Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

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Film, Lacan and the Subject
of Religion
A Psychoanalytic Approach to Religious
Film Analysis

Steve Nolan
Continuum International Publishing Group
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11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038

www.continuumbooks.com

© Steve Nolan 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978-0-8264-2760-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nolan, Steve.
Film, Lacan and the subject of religion: a psychoanalytic approach to religious film
analysis/Steve Nolan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-2760-1 (hb)
1. Motion pictures--Religious aspects. 2. Motion pictures--Psychological aspects.
3. Motion pictures--Ethical and moral aspects. 4. Religion in motion pictures.
5. Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981. I. Title.

PN1995.5N65 2009
205'.65--dc22
2008048872

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
 to the man who came before
and the men who come after
thank you for giving and sharing my love of film
to Jack, David and Daniel
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 Contents

List of Abbreviations x

Introduction 1
An Overview 3
With Thanks 6

Part One: Current Approaches to Religious Film Analysis

Introduction to Part One 9

1 Phenomenological Interpretations: Film as Sacrament 11

André Bazin: The Parameters of Cinematic Protestantism 11
Paul Schrader: ‘Protestant cinematic sacramentalism’ 12
Other Cinematic Sacramentalists: Cunneen, Bird and Fraser 14
Critique of Cinematic Style as Sacrament 15
Two Other Phenomenological Interpretations: Martin and
Thompson 16

2 Literary Interpretations: Film as Visual Story 20

The Auteur in Theological Film Criticism: Kreitzer 22
The Missed Point of the Emerging Orthodoxy: Deacy 25

3 Anthropological Interpretations: Film as Religion 28

Lyden: ‘film itself functions as a religion’ 28
Marsh: ‘the religion-like function of film’ 32

Part Two: Representation in Liturgy and Film

Introduction to Part Two 39

4 Liturgical Representation: ‘Others’, Narratives and Ideological

‘Realities’ 43
The Liturgical ‘other’: Priestly Representation 44
Sacramental Narrative of the Cross 47
Participation in the Ideological ‘Reality’ of Episcopal/Ecclesial
Authority 54
viii Contents

5 Cinematic Representation: ‘Others’, Narratives and

Ideological ‘realities’ 58
The Cinematic ‘Other’: The Film Star/Hero 59
‘Ordinary guy/extraordinary situation’:
The Overcoming-the-Other Narrative 62
Soviet satellites 63
Islamist militants 64
Participation in the Ideological ‘Reality’ of Hollywood Realism 66
The Siege (1998) 72

Part Three: What Can Film Theory Offer Liturgy?

Introduction to Part Three 79

6 Cinematic Identification: Suture and Narrative Space 80

Cinematic Perspective and Narrative Space 80
Jean-Pierre Oudart and Stephen Heath: Suturing
the Subject in Cinematic Discourse 83
Slavoj Žižek: When Suture Fails 87
Critique of the Subject Sutured in Cinematic Discourse 90

7 Suturing Suture: Joining the Theory Together 94

Cinematic Impression of Reality as Unconscious Effect 95
Symbolic reality, Imaginary reality and the Real of
the subject’s truth 96
Imagos and the representational nature of the complex 97
Anamnesis: the subject’s participation in the impression of reality 100
Mapping imaginary reality to cinema’s impression of reality 102
Cinematic Discourse and Lacan’s Linguistic Theory of Dreams 104
The (overdetermined) ‘Thing’: ‘dumb reality’ and
(forbidden) objet petit a 104
Lacan’s linguistic theory of dreams 106
The signifier as representative not significant 108
The repeated Real, the Real as missed encounter 110
Mapping unconscious desire to cinematic discourse 112
Suturing Identity with a Cinematic Other, Suturing Subjectivity 114
Identification with represented desire: a ‘genetic
theory of the ego’ 114
Libidinal investment, narcissistic identification:
‘dialectic of identification’ 115
The confusion of identity: jealousy, paranoiac knowledge
and transitivism 117
Procuring subjectivity: circulating the ‘rim’ and
superimposing the lack 119
Procuring subjectivity: the double operation of the ‘rim’ 119
Representation and the fading of the subject 120
Procuring subjectivity: the superimposition of the two lacks 121
 Contents ix

Modes of subject identification: the Ideal-I and

the ego-ideal 123
Symmetrical identifications: Imaginary projection and
Symbolic introjection 124
Mapping suture to identification with a cinematic other 126

8 Suturing Religious Identity in the Sacramental Narrative 131

Identification with the Priest as a Liturgical Representation 132
Constructing the priest as a liturgical representation 132
Priestly representation (i): a fiction sustained by erotic attraction 136
The Mission (1986) 136
Priestly representation (ii): a fiction sustained by
negation/disavowal 139
Father John McNeill 139
The worshipper’s solipsistic identification with priestly
representation 141
Joining the Narrative and Participating in Its ‘Reality’ 144
Signifying for: the reinscription of desire into the
sacramental narrative 144
The Exorcist (1973) 144
On the Waterfront (1954) 146
The Fugitive (1947) 148
The worshipper’s participation as a subject of
Episcopal/ecclesial ‘reality’ 150

By Way of Analysis 155

Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan) 156
Bewitched (Nora Ephron) 159
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton) 162
Conclusion: A Third Task – Moving beyond the ‘So what!’ 165

Notes 167

Bibliography 185
Bibliography of Religion and Film 185
Select Bibliography 196

Indexes 207
Author Index 207
Film Index 209
Subject Index 211
 List of Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used throughout the text. See Select
Bibliography for full bibliographical information:

Freud and Lacan

PFL
Sigmund Freud (1973–86), Penguin Freud Library, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 14 volumes.

E
Jacques Lacan (1977), Écrits: A Selection, tr. Alan Sheridan, London:
Routledge.
S1
Jacques Lacan (1991), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I. Freud’s Papers on
Technique, 1953–1954, tr. John Forrester, London: Norton.

S2
Jacques Lacan (1991), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II. The Ego in Freud’s
Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955, tr. Sylvana Tomaselli,
London: Norton.

S3
Jacques Lacan (1993), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book III. The Psychoses,
1955–1956, tr. Russell Grigg, London: Routledge.

S7
Jacques Lacan (1992), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII. 1959–60. The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis, tr. Dennis Porter, New York: Norton.
 List of Abbreviations xi

S11
Jacques Lacan (1979), Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-
analysis, tr. Alan Sheridan, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Second Vatican Council and other Episcopal and Ecumenical documents

All references to conciliar and post-conciliar documents are from Austin
Flannery (ed.) (1975), Vatican Council II: Volume I: The Conciliar and Post Con-
ciliar Documents, Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co; Dublin: Dominican
Publications.

CP Cenam paschalem (26 March 1970)

EM Eucharisticum mysterium (25 May 1967)
EP Eucharistiae participationem (27 April 1973)
ES Eucharistiae sacramentum (21 June 1973)
IO Inter oecumenici (26 September 1964)
IQ In quibus rerum circumstantiis (1 June 1972)
LG Lumen gentium (21 November 1964)
LI Liturgiae instaruationes (5 September 1970)
MS Musicam sacram (5 March 1967)
OE Orientalium ecclesiarum (21 November 1964)
PO Presbyterorum ordinis (7 December 1965)
SC Sacrosanctum concilium (4 December 1963)
UR Unitatis redintegratio (21 November 1964)

ARCIC-ED
Eucharistic Doctrine [1971], in Anglican/Roman Catholic International
Commission (ARCIC) (1982), The Final Report, London: SPCK & Catholic
Truth Society, 11–16.
ARCIC-ED: E
Eucharistic Doctrine: Elucidation [1979], in Anglican/Roman Catholic Inter-
national Commission (ARCIC) (1982), The Final Report, London: SPCK &
Catholic Truth Society, 17–25.
CCC
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), London: Geoffrey Chapman.
xii List of Abbreviations

OBOB
Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland
(1998), One Bread One Body: A Teaching Document on the Eucharist in the Life
of the Church, and the Establishment of General Norms of Sacramental Sharing,
London: Catholic Truth Society; Dublin: Veritas Publications.
 Introduction

n’avons-nous pas entendu un ecclésiastique plein de bonne volonté se prévaloir

auprès de nous de son dessein d’appliquer les données de la psychanalyse à la sym-
bolique chrétienne?

Jacques Lacan (1966), ‘Introduction théorique aux fonctions de la

psychanalyse en criminologie’, Écrits, Paris: Seuil, p 132

Two buildings dominated the Manchester landscape of my early childhood.

The first was the Apollo Theatre on Ardwick Green. Standing sentinel over
what, in its Edwardian heyday, had been one of the better-healed parts of the
city, by the early 1960s the Apollo was a magnet for hundreds of children
who, like me, crossed the busy Stockport Road each Saturday morning intent
getting the best seats for the children’s matinee. Our anticipation grew, as we
were entertained with a mix of songs, games and Woody Woodpecker car-
toons. But these were only foolish diversions. The real focus of our interest
was on what was about to happen in the next enthralment of the weekly
adventure serial. Each week, hostage to our heroes’ cliff-hanging adventures,
we were woven into the fabric of their unfolding B-movie narratives; and
each week, in our school playgrounds and in the car-less streets of our corpo-
ration slums, we re-lived their escapist adventures. From the brief episodes,
we absorbed enough of their struggles against adversity and assimilated
sufficient of their values of right over wrong, to be able skilfully to play with
the details as we participated in our own worlds of fantasy. In those periods
of play we became Rocket Man, Tarzan, Batman; their ordeals were our
ordeals, their triumphs were our triumphs, their life-threatening anxieties
were our life-threatening anxieties – at least until we were called in for tea.
The other building that dominated my early years was the Roman Catho-
lic Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, a Victorian colossus confident in its
position among the University buildings that lined the Oxford Road. As a
child, I disliked attending Mass and was reluctant in passing most of the
Sunday mornings of my first seven years in the half-light of its nether gloom.
Wrenched from play with my Protestant friends, I was bored by the liturgy;
2 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

I was alienated by the language; I was ignored by the priest; I was invisible
to the worshippers; and, above all, I was terrorized by an over-life sized
statue of the crucified Christ, tormented and bleeding as he hung dying
for my sins. And yet, the narrative in which I so reluctantly involved myself
nonetheless wove me profoundly into the fabric of its own reality. I believed
that I needed to be good because my sins had caused his suffering, and
any little lie, or childish swearword, or other such innocent wrongdoing
would put a sin on my soul, which I would need to confess or risk eternal
damnation. And because I passed the rest of my week in the primary school
that bore the name of my parish church, this narrative informed the fun
and games with my playground friends. We became each other’s consci-
ence, censuring our childish misdoings with the rebuke, ‘Aw! That’s a sin
on your soul!’
The contrast between these two buildings, their design and intention, is
enormous. But the impact of what these buildings represent, in my life and
doubtless the lives of millions of others across the world over the last cen-
tury, is equally enormous. Cinemas and the temples of our worship have
been those places where the world and our station within it have been rep-
resented to us in the images of the heroes we have been offered and the
landscapes of their narratives. They have been the pre-eminent places in
which we have learned who we are, and they have been the places in which
we have been joined into the narratives that have governed our cultures.
Almost from the beginning of cinema a diverse and ever growing body of
film theory has pursued an interest in explaining both the institution of
cinema and the art of film, including the ways in which both affect the lives
of those who consume celluloid images. In this book, I want to apply ideas
drawn from one particular area of film theory that developed during the
1970s in the British film journal Screen; a peculiarly challenging theoretical
mix of ideology, semiotics and psychoanalysis that has been concerned to
understand the ways in which cinema operates to construct the identity of
spectators. I want to use what Easthope terms the ‘Screen problematic’ (1983,
122) to provide a theoretical resource towards understanding the operations
of liturgy in constructing religious identity. This application clearly depends
on regarding liturgy as a medium of representation, one that parallels, in its
own very distinctive ways, the medium of cinematic representation. I want to
argue the case for that parallel and I want to use the concepts of suture and
narrative space, developed in the Screen problematic, to show how the repre-
sentations offered to worshippers in liturgy contribute to constructing their
religious sense of who they are and what their station in the world is and
should be. Along the way, I want to develop a methodology that will enable
religious film analysts to engage with film qua film: a way that treats film, on
 Introduction 3

its own terms, as a medium of representation; a way that avoids reducing film
to another type of literature or another type of going to church, but that
enables engagement with film as it is experienced or consumed.
Of necessity, this is a multidisciplinary project, and it takes its cue from
suggestions put forward by Ostwalt (1995) concerning the possibility of syn-
thesizing film criticism, religious studies and cultural studies. Ostwalt is
looking for a new approach to the religious analysis of film and cinema, and
although he stops short of actually articulating the methodological synthe-
sis he desires, he nevertheless highlights the obvious weakness in so much
religious film analysis: the failure of theological or religious studies to make
use of the analytical tools of film theory. This failure has, largely, been
reproduced by successive religious or theological film analysts because they
have remained ignorant of both the extensive body of film theory, in virtu-
ally any of its forms, and the nature of the filmic medium itself. As a conse-
quence, religious film analysts have tended to treat film as ‘visual story’ and
to search for ‘the cinematic analogue of the religious or sectarian question’
(May 1982, 26). At its worst, this search has degenerated into a ‘Quest for the
cinematic Christ’ and the pursuit of Christ-figures in film (Malone 1990).
In fact, a basis for something like the synthesis at which Ostwalt hints
already exists within film theory, in the Screen problematic, insofar as it com-
bines elements of cultural studies with the analysis of film. To realize Ost-
walt’s suggested methodology, it remains only to factor in the element of
religious studies. Screen’s distinctive theoretical mix of ‘Marxism and psy-
choanalysis on the terrain of semiotics’ (Heath 1985, 511) has never been
concerned with film as ‘visual story’ or with the discovery of the cinematic
analogue to any question, religious or otherwise. Its focus has been on the
unconscious operations of cinematic representation in constructing indi-
viduals as the subjects of ideology. Making the theoretical approach of the
Screen problematic part of Ostwalt’s anticipated synthesis with religious stud-
ies will mean a radical and original shift of interest, which may not exactly
satisfy Ostwalt’s search. But I suggest that an engagement with the Screen
problematic could liberate religious and theological film analysis from the
moribund pursuit of cinematic analogue to religious questions; an exercise
whose findings have tended toward the predictable and unremarkable.

