Editing Psychoanalytic film theory (section)

==Gaze==

In the early 1970s, [[Christian Metz (critic)|Christian Metz]] and [[Laura Mulvey]] separately explored aspects of the "[[gaze]]" in the cinema, Metz stressing the viewer's [[Identification (psychology)|identification]] with the camera's vision,<ref>Lapsley, p. 82-4</ref> - an identification largely "constructed" by the film itself<ref>Childers, p. 173-4</ref> - and Mulvey the [[Sexual fetishism|fetishistic]] aspects of (especially) the male viewer's regard for the onscreen female body.<ref>Lapsley, p. 77-8</ref>

The viewing subject may be offered particular identifications (usually with a leading male character) from which to watch. The theory stresses the subject's longing for a completeness which the film may appear to offer through identification with an image, although Lacanian theory also indicates that identification with the image is never anything but an illusion and the subject is always split simply by virtue of coming into existence ([[aphanisis]]).<ref>Jacques Lacan, ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis'' (1994) p. 207-8</ref>