This week's readings:
Wood, "Finding the Father in Rebel without a Cause" (click the title to view the essay)
Doane, "The Voice in the Cinema" (in coursepack)
Post your responses in the comments field by 8pm Wednesday night, Oct. 10. Don't forget to suggest a scene for viewing in class.
1) Sum up one key idea of each of the readings.
It's pretty obvious that both authors are using psychoanalysis, but they do it in different ways and to different purposes. Wood pyschoanalyzes the characters and their relationships. Doane applies psychoanalysis to understand the viewer/film relationship in the cinematic experience. So, let's focus question 2 more narrowly on Doane:
2) What does she mean by "phantasmatic body," and how does sound/image continuity relate to that?
3) Suggest one scene from Rebel without a Cause for us to look at in class. What "research question" would you like to ask about that scene? Explain how and why these authors' approaches or ideas might be helpful or interesting to use when analyzing the scene. Be very specific.
See the bottom of the first posted reading questions for "tips" on figuring out the answer to question 2, on method.
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Doane's arcticle is about the relationship between image and sound in film. She actually claims that image and sound have very few relationships. The three spaces that relate sound and the image is the space created by the film, but not coming from the frame. The second is the sound from within the frame. The third is the sound from the space the film is being viewed in, the theater. When it is broken down like this it makes sense that there are very few relationships between images and sound, and I think I agree with this statement. Even thought I think this is true, I also think that it is more complex than just where the sound can come from on the screen or theater. I think what sounds is also important. If a dog is shown barking, and the viewer hears a cat's meow, that would either be funny or confusing to the viewer. I think that without sound, its hard to have a relationship with a film. I know all about silent films, but they had music that corresponded with the film, and with all the exaggerated physical expressions, the music in a way was the actor talking. Doane's style of writing reminded me of Bordwell. They both used really intellegent words and personally I had a hard time reading both of them. They both used examples from other writers and both were exploring the relationship between the viewer and the film, just in different forms. Doane dealt with the audio relationship and Bordwell was interested in the viewer's concious.
Wood's essay was very interesting to me. It was written in a way that was more cinephiliac and it reminded me of Keathley. The most interesting point made was about the sexual tension between pretty much all of the characters. The two that really stuck out to me while watching the movie was the tension between Judy and her father and Plato's attraction to James. It was really interesting to see how fast Plato's attraction grew for someone who he had just met the day before. Wood uses a lot of examples from the film to show how the characters related and created the sexual tension. I just wonder how much of the tension was ment to be created and how much was accidently created. Personally I believe that there was supposed to be some but the final result was that there is way more than what was origianlly called for.
The scene I would like to look over again is the scene when Jimmy is going into his house and Plato just keeps following him and won't leave him alone. That scene really stood out to me as a crazy amout of sexual tension between Plato and James. To me it didn't really feel right, in the sense it wasn't intended for that scene to come off that way.
In her essay “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space” Mary Ann Doane is putting across the idea that there are spaces which allow us to understand the connection between image and sound. These spaces are the diegesis, visible space of the screen and the acoustical space of the theatre. Doane notes that the two latter spaces are related to the viewer and the first is “the only space which the characters of the fiction film can acknowledge.” Classical narrative cinema denies the last two spaces in order to heighten the credibility of the diegetic space. There is often a lot of thought within classical Hollywood cinema that the viewer and surrounding space do not affect the receptivity of the film. Doane’s writing makes the opposite argument as we see in the idea of the three spaces.
Doane also writes about voice-off and voiceover and how they are important to “establish certain conditions for understanding which obtain in the “intersubjective relation” between film and spectator.” She writes that the use of voiceover is a way of speaking directly to the viewer as apposed to the usual speech between characters which is not aimed at the viewer. The use of voiceover and voice-off often gives the viewer more insight into the film than what is visually available, and is therefore referred to as a part of the diegetic space.
The “phantasmic body” which Doane talks about in her essay is the body of the actor, together with their dialogue and the “technology and practises of the cinema” which create a body that has many attributes key to certain representations. She writes that the introduction of sound to cinema allowed for the representation from a “fuller body.” In silent films the actor had to make full use of their body and facial expressions as a replacement for dialogue to express emotions, but when talkies were introduced the continuity of sound and image meant that the “phantasmic body” gained more attributes and could be used as a representation for many more points.