An Overview

The approach that will be developed in this book makes use of the Screen
problematic theoretical synthesis, and its concern with the operations and
impact of cinema, to explore the operations and impact of religious practice,
4 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

specifically the operations of liturgy as a medium of representation. Central

to what I am proposing is the idea that liturgy can be understood as a medium
of representation that parallels the representational medium of cinema and
that understanding liturgy in this way allows the film theory concepts of suture
and narrative space to be applied to liturgical representation.
The religious response to film has often been strained, but in the 1960s
theologians and students of religion began to take film seriously, both as an
art form and as a cultural phenomenon. Religion and film is now de rigueur,
with classroom courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level and a cor-
responding increase in publications – in 2007, more than two dozen books
were published in the area. In Part One, I examine current approaches to
religious film analysis and I show how, adopting an interpretative approach
that favours theological or textual or anthropological categories, existing
religious film analysis has failed either to treat film as a representational
medium or to engage seriously with any kind of film theory. Chapter 1 looks
at what might be termed the sacramentalist approach, which regards film as
a ‘door to the sacred’, while Chapter 2 explores the literary approach and
the associated concern with authorial intent. Chapter 3 examines a more
recent direction of religious film analysis that considers the ways in which
spectators consume film as a form of religious practice.
Having argued in Part One that religious studies can (and should) find
more interesting analysis and interpretation, Part Two develops the idea of
liturgy and film as parallel media of representation. The differences between
these two areas are so obvious that the idea that they can be paralleled may
seem absurd and counter to commonsense. However, rather than offer sim-
plistic and unproblematic parallels, I want to make the case that film and
liturgy are representational media on the basis that both involve identifica-
tion with a represented ‘other’ through which spectators and worshippers
are sutured into the cinematic or sacramental narrative, and so become
participants in the narrative and in the respective (ideological) ‘reality’ the
medium supports. So, in terms of liturgical representation, Chapter 4 dis-
cusses the identifications associated with the priest as the ‘other’ of Eucha-
ristic liturgical representation. Here, in identifying with the priest in the
Anamnesis, worshippers are sutured into the sacramental narrative, becom-
ing participants in the narrative and, through submission of their volition
and intellect, in Episcopal (ideological) ‘reality’ it supports. Similarly, with
regard to cinematic representation, Chapter 5 uses the genre of post-Cold
War ‘terrorist hi-jack’ films to examine spectators’ participation in the ideo-
logical ‘reality’ of Hollywood realism and the way in which this is contingent
on identification with the star/hero as the ‘other’ of cinematic represen-
tation. My aim, in Part Two, is to demonstrate that the parallels between
 Introduction 5

liturgy and film can be made around three heads, insofar as each of these
media invites its constituency to: identify with an ‘other’; be ‘stitched’
(sutured) into a narrative; and ultimately to participate in a ‘reality’ that is
always already ideological.
Given that religious film analysis should regard film as film, and having
demonstrated the terms on which liturgy and film can be paralleled, in Part
Three I identify the concepts that psychoanalytic film theory can bring to
the study of religion in general and liturgy in particular. Since my interest
is in explaining something of the construction of religious identity in rela-
tion to the sacramental narrative and its liturgical representation, I con-
sider the associated concepts of narrative space and suture. Chapter 6
presents the distinctive contribution of Screen’s psychoanalytical film theory:
the development of the concepts of narrative space and suture insofar as
they relate to cinematic techniques and the construction of the spectating
subject’s fictional subjectivity (‘pseudo-identification’).
However, the Screen problematic was developed under the influence of
French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and a number of misinterpre-
tations distorted the understanding and application of Lacan’s ideas. For
this reason, having identified three fundamental (mis)interpretations
(their understanding of cinematic realism; their understanding of Lacan’s
linguistic theory of dreams; and their understanding of suture in relation to
the represented ‘other’), Chapter 7 makes a ‘return to Lacan’ in order to
explore his theory of subject construction and so reinstate the value of
suture. Here I offer three corrective suggestions. First, reconsidering Lacan’s
theory of the complexes, I suggest that the cinematic impression of reality
can be understood to be a performance of the subject’s own Imaginary
‘reality’ on which it is premised. Second, revisiting Lacan’s theory of dreams,
I suggest that cinematic discourse can be understood as the performance of
the subject’s discourse of unconscious desire, itself funded by the subject’s
psychic strategy of negation/disavowal. Finally, re-examining the neo-Laca-
nian theory of suture, I suggest that identification with a cinematic ‘other’
can be mapped to the subject’s narcissistic predisposition to confuse iden-
tity with the imago of the specular ‘other’. From this, I argue that, operating
by the same psychic processes of negation/disavowal by which subjects
come to ‘believe’ and so participate in the Imaginary reality of their own
unconscious refusal of the Real, cinematic subjects come to believe, and so
participate in, the ideologically informed reality of cinema.
Chapter 8 demonstrates how these insights can be applied to liturgical
representation and the subjectivity it constructs. In the first place, I show that
the worshipper’s identifications with the priest as a liturgical representation
are sustained by a complex narcissistic attraction that is simultaneously a
6 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

negation/disavowal of being in which the priest institutionally negates/

disavows his sexual fulfilment and the worshipper, alienated from him or
herself, denies the priest the humanity of being an actual person, negat-
ing/disavowing him in the ‘human weakness of his flesh’. Then, with regard
to how identification sutures the worshipper into the sacramental narrative
and so leads to the worshipper’s participation as a liturgical subject in the
ideological ‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority, I show that, signifying
for each other from the place assigned in the signifying chain of their dis-
courses of desire, worshippers re-member the salvific events as if present, and
that during the Anamnesis their discourses of desire become reinscribed
into the salvific/pastoral practice of the sacramental narrative. In this way,
worshippers become participants in the sacramental ‘reality’.
In the final chapter, I make explicit the analytic methodology developed
through the book and offer this as a tool with which religious film analysts
might engage with film qua film. I demonstrate how it can be used to get
beneath the superficial signifiers of a film, to understand how a film might
be experienced or consumed and to enable theology to address the unspo-
ken values supported by the film.

With Thanks

Unlike Spike Milligan, who claimed to have done it ‘all by myself!’ many
people have, in some way, enabled me to complete this work. I owe an obvi-
ous debt to my supervisor, the late Prof. Grace Jantzen, who read and
helpfully commented on anything I put in front of her and who taught me
the importance of structure and that what counts depends on who does
the counting. I am grateful to my teachers in the University of Manchester,
in particular those who believed in me, Prof. George Brooke, the late
Prof. Tony Dyson, Dr Kate Cooper and Dr David Law; and to the University
itself for the generous research studentship that made the research pos-
sible. Various friends read and commented on my work, in particular
Dr Barbie Underwood, Ms Beth Stockley, Prof. Aziz Sheikh, Ms Liz Hall.
During my research, I welcomed interaction with others working in the
area: Dr Christopher Deacy, Dr Larry Kreitzer, Dr Clive Marsh, Dr Jolyon
Mitchell, Dr Gaye Ortiz, Dr David Torevell. I am grateful to Mr John Capon,
Mr Brian Draper, editors who encouraged me to write about film, and to
the anonymous reader who helped me see the wood for the trees.
Finally, I want to thank my wife Marion, who has spent too many week-
ends as a laptop widow graciously allowing me time to work and supporting
me with coffee and her belief that it mattered. Thank you.
 Part One

Current Approaches to Religious

Film Analysis
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 Introduction to Part One

Cinema’s relationship with religion dates from the earliest period of film
history.1 Following the first commercial cinema screenings, by Auguste and
Louis Lumière in December 1895, early cinematographers took Christ’s
Passion as the subject for numerous short recordings. In France, the
Lumières themselves produced The Passion as early as 1897 and fantasist
Georges Méliès made Walking on the Water two years later, while in the United
States the Thomas Edison Company released The Passion Play of Oberammer-
gau in 1898, and by the turn of the new century Joseph Perry was collaborat-
ing with Herbert Booth (son of Salvation Army founder, General William
Booth) to make the film Soldiers of the Cross (Butler 1969, 33–54; Kinnard
and Davis 1992, 19–35).
Despite the initial potential for symbiosis between religion and film, there
has been a longstanding conflict of interests between the two institutions.
The film industry’s fundamentally entertainment based, money-making
agenda and the Church’s, particularly the Roman Catholic Church’s per-
ception of its role as moral guardian have meant the relationship between
cinema and religion has always been troubled (Skinner 1993; Walsh 1996;
Johnston 2000, 31–9). Ironically, it was the sexual and sadistic excesses typi-
fied by the religious, but commercially cynical, Cecil B De Mille that most
offended the Roman Catholics of North America and led to the creation of
the Legion of Decency in 1933. However, Christian theologians and stu-
dents of religion have subsequently developed more sympathetic positions
towards film, and an international body of literature has been emerging
since the early 1960s that might be traced to the new openness that
followed from the Second Vatican Council (Lyden 2003, 22).
Some have analysed theological and religious responses according to
type. John May identifies five types of response: religious discrimination;
religious visibility; religious dialogue; religious humanism; religious
aesthetics (1997, 17–37). Borrowing heavily from May, Robert K Johnston
(2000, 41–62) plots his typology of English language response as a shift
along a continuum from the avoidance of ethical boycott (Miles 1947;
McClain 1970) through dialogue to appropriation and film as divine
10 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

encounter. Arguing that Christian moviegoers, ‘should first view a movie on

its own terms before entering into theological dialogue with it’, Johnston
favours dialogue as his own methodological position (2000, 49).
Both May and Johnston acknowledge their debt to H Richard Niebuhr
(1951) for a typology of Christian theology and culture, as does John Lyden
who, like May, also uses Paul Tillich to divide existing approaches to reli-
gion and film between the theological (Protestant-dialogical/Roman
Catholic-synthetic) and the ideological approaches (2003, 11–35).2 But
while Johnston creates difficulty by attempting to find a chronological
development for his types of theological response, May’s more generic
approach generates its own difficulty insofar as it is dependent on the para-
digms of theology and literature.
In their different ways Johnston, May and Lyden highlight three of the
main approaches to the theological or religious interpretation of film.
Thus, arguing that, ‘Movies have, at times, a sacramental capacity to provide
the viewer an experience of transcendence’ (Johnston 2000, 57), Johnston
emphasizes the sort of sacramentalist approach that is characteristic of
phenomenological interpretations (although, because he privileges narra-
tive above all other aspects of film, Johnston’s approach is actually closer to
that of May). By comparison, contending that the religious film analyst
‘must be content with the literary analogues of religious or theological con-
cepts; for example, mythic structures and archetypal images and symbols’
(May 1982, 25), May represents a literary approach to the theological inter-
pretation of film. Finally, Lyden shares Johnston’s desire to understand film
in its own terms, ‘even when we do not agree with its messages’ (Lyden
2003, 3), and argues strongly that because films have a ‘religious power’
and perform a religious function for their audiences, they can and should
be regarded as a form of religion and interpreted through religious
categories.
My own typology is less subtle than that of Johnston or May, and in what
follows I will simply explore the three approaches to religious film analysis
identified here: phenomenological (or sacramental) approaches; literary
(or ‘cinematic theology’) approaches and anthropological approaches that
regard film as a form of religious practice (religion as film).
 Chapter 1

Phenomenological Interpretations:
Film as Sacrament

André Bazin: The Parameters of Cinematic Protestantism

Serious comment on film, that is both constructive and religiously informed,

can be traced to French Roman Catholic intellectual, film critic and theo-
rist of cinematic realism, André Bazin. Developing theory as a working
critic, Bazin discusses the nature of the religious film in a review of Jean
Delannoy’s film, God Needs Men (1950). Bazin first locates, and then rejects,
three categories of religious film (the ‘catechism-in-pictures’, hagiographies
and priest/nun stories) in order to argue for ‘filmic Protestantism’ as ‘the
best vehicle for a Catholic novelist in the cinema’ ([1951b]1997, 64). By
‘Protestantism’ Bazin means a simplicity or economy of cinematic style:

Everything that is exterior, ornamental, liturgical, sacramental, hagio-

graphic, and miraculous in the everyday observance, doctrine, and prac-
tice of Catholicism does indeed show specific affinities with the cinema
considered as a formidable iconography, but these affinities, which have
made for the success of countless films, are also the source of the religious
insignificance of most of them. Almost everything that is good in this
domain was created not by the exploitation of these patent affinities, but
rather by working against them: by the psychological and moral deepen-
ing of the religious factor as well as by the renunciation of the physical
representation of the supernatural and of grace. ([1951b]1997, 64–5)

Bazin is perhaps the first to mark the potential parallels between cine-
matic and liturgical style, and to report the stylistic unsuitability of liturgy
for religious filmmaking. He rejects Roman Catholic sacramental richness
because he favours the stylistic economy instanced in the work of Robert
Bresson, whose techniques of paring away dramatic dialogue, casting ama-
teurs and beginners, and stripping bare his characters, achieved a ‘form of
12 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

aesthetic abstraction while avoiding expressionism by way of an interplay of

literature and realism’ ([1951c]1967, 132). Ironically, perhaps, the result of
filmic Protestantism is itself a form of cinematic sacramentalism, the ‘tran-
scendence of grace’, that offers ‘a new dramatic form, that is specifically
religious – or better still, specifically theological; a phenomenology of salva-
tion and grace’ ([1951b]1967, 134, 136).

Paul Schrader: ‘Protestant cinematic sacramentalism’

While Bazin writes as a Roman Catholic, film writer-director Paul Schrader

is informed by his long abandoned Dutch Reformed belief. Schrader is
Bazinian insofar as he contends that cinematic style affects the experience
of transcendence, and Calvinistic insofar as he claims that his concept of
the transcendental in film has been informed by Calvin’s notion of sensus
divinitatus, the divine sense:

strip away conventional emotional associations and then you’re left with
this tiny little pinpoint that hits you at the end and freezes you into stasis.
(Jackson 1990, 29)

Schrader is convinced that ‘transcendental style’ is precisely a style. His point

is that as with any style, artists from diverse cultures can use transcendental
style ‘to express the Holy’ (1972, 3). Despite obvious problems with his
definitions – on his own admission his best definition of ‘the Transcendent’
is a truism: ‘[the] Transcendent is beyond normal sense experience, and
that which it transcends is, by definition, the immanent’ (1972, 5) – Schrader
suggests that transcendental style is defined by the intellectual and formali-
stic work of directors Bresson and Yasujiro Ozu, and that despite cultural
differences and volume of output, the work of both directors demonstrates
three critical movements built around ‘abundant’ and ‘sparse’ means.
The first movement is the meticulous representation of the dull, mun-
dane commonplaces of the everyday. Closely akin to Bazinian ‘realism’, this
presentation of reality prepares the way for the ‘intrusion of the Transcen-
dent’, by celebrating bare existence (1972, 39). Next, directors Bresson and
Ozu posit the disunity between humans and their environment, which
Schrader argues culminates in a decisive action, ‘the disparity’ of the second
movement (1972, 42). Here dull, everyday reality cracks, creating within
the spectator an alternative psychological reality, the ‘schizoid reaction’.
While the ‘everyday’ leads the spectator to feel that emotions are of no use,
 Phenomenological Interpretations 13

the ‘disparity’ invokes a sense that all is not right in the banality of the
everyday. This prepares the spectator for the third movement, which
Schrader terms ‘Stasis’, ‘a frozen view of life which does not resolve the
disparity but transcends it’ (1972, 49). For Schrader, the cinematic tech-
nique most suited to representing the sacred is not the dialectic of resolu-
tion but that of transcendence, and he is clear that it is a technique.

