernism. (Bordwell and Carroll 1996: 3- case left by enunciation along certain
points of the enunciated (enonc) during
as given by the closed fictional world but
68) Casettis Theories of Cinema is, in this light, a its emission.Cinematographic narratology announce themselves as something the text
history whose intention however thickly has moved forward most notably with the produces for the viewer. When signaling to the
overwritten by the authors prolixity is to project work of Marc Vernet, Andr Gaudreault, viewer with his wisecracks, Groucho calls
semiotics as an ongoing and cogent attention to her absence from the screen. Casetti
SRB 12.3 (2002) 10
associates such passages with those moments in film. The viewer actively constructs what she sees: rightly suggest that we need to review something
Hollywood backstage musicals wherein the she selects some details of the image and overlooks of Metz to understand how the differences arise
situation of the film viewer is aligned (ordinarily others, secures gaps in information by filling in and operate.
through montage) with the perspectives of material, through inference, that the film allows In Metzs best-known formulations, which
intradiegetic audiences watching a song and but does not provide. The filmic text becomes a treat cinematic codes, he works as a taxonomist
dance number. He takes these moments to be site of suggestions that, to a greater or lesser degree, of cinematic virtuality. His subject is the semiotic
the places where the enunciative process leaps the viewer must complete. Moreover, enunciation preconditions that permit cinematic textual
into the foreground and becomes distinguishable. never appears as such nor does the subject that it objects, individual films, to be fabricated and
In principle, however, such moments are of a implies. Enunciation can only be seen in the understood. In his astute discussion of Metzs
piece with a films textual production as a whole. nonc recognized through fragments (a series Language and Cinema, Casetti observes that in his
At every moment a film, he claims, directs its of indices internal to the film). These fragments theorizing of the singular textual system (i.e.,
looks and voices beyond the limits of the scene (or indices) Casetti organizes under the term the an individual film taken from the analysts point
toward someone who presumably ... has to collect gaze. The gaze organizes a perspective, a place, of view) Metz changes tack. He devises a method
them and answer back. (Face to Face, 122) a point of view, a pivot around which to organize to deal with the filmic text that does not coincide
The issue is the degree of explicitness and not images and sounds and give them coordinates and exactly with how Metz sets up the potential
distinguishing kinds of films. His discussion of form. The gaze, then, is a category of formal signifying elements a film might use. In other
Bitter Rice, which opens Inside the Gaze, is quite operations and the gaze does not appear as such words, between his code semiotics and his text
similar but is interesting in a further respect but is indexical in the sense of pointing or semiotics there is a methodological gap that
because Casetti shows that those moments when indicating. Hence, when we want to put a person Casetti finds more significant than most
the enunciation reaches beyond the limits of the in the place of the gaze, an enunciator, Casetti commentators have. When Metz develops his
scene are inevitably folded back into the nonc. does not mean an author who issues a set of taxonomy of codes, he proposes structural orders
This, he claims, is even true of Godards Vent statements but a set of textual-visual operations. of codes, and levels and arrays of subcodes. When
dest, usually accorded the status of a film of fully The gaze is not exactly some optical point of view treating films in their singularity, however, Metz,
developed discours and the very model of and that fact will entail making a whole the taxonomist of codicity recedes and a
modernist self-reflectivity. As the discussions of typology of operations - but is linguistic, the sign dialectician of textuality emerges. A filmic text is
The King of Marvin Gardens and, later, The King of a linguistic operation roughly equivalent to a not an ordered selection of codes, for Metz, a
of Spain and, later yet, of Citizen Kane proceed, voice and an indicator of subjectivity (Inside singular structure that deploys codes by execution
Casetti develops gradations of different degrees 19). However, the gaze does entail camera and combination. Unlike Bettini, Metz does not
and subtypes of enunciative activity, but never location or, more broadly, the ideal position of an postulate an ordering principle that orchestrates
are types of films, much less evaluations of them, observer witnessing the scene projected on the codes and, a fortiori, enunciation never takes the
set upon these distinctions. The simple fact is screen. So, Casetti (19-20) concludes: role of providing it. Instead, Metz argues that a
that whereas some films do, for a moment, These alternatives have profound roots: textual system arises as an operation that
address the spectator directly, or seem to, these before referring to either a technical transforms codes through their mutual
installation or a hypothetical position, point
instances are swiftly folded back into the diegesis, of view emerges at the very moment when
competition, or what Metz calls displacement.
