ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic theory, a theory of the relationship between sexuality and unconscious mental states, has informed thinking about film almost from the inception of the medium, and this influence has been particularly profound upon film theory of the recent past. Orthodox psychoanalytic theories of art have focused on the relationship between the creation of art, sexuality, and unconscious mental life, and a great deal of both film and literary criticism has used psychoanalytic theory to interpret texts or genres of texts, but the distinctive contribution of film theory to psychoanalytic theories of art lies in its focus upon the nature and character of film spectatorship. The way a film spectator experiences a film has often been likened to the way in which a dreamer experiences her dream: movie images are said to be in crucial respects like dream images and to elicit the states of belief that are characteristic of dreams. At the same time, the film spectator, who unlike the dreamer, is an actual viewer, has often been compared to the voyeur, considered as someone who looks unseen into a private world. These characteristics of cinema have been celebrated by critics seeking to discern the unique appeal of film as form of entertainment and art, sometimes considered subversive of conventional moral values, but they have also grounded diagnoses of the manipulative nature of the medium and the gender-bound nature of voyeurism in the cinema. As Hortense Powdermaker wrote nearly sixty years ago: “Hollywood provides ready-made fantasies or day-dreams; the problem is whether these are productive or nonproductive, whether the audience is psychologically enriched or impoverished” (1950: 12– 13).