Step three may confront the ineffable, but its techniques are no more
‘mysterious’ than steps one and two. There is a definite before and after,
a period of disparity and a period of stasis, and between them a final
moment of disparity, decisive action, which triggers the expression of the
Transcendent. The transcendental style itself is neither ineffable nor
magical: every effect has a cause, and if the viewer experiences stasis it is
with good reason. (1972, 49)

For Schrader, the moment of stasis is common to religious art in every

culture, establishing an image of a parallel reality, by which he means the
‘Wholly Other’. Schrader regards the religious film to be that which bal-
ances the abundant and the sparse so as to convey the sense of the Holy.
Further, he attributes the failure of the overtly ‘religious’ biblical spectacu-
lar film to the fact that it suffers from overabundant means. While it may
induce a form of belief, such belief should be ascribed not to the ‘Wholly
Other’, but to ‘a congenial combination of cinematic corporeality and
“holy” feelings’.1
The difficulty here is that the kind of sacramentalist approach typified by
Schrader expects too much of film, making it a ‘door to the sacred’ (Martos
1981). Schrader borrows the term ‘Wholly Other’ from Rudolf Otto’s
notion of the sense of the numinous, the mysterium tremendum (Otto 1958,
12–30). However, Otto would have rejected Schrader’s misappropriation of
his term to describe the ‘intrusion of the Transcendent’ insofar as Schrader
makes the experience contingent on cinematic style. For Otto, the mental
state associated with the numinous is ‘sui generis and irreducible to any
other’ (Otto 1958, 7), precisely because the numinous is ‘felt as objective
and outside the self’ (1958, 11). The objectivity of the numinous aside,
Schrader misappropriates Otto to the extent that his analysis becomes a
sophisticated argument towards a cinematic canon formed according to
the partialities of his own taste. Thus, he argues asymmetrically: the ‘reli-
gious’ film engenders a belief (in spiritual reality) that is contingent on
(a previously acquired) ‘holy’ feeling, while the ‘intrusion of the Transcend-
ent’ is contingent on cinematic style alone.
14 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Other Cinematic Sacramentalists: Cunneen, Bird and Fraser

If Schrader effectively articulates the kind of Protestant cinematic sacra-

mentalism at which Bazin hinted, others have worked with a sacramentalist
approach.
Joseph Cunneen locates the screened sacred in non-Hollywood (specifi-
cally European art cinema). Surveying the writings of Eric Rohmer, Andrey
Tarkovsky and Krzysztof Kieslowski, Cunneen argues that the reality of the
sacred is suggested on screen in moments of impossible ethical dilemma
(Cunneen 1993). At such points the human experience portrayed resonates
with that of the spectators, each being mutually informed by the memory
of a religious tradition. Like Schrader, Cunneen argues that the religious
may be encountered in the everyday, and at the point of decisive action.
However, he is less clear about the way in which encountering the ethical is
specifically religious, or about why this makes for a religious film.
As a philosopher of religion, Michael Bird finds parallels between cinema
and religion at the level of the perception of reality. Bird’s variant phenom-
enological approach finds a convergence between Tillich’s existentialist
theology and the phenomenological aesthetics of Mikel Dufrenne, at the
point where they speak of an implicit transcendence, ‘a Real that underlies
the real ’, encountered in feeling (Bird 1982, 8). The convergence of Tillich
and Dufrenne around questions of reality lays a foundation onto which
Bird maps the concerns of realist film theory. For Bazin, and fellow cine-
matic realist Siegfried Kracaur, film’s physical relationship to reality makes
it not a reinterpretation but a disclosure of reality. Bird argues that genu-
inely religious films are those that evoke in the spectator a sense of the
ineffable mystery of reality. He concludes:

In these realist statements, one finds something of a creed in which cine-

ma’s technical properties become the vehicle of meditation. This creed
requires a particular spiritual sensitivity in which the sacred is sought as
the depth in reality itself. (1982, 15)

In this, Bird proposes that the holy is discernible in the cinematic real. For
Bird, the cinematic real offers what Mircea Eliade termed ‘heirophany’
(1982, 11).
The most overtly sacramental interpretation of the effects of cinematic
style is offered by Peter Fraser. Fraser regards the essential mode of reli-
gious films to be the introduction of the ‘incarnational gesture’ to disrupt
and make holy the primary narrative. This disruption ‘typically transforms
 Phenomenological Interpretations 15

the narrative of the film into the most recognisable of all Christian narra-
tive patterns, the Passion’ (Fraser 1988, 2). The audience is then invited to
participate in the Passion in such a way that, for Fraser, an understanding of
Western liturgical tradition is necessary in order to comprehend religious
style in films.
Fraser’s emphasis on the narrative pattern of the Passion may seem to be
quite close to my own emphasis. For example, he discusses audience partici-
pation ‘in the Passion celebration that begins once the divine and the
human merge in the film narrative’ (1988, 3); audience identification; and
the existence of parallels between film and liturgy. However, my approach
differs from Fraser’s in two significant ways.
First, unlike Fraser I do not regard sacramental films to be a distinct cin-
ematic genre discernible according to any particular cinematic technique.
Fraser suggests that narrative shifts towards a formalism that ‘intends to
describe an underlying concurrent narrative track – the spiritual – [setting]
this film apart from the conventional Hollywood drama’ (1988, 1). Like
Schrader, Fraser determines this distinct genre, ‘what might be called “the
sacramental style”’ (1988, 7), according to an ‘objectivity’ founded on no
more than the peculiarities of his own taste.
Secondly, Fraser sees the parallels between cinema and liturgy as formal:

The symbolic functions of space and time within the incarnational

moment of the sacramental film make the complete performance of the
work a type of liturgical ceremony. As such films often follow a stable ideo-
logical base, and urge moral and spiritual enlightenment through the
embrace of a form of divine presence, they operate ritualistically. (1988, 8,
2
emphasis added)

Against this, I will argue in Part Two that a parallel does exist, but only
insofar as cinema and liturgy can be regarded as representational media.
In addition, I will argue that the significance of this parallel is not that it can
affect an encounter between the individual and the sacred, but that it can
enable a deeper understanding of the operations of liturgical representa-
tion, in particular with regard to the construction of religious identity.

Critique of Cinematic Style as Sacrament

Those who propose what amounts to a genre of cinematic sacramentalism

ultimately expect too much from film. In his discussion of directors whose
16 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

work affects for him the ‘intrusion of the Transcendent’, Schrader univer-
salizes his experience and fails even to acknowledge the possibility that oth-
ers may not be similarly affected. More significantly, while he takes his lead
from Bazin, Schrader loses sight of Bazin’s realist emphasis on the repre-
sentational character of film, what Bazin termed ‘The ontology of the pho-
tographic image’ (Bazin [1945]1967). Instead, Schrader pursues a moralist
agenda that is effectively rooted in Bazin’s Personalist values.3 Bazin clearly
locates his conception of realism as a given in the very objectivity of photog-
raphy, and argues that mechanical reproduction represents the real in a
way that has ontological connectedness with the object represented. In
other words, film is a representational medium. To regard it as anything
else is to impose upon it the demands of an alien agenda. (In Part Two,
I will argue that Bazin’s ontological realism is itself the product of an aes-
thetic convention, a cinematic anti-style, in which the impression of reality
is, ironically, an idealist effect founded on a materialist base. My point will
be to indicate the limits of the parallel to be found between cinema and
liturgy when regarded as representational media, and so to deepen under-
standing of the operations of liturgical representation.)

Two Other Phenomenological Interpretations:

Martin and Thompson

Two other phenomenological interpretations can be contrasted with those

of Schrader and the ‘sacramentalists’. In different ways, both these inter-
pretations have specific relevance to the thesis I am developing insofar as
they more accurately understand film as a representational medium. In
finding parallels between religion and visual art, Thomas Martin describes
a parallel of participation in representation, while John O Thompson is con-
cerned with how spectators consume cinematic representations of Christ.
I will consider briefly how both these approaches relate to my argument.
In proposing that a form of kinship exists between religious experience
and the ‘participative experience’ of the visual arts, Martin premises his
thinking on the idea that both share the same empirical grounds, which he
locates in the operation of the image. Martin’s phenomenological approach
poses epistemological questions about the way images operate in human
consciousness. He argues that they are interpretative spatial arrangements
developed in conscious response to acts of perception (Martin 1981, 13). In
other words, images are the building blocks by which human consciousness
makes sense of its world, and constructs its meanings. As he puts it, images
 Phenomenological Interpretations 17

are primarily ‘interpretative acts that through the unity of human thought
influence all our mental activities’ (1981, 37). In order to cohere into a
system of reference images need to be articulated within paradigms or
models, which he terms ‘imaginative constructs’. However, these constructs
themselves remain too abstract, and need in turn to be concretised in the
form of stories that incorporate images and imaginative constructs into rec-
ognizable movements: ‘[humans] must have stories about what their life is
and what should or could be. This is all part of the process by which persons
identify and confront’ (1981, 20). Martin sees public stories as helping to
create common order, and film as sharing in the power of story to create
common reality.
Martin’s particular question concerns the way in which public stories,
including film, function in developing religious consciousness. He holds
that because film is a visual or image medium, occupying large portions of
the average person’s time, it has an impact on the images that govern the
flow of awareness, which in turn impacts on religious awareness.
The point pertinent to my thesis is how Martin parallels what he describes
as the ‘kinship’ between religion and visual art in the area of a participation
in representation. For Martin, the experience of watching a film, like the
experience of worship, engages the spectator and acts to transform the indi-
vidual’s perception of reality. In other words, Martin argues that the parallel
between cinema and religion should be drawn in terms of shared participa-
tive experience, that both spectator and worshipper are embraced in a
‘total environment’, and that it is this environment that impacts on their
perceptions of reality. As I indicated with Fraser, the notion of participative
experience will be important in my own thesis. However, Martin’s interest is
in the phenomenology of religious experience whereas I am concerned
with understanding how film and liturgy, paralleled as a representational
media, illuminate the construction of religious identity.
For Schrader, the failure of the biblical spectacular lies in a false syllogism
constructed around the relation between cinematic and spiritual reality:
‘The film is “real,” the spiritual is “on” film, ergo: the spiritual is real. Thus
we have an entire history of cinematic magic’ (Schrader 1972, 163). In con-
trast, Thompson finds the failure in the gap between representing the deter-
minacy of the real, and Representing the indeterminacy of the spiritual.
Here, Thompson bases his analysis on distinctions made by Polish phenom-
enological aesthetician Roman Ingarden (1973)4: ‘between the “judgmental
propositions” that we apply when dealing with the real world, and “quasi-
judgmental propositions” that appear in verbal fiction’ (Thompson 1997,
291). According to Thompson, Ingarden had argued that real objects,
18 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

existing in real space-time, are unequivocally, universally determined, but

that fictional objects, no matter how well described, have a finite determi-
nation. For his part, Thompson attends to Ingarden’s point that realist
fiction is characterized by ‘spots of indeterminacy’ that ‘give the reader a
particular mix of enough quasi-judgmental propositions to create the “real-
ity effect”’ (1997, 292).
Thompson phrases his question directly as, ‘How is a representation of
Jesus to be effected when the Representative of Jesus is a filmed actor?’
(1997, 292, n. 6). He notes that while the criteria for filling in the gaps in a
visual representation of Jesus are neither photographic nor painterly but
the ‘extremely powerful tradition as to how Jesus looked’ (1997, 296), photo-
graphy is both iconic and indexical, ‘presenting us with images which are
causally linked to what they are images of’ (1997, 298). Thompson concludes:

As man, Jesus existed, as fully and continuously as other men and women,
in space-time. As divinity, Christ lies outside space and time – outside of
the framework of the kind of proposition-advancing that Ingarden dis-
cusses, but equally outside of the realm of the photographable. An actor playing
Jesus exists, of course, in space-time. A fictional character does not actu-
ally exist in space and time, because it does not exist; but concretizing
that character bestows upon it the quasi-space-time of the fictional world.
An actor playing a fictional character donates his or her own spatio-
temporal integrity and plenitude to the character. (The non-fictionality of
a character means that there are in Ingarden’s sense judgements rather
than just quasi-judgements to be ‘equalled’ by the actor, but since the real
character is being Represented rather than there-before-the-camera in
his or her own space-time presence, the process of donation is fundamen-
tally not different.) Insofar as Jesus was a man, [Max] von Sydow and
[Robert] Powell donate their bodies to be his Representative. But what
can they donate, space-and-time-bound as they actually are, that would
correspond to the divine aspect of Jesus? (1997, 303)

For Thompson, the failure of filmic representations of Jesus is due, not to

the limitations of cinematic style, but to the gaps that open between the
determinacy of the real actor and the indeterminacy of the spiritual the real
actor Represents.
Although Thompson avoids Schrader’s subjectivity by describing the
spectator’s subjective processes, and although he achieves this by regarding
film as a medium of representation, his interest in religion and film is in a
different area from my own. As is clear from his conclusion, Thompson’s
 Phenomenological Interpretations 19

concern is directed at how the spectator consumes cinematic representa-

tions of Christ. I will touch on this, in Part Two, when I discuss the priest as
a locus of liturgical Christic representation. But, whereas Thompson con-
cludes that von Sydow and Powell fail to represent Christ because they
donate their space-and-time-bound bodies to be his Representative, I will
argue that the liturgical construction of priestly representation is such that
he can support and reflect back the variety of representations that are
projected onto him, at least during the Eucharist: Christic and ethnic, tran-
scendent and mundane, merging into a complex representational Gestalt,
a semiotic incarnation.
Bazin was right to reject sacramental richness as stylistically unsuitable for
filmmaking. But his notion of filmic Protestantism has set the wrong tone
for other theological critics. Those adopting a sacramentist approach to
cinematic style have done violence to the representational character of
film, expecting too much of the medium. Schrader’s indulgent and self-
fulfilling search for Transcendental style in film is too selective and brackets
out the vast majority of film product as unworthy for consideration.
Although he begins with Bazinian realism in order to pursue a theological
agenda, he ultimately loses sight of the representational character of film
implied by Bazin’s realist emphasis. Taken together, Martin and Thompson
point to how film might more accurately be understood in its own terms as
a medium of representation: Martin emphasizing the parallels between reli-
gion and visual art in terms of a participation; Thompson stressing the
mechanisms of representation. However, while I share a certain amount of
common cause with Martin and Thompson, I want to take their interest
in film as representational media in a different direction and understand
the operation of liturgical representation on the construction of liturgical
subjectivity.
Having considered several phenomenological approaches to religious
film analysis, I want now to consider what might be considered the emerg-
ing orthodoxy of religious film analysis. Arising from an interest in literary
criticism, and exhibiting a preoccupation with authorial intent, May has
characterized this orthodoxy as the search for ‘the cinematic analogue of
the religious or sectarian question’ (May 1982, 26).
 Chapter 2

