The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema

by Christian Metz

Book Overview

Employing Freudian psychoanalysis, Christian Metz explores the nature of cinematic spectatorship and looks at the operations of meaning in the film text. NB: The subject for this book is film and not performance. However, there is no film on your list of subjects.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253203805
• ISBN13: 9780253203809
• Release Date: February 1986
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (Ips)
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Psychoanalytic film theory

Metz's work is generally considered to be essential reading for the study of film theory. When I first read this particular text, I found myself disagreeing with the psychoanalytic interpretation of the relationship that exists between film (the immaginary signifier) and the spectator. My frustration came from the apparent reduction of the cinema down to psychoanalytic terms and ideas that appear to limit our understanding of this complex artistic medium. If the reader agrees with the Lacanian model of the development of the subject, then these problems will not develop, however it seems that this particular interpretation leaves alot of questions unanswered. Putting these disputes aside, I think that this work is monumental because of Metz's penetrating (no pun)insight into the nature of the signifier. Even if the reader does not agree with his particular method of interpretation, his ideas that come from his deep critical examination make the text a very worthwhile one to read.

An essential film theory text

Metz attempts to compare the structures of the motion picture with the structure of language. In practice it doesn't always succeed, but this is considered a critical work in the field of film theory.