The Cinema Ideal: An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Studies of the Film Spectator

This study explores the model derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, via Marxism and semiotics, of looking at film. It retraces the steps of film theory from ideological criticism of the late ‘60s to spectator studies in 1988 when the book was originally published. Psychoanalysis enables a discussion of the cinema’s role as a social and political force and this book enters a discourse of the politics of representation. Reconstructing discussion of basic issues, the book addresse...