Literary Interpretations: Film as Visual Story

Setting his interpretative direction according to his professional research

and teaching interests in theology and literature, John May’s view, that film
is best regarded as visual story, set the direction for what characterizes the
major approach to religious film analysis.1 Although he does warn against ‘a
myopic concentration on one type of meaning’, May nonetheless argues
that ‘The literary bases of film – treatment and dialogue – do as a matter of
fact yield themes; and symbols are rooted more obviously in sight than in
sound, the medium of the literary word’ (May and Bird 1982, viii). From
this he discerns three theoretical approaches to the interrelation of litera-
ture and religion: heteronomy, or ‘Christian Discrimination’, an idea devel-
oped from T S Eliot’s view that Christian faith should be the standard for
judging literary greatness; theonomy, or ‘Christian Amiability’, from Tillich’s
idea of God as the ground of man’s being, ‘the root of religion’s purpose
and literature’s meaning’ (May 1982, 25); and autonomy, May’s preferred
approach and the perspective articulated in Johnston’s desire to ‘view a
movie on its own terms’ (Johnston 2000, 49).
In May’s view, with autonomy the standards by which the discipline is
judged come from within the discipline: ‘thus, literature cannot be sub-
jected to an alien norm any more than theology and religion can’ (May
1982, 25). May argues that, respecting the autonomy of literature, responsi-
ble critics would investigate the religious dimensions of literature without
expecting to find religious or theological terms in the text. ‘Any discussion
of the religious tone of a work would have to be done in the language of the
text itself’ (1982, 25). Theological critics will preserve the autonomy of film
when and if they view a film as a ‘visual story’. May’s interpretative approach
demands that the theological critic examine the formal structures of a film,
because these structures ‘represent the visual analogue of religious and
sectarian questions’ (1982, 31). So it follows that the task of the theological
critic ‘is to discover the cinematic analogue of the religious or sectarian
question’ (1982, 26).
 Literary Interpretations 21

However, May seems to be more in the spirit of Eliot than he supposes

when he recommends that:

The inexperienced moviegoer must therefore develop the analytical skills

for conscious reflection upon the seductiveness of film, or at least be
guided by knowledgeable critics to the best films available, those that are
faithful to the values of our religious tradition. (1992, 2–3)

In any case, he was certainly in the spirit of the pro-moral value literary
criticism of F R Leavis (against which Screen reacts so strongly).2 While May
resists ‘the temptation to substitute “film” for “poem” and “director” for
“poet”’ (1992, 5), the resonance between him and Leavis is strong. Just as
Leavis identified literature on the basis of literary genius, so May’s desire ‘to
discover the cinematic analogue of the religious or sectarian question’ leads
him to consider films ‘concerned with the religious visions in American
film classics’, films which offer ‘an image of the religious sensibility of an
American filmmaker, and thus a likeness of the transcendent in his vision’
(1992, 5). Consequently, May betrays his expressed preference for auton-
omy insofar as a film’s suitability for theological criticism is determined by
the director’s religious sensibility; in other words, the likelihood of finding
something of the transcendent in his film. (As will become clear, Screen
discards this approach to film as ‘subjective’ and ‘taste-ridden criticism’.)
May’s commitment to ‘the literary bases of film’ highlights a number of
issues that emerge directly from, and are typical of, this literary approach to
the theological interpretation of film. Not the least of these is a moralizing
concern to guide inexperienced moviegoers towards the canon of ‘best
films’, films considered faithful to traditional religious values. But May also
allots a privileged if not reverential place to the filmmaker as auteur : cine-
matic genius and possessor of a religious sensibility in whose directorial
vision ‘the cinematic analogue of the religious or sectarian question’ can be
found. May’s implicit cinematic canon is funded by the idea that such films
can be objectively identified and commented on by knowledgeable critics
to instruct inexperienced moviegoers, and his notion of the ‘knowledge-
able critic’ compares directly with Leavis’ idea of ‘complete readers’. Finally,
May uses a theological category, in this case, the ‘transcendent’, as the
standard against which to judge the suitability of a film as candidate for
theological criticism.
Space does not allow me to discuss these three issues fully. I have already
touched on some of the difficulties associated with the notion the ‘tran-
scendent’. And I will have more to say about Screen’s opposition to the kind
22 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

of anti-theoretical, pro-moral value, Leavisite subjectivity that could pro-

mote the possibility of a cinematic canon. More significant in terms of my
criticism that May’s literary approach fails to understand film as a represen-
tational medium is his privileging of the filmmaker as auteur.

The Auteur in Theological Film Criticism: Kreitzer

In its relation to cinema, the term auteur was coined in the 1950s by the
French film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma. Originally it was used evaluatively to
distinguish filmmakers by their creative ability. The term was commonly
reserved for directors like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles, who typically
wrote, acted in, produced and sometimes scored their own films. Later,
Andrew Sarris developed the term, popularizing it into a theory in the
1960s (Sarris [1968]1996). The list of theological critics who depend on
auteur theory is long (for examples, see May and Bird 1982; Marsh and
Ortiz 1997), and they are typical of so much North American film criticism
rooted in Sarris’ version of auteur theory. To expose the weakness of this
argument, and demonstrate my contention that theologians and students
of religion have failed to understand film as a medium of representation,
I will briefly discuss Larry Kreitzer’s redaction critical approach to biblical
studies and film.
A biblical studies interest in film has been a relatively recent development
in theological film criticism. Leaving aside historiographical work (e.g.
Babington and Evans 1993), writers have either attempted an interpretative
dialogue between biblical and filmic themes, or they have looked at filmic
interpretations of Christ (Malone 1990; Baugh 1997; Telford 1997).3 Char-
acteristic of the biblical studies approach is a concern with interpretative
dialogue, summed-up in Robert Jewett’s commitment to treat film and
biblical passage with ‘equal respect’ (Jewett 1993, 7). For his part, Kreitzer
develops the truism that the Bible and biblical themes inform Western
culture, and he extensively demonstrates his thesis that Western cultural
interpretation reinforms biblical hermeneutics (Kreitzer 1993; 1994; 1999).
This ‘reversal of the hermeneutical flow’ means that the interpretation of
biblical texts is inevitably marked by the way in which art objects, culturally
produced, are received. Kreitzer’s approach is an original, if somewhat
unsatisfying attempt at genuine dialogue, an intertextuality that aims to
provide flashes of interpretative insight between texts, biblical, literary and
filmic, to create contemporary midrash (1993, 8). (For his part, Jewett’s
attempts have been less successful in achieving their aim insofar as his
 Literary Interpretations 23

concern with dialogue ‘in a prophetic mode’ continues to privilege the

biblical text.)
Kreitzer is not primarily interested in film, but in the processes of inter-
pretation and the insights to be gained by interpreting biblical texts in the
light of contemporary literature and film. For this reason, he starts from
the premise that there can be a reversing ‘of the flow of influence within
the hermeneutical process’, in such a way as to allow us to re-examine New
Testament passages or themes ‘in the light of some of the enduring expres-
sions of our own culture, namely great literary works and their film adapta-
tion’ (1993, 19).
Kreitzer proposes two elements to his method. First, he makes the gen-
eral observation that the Bible and biblical themes have informed our
culture and its art forms. These art forms have in turn reflected back
interpretations of the biblical themes on which they have drawn, to such a
degree that understanding of those themes has been reinformed. This new
understanding has in turn reinformed culture, new art has been created,
and so the cycle turns on. (Kreitzer’s specific example is Holman Hunt’s
The Light of the World.) In terms of his own strategy, Kreitzer locates his
chosen literary and cinematic art between New Testament texts and our
contemporary setting. In this way, Janus-like, they lubricate the hermeneuti-
cal flow. The second element of Kreitzer’s method is to see cinematic inter-
pretation as a kind of performance of the interpretative process, which he
describes but does not go on to theorize.
If Kreitzer’s strength is his impressive ability to detail the way fiction and
film can inform the process of interpretation, his weakness is that his meth-
odology is unproductive. For example, in his intertextual discussion of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Romans 7, Kreitzer gives an impressively detailed
consideration of the dark side of human nature personified in Mr Hyde.
However, acknowledging that this dark side is read by some as sexual immo-
rality, he somewhat feebly concludes:

Is it too much to suggest that the words in Romans 7, although they almost
certainly will not bear the interpretative weight of sexuality sometimes
thrown upon them, nonetheless do so speak to us of moral struggles that
characterized not only the apostle’s life, but ours as well? (1993, 126)

Kreitzer’s weakness lies in his analytical method. On the one hand, he

appears to suggest a reader-response approach to the texts that moves from
‘facets of our cultural heritage, and then to apply it to our understanding
of the [New Testament] materials’ (1993, 19). On the other hand, his
24 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

meticulous investigation of sources and nuances of adaptation reveals a

redaction critic’s preoccupation with authorial intent, rather than those of
someone treating film qua film.
Responding to my critique (Nolan 1998a, 7–8), Kreitzer asserts: ‘I take it
for granted that a well-grounded understanding of the author’s intent in
producing a piece of literature, however difficult that is to determine, can
contribute significantly to our appreciation of his or her writing’ (Kreitzer
1999, 28). However, against this assertion, the experiments of Russian
Formalist filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov persuasively demonstrate
that cinematic meaning emerges for the spectator in the juxtaposition of
shots in a way that is beyond the control of the director/editor. From 1919,
as an organizer and teacher in the State Film School, Kuleshov began
experimenting with montage. Working under post-Revolutionary econo-
mic constraints,4 with such students as V I Pudovkin and (briefly) Sergei
Eisenstein, Kuleshov discovered and theorised what became known as the
‘Kuleshov effect’: ‘an illusion achieved through time which demonstrated
that the succession of one shot by another would alter the apparent mean-
ing of the component shots’ (Kovacs 1976, 34). Kuleshov detailed a number
of experiments, the most impressive being one he worked on with Pudovkin
(Hill 1967, 8; Kuleshov 1971/72, 114–17). Taking existing footage of the
Russian actor Mosjukhin they selected several close-ups that did not express
any emotion. These ‘quiet close-ups’, which were all similar, were then
joined with other clips of film in different combinations. A first close-up of
Mosjukhin was followed by a shot of a plate of soup standing on a table;
a second was linked with shots of a dead woman in a coffin; finally, a third
close-up was followed by a shot of a little girl playing with a toy bear. What
was surprising was the audience’s reaction to the experiment. Unaware that
the shots of Mosjukhin were all the same,

The public raved about the acting of the artist. They pointed out the
heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched by
the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead woman, and admired
the light, happy smile with which he surveyed the girl at play. But we knew
that in all three cases the face was exactly the same. (Pudovkin 1958, 168)

These early cinematic experiments decisively demonstrate the vanity, typi-

cal of the assertion made by Kreitzer and others, that film could be consid-
ered in terms of authorial intent. They also expose the mistake of ignoring
the insights of film criticism; a mistake shared by many theological critics,
in particular those who insist on treating film as literature, and an approach
 Literary Interpretations 25

that does violence to the integrity of the medium insofar as it fails to under-
stand film as a medium of representation.
It is likely that May is motivated by a concern to establish film as a serious,
academic interlocutor for theology, paralleling literature as worthy of theo-
logical reflection. But if so, his conviction about a literary basis to film only
distorts religious studies’ understanding of the nature of film, albeit in a
different direction to Schrader’s sacramentalist discussion of cinematic
style. If May’s choice of films for theological interpretation is less idiosyn-
cratic than Schrader’s, selecting films that are considered to be faithful to
religious values, this is because he, like Leavis, is concerned with moral
guidance. In privileging the cinematic genius and religious sensibility of
the auteur May, Kreitzer and others make apparent both their lack of engage-
ment with film theory and the limitations of treating film in terms of liter-
ary categories. In short, they exemplify the almost universal failure of the
orthodoxy emerging among religious film analysis to engage with any form
of film theory, and in particular being entirely closed to the psychoanalytic
film theory that I propose can enlighten religious studies’ understanding of
how liturgy operates as a representational medium.