In his article “Finding the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel without a Cause” Chris Wood is clearly making the link between the characters search for a father figure with the actors search for a father figure. James Dean and Natalie Wood search for a father in director Nicholas Ray, whereas Sal Mineo finds this in James Dean. Wood quotes the film when Jim says “He [Plato] tried to make us his family.” This shows us that the characters know what is happening within the film and leads me to wonder whether the actors knew they were looking for a father figure or whether it was a subconscious action.
I would like to look at the scene in the police station in which James Dean’s character Jim says “You’re tearing me apart”. I think that this scene relates to what Mary Ann Doane says about the “phantasmic body” and how with the introduction of sound the body becomes “fuller”. Dean is not only able to use his body and face to express emotion (namely anger) but the addition of dialect it becomes much more intense.
Reading Questions Joshua McClain
In The Voice In The Cinema, Mary Doane writes about the relation and historical setup that sound plays in the understanding of a film. She talked about how the need for “talkies” was really an outcry for films to be more realistic and meet people at some form of “reality” on screen. The acceptance of synchronous sound was a smooth transition into the technique of film. People accepted it as real because of three main points. The space of the diegesis simply is the space that the visual and aural sets up on screen which has no boundaries. Second is the visible space that is seen, or the space on the screen displayed for the viewer, was believable because people saw what was on screen and believed it as an actual representation of what was happening. Finally the actual space of the theatre comes into play. The theatres acoustics help envelop the viewer into a deep relationship to what is on screen. Doane also goes into the historical context of several types of aural relationships in the cinema; the use of asynchronous sounds, voice-over commentary, and voice coming from off screen. The introduction of all of these conventions took place over a period of time to allow the viewer time to adjust to these new ways of hearing film and making visual and aural connections. Her discussion on the way that film, seeing and hearing come together was based on an “invocatory drive” to hear things was just like the basic need to see things. The audience constantly wants to hear things and see things, and when they are on the screen people can not help but interpret and understand them.
Chris Woods’s essay, published on the senses of cinema website, was an in-depth look into the relationships between Jim, Judy, and Plato. He dissected how each character needed different things in their journey towards the “symbolic world” or adulthood, and how they all tried to get them from their counterparts in the film. I felt his overt sexual relations that he found between the characters were Woods personal idea and he tried to make it stick by bringing in extraneous information about the personal identities of the actors themselves and the director. The Characters had enough complexity to themselves in the filmic world. The absence of the father is exactly the question that came into my mind while watching the film and I was glad that Wood chose to talk about it. He described how each character needed a father figure in their life and they all transposed that need onto one another.
The phantasmatic body that Doane is talking about I believe in the viewer’s relation to the film. She stated right in the beginning “who can conceive of a voice without a body”. Therefore when we watch and listen to a film we are allowing an unreal connection to go with the character on screen and the dialogue being spoken. A phantasmatic relationship between the two unconnected parts is created by the viewer’s creation of a single source of being. We do not consider visual and aural two separate things while watching a film, we connect the two and they become one. It is an illusory tool that is dependant on the viewer making the connection.
The section of the film I would like to look at is the part right in the beginning when Jim, Judy and Plato are in the police station, they have not yet been introduced formally to one another, but I would like to see if there is pseudo connection already towards one another. I would like to see if there is a connection even before they meet one another.
Rebel Without a Cause: Week Six
Christina Freiberg
In the Wood article, he discusses the psychological development and behavior between a child and their father. What he calls “object carthexis,” he draws upon the notion of child seeking affection from an older, father (like) figure. His approach to the analysis uses this psychological need for acceptance intertwine with a critical analysis of “Rebel Without a Cause.” All three main characters, Jim, Judy and Plato, long for someone older to be stronger, compassionate, and supportive. When none of the three can get along with their parents, they become lost in a rebellious side of running away and reckless behavior, like the chickie run or red lipstick. The tactic is used in order to see if someone will notice them, and most importantly, make them stop and love the child. Since all three character’s have a deep and quite possibly disturbing connection to a male figure, it makes it difficult to talk about all three in a short paragraph. For the purpose of the assignment, I will focus in on Plato (briefly) and his absence of a father figure.
Plato’s parents are absent throughout the film, and his only companion is the nanny who takes care of him. He is the loneliest person in the film, sheltered and quiet. In Wood’s article, he discusses that the moment Jim enters his life, there is an instant connection, but it does not occur right away at the police station. It is the next day at school. Since the movie takes on an Aristotelian time frame (everything will happen in the span of 24 hours), we see him hopelessly attach himself to Jim the moment he asks if he is okay. It seems that Plato, who’s father is the form of child support checks, immediately is drawn to Jim, finding in him someone to look up to. In fact, Jim becomes like a god in his eyes: there is a sense of immortality that Jim has which is eerie to his own ending.