the nonc. A second point follows: self- the enunciation undertakes its own (1974b: 99-105) It is displacement dialectic
referentiality (or reflexivity) is not an avant- nonc as an object to be transmitted, by among subcodes comprising a codes regional
garde exclusive, but is a potential feature of any orienting the nonc toward a point virtuality - when a film achieves concretion that
unexceptional film no matter how fleeting such different from where it was constituted, gives rise to its textual system. Metz regards this
and thus establishing within its very center
moments might be. Grouchos aside is not process as filmic writing.14
an appropriation and an address.
fundamentally different from the actors address Casetti takes it that in placing a conflictual
The nonc is constituted somewhere, and now
in Brakhages avant-garde film Blue Moses. The idea of filmic writing beside his structuralist
it is constituted at another point, and this entails
same device appears in the teenaged modeling of cinematic codes (e.g., the grande
a double activity: the subject of enunciation
protagonists asides in Ferris Buellers Day Off, in syntagmatique), Metz opens a division in his film
divides into an enunciator and an enunciatee.
the wisecracking baby (voiced by Bruce Willis) semiotics. Instead of thinking structures/codes
The subject of enunciation exhibits itself more
in Look Whos Talking, no less importantly than (modeled on langage) being simply utilized in a
or less openly (as in Grouchos asides) and installs
it does in Sally Potters feminist film Orlando. singular filmic utterance (a texts parole) a model
itself in the nonc. It can delegate its work to
The direct-to-camera testimonies woven of a virtual-to-realized progression straight
figures in the filmic text, whether a character or a
through the satire-thriller To Die For, the through selection to cinematic realization -
camera movement, and there is no fundamental
proliferating addresses-to-the-camera of Denys Language and Cinema passes into what Casetti
difference between those examples where
Arcands Stardom, or John Travoltas opening regards as a second semiotics (sometimes termed
enunciation is openly expressed and those
monologue on the sorry state of Hollywood text semiotics). Given Metzs divided theory,
multitudes of film passages where nonc no
action films at the start of Swordfish, itself a self- Casetti discerns two options: the first posits
longer calls attention to itself but becomes
consciously mediocre specimen of the genre, all tangentially infinite productivity. This option
preoccupied with its own contents. (21) So,
share the same discursive properties as Vent dest. is instanced by Marie-Clair Roparss adaptation
while there are cases of enunciated enunciation
Casetti develops his point about of a theory of film writing in her analyses and her
when a character looks directly into the camera,
continuity of enunciation through Bettinis claim discovery of the ascent of the unstoppable
cinematic events can and most often do pass
that every film operates between two poles, one motion of signification. (Theories 146) The
beyond the enunciative frame to what Casetti
of which is an ordering principle that causes second option is to define the film texts as a
terms the environment made up of the whole
the film to cohere within its diegesis. This pole coherent, complete and communicative
filmic text. Hence, Casetti does not make
pertains to enunciation as a basis for textual entity,(147) an option likely to be exercised by
distinctions that place histoire and discours in
production. The other pole is the films film analysts who come under the influence of
opposition but instead produces a schema of
immanent destination, (Theories 240) the Eco, and especially The Role of the Reader, as Metz
relations the filmic text establishes with the
spectator. What distinguishes Grouchos asides, himself comments (Inside the Gaze xii). Once
viewer, and to these he assigns pronoun-functions,
or Travoltas monologue, is that the tug between again the Italian semiotics connection produces
in effect positions of filmic-narration relations.
the two poles becomes noticeable, accounting a difference in approach.
In his discussion of the Casetti-Metz debate,
for a temporary tear in the nonc, and the When Casetti takes the second option as his
Buckland regards enunciation to be a problem
viewers presence is felt, even recognized. Casetti own he argues that its validity stands on two bases:
Metz casts differently than Casetti. Bettinis
claims, however, that in every film the source one, the internal maneuvers (Bettinis ordering
smooth polarity that Casetti takes over does not
and the addressee are woven as traces of a principle) a film has at its disposal to produce
apply in Metzs discussion. The blunter difference,
films generation a set of marks in the formal textual coherence, despite the material diversity
however, involves the status and role that
processes (like point-of-view editing figures, for of cinema and, two, the contributions of the
linguistic analogy holds. Metz retains enunciation
instance), but some films can also offer both spectators who shape the meaning of what they
when theorizing the problem of reflexivity in film,
the actual author and the spectator a ... true see. (147-148) For Casetti, cinema is not only a
and reflexivity is likewise how Metz designs his
symbolic prosthesis. (242) Inside the Gaze largely communication medium; a films textual
model of norms of filmic comprehension.
concerns a typology of usages and textual coherence depends on the spectators activity.