The Missed Point of the Emerging Orthodoxy: Deacy

Christopher Deacy subscribes to what is emerging as established orthodoxy

among religious film analysts. In Deacy, May’s insistence on searching for
cinematic analogue finds form in his interest in the cinematic analogue of
redemption. Deacy’s thesis, that film noir protagonists can be considered as
redeemer-figures – in Deacy’s terms, a ‘functional equivalent of Christ’
(Deacy 2001, 69, 84, 92, passim) – is premised on his position that film offers
one more secular site of religious activity. Consequently, he argues that,
since the ‘overwhelming evidence’ suggests that film is displacing ‘some of
the roles traditionally associated with religious discourse’ (2001, 3), there
are strong grounds for reading films in terms of contemporary redemptive
activity. I will not discuss here the many problems that are associated with
Deacy’s rather confused approach, other than to point out that despite his
assertion that noir justifies a religious reading (2001, 91) the real subject of
Deacy’s discussion is the idiosyncrasy of his own reading, rather than the
film text.
Deacy suggests that to find religious significance in cinema, films should
be read ‘against the grain’. By this he means that eschewing entertainment as
cinema’s raison d’être, those films that challenge ‘the optimistic, life-affirming
26 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

and “magical” spirit of traditional Hollywood cinema’ (2001, 36), such as

film noir, are appropriate candidates for theological or religious reading.
Here he is suggestive of where his analysis would benefit from an engage-
ment with psychoanalytic film theory. Deacy’s point is that it is the reso-
nance of these films in the lives and experiences of their audiences, of the
inherently human experience of the protagonist, ‘that enables such films
to be read in theological terms’ (2001, 10).
Deacy loads his definition of film noir with theological significance, argu-
ing that the genre is engaged ‘in a highly focused and theologically con-
structive fashion with the estranged, disaffected, despairing and fragmentary
quality of human existence from which . . . redemption can ever be a possibi-
lity’ (2001, 37). From this, he describes the existential terrain of noir in
terms of an Augustinian-Lutheran landscape (Augustine’s understanding
of humanity as depraved and prone to sin and eternal damnation mapping
film noir fatalism; Luther’s intrinsic mistrust of human moral decision mak-
ing mapping the moral ambiguity of the noir universe). With the intention
of redefining Christology to fit the unfolding landscape of noir, Deacy charts
a theological trajectory from Augustine (and Pelagius), through Kant and
Schleiermacher, to John Hick and Don Cupitt. Citing selectively he argues
that the direction of post-Enlightenment theologians (Kant, Schleierma-
cher) is away from ‘high’ Alexandrian Christology and towards an Antio-
chene Christology fitted for Hick’s anthropocentric (and arguably
post-Christian) realm of ‘person-making’ theodicy. Deacy’s submission,
then, is that ‘Within the context of this more anthropological approach to
redemption, there is a significant degree to which film noir may feasibly be
construed as a fertile site of redemptive activity’ (2001, 75–6).
Premising his discussion of ‘The [sic] Christian basis of the filmic
redeemer/Christ-figure’ on a contemporary Antiochene Christology, Deacy
argues that recent cinematic portrayals of Christ’s humanity make good the
lack in Apollinarian Christology precisely because ‘the inherently human
aspect of his personality is absolutely essential to the redemptive process’
(2001, 82). Consequently (and ironically), this makes Martin Scorsese’s
Jesus (The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988) ‘theologically acceptable’ since he
is far more Antiochene, ‘more realistic and introspective’, than that of
George Stevens or Nicholas Ray. But his point is that there are ‘enough
discernible, and judicious, parallels between the Christian understanding of
the person of Christ and Scorsese’s noir-orientated protagonist to warrant
an affiliation’ (2001, 88).
And this is where he is most strongly suggestive of the benefits of engage-
ment with psychoanalytic film theory. Arguing that Scorsese delineates his
 Literary Interpretations 27

Christ as an authentically human character, ‘who undergoes a redemptive

experience with his finite human condition’ (2001, 89), Deacy suggests that
it is the audience’s identification with the figure of Jesus that constitutes a
site of potential redemptive activity. His point is that ‘the film may be seen
to “stage this same conflict and victory in the spectator”, wherein the figure
of Jesus becomes, in effect, the paradigm, or model, of that experience’. In
other words, ‘in the spirit of the Antiochene understanding’, Jesus is ‘one
of us’ so we share the redemption he accomplishes.
Although Deacy’s thesis is clear, a key question remains unanswered. As
far as religious film analysis is concerned, his original point concerns audi-
ence identification, in this case, with the noir protagonist, as functional
(and hence redemptive) equivalent, and that this identification constitutes
the site of potential redemptive activity. He is absolutely right to say that ‘If
the film audience was not in some sense a part of the film “text”, we would
be unable to share the experiences of the film protagonist’ (2001, 91–2).
However, Deacy crucially fails to explore the nature of this identification,
taking recourse in the anodyne excuse that the processes by which movies
affect spectators are ‘intellectually elusive’ (2001, 91).
I have no doubt that Deacy is onto something. But choosing, like so many
other religious film analysts, to ignore entirely the kind of film theory that
attempts to understand cinema spectatorship, he misses the point of his
own argument. Consequently, his approach is important only insofar as it is
an example of what currently passes as ‘orthodox’ religious film analysis.
Yet, to retain integrity, interdisciplinary studies like this need to be genu-
inely interdisciplinary, and religious film scholars must struggle to master
both their disciplines equally: film and its theory as well as religion and its
theology. Deacy, like so many others, has not.
Against this, I want to argue that work on religion and film must begin to
understand and work with the ways in which film operates on the spectator.
It is not enough simply to hold the two things up for inspection and think
that the comparison has been established. I will argue that it is precisely in
the area of identification with an ‘other’, insofar as it is allied with narrative
and participation in (ideological) ‘reality’, that the most interesting analy-
sis and interpretations will be found. This is the area at which Deacy hints
but does not venture.
 Chapter 3

Anthropological Interpretations:
Film as Religion

A certain kind of logic can be attributed (if not actually discerned) in the
development of religious film analysis: where it once regarded film as sacra-
mental invitation to participate (Fraser 1988) or as ‘cinematic theology’
(Hurley 1970), some religious film analysts are now arguing that film can,
and indeed should, be seen as religion, as a form religious practice. These
writers have noticed a simple, but obvious paradox, apparent in practically
all writing on film, religious or otherwise, and described by Deacy as ‘the
bizarre situation where it is implicitly recognized that audience interpreta-
tion matters, yet at the same time no serious attempt is made to find out
what an audience is actually thinking vis-à-vis a given film’ (Deacy 2005, 6).
Deacy’s observation signals that religious film analysis is beginning, some-
what belatedly, to catch up with what for most nonreligious film theorists
has been a longstanding interest (Nolan 2003, 177), namely a concern with
how spectators actually consume film. For Lyden and Marsh, the distinctive
of this consumption is that it is religious, so Lyden speaks of ‘how film itself
functions as a religion’ (Lyden 2003, 34), while Marsh writes about the ‘reli-
gion-like function of film’ (Marsh 2004, x).1

Lyden: ‘film itself functions as a religion’

In his book, Lyden ‘seeks . . . a method for understanding film as perform-

ing a religious function’ (Lyden 2003, 3). As such, he views popular films ‘as
phenomena analogous to religions’ (2003, 12), he speaks about ‘the study
of religion as film’ (2003, 12), considers ‘the religious voice of the film’
(2003, 34), and his reoccurring, question begging concern is ‘how film itself
functions as a religion’ (2003, 34). This perspective allows Lyden to make
what is an interesting and certainly original contribution to the ongoing
 Anthropological Interpretations 29

debate about how religion and film can be brought into dialogue. Based
firmly on the principle of heteronomy, Lyden proposes interreligious dia-
logue as a model for dialogue between religion and film: ‘Interreligious
dialogue and study have progressed to the point that scholars seek to
understand the other religion as it understands itself, even though they
know they cannot fully achieve this goal’ (2003, 35).
While this is an original proposal, Lyden hangs a great deal on how he
defines religion.
To that end, Lyden finds the definition developed by anthropologist
Clifford Geertz to be ‘the most helpful and comprehensive one for analyz-
ing religious phenomena’ (2003, 41). According to Geertz’ 1966 definition,

a religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful,
pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formu-
lating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and moti-
vations seem uniquely realistic. ([1966]1973, 90)

Lyden examines these five aspects in turn and, unsurprisingly, locates

each of them in what he terms ‘the religion of film’ (Lyden 2003, 44),
although it is difficult to know whether by this phrase Lyden intends that
individual films equate to individual religions; that film as a genre is a religion;
that the institution of film (i.e. cinema) is a religion; or that film (like religion) is
a cultural system.
Lyden’s analysis becomes interesting when he considers the fourth and
fifth aspects of Geertz’ definition. Noting that ‘there has been almost no
examination of the rituals of filmgoing by which the worldview and ethos of
films are religiously appropriated by the viewer’ (2003, 46), Lyden critiques
Geertz’ failure to understand how Western popular cultural experience
parallels the sort of rituals Geertz observed in Balinese religion. Against
Geertz’ implied assertion that Balinese drama, insofar as it invites audience
participation, is more high mass than theatrical presentation, Lyden argues
that popular films do often invite audience participation:

Had Geertz done an ethnographic study of a midnight showing of the

film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example, he might have had some
appreciation for the ways in which Western popular culture created the
sort of ritual experience that the Balinese have in their religious drama.
As the audience flick their lighters on, throw toast at the screen, or
30 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

respond verbally to the cues in the film, they become part of the story.
This no doubt explains also why people would go to the film over and
over again, as if to a church service, for this ritual experience. (2003, 47)

Lyden concludes that more ethnographic study is needed ‘on the ways
films are experienced, as the tendency has been to treat the film as a “text”
in need of interpretation rather than describing the event of film viewing as
its attendant symbolisms’ (2003, 47).
Clearly, because he is interested in ‘how films function for their audi-
ences’ (2003, 6), ethnography is important to Lyden and, from this per-
spective, using Geertz, a semiotic or symbolic anthropologist engaged in
ethnographic study, is wholly appropriate. The difficulty is that Lyden is
not only confusing but confused.
To begin with, Lyden correctly observes that the debate about how reli-
gion scholars should approach film, a modern example of the classic ‘“prob-
lem” of “religion and culture”’, suffers from the assumption that ‘we pretty
much know what religion is, and what culture is, and [that] we can distin-
guish them without too much difficulty’ (2003, 2). Initially, Lyden signals
he will follow a modified version of May’s approach of autonomy, contend-
ing that ‘there is no absolute distinction between religion and other aspects
of culture’ (2003, 2). However, he immediately undermines his open-
handed position by indicating that he will privilege the religious by apply-
ing categories drawn from religious studies – myth, morals, ritual – to his
work with film: ‘certain aspects of popular culture have a “religious” side to
them’ (2003, 3). As with May, Lyden’s struggle towards autonomy seems too
exhausting and, even more quickly than May, he collapses into heteronomy,
privileging the religious over the nonreligious.
From his assumed premise, Lyden goes on to take religion and film
watching as comparable cultural phenomenon, equally susceptible to
ethnographic study. Wanting to know ‘how films function [religiously] for
their audiences’, Lyden could variously be accused of begging the ques-
tion, importing his conclusions, or assuming the very thing he is inquiring
about, namely ‘how film itself functions as a religion’ (2003, 34, emphasis
added). Yet, this approach is methodologically legitimate for Geertz, who
proposes that ‘Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings,
assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better
guesses’ (Geertz 1973b, 20). This is because the validity of the explanatory
conclusions drawn depends on ‘the power of the scientific imagination to
bring us into touch with the lives of strangers’ (1973b, 16). Lyden seems
persuaded that his guesses are at least as good as, if not better than, those
 Anthropological Interpretations 31

of others, but he seems to give hostage to fortune when, without irony, he

observes that,

Whether past approaches have applauded or critiqued particular films,

they have often looked only for what they wanted to see, and so found
only either what fits with their views or what can provide a convenient
straw man to oppose. (2003, 34)

To be fair, Lyden does acknowledge that he cannot claim his own approach
is free of bias or error. Yet it seems to me that it is highly unlikely that any
unbiased observer would, without prior intent, ever assume film to be a
religion. Lyden, himself, fails to consider how his own particular bias – the
bias of ‘attempting to find the religious voice of the film itself’ (2003, 34) –
might – like the bias of imposing ‘our own theological or ideological frame-
work on the film’ (2003, 34) – lead to misunderstanding about ‘how it [the
film] conveys its message to its viewers and how it functions religiously or
filmically’ (2003, 34).
Lyden is right, and would certainly be supported by Geertz (1973b, 14),
when he argues that, ‘Films are understood and interpreted only in the
context of their actual viewing’ (Lyden 2003, 47). However, despite appeal-
ing to religious film analysts to understand ‘how the average viewer sees it’
(2003, 47), Lyden – besides taking note of box office success and utilizing a
form of ‘the concept of the “implied reader”’ – refers only to ‘some studies
of audiences done by others’ (which are difficult to follow up) and to his
‘own interpretive observations drawn from conversations with students and
other viewers of films who are not professional film theorists’ (2003, 137–8).2
Moving to the fifth aspect of Geertz’ definition, Lyden acknowledges a
certain ambivalence with regard to the value of his authority. While he pro-
poses that Geertz reinforces ‘the idea that religious rituals create a sense of
reality that points to a different way of viewing the world from that provided
by ordinary experience’ (2003, 48), he also acknowledges that Geertz him-
self ‘seemed unwilling to admit the extent to which works of art can create
this alternate sense of reality’ (2003, 48). In fact, Geertz makes a clear dis-
tinction between what he calls ‘the religious perspective’ and other major
perspectives by which ‘men construe the world – the common-sensical, the
scientific, and the aesthetic’ (Geertz [1966]1973, 111). Geertz adds that the
religious perspective differs

from art in that instead of effecting a disengagement from the whole

question of factuality, deliberately manufacturing an air of semblance
32 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

and illusion, it deepens the concern with fact and seeks to create an aura
of utter actuality. ([1966]1973, 112)

Consequently, for Geertz, the religious perspective differs from art –

and by extension film – insofar as it is concerned with a ‘sense of the “really
real” . . . [to] which the symbolic activities of religion as a cultural system
are devoted to producing, intensifying, and, so far as possible, rendering
inviolable by the discordant revelations of secular experience’ ([1966]1973,
112). Lyden rejects this view of the aesthetic perspective in the basis that in
both religion and art (specifically film) ‘the participant enters into such
ritual space in order to experience an alternate reality’ (Lyden 2003, 52).
The difficulty for Lyden is that Geertz’ definition, as a whole, will not
work for him. Lyden wants to understand how film performs a religious
function and, for him, ‘Geertz’ defines religion by its function in human
society, rather than by theological content (e.g., belief in a transcendent
being), but he also avoids the reductionism of many social-scientific defini-
tions’ (Lyden 2003, 41). However, while Geertz’ early interest addressed the
cultural function of religion (Geertz [1966]1973, 123), his real interest,
and his major contribution to anthropology, is semiotic anthropology
(Geertz 1973a, ix). To the extent that Geertz’ definition retains value for
him, as a semiotic anthropological ethnographer, it is in its ability to dem-
onstrate a semiotic concept of culture (Geertz 1973b, 5). In other words, it
would not so much be a question of how films function, religiously or other-
wise, that would interest Geertz, as what might be the cultural meaning
of films. Geertz is less the functionalist Lyden needs him to be and more
the postmodern interpreter (McLoughlin 2001, 106) against whom Lyden
distinguishes his approach.3

Marsh: The ‘religion-like function of film’

