ABSTRACT
Narratives that share oral underpinnings are fully capable of maintaining their own cultural, linguistic, and textural uniqueness—much the same way that “Machiavellian” novels can, notwithstanding that their are always inscribing onto a page. Awareness of the oral characteristics of narrative, as well as of oral noetics certainly allows for some flexibility regarding these judgmental barriers. In the case of psychoanalytic film theory, for instance, popular film is often read as pivoting on seductive screen figures that promote a spectator’s slippage into a star’s image, or as capitalizing on a spectator’s desire; and because that desire is bound up with looking, it is said to induce narcissism, fetishism, and voyeurism.
