French film theorist, best known for pioneering the application of Ferdinand de Saussure's theories of semiology to film. Metz applied Sigmund Freud's psychology and Jacques Lacan's mirror theory to the cinema, proposing that the reason film is popular as an art form lies in its ability to be both an imperfect reflection of reality and a method to delve into the unconscious dream state. In Film Language: A Semiotics of Cinema, Metz focuses on narrative structure — proposing the "Grand Syntagmatique", a system for categorizing scenes (known as "syntagms") in films.
Christian Metz
(1931 - 1993)
Influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of semiology and Claude Levi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, Metz tried to define film language as a set of codes and structures that organize meaning in ways that were predetermined by the medium itself, rather than by individual filmmakers. As a way of analyzing
narrative cinema, Metz identified the presence of eight principal syntagmas — combinations of sounds and images that are organized into units of narrative autonomy.
MOTIVATIONS / IDEAS
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Considers the spectator as more than a passive viewer. Holds that spectators interact with the action of the film, taking pleasure in watching, giving meaning to the film. The spectator can be a ‘decoder’. Usually the film relies on signs and it is up to the spectator to decode them and give them meaning.
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Argued that viewing film is only possible because of voyeurism (or ‘scopophila’: Greek for love of looking) – best seen in silent film.
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Applied both Sigmund Freud's psychology and Jacques Lacan's mirror theory to the cinema, proposing that the reason film is popular as an art form lies in its ability to be both an imperfect reflection of reality and a method to delve into the unconscious dream state.
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Considers that there is always something on the screen, but the reflection of the spectator’s own body disappears. Metz believes that this is an absence or separation of the spectator from the screen. This is possible because the spectator has had the experience of seeing his/her self in a true mirror, and can therefore understand and imagine the existence of a world without actually having to find his/herself physically/actually in it.
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Noted for defining film language through the use of the imaginary signifier.
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Influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of semiology and Claude Levi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, Metz defined film language as a set of codes and structures that organize meaning in ways predetermined by the medium itself rather than by individual filmmakers.
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In analyzing narrative cinema, Christian Metz identified the presence of eight principal syntagmas as combinations of sounds and images that are organized into units of narrative autonomy.
RELATED STUDY TERMS
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Semiology -- The study of signs and symbols; semiotics. Derived from work of Saussure.
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Signs -- An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.
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Signifier -- a sign's physical form (such as a sound, printed word, or image) distinct from its meaning.
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Imaginary signifier -- Considers the medium of the narrative film as a linguistic dimension where the signifier (the formatted film, celluloid, etc.) is the foundation of the symbolic, the "signified" and "signification" belong to the imaginary.
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Symbol – A thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.
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Syntagmas -- A constructed sequence of words in a particular syntactic relationship to one another, as found in narrative film.
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Lacan’s “Mirror Theory” -- The mirror stage in human development is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves) from the age of about six months.
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Apparatus theory -- cinematic apparatus (technology) has an ideological effect upon the spectator, because the cinematic apparatus purports to set before the eye and ear realistic images and sounds, even though the technology disguises how that reality is put together frame by frame. It also provides the illusion of perspectival space (perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made). This double illusion conceals the work that goes into the production of meaning and in so doing, presents as natural what in fact is an ideological construction.