Cronenburg and Psychoanalytic Theory

How can a viewer so believe in a film when they, all the time, know that the world and story of the film is fiction and fantasy? The power of cinema comes in its power to duplicate the real world, the world we know. Cinema is able to show us the world we live our lives in, but it goes beyond that; it is also capable of manipulation- unlike many other arts, which can simply observe and record with minimal manipulation. It is manipulation that sparks interest in the world, as portrayed in film

“Psychoanalysis and the cinema were born at the end of the nineteenth century. They share a common historical, social, and cultural background shaped by the forces of modernity.” (Creed, 77). Psychoanalysis was also born at the same time as the automobile; this is an interesting point to consider in relation to a psychoanalytic reading of David Cronenburg’s film Crash.

The point of view shot offers a viewer something familiar from their own life and experiences, making it easier for them to interpret the world of the film in relation to the real world which they inhabit, thus accepting the cinematic representation of the world as accurate. Sobchack asks, “What else is a film if not ‘an expression of experience by experience?’” (Sobchack 36). He later seems to answer this, saying, “…Most of the descriptions and reflections of classical and contemporary film theory have not fully addressed the cinema as life expressing life, as experience expressing experience. Nor have they explored the mutual possession of this experience of perception and its expression by filmmaker, film, and spectator- all viewers viewing, engaged as participants in dynamically and directionally reversible acts that reflexively and reflectively constitute the perception of expression and the expression of perception” (Sobchack 38). The world of a film reflects the real world; thus the characters of a film reflect the people in the real world and relate to the world of a film, which they inhabit, just as people relate to the real world, which they inhabit. So, in a way, not only does the point of view shot, which is a film’s representation of people’s perceptions of the real world as characters’ perceptions of the filmic world, help the viewer relate to the character, but it also relates the character to the viewer, even if the viewer is not yet in a relation with the character. Basically, the character reflects the person even before the person has begun to relate to the character, meaning that the relation pre-exists the viewer in some way. The relationship is two-ways, and not only on the part of the viewer.

In Crash I’m saying that if some harsh reality envelops you, rather than be crushed, destroyed or diminished by it, embrace it fully. Develop it and take it even further than it wanted to go itself.” (Cronenburg, from ‘Crash’, Sight and Sound).

Some topics in this essay:
, Sight Sound, Film Comment, Age Cronenburg, Crash I’m, Crash Central, Elias Koteas, American Nightmare, JG Ballard, real world, Crash Crash, world film, watching film, creed 87, real world inhabit, realise watching, relate character, psychoanalytic film, psychoanalytic approach, human body, gaze filmmaker,