User:KWatson/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dis

mantle both identity and film. As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his in sides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.

Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with

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regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the

boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility, 7 feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image (76). Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a

metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance” (81). Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to”(82)

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 Here the visible is associated with stability, permanence, and distinctiveness—terms that are crucial to our understanding of cinema, but that mirror the ways we come to understand ourselves as selves. In film, the visible is assumed to guarantee presence, an assumption that stems from, among other things, the historical and philosophical privileging of the visual as a primary quality, and the problem of the voiceovers and voice-offs of sound film—which are often disembodied, absent, and coming from beyond the grave or before birth. Because the visual has historically been the privileged epistemological order through which we understand both film and identity, by focusing on sound, which is dynamic and playful, we can begin to dis
 mantle both identity and film. As Mailer sees his voice, witnessing his in sides (in the form of his adenoids) undermining his outsides, the visual and audible come together, undoing the binary oppositions between seeing and hearing, insides and outsides.
+Dolar contrasts the visible to the audible, arguing that the latter is associated with a lack of distance, a lack of distance perhaps best embodied by the uterine envelope created by the mother’s voice. This lack of distance with
+Page Break
+regard to the sound of the voice stems from the fact that the voice is simultaneously sent and delivered, thus folding back on itself and troubling the
+boundaries between self and other. This lack of distance is also precisely what Mailer experiences when he sees himself in his first documentary, at once spoken and heard. While Christian Metz dismisses seeing oneself on screen as an impossibility, 7 feminist film theory calls attention to the discomfort that comes from not being granted the distance that the visible demands. In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Anne Doane argues that the female spectator goes largely untheorized because the historical “imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation of the woman” leaves her too close to the image (76). Doane theorizes that in order to achieve the distance necessary to watch and appreciate film, female spectators assume a
+metaphorical feminine mask, which “in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance” (81). Doane then briefly considers why men do not have to masquerade as more masculine spectators, writing, “The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant—it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way but that he doesn’t have to”(82)