The Camera And The Spectator

In his discussion of Hollywood cinema, Richard Maltby argues that "the movie theatre constructs us as spectators in ideal viewing conditions; our only sense that we ourselves occupy space comes from watching the screen. The camera remains relatively unobtrusive, seldom drawing attention to its mediating presence." Maltby figures the spectator in film as a constructed presence, but what is interesting about his analysis is the fact that his assertion underlines a great paradox in spectator construction: the camera goes to great lengths to negate its mediating presence in its use of the edit and montage, but the very fact that the spectator is watching a screen reminds them of their presence, their role as spectators. This chapter will analyse this paradox and will look at the varying ways in which the camera facilitates spectator construction. Christian Metz's analysis of the mirror stage for Lacanian psychoanalysis leads to a practical application of his theory with a detailed scene analysis of the "to be or not to be" speech from Act III, Scene I in Branagh's film Hamlet which refigures the spectator's construction in film to a system where film and the spectator operate in mutually reciprocal roles in much the same way as was found in the previous chapter. Finally, we move on to a practical application of the camera in creating the spectator with an analysis of the mousetrap scene from Branagh's Hamlet. To begin with, though, we return to Christian Metz and the mirror stage in ego construction. Christian Metz finds that "film is like a mirror. But it differs from the primordial mirror in one essential point: that there is one thing that is never reflected in it: the spectator's own body." A key moment in a child's development is when it is first held up in front of the mirror by its mother. As Metz argues, "this is where primary identification (the formation of the ego) gets certain of its main characteristics: the child sees itself as an other, and beside an other. The child's ego is formed by identification with its like: the other human being who is in the glass, the own reflection which is and is not the body, which is like it. The child identifies with itself as object." Metz's analysis is complex and needs unpacking. Before the child is shown the mirror, it has no concept of itself as a separate entity. When it is lifted in front of the mirror for the first time it sees its mother, an other, but it also sees its own reflection and identifies it as an other because it is not the child, it is its reflection. Simultaneously, however, the child identifies with itself because it is its like. Its likeness is another object in the mirror reflecting many objects, its mother etc. hence why it "identifies with itself as an object." The mirror is key then to ideas of psychoanalytical subject construction - much like it was key to figuring the spectator as the 'third' space in the previous chapter. But what has this to do with spectator construction in cinema? Metz continues, "in the cinema, the object remains: fiction or not, there is always something on the screen. But the reflection of the own body has disappeared." This fact is key to Metz's work - that the spectator must have experienced this mirror stage for film to function properly. Noting that the spectator's reflection is absent from the film screen, Metz argues that "what makes possible the spectator's absence from the screen - or rather, the intelligible unfolding of the film despite that absence - is the fact that the spectator has already known the experience of the mirror and is thus able to constitute a world of objects without having first to recognise himself within it." For Metz, the spectator's adequate 'completion' of the mirror stage in Lacanian psychoanalysis allows the possibility of film in two ways: firstly, the spectator can imagine a world where he is absent - he does not have to perceive himself to believe the film. Secondly, the mirror allows the film to unfold in an understandable manner. For Metz, in order for film to be understood the spectator must be absent from the screen but still be able to recognise the world he perceives and the mirror is very much at the heart of unlocking this possibility. Metz's readings of spectator construction are very heavily based on a psychoanalytical reading of the mirror, so we return again to the "to be or not to be" speech in Act III, Scene I of Branagh's Hamlet to unpack his theory even further. Much work has been done on this speech, it is perhaps the most famous in all of Shakespeare's works, but scholars still differ on what the 'question' actually means. Some posit that it is a question as to whether life is worth living, or whether Hamlet should take his own life. "To be" surely means "to live" and "not to be" surely means "to die", so it is interesting, given Metz's analysis of the mirror stage in ego construction, that Hamlet should pose this question as he stands before a mirror: Branagh's Hamlet needs to stand before a mirror, to see his own reflection, to ask this question, but what does his question suggest if we propose a reworking of the situation - suppose this is the first time Branagh's Hamlet has seen himself reflected in the mirror (from a psychoanalytical standpoint, we don't know whether Shakespeare's Hamlet did at all) We know from the framing of the scene that there are no 'others' reflected in the mirrors surface - in fact, there are very few objects reflected at all. Following Metzian analysis, there is no 'other' for Hamlet to identify against as an 'other'. Branagh's Hamlet says "to be or not to be" , but, in accordance with Metz, there are no 'objects', no 'others' for Hamlet to identify against, therefore this Hamlet cannot identify with himself as object. According to Metz, Branagh's Hamlet is not there in the sense that he cannot identify with himself. This is a problem, both to Hamlet and to our formed ideas of spectator construction. I propose, however, a solution to this problem that is provided by the camera and the spectator. As Hamlet recites the speech, the shot zooms in until the mirror fills the frame. The camera sits at Hamlet's right shoulder - the physics of the shot imply that, according to Metz's ideas of spectator identification with the camera, we similarly 'see' ourselves reflected in the mirror. Of course, this is impossible because Metz argues there can never be a reflection, because "at the cinema it is always the other on the screen.I am all perceiving because I am entirely on the side of the perceiving instance." The spectator can never be seen because it would negate their role as the all perceiving power, however, I argue that it is the camera's position in front of the