IDEOLOGY and the IMAGE

Preface = viii Acknowledgments = xiv Introduction: Picking Up the Trail = 1 1. Art and the Perceptual Process = 9 Signs of Communication in Film and Reality = 9 Everyday Perception of the Physical World = 12 The Perception of the Representational Image = 20 Perception and the Unconscious = 26 The Perception of Self = 29 The Politics of Perception = 34 The Aesthetics and Politics of Recognition = 36 2. The Analysis of Representational Images = 43 Signs and Referents = 43 The Nature of the Iconic Sign = 44 The Critical Analysis of Iconic Signs = 48 The Renaissance Painting and the Photographic Image = 52 The Meaning of Images = 57 Images in Combination = 60 Images and Ideology = 63 3. The Cinema: Movement, Narrative, and Paradox = 69 Motion Pictures: The Making of a Text = 69 The Narrative Text and Desire = 73 Narrative Time = 80 The Narrative Diegesis = 82 The Motor Codes of Narrative = 87 Pragmatics, Paradox, and Pleasure = 93 4. Blonde Venus: Playing with Performance = 104 Critical Approaches to Narrative = 104 Sternberg and the Critics = 109 Synopsis = 111 Editing = 112 Composition = 112 Lighting = 113 Decor = 119 Clothing = 123 Performance = 125 Narrative Progression = 127 5. For The Birds = 133 Critical Assumptions = 133 Classical Narrative, Ideology, and the Imaginary = 134 Sighting The Birds = 135 Synopsis = 136 The Mise-en-scène of a Family Intrigue = 137 Metaphor and Nodal Points: At the Window = 154 Metonymy. Desire, and Transformation = 160 Psychoanalysis Aside = 166 6. The Documentary Film and Principles of Exposition = 170 The Non-Narrative Realm: Critical Approaches = 170 The Expository Form = 172 The Pragmatics of Exposition = 181 Modes of Address = 182 The Expository Sequence = 196 Narrators and Characters in Direct Address = 198 The Place of the Viewer = 205 7. Frederick Wiseman’s Documentaries: Theory and Structure / = 208 Approaching Observational Cinema = 208 Documentary Mosaics = 210 Constraints and Social Change = 216 Building Sites for Observation = 218 Re-viewing Mosaics = 233 8. Documentary, Criticism, and the Ethnographic Film = 237 Some Basic Considerations = 237 Criteria: Science and Criticism = 243 What Is Science = 246 Ethnographic Practice: Critical Problems = 250 Necessary Distinctions: visible/empirical, observation/description/explanation = 262 Modes of Explanation = 267 A Common Type of Explanation = 274 The Search for a Model = 275 Conclusion: Pitching Camp on a Journey Not Yet Ended = 285 Appendix A. Flicker and Motion in Film by Susan J. Lederman and Bill Nichols = 293 Appendix B. Christian Metz’s Grande Syntagmatique = 302 Selected Sources = 304 Notes = 314 Index = 329

Show more