(Impersonal, 114) But Metz rejects the linguistic
correlatives to them, which provide either such This already implies that text semiotics and
analogy that Casetti applies to cinema when he
marks or such prostheses. The reason Casetti enunciation must be coincident. He seems to
attaches personal pronouns to kinds of cinematic
offers for developing this position is that the argue in Inside the Gaze that the later is to be
arrangements and shot-types. Metz also rejects the
film offers itself to sight and that the practical privileged because the film must not only
communication model that leads Casetti to
(even material) segregation of spaces (in Metzs originate from an intending entity but must also
place persons in the circuits of cinematic
phrase) is overcome by narration which, for be directed toward a receptive entity. He
communication. Casetti and Buckland both
Casetti, is operatively equivalent to semiosis in provides no developed separate account of
SRB 12.3 (2002) 11
internal maneuvers in his book; though it is a Because of their joint history in film theory, making asides to the film spectator or directly
book that entails a good deal of formal analysis, reflexivity and enunciation tend to overlap and addressing the camera. There is no deixis in a
Inside the Gaze offers no theory of film form per this question remains relevant today. Both motion picture. The object of the voyeurs gaze
se. Casetti allows for considerable seesawing concepts guide film analysis to indicate how films cannot be self-reflexive in the sense of deixis
between the texts authority and the viewers go about the process of foregrounding the meaning a dedicated set of signs that situate the
completion. His intention is to put a person in production of their significance, and of opening exchange between two persons because films
place to engage and even fulfill the films work. themselves to a viewers comprehension, and this know nothing of the spectators presence.
For instance, he contrasts person with the is identified with discours. Films, like classical Metz characterizes narrative film as
silhouette that the text creates within the Hollywood narrative films, that do not seem to normatively histoire for it does not possess deictic
interior of its own limits. (Inside 10) And though open themselves in this way, parade themselves markers and is a spectacle unaware of being
he accords equal validity to both projected as histoire as story without discursive marks, watched. The cinema is monodirectional.
silhouette and person, no balanced model emerges without marking a point of emission - supposedly (Impersonal, 145) Metz writes: The spectator
in sufficient relief from Inside the Gaze. And lack a reflexive dimension. On this account, who is present but does not manifest his presence
though he says that he believes in both a spectator discours must be regarded as a deliberate gesture a in any respect because a film will never (can
who is an individual of flesh and blood and a film makes. Enunciation is an act a film performs never) respond to him (150-151). Traces of its
symbolic construction of the film text, and and not a condition of cinematic textuality. The semiotic production are another story, and so films
claims that they will interact, he does not explain joining of enunciation and reflexivity in this way can be discours but only in a different fashion.
how these entities are interactive beyond what a arises from enunciations assignment to double Reflexivity does occur in film, but its thrust is
reader of Inside the Gaze must construe as the films role in both accounting for how a text actualizes inward: the text bends toward itself and self-
invitation to act as its receptive entity. Casetti the virtualities of the cinematic codes and of recognizes its principles of composition.
does outline two methodological approaches offering an orientation toward its internal Metz sees the filmic text as any film when
potentially relevant to an account of interaction. meaning-production to the viewer. In practice, examined from the perspective of the analyst. He
One he terms the generative approach that many critics sever these roles, however, and do does not regard reflexivity to be a special case nor
delineates the operations by which a text comes not integrate reflexivity and internal articulation does he petition special devices to account for
to be constituted and an interpretive approach as a matter of theory. They use self-reflectivity as discours. Rather it is a quality of filmic textuality
that delineates what the recipient has at his a critical criterion. However, neither Casetti nor that can be brought to light by analysis. In
disposal to unveil the texts meaning. (Inside 12) Metz may be counted among critics who Impersonal Enunciation, Metz substitutes two
The former approach takes it that the text differentiate films in this fashion. Casettis claims other categories to account for reflexivity,
constructs the receiver, the latter that the receiver that the viewer completes the film utterance metalanguage and anaphor. Metalanguage is the
constructs the text. Admitting that both prompted by the internal organization of necessary capacity of a language to refer to itself.
approaches cannot be taken together they enunciation a film performs indicates that films It is not an autonomous instrument or special
would be contradictory - Casetti still insists that enunciate as a matter of course, by their nature as feature of language. Buckland uses the example
one can shuttle between them. He himself does narrating artifacts. So far Metz concurs, and refers, of the sentence, You should never say never.