Donae’s article chronicles how the sound and the use of a voice-over are implemented in a movie and in the theater. The articles approach is supported by observations made by her as one would watch in a movie theater. The voice-over, she states, acts as the voice of the theater, dictating actions the viewer should experience through the character's vicariously. With a combination of history and conceptual theory, the development of sound through phantasmic body helps bring unity from the actor to the viewer. Along with the stylistic concepts of music and sound effects, it heightens the viewer’s act of viewing. One key point she discusses is the anchored body within the concept of space. It is here that the viewer experiences three different spacial concepts: the space of the diegesis (i.e. that there is no physical limits), visible space of the screen as receptor of an image (i.e. the speaker directly behind the screen to make the movie “talk”) and the acoustical space of the theater or auditorium (i.e. the activity that does not occur on the screen but the audience reaction within the space they are viewing the movie).
In relation to Doane’s article, the research question I impose is what if the viewer, sitting in the theater, is watching a scene about student’s in a theater? The theater scene at the observatory comes to mind. As the students are assembled to learn about “A Trip to the Moon,” a.k.a “Atomic Age,” the students, with Buzz and Judy as the epicenter, are not paying attention. They are sarcastic, ignoring the lesson. Here, they are adding to the concept of space and sound, through the acoustic space. By adding their own opinions, they are interpreting the meaning of the lesson. The viewer watching them are now more interested in their dialogue, and like them, less interested in the lesson. The act of viewing, with the accompaniment of sound, is altered by their presence, showing that the focus should be on this rebellious group.
Also, the narration about the galaxy acts a narration tool as itself. For example, when Jim walks in, Ray ingeniously has the voice-over declare that, “For many days before the end of our earth, people will look into the night sky and notice a star, increasingly bright and increasingly near.” If this scene does not foreshadow the end, let alone James Dean’s career, then I do not know what does! Then the voice-over declares, “As this star approaches us, the weather will change.” Here, it sets up Plato, Judy and Jim’s relationship with one another, with Jim drawing three together as a family.
When examining Mary Ann Doane’s “The Voice in the Cinema: the Articulation of Body and Space,” one can see that Doane uses a psychoanalysis approach to break down the relationships between sound and image. The author talks about the advancements in technology and how it can affect one’s viewing of the film. “The Voice in the Cinema” also dives into the notion of synchronization as a style of certain films that convey motion where sound is lacking. Another interesting part of Doane’s article is when she describes the mise-en-scene within the film and how the images, voices, sound effects, music, writing, etc work together to create the body of a film.
Chris Wood’s article, “Finding the Father: a Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel without a Cause,” brings forth a theory of who is actually the father in the film. Wood looks at the relationships between Jim, Judy and Plato and how they are connecting (or lacking connection) with their own fathers. The article also goes into detail of how Jim becomes the father to Judy and Plato, mainly because he feels as if he needs to be the father role in his family. This article was very illustrative and deeply explored the problem of family relationships in the film.
Phantasmatic body is described by Doane as “a support as well as a point of identification for the subject addressed by the film” (374). A phantasmatic body of a film deals with the connection between voice and image and how the viewer can pair the two things together. For instance, the author talks about the use of “talkies” and how the viewers wanted to “be sure they were hearing what they saw” vs. the silent films in which the characters had to convey an incredible amount of emotion in order to get the point across without using words (374).
One scene that I would like to look at in class would have to be the scene where Jim is in his bedroom and his father walks in and they are discussing Jim going to prove himself at the bluff. I just thought it was interesting how Jim’s father is giving him advice about being a man while he was organizing and wearing an apron. It’s definitely one of those scenes that Wood was talking about when looking at the role of the father between Jim and his family.
Doane’s article focuses on the idea of cinema’s phantasmic body, which she describes as “a pivot for certain cinematic practices of representation and authorizes and sustains a limited number of relationships between voice and image” (Doane 97). She explains the phantasmic body as the unity of sound and image, which links the film into one entity and allows for the viewer a fuller experience. About the addition of the voice, Doane writes, “the voice serves as a support for the spectator’s recognition and his/her identification of, as well as with, the star” (Doane 97). Aside from the unity of voice and image she discusses the idea of space, which she breaks down into three specific categories: the space of diegesis, the visible space of the screen, and the space of the theater. In combination along with sound and image, the film creates for itself a phantasmic body, which embodies every element of the film and allows for a viewer’s heightened understanding of it.
