ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how some of the multimodal extensions to discourse analysis just mentioned may provide for an increased connection between film analysis and the concerns and methods of Critical discourse analysis (CDA). It focuses on specifically filmic mechanisms that call equally for critical analysis. Apparatus theory is probably the most far reaching of associations between film and ideology to have been drawn and, as a consequence, is considered by the majority of researchers to have seriously overshot its target. The essential idea of apparatus theory is that the very facts of the technological production and manner of consumption of film are inescapably ideologically inscribed. More nuanced characterisations of intrinsic ideological placements of spectators are explored in feminist film theory, where it is the portrayal of women and gender relations that receive central attention. The starting point for feminist film theory is the seminal work of Mulvey and her application of certain aspects of Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