Like Lyden, Marsh assumes the ‘religion-like function of film’ (Marsh 2004, x)
premised on his view that the practice of film-watching/cinema-going is
functionally analogous to religious practice.4 From this he considers how
film/film-watching functions in Western culture and discusses the theoreti-
cal and methodological tasks of the theology/religion-film dialogue – in
particular, how films work and how they are received.
To establish his conviction, Marsh uses, among others, J D Crichton’s
definition of worship as, ‘a religious phenomenon, a reaching out through
the fear that always accompanies the sacred to the mysterium conceived as
 Anthropological Interpretations 33

tremendum but also fascinans, because behind it and in it there is an intuition

of the Transcendent’ (Marsh 2004, 30). As such he finds analogy with the
film-watching experience of being ‘taken out of oneself’ and turns to film
theorists Tan and Frijda to explore the role of sentiment in film-watching.
Unconcerned with worship or religious practice, Tan and Frijda aggregate
sentiment to ‘helplessness and submissiveness in the face of the over-
whelming’ (Marsh 2004, 31) and, of the filmic themes Tan and Frijda
regard capable of arousing a sentimental response, Marsh finds the ‘awe-
inspiration’ theme closest to Crichton’s definition. He concludes that ‘Film
fulfils a similar function to worship when it evokes emotions such as those
Tan and Frijda identify’ (2004, 34).
Re-evaluating emotion as part of audience response to film, Marsh links
film-watching and the emotional component of worship to find that ‘The
experience of film-watching . . . supports the importance of reader-response
criticism’ (2004, 36). Finally, to secure his reader-response defence of theo-
logy/religion-film dialogue, Marsh draws on Martin Barker’s notion of
‘pro-filmic theory’, an ‘aggregate of concepts through which we can address
films as constituting imaginative universes’ (2004, 38, citing Barker).
Marsh is attracted by Barker’s pro-filmic emphasis on film’s ‘role in peo-
ple’s lives’ (2004, 38) and moves from Barker’s observation about the need
for ‘procedures for exploring how emotional responses to film might be
structured’ (2004, 39, citing Barker) to assert that this is precisely what the-
ology could supply to film. Marsh concludes: ‘Theology would then func-
tion as a cognitive world in relation to which emotional responses to film
would be structured’ (2004, 39).
Marsh is no doubt right on this point. Theology can indeed provide a
cognitive structuring for emotional responses to film, as it clearly has done
for the many writers who have offered theological/religious readings of
film. However, Marsh himself admits that the present cultural context is
such that organized religion is in decline. (A subtext of the book is Marsh’s
missiological-apologetic use of the theology/religion-film dialogue to cri-
tique the Church’s failure to engage the cinema-going generation.) Conse-
quently, the majority of cinema-goers ignore, if not actually ridicule, the
cognitive structuring theology/religion might provide, while those who
participate in the ‘theology/religion-film dialogue’ are those who are
already persuaded. It is regrettable, then, that Marsh succeeds only in
strengthening the case for the ‘theology/religion-film monologue’.
In large part, this is because he has been unable to move beyond that
most common failing among participants in the theology/religion-film
debate, the very thing that he claims he wants to resist, ‘namely to imply
34 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

that theological meaning is in a film [or in film-watching practice] simply

awaiting the discovery of trained theological interpreters’ (2004, 110).
Marsh has shifted his view since co-editing Explorations in Theology and Film
with Gaye Ortiz (1997), where the quest for cinematic analogues to theo-
logical/religious questions was the cause of several contributors making
this very implication. However, his interest in the ‘religion-like function of
film’ leads him to discover religious analogues in cinematic practices.
Like so many other religious film analysts, Marsh’s problem is methodo-
logical. In considering his analogies he makes one of the pair of possibly
analogous terms the hermeneutic frame through which he interprets the
other. For example, he selects a range of practices he regards as function-
ally typical of ‘religion-type’ behaviour (regular, rhythmic habit; rest and
relaxation; shared experience; special architecture). He then finds func-
tionally analogous practices among cinema-goers and interprets the cinema-
going practice through the frame of typical ‘religion-type’ behaviour. It is
no surprise, then, that he can boldly conclude that ‘cinema-going functions
as an alternative to, or a replacement for, traditional religious activity’
(2004, 6). However, such consistent, uncritical privileging of religion and
religious experience as normative leads Marsh to absurdity, asserting that

more people who watch films are theists of a kind than care to admit it. It
is simply that they have not done enough thinking about God in relation
to a living tradition of God-talk to bring their feelings, beliefs and thought
into some sort of coherent shape. (2004, 10)

But on this logic, it is not unreasonable to conclude that more people who
practise religion are atheists of a kind, it simply that they have done too much
thinking about God in relation to a living tradition of God-talk.
Marsh is right to shift his attention to the film-watching experience, and
in particular to attend to emotional (sentimental) or subjective responses
to film. He is also right to give more attention to the role of film theory.
However, his weakness is in not giving film theory enough attention. So,
while he acknowledges my insistence that theologians attempt a more sus-
tained interaction with film theory (Nolan 2003, 177), he chooses to dismiss
the perspective of psychoanalytic film theory on the grounds that ‘such film
theory is itself under severe challenge from within the world of film studies’
(Marsh 2004, 88). Rejecting ‘Screen theory’, Marsh relies on film critics and
film analysts informed by ‘post-theory’ (Bordwell and Carroll 1996).
Marsh appears to adopt this position on the basis that post-theory
approaches are necessarily more empirical in that they look ‘at what films
 Anthropological Interpretations 35

actually do, rather than what is in them and what it is assumed they should
do’ (Marsh 2004, 119). Underwriting his position is his (in my view correct)
intention to resist the ‘ever-present tendency in theology to gravitate
towards “real art”, as if popular culture has little to offer theology’ (2004,
118–19). As he puts it, ‘There is a disturbing suspicion of the popular’
(2004, 83). To this end – with reference to Freidrich Schleiermacher, the
‘theologian of feeling’ – he emphasizes the affective and suggests a more
positive role for sentimentality, both in film and theology.
In fact, Marsh is in accord with early film-theologians like Neil Hurley
who shared a similar missiological-apologetic intent to re-engage a cinema-
going generation alienated from the Church. For his part, Marsh is con-
cerned about a generation which recognizes the importance of the affective
aspect of life, and for whom ‘spirituality is seen as a good thing’, yet who
decline the religion which might provide assistance ‘in the cognitive struc-
turing of emotions’ (2004, 39). For Marsh, doing theology through film in
part provides some of that cognitive structuring such that he asserts ‘The
experience of film-watching is an exercise in spirituality’ (2004, 122).
All this, however, comes very close to making assumptions about what
films should do, rather than looking at what they actually do, and appears to
belie the empiricism Marsh assumes for post-theory.
Marsh’s disagrees with what he sees as my ‘preference for screen theory
as theology’s conversation-partner’ on the basis that he thinks it leads me
‘to major on theology’s aesthetic dimension’ while his ‘interest in viewer
response leads [him] to emphasize the emotional dimension’ (Marsh 2004,
131). He also objects that ‘participants in the theology/religion-film debate
who highlight aesthetics will be more drawn to art-house films, whilst those
who are interested in films’ emotional impact will work more with popular
films’ (2004, 131).
Yet Marsh has not understood the Screen theorists, or how their insights
might be significant for theology/religious studies. The Screen theorists
were deeply interested in the pleasures audiences derived from watching
film. They used semiotics, ideology and psychoanalysis to explore how audi-
ences consume and are shaped by popular Hollywood cinema. My own
work has been entirely with popular Hollywood cinema, looking at the Alien
cycle (Nolan 1998b) and the films of Robin Williams (Nolan 1998c), and
I have used Screen theory to develop an interpretative frame with which to
examine Hollywood representation and audience response (Nolan 2005),
which I will develop in the final chapter of this book.
The strength of Lyden and Marsh, and their attempts to lift the theology
through film project out of the trap of seeking cinematic analogues into
36 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

which much of it has fallen, is in their focus on how audiences consume

film, a move echoed by Deacy (2005). The emphasis of these writers may
appear quite close to my own emphasis on the consumption of representa-
tion (Nolan 2003). However, there are at least three important differences
between us.
First, these writers find the practices of church-going and film-watching
functionally analogous and they are prepared to be categorical in their
assertions about ‘film as religion’: ‘If popular films do function as religion,
as this study claims . . .’ (Lyden 2003, 31); ‘The experience of film-watching
is an exercise in spirituality’ (Marsh 2004, 122). On the other hand, my
approach identifies functional parallels on the basis that I regard liturgy
and film as representational media.
Second, both Lyden and Marsh dismiss, almost without consideration,
the theoretical insights of the Screen problematic (Lyden 2003, 27–35; Marsh
2004, 123–31). For my part, I want to work critically with these insights and
use them to understand the operations of both liturgy and film.
Third, most writers on religion and film resolutely privilege religion over
film. Lyden is unexceptional. Whereas others, such as May and Johnston,
argue that films should be treated in their own terms yet succumb to a
version of Eliot’s ‘Christian Discrimination’ (aiming for autonomy they fall
into heteronomy), Lyden wants to return to autonomy, arguing that reli-
gion is one cultural phenomenon among many the relationship of which is
recognized as ‘religious’ and ‘nonreligious’ and between which ‘no abso-
lute distinction’ (Lyden 2003, 2) can be made. Consequently, the ‘tendency
to label certain sorts of activities as “religious” chiefly [arises] because they
fall into the patterns that we recognize from religions with which we are
familiar’ (2003, 2). However, Lyden proposes that engagement between
religion and film, ‘will be most readily accomplished by granting that cer-
tain aspects of popular culture have a “religious” side to them’ (2003, 3).
So, while for Lyden autonomy may mean that the ‘nonreligious’ can become
‘religious’, the traffic is non-reversible, the ‘religious’ does not become
‘nonreligious’; in other words, Lyden’s autonomy (like May’s) has all the
characteristics of Eliot’s heteronomy. In contrast, my approach aims to
regard both religion and film with equal suspicion (heteronomy).
I will amplify these differences in what follows, demonstrating the paral-
lels between liturgy and film on the basis that they are representational
media and outlining in greater detail the theoretical insights of the Screen
problematic.
 Part Two

Representation in Liturgy
and Film
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction to Part Two

There can be no doubt that liturgy and film are demonstrably different
media. For example, whereas commonsense assumes a certain objectivity to
the photographic image, largely because a photograph is understood to be
‘formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man’ (Bazin
[1945]1967, 13), the iconography of religious images and statues, and the
poetics of religious liturgies, are self-evidently works of creative human
imagination. On this basis, liturgical representation cannot possibly be con-
sidered in any way realistic, and my assertion that liturgy and film can be
paralleled as media of representation cannot, therefore, be sustained.
However, it is not my intention to work from the commonsense assump-
tion, which was given theoretical formulation by Bazin, but rather from a
perspective developed in the cinesemiotics of Christian Metz. I will discuss
Bazin and Metz in more detail in Chapter 5. It is enough here to note that
Bazin was confronted by a paradox, namely the ontological relation of cin-
ematic realism to its object via an artistic medium whose genius is the illu-
sion of reality, and that this paradox was addressed, more or less successfully,
by Metz’ distinction between the capacity of cinema to both denote and
connote (to show and suggest). Metz’ contribution is important insofar as
he shifts theoretical interest away from a preoccupation with surface real-
ism and towards discussions about ‘signifying practice’.1 As will become
clear, while Bazin articulates an unproblematic, referential theory of repre-
sentation (concerned with what is signified), Metz’ interest in the nature of
cinematic language offers a semiotic theory of representation (concerned
with the operations of the signifier). Metz’ shift from denotation to conno-
tation is a shift from reference towards signification, and had the effect of
reorienting the field of film theory.
The inability of liturgists and theologians to liturgically parallel Metz’
semiological distinction has, at times, had bloody consequences, for exam-
ple, the great iconoclast controversy (eighth and ninth centuries CE).
Although iconoclasts and iconophiles developed their diverging theoreti-
cal positions from a common view that an image is in some way related to
or derived from a prototype, iconoclast emperor Constantine V (d. 775)
40 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

extended this definition and asserted that a genuine image was ‘identical in
essence with that which it portrays’, a reference to orthodox Trinitarian
formula (Pelikan 1978, 109). In this sense Christ denotes ‘the image [eikon]
of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1.15), and consequently any other image,
insofar as it could not be ‘identical in essence’ was necessarily false. Under-
standably, then, the only authentic image allowed by iconoclasts was the
Eucharist.2 Rejecting the notion of an identity of essence, iconophiles, like
Theodore of Studios3 and John of Damascus,4 argued that ‘By nature Christ
is one thing, and the image of Christ is another, and yet there is an identity
because they are called the same’ and that an image was ‘a likeness that
characterises the prototype in such a way that it also maintains some distinc-
tion from it’ (Pelikan 1978, 119). In arguing for a distinction between ‘like-
ness and identity’ against the definition of ‘identical in essence’ it is possible
to see how Metz’ distinction would have helped the iconophiles to more
effectively answer the iconoclasts’ referential approach with consideration
of iconographic signification.
Another difference between liturgy and film is in terms of the ‘realities’
each represents (signifies). There is recognition, even among realist film
theorists like Bazin, that the genius of cinema is its ability to create an
‘impression of reality’ as a psychological effect of its images. Over against
this, the reality described in and through liturgy can be taken as referring
to a metaphysical ‘reality’. I am cautious here of becoming embroiled in a
set of philosophical debates that would go far beyond the scope of this
book. However, given the extent to which liturgical and cinematic discourse
speak freely about ‘reality’, it is impossible to avoid the term altogether. For
the purpose of my argument, I will take ‘reality’ to mean those (differing)
realities signified by liturgy and film. (My use of ‘reality’ in this way will
reflect Lacan’s use of the term to mean a form of socially constructed
reality.)5 The point I want to argue from this is that, as signifying practices,
these ‘realities’ are experienced by individuals in ways other than aestheti-
cally. My argument is that individuals, as worshippers and spectators, in some
way become participants in the realities represented by liturgy and film.
Here again differences between the two media come in to focus. As will
become clear, liturgical discourse is familiar with the concept of participa-
tion, specifically, participation in the Eucharist. By this it is understood
that during the Anamnesis, the Eucharistic prayer of remembrance, wor-
shippers participate in ‘the sacrifice of the cross’: a present participation
by the faithful in Christ’s historic sacrifice, affected in relation to liturgical
representation.
 Introduction to Part Two 41

The actual nature of such mystical participation may be open to debate.