In Chris Wood’s article, “Finding the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel Without a Cause,” his main focus revolves around the film’s theme of searching a father figure. As it pertains to Jim, Judy, and Plato, Wood describes it as an object cathexis, “the selection of an object or person as the love object.” All three characters are searching for a father figure, and in reality, the actors found it in Nicholas Ray. In the end Jim and Judy succeed in finding father figures. Judy sees Jim as a parental model. For Jim’s own satisfaction, he makes that step and becomes an adult. Plato, however, fails in finding a father once he realizes that not even Jim can love him the way he wants to be loved.
The scene I’d like to see again is the final moment in which Jim covers Plato’s corpse with his jacket, and his father covers him in the same way. Wood makes mention of this moment in his article and I think it would be interesting to see one more time in terms of theme and character.
In “Finding the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel without a Cause”, Chris Wood expands on Director Nicholas Ray’s explanation of the overriding them of the film is the universal search for a father figure. Each of the three main characters – Jim, Judy, and Plato –suffer from the lack of a strong and loving father or father figure. Their angst and story in this film are all about that search. As the article’s title notes, Chris Wood is interested in a psychoanalytical analysis of this classic film, and he utilizes the language and methods of that world in his analysis. One of the many scenes we could watch relative to this explicit desire in the film is the scene where Judy and Jim discuss Plato’s thinking of them as his surrogate family. When Judy tells Jim that Plato was talking about him like a father, Jim replies: “He tried to make us his family.” Later, Plato repeatedly refers to Jim as a potential father and, eventually, another abandoning father figure.
In “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space”, Author Mary Ann Doane notes that cinematic history created a standard of synchronous dialogue in film, but that things would not have had to work out that way. After sound entered the world of motion pictures, filmmakers concluded that people would feel cheated if the images were not matched with synchronous sound. Doane notes that this development stunted the development of movie sound techniques outside the narrow world of synchronicity. Sound an image in tandem is the standard, and represents a rather simplistic effort to recreate “reality”. In traditional Hollywood, therefore, dialogue had to either be matched directly with synchronous sound and action or eventually matched up with a particular character in a particular place. Doane goes on to describe the many ways that dialogue is representative of a “space” in the world as tangible as synchronized sound and image. Psychoanalysis and critical feminist theory are two of the tools utilized in her close analysis of sound in cinema. The term “phantasmatic body” is in reference to the role of the voice/body in cinema as a kind of phantom being or entity. Technology marries the image and sound into a phantom reality that is central to cinema’s techniques of representation.
When Mary Ann Doane refers to a "phantasmatic body," in her essay “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space,” she is exploring the voice’s purpose in clarifying an image and vice versa. In a word, sound can expand or even produce an image out of frame and, in reference to Doane, possesses “first and foremost unity (through the emphasis on a coherence of the senses) and presence-to-itself.” Doane subsequently explains the effectiveness of synchronous sound as possibly the most prolific form of auditory representation in film. She does, on the other hand, look to asynchronous practices of sonorous manifestations on film, something which she describes as “wild” sound (97), and suggests that the phantasmic body can still maintain it’s before mentioned unity during a marriage with “wild” sound elements. I found Doane’s argument for the dichotomization of the “phantasmatic body” most compelling, specifically the summation that “voice-off” has the efficacy to bring “epistemological power of the image” to its knees if, for instance, a “voice-off” were to come from the back of a theater screening an image (98).
For tomorrow, I’d like to re-examine the scene in the small cabana house where Plato first laments his father, then prevaricates about his history, and finally collapse in shame about their reality together. Keeping Wood’s essay in mind, I would ask the following: what elements of staging and interaction between Jim and Judy would help buttress Wood’s suggestion that Jim is a surrogate father to Plato? And through that lens, what staging and blocking elements between Jim and Judy (Plato’s surrogate Mother?) in these scene evidence such a reading? Does any one placement or affect exchange or interaction between Jim and Judy suggest that a sort of reverse Oedipus complex is being experienced by Plato on a subconscious level?
