Greg Singh

Greg Singh

1. Cinephilia

   • The Love of Cinema
   • Cinephilic moment - open to all
     • evokes emotional response
       • Can watch in more ways than ever before
         • DVD's
         • Online Streaming
         • Interact online
           • Blogs
           • Fanfic
     • Captures special moments
       • things that may not be obvious
   • Full Acknowledgement of text
     • Better at analysing
   • "Out-of-the-ordinary" film viewing
   • Very subjective
     • Hard to generalise
   • Conceptual Framework
     • Object of study in itself
     • Method of analysis

2. Post Jungian approaches

   • Cinephilia indicates engagement
     • Emotional Attachments
       • Meaningful
       • Personal
       • Reflective
   • All films have meaning
   • Way of looking into films
     • reflects meaningful encounters

3. Archetypes

   • Cult text
     • Must be loved
     • Quotable
     • Have Archetypal appeal
     • Star Wars
       • Fans create own meaning
   • “Serves only to indicate a pre-established and frequently appearing narrative situation, cited or in some way recycled by innumerable other texts and provoking in the addressee a sort of intense emotion accompanied by the vague feeling of deja vu, that everybody yearns to see again.”
   • Semiotic approach = bugbear for Post-Jungian theory
     • Signs/symbols can be recycled
       • help viewers understand
     • Cultural Symbols
       • Develop over long time
         • represent underlying and inexpressible archetypal structures in psychic life.
       • Semiotic signs
         • "Symbols are empty and full of meaning at the same time."
   • Infinite possibilities
     • used time and time again
       • just in different context
   • The 'third-image'
     • Deja vu
       • Part of cultural life
     • Cannot be verbally expressed
       • Characters can embody symbolic meaning
         • Different spectators will interpret this differently.
   • Symbolism
     • Represent many things
     • More than meets the eye

4. Changing attitudes

   • Films not only being regenerated for entertainment but also to “revise earlier cultural and ideological statements”
     • Characters adjusted to fit ideology
     • Films mark changing attitudes
     • Need to meet the needs of new demographic
     • Doesn't always go down well
       • Fans mad at Star Wars Changes
         • 1977 version: questionable morals
           • The Shadow Archetype created for Solo
           • Character had been altered against their will
   • Cinephile may be able to spot changes that others can't

5. Fans and texts

   • View them as their own
   • In Cult culture...
   • Don't just want to be a spectator
   • Want to have control
     • You want to add to it subjectively
   • Films provide Jouissance:
     • Physical/intellectual pleasure
     • Freud: pleasure through looking
     • Expression of inner desires which have no goal.
   • If patient, can achieve unearthly pleasure
     • addictive
     • Meets desires we didn't know we had
   • Examine marginal details.

6. Successful psyche films...

   • Not about writers intentions
     • Preffered reading not always met
       • Interpretation = 100% subjective
   • Successful psyche films address the everyday
     • Don't set out with intention of evoking psyche responses
   • Different symbols have different meanings
     • Meanings can be infinite
   • No such thing as final meaning for symbols

7. New Tech

   • Viewers can archive films
     • watch time and time again
     • Emotional investment all comes down to spectator
       • Sense of escapism
         • Imagine themselves as character in fiction world
     • However, not two faced so doesn't reflect psyche
       • either/or relationship
       • To understand films, need to see past present and future as a team, not rivals
         • i.e. mix of old and new
   • Cults can spread material and info about films
     • Blogs
     • Fanfic
     • Commentary
   • Allowed for more active engagement
   • "Utopian Consumerism
     • Yet still influenced by big bosses
       • They control what is distributed
       • Mix of old and new = essential to selling
   • Patterns
     • Repeated viewing
       • Small details highlighted
       • New ways all the time
       • Supplementary texts AID viewing experience .
         • expect DVD extras and merch, etc

8. Images have potential to recast old myths for personal understanding.

   • Walter Benjamin: “Only a thoughtless observer would deny that there are correspondences between the world of modern technology and the archaic symbol-world of mythology.”