Narrative POV & the Gaze

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While I tend to agree with the professor that Atonement is an unreliable narrative, itis only a partial agreement.  I believethat Atonement, as well as allmovies, are only as reliable as you make them. Films are merely collections of stories and bits of media throwntogether to make a new product.  Though Atonement does go in and out of fact andfiction, there are clues in the beginning that let the careful watcher know itis fantasy.  Of course, I’m talking aboutthe non-diegetic sound that kicks in at the very beginning, a typewriter.  The film tricks into believing it is merelyan interesting film score.  As a firsttime viewer we do not realize its alternative function until the surpriseinterview with grown up Briony sometime later. I also agree with the professor that there are clues later on, as it wassomething I noted as well, as Robbie’s story becomes more fantastic as itprogresses, until it peaks on the beach—where I wrote, “this must be hell”.In the end we realize that it is truly anunreliable narrative, in a sense of fact or fiction.  If you ask me, it has been honest as a storyand film from the very beginning.  Allfilms are contrived and in their final product an amalgamation of subjectivepoints of view.  In this film we are mostly seeing Briony’s point of view, as wellas those of her made up characters.  The film projected to us is made up of multiple points of view; that of the director,cinematographer, composer, and so on. The final subjective point of view is our own and perhaps the most tricky. We begin making up our own minds about where it is going from theget-go—we are trained as movie watchers to struggle to make sense of even themost illogical action.  However, eachpoint of consciousness in the audience is its own set of subjective constructsimposing itself on the creative work of fiction before the senses.  Perhaps a movie like Richard Linklater’s Waking Life better illustrates thispoint.  If you asked the audience what itwas about or what they thought a specific scene meant—each might deliver acompletely unique response.  The same maybe true for Atonement, but I think inthis case, director Joe Wright strived to communicate a similar story to eachobserver individually.There are several points of viewthroughout films that are utilized for different types of communication.  The first is the look of the camera, a sortof omnipresent third person narrator. This look shows the viewer the action happening on set.  These are the sort of mise en scene shotsencompassing the larger story in the frame. Director Stanley Kubrick has many good examples of these types of shots,especially in his use of wide angle shots with long duration—a key part of hisstyle as an auteur.  In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick uses thisstyle technique to allow the story of the apes unfold on screen.  The camera patiently waits as the apesdiscover tools for survival, in this case a bone as a club used for killing,and suddenly a mysterious monolith appears.  This scene illustrates my point, as with Waking Life, the audience may notunderstand what is happening on screen as—there is no explanation given eitherthrough voice over or montage.  Kubrickhas used his camera-pen to lay out a series of events left to our subjectivepoint of view to interpret—and a perfect technique to depict primal urgepredating language.This leads to the second type of look,which I mentioned in the last, the look of the audience.  As I have discussed in three examples alreadythe audience is the final subjective point of view and perhaps most important,as movies are created with an audience in mind. We watch and impose our own perception on the action, making sense, orcomplete non-sense, of what unfolds. This look is not utilized by the director or cinematographer, but it isin the forefront of his mind while making choices and attempting to guide them.  If it were left to these two looks alone,films would probably be totally misunderstood and boring.  Even nature documentaries, where actionfollows this model, have voice over narration to help lead and draw viewersin.  No, there is a third look filmmakers utilize, the subjective look of the character.  In between the look of the camera they splicein looks of the character and various other subjective shots to lead theobserver and help tell the story.  Theseshots are the dialogue in books, the stuff that progresses action and keeps thereader reading.  A movie has notsuccessfully pulled off a shot list made up entirely of these “POV” shots—asillustrated by Lady of the Lake.  But I believe we are getting closer withfilms like Enter the Void, where alarge portion of the film is done in the floating POV of a deceasedspirit.  Perhaps if virtual reality isever progressed to a more realistic consumer product we will begin seeing morePOV films.
                Now we know who islooking, but not why we are looking and where. We have discussed in depth during class that the typical gaze of thecamera is that of a heterosexual male. This gaze often objectifies women, displaying them in unrealistic posesand sickly proportions, presents them as helpless impediments to the malehero’s action, and perpetuates idealized role—in a man’s world—of servitude toman.  It is easy to explain the reasons,on the surface at least.  The era inwhich the film industry developed was been dominated by man for generations,both in industry and society; so it was only natural for film to mirror thatsociety and its slow but subsequent progression towards equality.  Upon researching the matter further I foundsome interesting relations to language itself which strike deeper to the rootof this inequality.  Letters, words, andsentences are merely symbols used to point to familiar objects and strungtogether to represent more complex expressions. There is a desire to encompass all things in symbols and, therefore, alldesires themselves must be represented by a symbol.  This is an inferior process ofidentification—much like that of Lacan’s mirror stage where a child identifiesthe false projection of himself in the mirror as proper, but is always a false,inferior projection of the self—and being inferior, sets up an unequalstructure in the mind.  It is thereforeonly natural for that structure to be projected into our physical world as weproject so many other psychological scars outward; that is unless we diligentlyrealize and work through them.  I thinkit is only natural that we have imprinted these same projections on film.  Lacan says that a healthy person thrives on asystem of symbols and desires and actually needs the imaginary to stay in touchwith the real.  This understanding—thoughit is mine, subjective, and probably false—spoke to me because my happiness hasalways had a direct correlation to frequenting the movies.The gaze began very male, but does itexplain the continuation of that same or similar gaze today—even in the work offemale artist?  Studies have shown thatthe one looking most intently isactually the female.  It is more thanlikely the fault of this male gaze which has trained girls early on toself-analyze.  In some overly dementedform of the mirror stage, girls not only identify with the false representationin the mirror, but they project that idealized form into the mirror aspresented to them through the gaze found plastered all around them.  Mulvey says, "The determining male gazeprojects its fantasy onto the female figure," and through transitive propertiesinto the minds of little girls.  It comesin many forms, magazines, movies, Disney; but whatever we have done, it has nowbeen perfected.  Statistics show thatwomen spend the money and literally hold the purse strings—so now advertisingis directed 90% at women.  A man rarelyspends, but when he does it is usually under the influence of a woman.  It is said that the mirror stage is merely astage for boys to reflect on his path to becoming a man.  He must go out and become a man of action orbe left behind, as in a wallflower at the middle school dance.  A woman however can perform her idealizedfunction from that stage and often remains there.  Mulvey talks about how film must challengeand destroy this function.It is easy to blame and more difficult totake responsibility.  I understand thatthe system is rigged for most and I speak from a privileged white maleperspective, but all the tools to help lift yourself out of these narrowcorridors are there if you desire them. Some films have become more responsible while others seem to get worseas they embrace the consumer culture and try to indoctrinate both male andfemale children into states of eternal infancy. Corporations would probably love for us to remain thoughtless sheepcontinually searching for our next shepherd. We are like an Arbus photo of teenagers in love, posing as acouple—thrusting ourselves into adult scenarios we are unprepared for where weend up looking like little kids in our parent’s oversized clothing.  In the end I do not think that it is film’sresponsibility or fault if we end up this way—it is parents, it is ours.  If we cannot raise our children and guide oursociety into a more mature, sanely self-aware, and self-sufficient one, than wedeserve the bed in which we lay.  Atleast film will be there as an escape for us all.  I do not think the solution is avoiding thosemirror stages but learning to transcend them. We all need to do a little growing up.