ABSTRACT
In ‘The Imaginary Signified’, film theorist Christian Metz (1975) has identified an acute problem for the film industry. The problem will come as no surprise to those who run the industry, for they are daily confronted with its practical repercussions. But its theoretical repercussions have been less charted. Here is how Metz has characterized the problem:
In a social system in which the spectator is not forced physically to go to the cinema but in which it is still important that he [sic] should go so that the money he pays for his admission makes it possible to shoot other films and thus ensures the auto-reproduction of the institution-and it is the specific characteristic of every true institution that it takes charge of the mechanisms of its own perpetuation-there is no other solution than to set up arrangements whose aim and effect is to give the spectator the ‘spontaneous’ desire to visit the cinema and pay for his ticket.