However, I will argue that, as a signifying practice, Eucharistic liturgical
representation operates to install worshippers as participants in the ‘reality’
of Episcopal/ecclesial authority. My point will be that, in relation to the
signifying practice of liturgical representation (specifically, the priest in per-
sona Christi and in nomine totius populi), worshippers participate in Episcopal/
ecclesial ‘reality’; in other words, they participate or ‘live as’ subjects of
Episcopal/ecclesial ideology.6 In terms of my assertion about liturgy and
film, I will argue that the ideological operations of liturgy are better under-
stood in terms of the analytical categories developed by film theory. I will
ague that, in ways paralleling cinematic representation, liturgy operates as
a signifying practice to connote a context within which worshippers partici-
pate (‘live as’ subjects) in a particular ‘reality’.
For Screen, the concept of ‘signifying practice’ has value insofar as it con-
tributes to uncovering the strategies by which cinematic realism makes
‘what appears on the screen self-evident and natural, a “truth”’ (Screen 1972,
3): what Terry Eagleton terms ideological strategies of ‘universalising’ and
‘naturalising’ (Eagleton 1991, 45). I will use the term ‘liturgical subjectivity’
to parallel directly ‘cinematic subjectivity’, not because I regard the content
of the subjectivities to be the same, but because I am arguing for a parallel
between the operation of liturgical and cinematic representation as signi-
fying practices that connote a context in which individuals participate as
subjects in an ideological ‘reality’.
I want, therefore, in Part Two, to argue that the parallels between liturgy
and film can be made around three heads, insofar as each invites its con-
stituency to: identify with an other; be ‘stitched’ (or sutured) into a nar-
rative; and ultimately to participate in a ‘reality’ that is always already
ideological.7
I will begin by considering aspects of liturgical representation that can
be paralleled with film. In Chapter 4, I will argue that it is identification
with priestly representation, the liturgical ‘other’, that stitches worshippers
into the sacramental narrative of the Cross and that ultimately enables
participation in the ideological ‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority.
I will discuss the sacramental narrative of the Cross as the narrative into
which worshippers are ‘stitched’ and I will argue that this liturgical invita-
tion to identify with an other and be ‘stitched’ into a salvific narrative results
in worshippers becoming participants in the liturgical ‘reality’ of Episcopal/
ecclesial ideology/authority. In Chapter 5, I will parallel this movement
of liturgical identification by considering the spectator’s identification
42 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

with the film star/hero as the cinematic ‘other’. I will discuss the ‘regular-
guy-overcoming-the-extraordinary-situation’ narrative into which spectators
are joined and show how this leads to the spectator’s participation in the
ideological ‘reality’ of Hollywood realism.
 Chapter 4

Liturgical Representation: ‘others’, Narratives

and Ideological ‘realities’

The centrality of the Eucharist to Roman Catholic theology and spirituality

is without question. The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962–65) and
its subsequent post-conciliar commentaries reaffirmed the overriding
importance attached to the ‘sacrifice of the Mass’. For example, spelling
out the implications of the reforming council’s thinking on sacred liturgy,
the commentary Eucharisticum Mysterium states: ‘The mystery of the Eucha-
rist is the true centre of the sacred liturgy and indeed of the whole Christian
life’ (EM, 1). This point is underlined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The Eucharist is the heart and summit of the Church’s life, for in it Christ
associated his Church and all her members with his sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving offered once for all upon the cross to his Father. (CCC, 1407)

This strong assertion of the centrality of the Eucharist arises from the
belief that it represents a participation in ‘the sacrifice of the cross’, and that,

As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which ‘Christ our Pasch is sacri-
ficed’ (1 Cor. 5.7) is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption
is carried out. (LG, 3)

In underlining the singular importance of the liturgy and Eucharistic

celebration, Roman Catholic catechesis stresses that the object of the Eucha-
rist, ‘the sacrament of all sacraments’ (CP, 326), is union with Christ (ES,
25). As such, the Eucharist is viewed as a very present participation in the
sacrifice of Christ, the sacramental narrative, in which the people, in and
through the liturgical action, share in ‘the mystery of salvation, present and
active . . . [and thereby] save themselves and their brethren’ (EP, 19). To
this end, it is the priest’s representative action, especially during the prayer
44 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

of remembrance, the Anamnesis, praying ‘in the person of Christ’ and ‘in
the name of the entire holy people’ (SC, 33; LG, 10; EM, 12; MS, 14; CP 7),
through which the laity participates in Christ.
Immediately, the three heads – identification with an other; stitching
(suturing) into a narrative; and participation in ideological ‘reality’ –
become more or less apparent. The object of the Eucharist is union with
Christ through the representative action of the priest (as the liturgical
‘other’), through identification with whom the laity participate in the sacra-
mental narrative of Christ’s sacrifice, ‘the mystery of salvation, present and
active’. Slightly less obvious here is the nature of the ideological ‘reality’ that
is Episcopal/ecclesial authority. However, a fuller understanding of priestly
representation and the priest’s catechetical and pastoral duties will clarify
the ideological ‘reality’ into which liturgical subjects are led to participate.

The Liturgical ‘other’: Priestly Representation

Within the Roman Catholic tradition, priestly duties are explicitly directed
towards the ‘formation of the faithful’. I will draw out the implications of
this when I consider worshipers’ participation in the ideological ‘reality’ of
Episcopal/ecclesial authority below, but for now it is important to recog-
nize that pastors of souls are intended to act as the primary reference
against which lay identification is calibrated.
Specifically, it is the priest’s duty to ‘promote the liturgical instruction of
the faithful and also their active participation, both internal and external . . .
and in this matter they must lead their flock not only by word but also by
example’ (SC, 19, emphasis added). The priest is the one who, through the
mix of liturgical, pastoral and catechetical duties, instructs the faithful in
the dynamics of the liturgy: it is through his words and actions that they
learn about his representative function – representing both Christ (in per-
sona Christi) and the people (in nomine totius populi); and it is on the basis of
his instruction that the faithful ‘associate . . . with [the priest] in offering
the sacrifice to God the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit’ (CP, 60).
In other words, the priest encourages the people to identify themselves with
him in order to participate through active remembering in the Anamnesis,
the Eucharistic prayer of remembrance. And to facilitate this, it is incum-
bent on the priest to minimize the intrusion of the particularity of his per-
son into the performance of his Eucharistic duties (CP, 313; EP, 11, 17).
The set of identifications encouraged is complex. To begin with, the
priest instructs the laity about Christ. Predicated on a high Christology,
 Liturgical Representation 45

drawn from the historic creeds, the instruction deals with Christ’s participa-
tion in the Being of the Father; his creation of all things; his incarnation
and virgin-birth; his life and teaching, betrayal and sacrificial death; his
resurrection; his ascension and reign in glory as Lord; his second advent
and judgement; and his unending kingdom (CCC, 430–682).
Having established the nature of Christ, the priest also instructs the laity
concerning his own representative function, namely, that he is (signifies)
for them in persona Christi. The representative function of the priest is based,
primarily, in the celebration of the Eucharist. In that place the priest is not
merely a stand-in for Christ, but by virtue of his Holy Orders, he has been
‘configured [configurantur] to Christ’ (PO, 2, 12; CCC, 1581).1
The language of ‘configuration’, and (elsewhere) of ‘indelible character’,2
confuses priestly representation with the issue of ontology. Commenting
on Presbyterorum ordinis, Wulf, Cordes and Schmaus cautiously criticize the
Council’s decree for stressing character over calling. Locating priestly con-
secration as rooted in the fundamental consecration of baptism, they
prefer to steer clear of ontology, and argue instead the need to translate
the ‘profound speculation of high scholasticism into personal categories’
(Vorgrimler 1969, 267–8). Despite this tentative criticism, the relationship
between priest and Christ continues to be understood as a qualitative
association or identification, be it in character or calling. The point is that,
by virtue of his ordination, the priest enjoys a qualitative association by
which he also ‘possesses the power to offer sacrifice in the person of Christ’
(CP, 60).
Whether or not this represents ontological change, the idea that Holy
Orders somehow re-defines (or re-configures) the priest as Christ’s repre-
sentation remains strong. Through consecration to God in ordination,
priests ‘are made the living instruments of Christ the eternal priest [in a way
which, through the language of ontology, effectively surpasses mere instru-
mentality] . . . . Since every priest in his own way assumes the person of
Christ he is endowed with a special grace’ (PO, 12). It appears, then, that,
even if the charism associated with priesthood is extended to him structur-
ally (by association with the priestly office) the priest’s association with
Christ is such that he possesses the charism as a personal attribute.
What is clearly significant is that this identification is not understood to
obtain between laity and Christ. For, while they may be a priestly people
sharing the ‘common priesthood’ in Christ’s priestly ministry (LG, 10; CP,
62; CCC, 901–3), the difference of calling between priest and laity is such
that, even if the demands of perfection (the standard of identification with
Christ) are bracketed out, the representative function of the ‘ministerial or
46 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

hierarchical priesthood’ (LG, 10) is unidirectional: it is the priest, and only

ever the priest, who acts in persona Christi as Christ’s representation.
The incarnational hierarchy is such that, as Christ is understood to incar-
nate and mediate the divine and the human, so the priest is understood to
incarnate and mediate the Christic and the human. In other words, as well
as representing Christ, the priest represents the people: the sacrifice he
offers and the prayers he prays (excepting those he prays silently for his
own needs) are offered in nomine totius populi (SC, 33; MS, 14; LG, 10). His
voice may be the voice of God, but it is spoken in the accent of the people
(EP, 8). Priestly duty requires the pastors of souls to ‘associate the people
with himself’ (CP, 60), by being good shepherds who are willing to give
their life for the sheep (PO, 13). Priests must teach the faith, preach the
Word, challenge the heretics; minister to the poor and the sick; and count
themselves as ‘brothers among brothers as members of the same Body of
Christ which all are commanded to build up’ (PO, 9).
Priestly representation is, then, Janus-like. In persona Christi, the priest
faces the people and represents Christ; in nomine totius populi, the priest
faces Christ and represents all the people. Like a screen of smoke in a son et
illuminaire, he supports and reflects back the various representations pro-
jected onto him in the Eucharist: Christic and ethnic, transcendent and
mundane, merge into the representation of an incarnational, atemporal
Gestalt; a semiotic incarnation.
Understood in this way, priestly representation can be seen to have close
association with Eucharistic sacramental theology of ‘real presence’, a con-
cept that substantially shapes the worshipper’s Eucharistic participation in
Episcopal/ecclesial (ideological) ‘reality’. Post-conciliar commentary makes
explicit that Christ’s Eucharistic presence is multilayered (hierarchical),
and the principal forms are manifested progressively:

First, he is present in the assembly of the faithful gathered together in his

name; then he is present in his word when the Scriptures are read in the
church and explained; likewise he is present in the person of the priest; finally
and above all he is present under the eucharistic species. (ES, 6, emphasis
added; EM, 9; ARCIC-ED, 7)3

To be explicit, in persona Christi the priest represents (or signifies) Christ,

and thereby makes him present.
The concept of the ‘real presence of Christ our Lord under the Eucharis-
tic species’ (CP, 3), makes the essentially hierarchical nature of liturgical
representation acutely apparent. The point is that ‘real’ presence, brought
 Liturgical Representation 47

about by a ‘conversion of the inner reality (or “substance”) of the bread

and wine into the inner reality of the body and blood of Christ’ (OBOB,
50),4 embodied in and affected through priestly representation, evinces the
fundamentally, explicitly and self-consciously hierarchical nature of the
Church (LG, 18–29). Now the priest, signifier of Christ, is also signifier of
Episcopal/ecclesial authority. All that the priest is, in function and charism,
office and essence (EM, 11; LI, 4), is regarded as gifted by the Holy Spirit,
via the Church (LG, 7). The Spirit bestowed charismata onto the apostles
and their representatives, the bishops; then, successively, through the bish-
ops onto the priests (LG, 20, 22). The mystical, hierarchical connections
are such that the priest not only represents the bishop, but, as with Christ,
he actually makes ‘him present in the assemblies of the faithful’ (PO, 5). In
fact, the priest’s ability to make Christ present is derivative; since it is the
bishops who most fully represent Christ to the people (LG, 21), it is their
voice that intones most clearly in the accent of Christ (LG, 20). Again, it is
Episcopal authority that legitimates Eucharistic celebration (LG, 26), and it
is the bishops, functioning collegially, who are united with the Roman Pon-
tiff, the Vicar of Christ, and are the supreme governors of the Church (LG,
22). For this reason, it is the priest’s duty to submit to that hierarchy, and to
foster the ‘formation of the faithful’ who will also submit to the hierarchy.
In Chapter 8, I will return to priestly representation insofar as it is impli-
cated in the ‘stitching together’ of religious identity. For now it is enough
to establish that as a key element of liturgical representation the priest is
offered to the laity as the focus for their identification. As far as the parallel
between liturgy and film is concerned, I will indicate below how liturgical
identification with the priest can be compared with cinematic identification
with film stars. I will argue that the priestly capacity to represent Christ in
persona Christi is in fact connotative, that he makes Christ present insofar as
he connotes Christ. Before that, I must consider the liturgical narrative into
which worshippers are invited to ‘stitch’ (or suture) themselves, in particu-
lar the sacramental narrative of the Cross.

