Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus
The illusion of movement in cinema masks human perceptions of stationary objects. Following
this principle, Jean Louis Baudry presents a critical analysis of graphical representation as seen
from the ideologies of Derrida, Freud, and Galileo. In an attempt to explain identity formation,
Baudry looks at the combined influence of Lacans idea of the Mirror Stage and Althussers idea
of the Ideological State Apparatus on identity formation. He draws from different theories and
concludes that the film is based on a primarily ideological effect. In line with Lancans theory of
the Mirror Stage, Baudry explains that this ideological effect involves perceiving the viewer as
an imaginary object (p.532).
Central to his theory, Baudry argues that the potential of cinema to produce knowledge is
constrained by the constrained nature of the camera and other apparatus. He questions the
potential of contemporary film to differential between illusion and reality. The centrality of the
human mind is confirmed by the unfolding of the universe as observed through the human eye at
the cinema. At the cinema, the human mind is free from the body. According to him, the sight of
the world gives the perception of its origin and meaning. He links human experience at the
cinema with the quest for social order and organization.
Viewers want narratives and film that make sense of complex experience. This desire is proof of
the human mind as a free, center of the universe. Baudry discuss the introduction of western
science and invention of the telescope and the camera, which have given new meaning to the
human perspective of the universe. He refers to the new phenomenon as the decentering of the
human universe, which according to him, is a sign of the end of the belief in geocentrism
(p.532). The new technology inherent in the modern camera has helped to redefine the universe
and gave it a new meaning. However, it must do so coherently.
The different in perspectives demonstrates the subjectivity of the film. The film subjects the
viewer to dominance, making them unable to differentiate reality from illusion. Baudry describes
the ideological effects inherent in the cinema to foster his view of objectivism and idealism in the
film. In his words, the conception of space between Renaissance theorists and Greeks differs
(p.534). As an evidence, he presents Aristotles view that the space is heterogeneous and
discontinuous, which contrasts with Democritus view that space is made up of indivisible
atoms (p.534). The camera creates an illusion of movement through the combination and
organization of static objects captured by the camera. The work that goes through the making of
a film by transforming images captured through the camera, editing them and giving them
movement masks the transformation. This transformation has inherent ideological effects.
Aligning the camera with the viewers eye gives rise to a transcendental subject, giving the
subject movement and meaning (p.535). Baudrys aim in explaining the ideological effects of the
film is to emphasize the role of the cinema, which according to him, is to reproduce an ideology
of idealism. It is to create an illusion in the mind of the viewer that what they see is objective
reality (p.533). Hence, the apparatus used in transforming pictures into the film should be
visible. While the cinema should be coherent, free from the inconsistencies of the apparatus used
to transform pictures into film, it must ensure that the viewer is within the realm of reality.
Jean-Louis Baudry Edit
A French apparatus theorist. His work is a strand of the ideologically-based theories of film in
the late-60s/early-70s, that were influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, Althusser's theories of
ideology, and the student revolts of 1968.
This essay is one of film theory's "greatest hits", the major essay that is taught regarding the
function of the camera as an ideological apparatus. This could be cited as an early form of media
archaeology?
Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic
Apparatus [1970] Edit
Baudry's essay argues that we must turn toward the technological base of the cinema in order
to understand its truly ideological function. This is constituted by the 3 technological parts of the
film and film-going experience experience:
1. projection is difference denied, because it restores continuity to static images
2. the camera, aligned with the eye (and hence, the subject in the tradition of Western art)
produces a transcendental subject who is granted movement and meaning. The eye is
given a false sense of complete freedom of movement
3. the setting of film itself, with its dark room and straight-forward gaze, reproduces the
mirror stage in which secondary identification occurs, allowing for the illusory
constitution of the subject
Thus, the role of film is to reproduce an ideology of idealism, an illusory sensation that what we
see is indeed objective reality and is so because we believe we are the eye that calls it into
being. The entire function of the filmic apparatus is to make us forget the filmic apparatus--we
are only made aware of the apparatus when it breaks.
Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Obsever is a useful counterpoint to Baudry's progressive
history of film. His concern over projection as the production of continuity between different
images is mirror by Kittler's assertion that the medium of film is a corallary to the Lacanian
Imaginary in Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Like another major essay on the function of
technology and cinema in constituting the 20th century subject, Walter Benjamin's "The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility", Baudry wants to know whether the work of
cinema is made evident or concealed; this is analogous to Benjamin's politicization of the
aesthetic vs. aesthetization of the political. Unlike Baudry, however, Benjamin considers the
conditions of the apparatus ideologically ambiguous, as the viewer does seem to wield some
autonomy in relation to their interpretation of material. Baudry does seem to take the audience as
a given of absorption or consumption (he presumes a very uni-directional observer, rather than
one that can think about the conditions of reception)
For Your Consideration Edit
JLB is strongly influenced by an Althusserian concept of ideology, which makes his
theorizations a little rigid
He presumes a straight history from the camera obscura to film, believing that these
relationships are contiguous. He uses phrases like the history of film shows by which
he must mean a progressive history of the technologies of film, granting an unlikely
autonomy to the technologies themselves. A bit technologically deterministic
I do like how he frames film as a form of ecriture, because of its use of discrete segments
being composed as an illusory continuity of meaning.
Critique of Jean-Louis Baudrys Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic
Apparatus"
In Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus, Jean-Louis
Baudry provides an assessment of the relationship between ideology and the cinematic
apparatus. His assessment approaches how characteristics of cinema and the viewing
experience are connected to the cultural study of ideology from the perspective of film
theory.
Baudry begins his assessment by describing the first part of his multi-faceted
cinematic apparatus, the camera. The camera ends up somewhere in between an
objective reality, (Baudry 40) subject to the conscious mind of the operator, who then
imbues the final product with an ideological surplus value (Baudry 41), through their
use of framing, perspective, lens, and many other aspects of mise-en-scene and
montage. He then explains how the projector produces an illusion of continuity
between successive images while constructing movement, ultimately creating an illusion
of reality (Baudry 42). Baudry also reiterates that the image will always be image of
something; it must result from a deliberate act of consciousness (Baudry 43). He
finalizes his assessment, naturally, at the final part of the cinematic apparatus, the
cinema itself. He focuses on how the aspects of the cinema (a hidden projector and a
darkened, noise isolated room) are created so as to isolate the audience as much as
possible from outside influences, helping to produce impression of reality, to maintain
as much a sense of suspension of immobility. This helps to replace the spectators
reality with the illusion of reality on the screen, which is imbued with an ideological
surplus value (Baudry 45).
Baudrys assessment is extremely thorough as it brings into account many parts of
what he describes as the cinematic apparatus. To him the cinematic apparatus is not
just the camera and/or the projector which produces the images that make up the film,
but it also includes the camera operator, as well as the cinema theater. His
thoroughness is necessary because of the different levels and points at which the
ideological effects are produced and altered by the cinematic apparatus (that Baudry
describes), or lack there of. His assessment of the camera operator and the cinema
itself are the most agreeable because they seem to be the most accurately described
and detailed parts of his assessment.
Given the title of his text, he approaches the ideological effects of the cinematic
apparatus from all important angles and aspects of the cinematic apparatus. His
assessment might be even more successful though, if he had also approached his
assessment by analyzing the direct psychological effects of the cinematic apparatus.
The lack of consideration/analysis of the psychological history of the spectators
assumes that the spectators approach the cinema with a completely sterile psychology,
but its known that the spectators do not, and acknowledging that fact, we must also
acknowledge that the osmosis of the ideology is dependent on the ideological concepts
already present within the spectators minds. That being said, I believe that Baudry has
produced an extremely solid assessment of the connection between ideology and the
cinematic apparatus.
Works Cited
Baudry, Jean-Louis, and Alan Williams. "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic
Apparatus." Film Quarterly 28.2 (1974): 39-47. Print.
