MLN (1996) - The Reality of Motion Pictures

Details

• article: The Reality of Motion Pictures
• author(s): Dirk Baecker
• journal: MLN (01/Apr/1996)
• issue: volume 111, issue 3, pages 560-577
• DOI: 10.1353/mln.1996.0032
• journal ISSN: 0026-7910
• publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Perkins, Donald Crisp, François Truffaut, Henry Fonda, Hitchcock Chronology: 1951, Hitchcock Chronology: 1966, Hitchcock Chronology: 1972, Ingrid Bergman, James Stewart, Klaus Theweleit, London, England, Martin Scorsese, Michel Piccoli, Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, New York City, New York, North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), Slavoj Žižek, The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958)

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Abstract

Examines the relationship between reality & communication expressed in motion pictures. The reality communicated by movies is a form of reproduced reality characterized by limitations that both restrict & expose the type of reality witnessed in movies. Through the processes of revelation & registration, movies make visible a form of reality that cannot be experienced elsewhere. Movies employ the distinctions of behavior, communication consciousness, & situation to produce a form of reality that both exposes & blurs these distinctions. The boundary between the real & unreal is constructed by the observer, & movies therefore represent a form of second-order interpretation & communication. The reality of movies is shaped through the interaction of two systems: perception & mass communication. The second-order interpretation of the observer serves as a means of error correction, whereby the viewer mediates the relationship between fiction & reality. Therefore, it is concluded that movies produce double-sided objects that allow the spectator to consciously & unconsciously cross between the realms of fiction & reality. T. Sevier