mirror, the demand implicit in the physics to be seen, that enables Hamlet to contemplate his reflection and ask "to be or not to be." The physics of the shot demand the presence of the spectator and Branagh's Hamlet recognises that presence, and in recognising the spectator as the other is thus able to complete his mirror stage. The spectator's presence thus enables an "intelligible unfolding" of film via their construction through the mirror stage, but also enables Branagh's adaptation of Hamlet to continue through Branagh's Hamlet's identification of the spectator as other. What this extended analysis of Metz's interpretation of the mirror stage produces is a reading of the spectator as simultaneously constructed by film i.e. through the mirror stage, and in constructing film, as just exhibited in the spectator's engagement in the "to be or not to be" scene from Branagh's Hamlet, and it is important to recognise this reciprocal relationship. Far from being a reading of the spectator as a passive object in film, Alenka Zupancic argues quite the opposite. She argues that "it is only the presence of the gaze that makes the images come to life and it seems these images stand still the moment the curtain falls into the field of vision." There are parallels to be drawn here with Metz - where Zupancic has the curtain of the theatre 'stop' the action, Metz has the spectator, the projector, of film, close his eyes. Both then accord the spectator critical importance in the construction of film, and this is interrogated in the mousetrap section of Branagh's and Tennant's Hamlet adaptations, particularly the mise en scene of the former and Tennant's use of his home video camera in the latter. What is notable about both, however, is the form the spectatorship takes - in Branagh's production, the spectators of the mousetrap are literally constructed as an audience, spread in a horseshoe shape about the stage on steeply ascending rows, with Claudius and Gertrude occupying pride of place in a box centre stage. In Tennant's adaptation, the spectators are constructed in a similar way, in a horseshoe with Claudius and Gertrude at the centre. Analysis of this very conscious decision on the part of the filmmakers is key to understanding this aspect of spectator construction - as E. Deidre Pribram argues, "film viewing and subject formation are reciprocal processes: something about our unconscious identity as subjects is reinforced in film viewing, and film viewing is effective because of our unconscious participation." Applying Pribram to spectator construction in the mousetrap scene of Branagh's adaptation unlocks two key ideas. Branagh's Hamlet's 'moulding' of the spectators of his play into the shape of a theatre audience not only physically figures them as spectators, but it also subconsciously reinforces the idea of the spectator as a constructed entity because they are watching a play - by placing the spectators of his mousetrap in a very consciously spectator 'shape' (gathered in a horseshoe, with the focus being the stage in the middle), Hamlet sub-consciously reinforces the spectators sense of themselves as a spectating entity. This is a figuration of spectator construction that needs further analysis. Pribram argues that "the subject is continually constructed through meaning-producing practices such as cinema" and I propose that this reading can be further applied to Branagh's version of the mousetrap, in particular through his use of cinematography. The camera angles used and the way in which they are cut together both reinforce in the spectator the idea that they are a perceiving object watching Branagh's film of Hamlet, but also reinforces in the spectator the sense that they are present 'in' the film, a member of the court of Elsinore watching the mousetrap. Lucy Hamilton crystallises this idea in finding that in Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, "the cinematographer Donald McAlpine aimed to remove 'every vestige of stage, every hint of highbrow classic, by trying to develop as much movement and change of perspective as possible, every cinematic trick we [could] think of to make it look as much like a movie as we [could]." Branagh uses the same technique which serves both to construct the spectator as a film viewer, but also as a viewer of the mousetrap. This is complex and needs analysis. In the mousetrap scene, the aim for Hamlet is to "catch the conscience of the king" , thus in Branagh's Hamlet the framing of the scene must capture the moment when Claudius reveals his guilt. However, for the scene to make sense, it must also capture the other characters in the moment when Claudius reveals his guilt. As such, the camera has to account for seven different perspectives - Hamlet's, Horatio's, Gertrude's, Claudius's, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern's, Ophelia's and Polonius's. The end result is a sequence where the shot changes around 50 times to capture the action of the scene. Branagh's choice of cinematography reinforces the spectator's idea of him/herself as constructed doubly - first in using so many shots to portray the action of the mousetrap that the film spectator is simultaneously figured as one of the audience members of the mousetrap, and second in his use of the camera to reinforce in the spectator that they are a spectator of film. In Branagh's mousetrap play the way that it is shot, every cut, every change in camera angle acts as if to repeatedly remind the spectator that they are watching a film. Though this use of the cut is ultimately made in the edit, it is the combination of the cut and the position of the camera that combines to create the sensation of the spectator as double constructed. There are 50 cuts in the sequence, but the shots jump from one space to the other. In one shot, we are portrayed Claudius, in the next, the camera has shifted to the otherwise of the hall to show Horatio peering out from behind a curtain. The camera literally creates the spectator. We arrive at the end of chapter two of our analysis of the camera in creating space, time and the spectator, the spectator having been the focus of this chapter, and what it has uncovered is a link between the mirror, which was the focus of the previous chapter, and spectator construction. What began as an in-depth analysis of Metz's discussion of the mirror stage in Lacanian psychoanalysis introduced a look at the use of the mirror in Branagh's adaptation of Hamlet. This scene analysis moved on to the concept of the mirror and the spectator which in turn led to an in-depth discussion of the spectator and film as being mutually constructing entities. The focus of my final chapter will be time, and how space has an impact on the illusion of time in film.