Subject construction and spectatorial identification: A revision of contemporary film theory

The rigorous differentiation between polemics, criticism and theory within the discourse of film studies results in the determination of the epistemological paradigms underlying such analyses, and it reveals the analytical category errors that plague such discourse. Consideration of the inconoclastic aspects of Hollis Frampton's films--especially his use of linguistic elements as a test case at the limits of cinematic experimentation--reveals the full range of subject constructions and spectatorial identifications in the cinematic apparatus. This expansion in turn permits a more complex critical utilization of psychoanalytic theory identification is understood to be both partial and mixed, and it must be understood according to a complete combinatory system of pyschic states, rather than according to that sort of idealized spectator which is so often posed as the key hermeneutic figure in film theory. The empirical spectator must not be confused with the ideal spectator posited by the filmic text, yet the articulation between the two must be established. Ultimately, this is both an empirical and a metaphysical problem, and such research must occur through an accurate mode of textual analysis and the empirical study of spectatorial identification.