not shuttle between them, or at least not clearly for example, to any film as a filmic text. Metz, The first appearance of never belongs to object
or sufficiently enough to suggest a balanced however, uncouples the double role of language, which denotes states of affairs outside
approach. The twinned approaches have a enunciation - textual production and reflexivity language while the second refers to language itself,
further shortcoming, namely ambiguity, in that from linguistic analogy and from which is what metalanguage does. The difference
Casetti seems to take the interpretive approach communication. lies in the denotative function a word performs,
to involve interpretation (of meaning, one Buckland finds this uncoupling worked out and, here in the second instance, the reflexive
assumes) while Inside the Gaze says virtually in Metzs (1982) Story/Discourse (A Note on function and not a special feature of the word
nothing about how a film viewer might read a Two Kinds of Voyeurism). The distinction never. Metz applies the same principle to film:
film for its significance in the course of receiving between histoire and discours, which Metz seems Cinema does not have a closed set of enunciative
the ways its diegesis and the behavior of its to accept, would seem to make deixis fundamental signs, but refers to one potential function of all
elements are constituted. since, in a basic sense, discours means signs of textual features. (Impersonal, 147) Many
It is the basic project of Casettis book to emission. However, Metz precludes deixis because ordinary types of cinematic construction can have
theorize the viewer receiving the film text and of the way he construes cinematic specificity on enunciative purposes for example subjective
completing it and the formal means the film itself material grounds. In a very influential framing. In this perspective, Hitchcocks Rear
deploys to elicit and position that reception and formulation, Metz associates discours in visual arts Window is not radically different from Michael
activate completion of the filmic text. In his with voyeurism matched with exhibitionism, and Snows avant-garde film Wavelength. Nor is it
account, it is obvious, Buckland says, that Casetti histoire with a voyeurism that misses its meeting potentially less self-reflective discours than La
models his theory on speech (on face-to-face with the exhibitionist. Discours means the Chinoise.15
conversation) and on communications (Cognitive exhibitionist engages in a relay of looks with her Likewise, Metz poses anaphor as an
52). And so, Casetti constantly elicits deictic beholder. In theatre, performer (exhibitionist) alternative to deixis. Using the sentences John
concepts from linguistics and elaborates on them and spectator (voyeur) can recognize one another is ill. He will not be coming to work today,
through film-language analogies: his enunciation because two looks are co-present in the same Buckland describes anaphor as a reference made
model speaks of I, you, he. The film is speaking physical situation. Theatre is a particular kind of to information already contained in an utterance.
and the person who watches it communicates speech situation defined by the co-presence of Deixis refers to relations between linguistic signs
with it mutually. Bucklands commentary on the performer and spectator, however formalized and and the real context of speaking. Anaphora are
Metz-Casetti debate understandably, then, takes therefore weaker theatre might make the situation not dependent on the moment of speaking but
reflexivity as the crux: the film must speak its own in comparison with two friends talking on a street are features of writing and signs internal to a text.
presence to the viewer in Casettis model and corner. They are contained within the utterance without
acknowledge the viewers presence to it, as The cinema situation is fundamentally referring to the context of the act of
happens in spoken communication. As different. Metz (1974a: 4-15; 1982:1-87) posits a communicating and without requiring special
mentioned above, Metz implicitly models his radical segregation of spaces between the film signs. For Metz, then, reflexivity in film is a
theory on writing, says Buckland, and he viewer and the screen as a material condition of compositional choice a filmmaker makes in
reject[s] all deictic concepts (concepts that cinema. The film performer is recorded and constructing a film text, and not a puncturing of
designate how film is oriented to its contexts of production completed before the spectator sees cinemas normative situation, which assigns
production and reception). (Cognitive 52) Metz the film. The cinema situation is inherently absence to the film spectator.
rejects such a communications model of the film voyeuristic: we look into a diegetic world that The influence of Metzs typology in Story/
text and does so consistently. In 1964, he expressly cannot look back. The situation is inherently Discourse on post-structuralist film theory
rejects intercommunication of the film image non-communicational. The viewer-voyeur in a cannot easily be overestimated. The model of
and viewer when differentiating film codes from movie theatre cannot expect any recognition from cinematic voyeurism proved powerfully suggestive
langue (1974a: 75-77). When his accent later the screen because the exhibitionist is materially to feminist critical themes, for example.16 But,
falls on filmic writing, Metz pushes yet further away absent. Lana Turner struts her stuff in a midriff- more important is the suggestion that the
from analogizing cinema through communicative bearing two-piece for John Garfields benefit in spectator, because he is not involved in a
speech in favour of a strict sense of textuality. The Postman Always Rings Twice but Turner will communication, can be understood as holding a
From this position comes Metzs sharp criticism never be an exhibitionist to me. This is likewise subject position on the other side of the screen
of Casetti for using linguistic concepts of the true of Groucho or Jean-Pierre Laud in Godards where the point of entry into the filmic space lies
speech situation in order to theorize enunciation La Chinoise, or Liv Ullman in Ingmar Bergmans along a phantasmic pathway of the cameras
in cinema. What effects do these divergent Persona, films often cited as examples of cinematic work. For this reason, Metz argues that the
models have on enunciation and reflexivity? discours. These performers are absent when