In Finding the Father, Chris Wood uses production details to explain psychological tensions behind the scenes and relates them to the way things play out on the screen, and to the actors personal lives as characters in the movie Rebel without a Cause, as well as actors on a Hollywood set.
Using this knowledge, Wood is able to make some insightful comment on both the personal lives and the screen lives of the characters, and also offers some strange insight into the realness of the performance.
This application of psycology to film seems most appropriate to me. Not only does it help Wood to examine the nature of acting, it also allows a glimpse into the film maker's motives for his choices of this story and this cast. Of course, there is also an inference that Ray was something of a predator on this set, which sets this analysis apart from most of those that we see. It is interesting though how this information is treated in the most analytical and non-judgmental way possible, just as we should with any film analysis.
This analysis leads me immediately to the opening credits and the action behind them as Dean quite clearly is dressed like a grown up playing like a child. First he plays with the toy monkey, and then he plays parent to it. Drunken parent, and yet this is all too appropriate for the times as well. This sets the tone that Wood identifies as Ray's statement, that failing to leave childhood behind has serious consequences. In terms of a question, I think it is important to ask if this scene functions like the other opening scenes so far in this term's viewing as being a kind of thesis and model for the film as a whole, or if it departs from that.
Mary Ann Doane's The Voice in Cinema: the Articulation of Body and Space attempts to outline the aspects of sound in cinema as a construction. She uses the term "phantasmatic" and goes on to argue that because the sound, which seems natural in common sense is anything but; it is an illusion and as such has some very interesting and illusory effects, such as the creation of space in the viewer's mind, and unity in the viewer's perception of the film.
I find her closing statement to be the most poignant, "...whatever the arrangement or interpenetration of the various spaces, they constitute a place where signification intrudes." I find this idea of the intentional intrusion of significance through voice created space to be the real highlight of the article. It is through the voice that cinema broke the bonds of on screen space really, and the power to intrude simply with the voice emotionally and spatially and cast meaning is a wonderful point about cinema itself. This idea deepening of diegesis, of accounting for lost space, of accounting for the "lost other" is so subtle and yet so essential to modern cinema. The phantasmatic body does not really even require realism, as she points out, as wild sound does not break it's unity. If anything, sound and voice in film crosses a sensory barrier in her sound engineer's quote, "... to make the screen look alive."
(italics mine).
Chris Wood’s essay simply sums up the goals and motives for each of the main characters in Rebel Without a Cause. Each character struggles with their own paternal problem in different ways. Jim’s dad doesn’t stand up for himself and lets his mother govern everything. Judy’s dad just plain doesn’t relate to her and has a conflicting view on whether his daughter isn’t a little girl anymore and shouldn’t be kissing her father or not old enough for lipstick and certain kinds of clothing. Either way she’s getting scolded for it no matter what she does and its tormenting her like the others. Plato is a different story altogether and doesn’t have any parents to take care of him, which makes you ask which situation is worse. “The goal, then, of Jim, Judy and Plato is to search for an ideal father figure, one who will offer them support and encouragement without abandoning them physically or emotionally, and who will assist them in their journey from the imaginary world to the realm of the symbolic.” Of the three characters though, Plato will never fill this void successfully.
The scene I’d like to cite is when Plato is telling Judy a fake story about Jim. This is in fact Plato trying to mold or fantasize Jim into the father figure he so desperately needs and desires. I’d also like to take a look back at the moment when Plato opens the letter from his father. This collision of similar motives between the displaced hate for Plato’s father as well as wanting to save Jim from the gang of revenging teens is yet another interesting “breaking point” for this character however what is more interesting to me is the mix between these motives. That the ignition of an ulterior motive drives the character to make moves on another similar to the way in which Travis Bickle decides to take action for Iris.
Mary Ann Doane’s article discusses a characteristic of sound that is rarely discussed. She goes through all the different kinds of ways in which sound is used in film from diegetic to non-diegetic, synchronous to asynchronous and even mentions sound within the actual theater of spectatorship. She also explains that sound, for the spectator, is an important source for realism. Sound has a strong connection with space and special relationship to other people/objects. The different qualities that make up the sound can easily define the space in which the sound is emitted. She calls this kind of connection phantasmatic, in which believable relationships between voice (sound) and body (image) and source and space (location) are defined. “The attributes of this phastmatic body are first and foremost unity and presence-to-itself.” That means that the sound on screen needs to be 100% believable to be effective and convincing, except when that realism is purposefully broken which would also produce an interesting effect upon audiences.
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