Sacramental Narrative of the Cross

Although I am again cautious of entering a set of debates that would take

me beyond the scope of this study, before I explore anamnesis, I need to
comment on my working definition of sacrament. As I am not in this chap-
ter primarily concerned with the nature of what may lie behind the sacra-
mental symbol, it will be enough here for me to note that I am adopting
48 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Joseph Martos’ functional definition (which is in turn based on the work of

Mircea Eliade) that, ‘sacraments . . . function as “doors to the sacred,” that
is, as invitations to religious experiences’ (Martos 1981, 17).
Behind Martos’ definition is an antipathy towards those forms of patristic
and scholastic sacramental theology, influenced by Hellenistic categories,
which he regards as responsible for ‘a purely metaphysical and even a magi-
cal understanding of the sacraments’ (Martos 1981, 40). Augustine’s defini-
tion of sacrament as the sign of something sacred5 distinguished between
the sacrament as sign (sacramentum) and the reality of the sacrament (res
sacramenti). This view held general assent until, in the eleventh century,
Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) sparked a dispute by denying the real presence
of the ‘body of Christ’ in the Eucharist.6 In effect, Berengar challenged the
objectivity of the sign, adopting a position against the idea that a sign could
be the same as the reality it signified. To this either/or Berengar’s opponents
proposed a both/and (Leeming 1956, 253). Against Berengar, Hugh of St
Victor (d. 1141) posited the ‘first significant presentation of a doctrine of
the sacraments’ in a threefold view the sacrament as: the res, the facta, and
the verba (Auer 1995, 28). In the thirteenth century, High Scholasticism
brought a further development applying Aristotelian concepts to sacramen-
tal theology, thus while Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) continued to interpret
the Augustinian formula elementum et verbum in the general sense of materia
et forma, Hugh of St Cher (d. 1263) was the first to use the conceptual pair
in the hylomorphic7 sense of Aristotelian philosophy: ‘The words, seen as
form, are for the element and the action, seen as matter, not only a deter-
minant but also the very cause of the reality of the sacrament’ (Auer 1995,
29). Martos concludes that, with Hugh, the subjectivity of New Testament
personal and communal categories became objective and metaphysical;
the sign and the reality it signifies, the sacramentum et res, were now one and
the same:

The fathers spoke about sacraments primarily in objective, metaphysical

terms since that was the manner of speaking which their philosophical
tradition demanded. So later generations came to understand sacramen-
tal practices primarily as signs of unseen metaphysical realities such as
changes in one’s soul or in one’s spiritual relation to God and other
Christians. (1981, 59)

Significantly, the ‘image of his body’, the liturgical representation of Christ,

was now understood to have taken on his reality. In the same way that icono-
clastics like Constantine V implied a metaphysics of presence in regarding
 Liturgical Representation 49

the Eucharist as the image of Christ, so there is a similar metaphysics of

presence implied in the sacramental theology developed in High Schola-
sticism: the representation of Christ is at the same time his metaphysical
reality made present.
Metaphysical Scholastic sacramental theology represents authorized
Roman teaching prior to Vatican II.8 However, since the reforming council
the metaphysical tradition of sacramental theology has been reinterpreted,
notably in relational terms. For example, Edward Schillebeeckx and Karl
Rahner, both influential in the formulations of the Council, interpreted
the sacraments through Thomist theological categories and phenomeno-
logical–existentialist paradigms.9 Thus, Rahner’s sacramental theology is
intimately dependant on his Christology and ecclesiology, and his reinter-
pretation in terms of Heideggerian Thomism (McCool 1975, xx) is mod-
elled on a conception of human existence as a symbolic activity. For Rahner,
Christ is the historical incarnation of the grace of God, such that one can
point to a ‘visible, historically manifest fact, located in space and time, and
say, Because that is there, God is reconciled to the world. There the grace
of God appears in our world of time and space’ (Rahner 1963, 15). Christ
is the ‘spatio-temporal sign that effects what it points to . . . [the] reality and
sign, sacramentum and res sacramenti, of the redemptive grace of God’ (1963,
15). For its part, the Church ‘socially and juridically organised’ (1963, 13),
is the ‘continuance, the contemporary presence, of that real, eschatologi-
cally triumphant and irrevocably established presence in the world, in
Christ, of God’s salvific will’ (1963, 18). In short, the Church is ‘the real
symbol through which the Incarnate Word expresses himself in human
history’ (McCool 1975, 278). As such, the Church is the fundamental sacra-
ment ‘always and unchangeably the sign which brings with it always and
inseparably what it signifies’ (Rahner 1963, 19), and so provides the theo-
logical substructure for the so-called seven visible sacraments. Thus, just as
the hypostatic union of divine and human natures, the Christological sign
and reality, is understood to be inseparable yet ‘without confusion’, so in
the Church ‘manifest historical form and Holy Spirit, are not the same’
(1963, 19), and the sacramental duality of sign and signified, sacramentum
and res sacramenti, is similarly understood (1963, 34). Rahner’s Heidegge-
rian Thomist reinterpretation may not represent the return from meta-
physics to metaphor that Martos would like. However, it is a move from a
metaphysics of presence towards a type of metaphysics of relation.
Martos rightly draws the boundaries of the debate about sacramental
reality around contrasting positions regarding sacramental language. On the
one side, sacramental language is regarded as a theological truth statement
50 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

about an objective, if invisible, metaphysical effect caused by receiving the

sacrament; while on the other side, sacramental language is understood as
a metaphorical description for a particular subjective religious experience,
the experience of sacramental reality. In essence, these distinctions repre-
sent a recasting of the iconoclast debates, which were concerned, on the
one side, with representation of reference (preoccupied with the signified)
and, on the other side, with a representation of signification (preoccupied
with the signifier). In Metzian terms, this is the distinction between denota-
tion and connotation, and Martos’ functional definition, in which the sac-
rament signfies something sacred, is clearly connotative and extends an
invitation to the worshipper to participate in sacramental reality.
Key to participation in the sacramental narrative is the notion of anamne-
sis. Rooted in Jewish faith and practice (Dix 1945; Jeremias 1966; Bouyer
1968; Gregg 1976), the idea was established very early in Christian theology,
notably in the Pauline-Lucan tradition of Jesus’ command to repeat the
Eucharistic ritual as a memorial: ‘Do this in remembrance [Greek anamne-
sis] of me’ (1 Cor. 11.23–6; Lk. 22.15–20).10
As I have indicated, Roman Catholic catechesis puts heavy emphasis on
the singular importance of the liturgy, and in particular on Eucharistic cel-
ebration. This celebration is the action of the Church (EM, 3(c); SC, 47),
and within it the laity have a clearly defined place that is intended to be
substantial. While the priest is acting in persona Christi and in nomine totius
populi, the faithful are not to be ‘silent spectators’ (SC, 48); their ‘perfect
participation in the liturgy’ qualifies them to ‘receive the divine life abun-
dantly’ (IO, 8; MS, 5; CP, 3, 14), and the laity’s minimum of active participa-
tion is constituted responsively in terms of acclamations and replies to the
priest’s greetings and presidential prayers (CP, 14). However, and more
substantially, while the priest acts to consecrate the bread and wine,

the role of the faithful in the Eucharist is to recall the passion, resurrec-
tion and glorification of the Lord . . . to offer the immaculate victim not
only through the hands of the priest, but also together with him; and . . .
to perfect that communion with God and among themselves which
should be the product of participation in the sacrifice of the mass. (EM,
12, emphasis added)

Anamnesis, then can be understood in terms of active remembering.11

Protestant biblical scholar, Brevard Childs, in his study of the Semitic con-
cept of memory, offers an account of active memory in terms of ‘actualiza-
tion’, which he borrows from Heidegger.12 Childs argues that, while the
 Liturgical Representation 51

experience recalled by later generations of Israelites was not that of their

own psychological memory, the important point is that through the memo-
rial (Hebrew: zkr) they nevertheless participated in the flow of a tradition,
thereby making it theologically present and, in this theological sense, their
own. Thus,

The act of remembering serves to actualize the past for a generation

removed in time from those former events in order that they themselves
can have an intimate encounter with the great acts of redemption.
Remembrance equals participation. (1962, 56)

Childs defines this internalizing process of ‘actualization’ as ‘the process

by which a past event is contemporized for a generation removed in time
and space from the original event’ (1962, 85). Rejecting any association of
‘actualization’ with myth, as in the mythopoeic re-enactment of sacred
drama, or history, as in the cultic recital of the historic acts of redemption,
Childs interprets ‘actualization’ biblically as ‘a concept which shares fea-
tures of both yet exhibits a unique character of its own’ (1962, 83). Childs
argues that Israel’s liturgical conception of history is characterized theo-
logically by what he terms ‘redemption time’: a time in which a redemptive
event, for example the Exodus, continues to reverberate in the lives of suc-
cessive generations. In ‘redemption time’ this event is seen as the action of
a God standing outside time whose actions are, consequently, eternally
present. Thus, when Israel remembers and participates in cultic activity, for
example the Passover, the past event is actualized in the present moment.
For Israel, this was no ‘mere subjective reflection, but in the biblical cat-
egory, a real event occurred as the moment of redemptive time from the
past initiated a genuine encounter in the present’ (1962, 84). This said,
Childs equivocates on the subjective nature of ‘redemption time’, and
argues it is only correct to speak of an actualization of a past event in terms
of memory: ‘Only in relation to Israel’s memory is the problem to contem-
porize past tradition’ (1962, 75). Indeed, he is explicit that ‘actualization’
is contingent on the subjective psychological process of identification:
‘Actualization occurs when the worshipper experiences an identification
with the original events’ (1962, 82). In short, Childs is suggesting that in
the activity of cultic remembrance, the subjective psychological process of
identification coincides with a theological perspective of time to affect the
‘actualization’ of religious experience.13
If anamnesis is the active remembering by which the faithful participate
in the sacramental narrative, then their participation as subjects is, in every
52 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

sense, subjective: subjectively recalling in such a way as to become (ideo-

logical) subjects of Episcopal/ecclesial authority. To facilitate this, the ‘pas-
tors of souls’ have a duty ‘to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of
what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite and enriched by it’ (SC, 11).
It is for this reason that the priest is charged with providing the kind of
liturgical focus that will promote an active, anamnetic participation that is
both ‘internal and external’ (IO, 19).
The point is that by actively remembering in the Anamnesis the people
become participants in the sacramental narrative that recalls Christ’s saving
activity. Thus, the Mass begins with the priest’s penitential invitation and
the people’s response:

Celebrant: Let us call to mind our sins

People: I confess to almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned
through my own fault . . .
(CTS 1998, 5, emphasis added)

With these words worshippers publicly and unambiguously situate them-

selves as being in need of personal forgiveness. After the Absolution the now
cleansed community hears the Word of God before rehearsing the salvation
narrative in the recitation of the Nicene Creed (the ‘I’ now become ‘We’).

People: We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ. . . .

For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven. . . .
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
(CTS 1998, 11, 13)

Later, in the Eucharistic Prayer (just prior to the Anamnesis) the congrega-
tion proclaims the mystery of faith:

Celebrant Dying you destroyed our death

and People: rising you restored our life.
Lord Jesus, come in glory.
(CTS 1998, 23)
 Liturgical Representation 53

By these and similar words, the worshipping community joins itself into
the salvation narrative, not as a passive audience to a liturgical theatre, but
as participants. Having identified as sinners in need of forgiveness; having
identified as those in whose place Christ died; and having identified as
the recipients of Christ’s resurrection life, the worshippers are now active
players in the drama of the salvation narrative.
Fundamental to their participation is the belief that Christ is present in
the Eucharistic species (SC, 7). This is a presence conceived to be outside
the limitations of time and space – an eternal presence, independent of the
correct liturgical activity on whose efficacy it is predicated, since in liturgi-
cal celebration ‘something more is required than the laws governing valid
and lawful celebration’ (SC, 11) – but which is palpably embodied and
signified in and through priestly representation.
The key theological notion here is that it is at the memorial meal that
Christ himself, through the liturgical action of his representative, the priest,
‘perpetuates in an unbloody manner the sacrifice offered on the cross,
offering himself to the Father for the world’s salvation’ (EM, 3(c); SC, 47).
In other words, the sacrifice of the Cross, an event in an historic past, is
continuously re-presented in an eternal now (CP, 48), in and through the
priest’s representative action (embodying Christ’s ‘real’ presence), and
consequently what is represented liturgically is a participation in that eter-
nal now, in and by the worshipper’s active remembering (anamnesis). The
sacrificial character of the Mass is not to be understood as the resacrificing
of Christ, a quasi-magical summoning up of the victim for reimmolation in
the historic present (ARCIC-ED, 3, 5), but as the present participation of the
worshippers, priest and laity, in the eternally present Paschal event, by the
anamnesis of his death and resurrection.
As with priestly representation, I will return to sacramental narrative, in
Chapter 8, when I will consider its implication in the ‘stitching together’ of
religious identity. My point here is to show how, in and through the Anam-
nesis, worshippers are joined (or sutured) into a salvation story; more than
spectators, they become players in the narrative. Again, as far as the parallel
between liturgy and film is concerned, I will indicate below how being
‘stitched’ into the sacramental narrative parallels the way in which cinema
spectators are joined into the cinematic narrative. Finally, in this chapter,
I must consider the ideological ‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority in
which worshipping subjects participate.
54 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Participation in the Ideological ‘reality’ of

Episcopal/Ecclesial Authority

The Sacred Congregation of Rites has made explicit the catechetical aspect
of the liturgy. The Congregation proposes that the intention behind the
Vatican II document Sacrosanctum concilium is ‘to foster the formation of the
faithful and that pastoral activity of which the liturgy is the summit and
source. . . . [To that end it] is especially necessary that there be close links
between liturgy, catechesis, religious instruction and preaching’ (IO, 5, 7).
This formative function occasions the convergence of the liturgical, pasto-
ral and catechetical priestly duties. As such, the liturgy is to be conceived as
a medium of religious instruction, a part of which concerns the nature of
the priestly role and the hierarchical nature of both liturgy and Church.
As I indicated with reference to priestly representation above, priestly
duties are legitimately considered to include shaping the desire of the faith-
ful. Priests, through liturgical instruction, aim at the internal and external
participation of the faithful. For the faithful, who desire both unity with
Christ and salvation for their souls, participation in the sacrifice of the
Cross, offered at the hands of the priest under Episcopal authority, neces-
sarily entails the submission of both volition and intellect to the power of
Christ as represented and embodied in the Church and its ministers. From
this point, and for all practical considerations, it will be the priests and bish-
ops who will exercise control; not only over external liturgical forms and
participation, but over the internal desires and thoughts of the people; not
simply on pain of physical violence or death, but of exclusion from the
means of salvation grace. In short, the ministers of the Church exercise
power over an individual’s eternal destiny. It is in this way that the power
of liturgy mutates from being a medium that brings the worshipper into
an experience of God to being a powerful technology of (in this case) the
ideology of the Roman Catholic episcopate.
Church dominion over volition and intellect (desires and thoughts) is,
then, an explicitly intended effect of the liturgy. Such dominion is neces-
sarily determinative of the individual’s psychological processes, in particu-
lar the construction of subjectivity and the calibration of identity. The
import of this is made explicit by the British Bishops, for whom ‘It is of
special concern . . . that when someone receives a sacrament he or she
knows and desires what the Church means by that sacrament’ (OBOB, 9, emp-
hasis added). The Bishops repeatedly accentuate ‘the inseparable bond
between the mystery of the Eucharist and mystery of the Church’ (OBOB, 8),
a relation of ‘intimate connection’ (OBOB, 9), ‘two essential dimensions of
 Liturgical Representation 55

one and the same Mystery of Faith’ (OBOB, 10).14 This is because for the
Bishops, a correct perception of the Eucharist is predicated on a correct
ecclesiology. Salvation is ‘not as private or isolated individuals, but as a
people, as a community, as a family’ (OBOB, 11 – compare 56). As the
Bishops make clear:

The Catholic Church claims, in all humility, to be endowed with all the
gifts with which God wishes to endow his Church, all the invisible and
visible elements needed by the Body of Christ for its life of discipleship
and mission. (OBOB, 20)

It follows then, of necessity, that the faithful should be in unity with the
Universal Church, ‘rooted in sharing the same faith and in our common
baptism, in the Eucharist, and also in communion with the bishops of the
Church united with the Bishop of Rome’ (OBOB, 59). True believers must
be able to say the ‘we believe’ of the Creed; indeed those who are only ‘able
to say “I believe”, but not able fully to share the “we believe” of the Catholic
community’, will be among those disqualified from Holy Communion
(OBOB, 42; CCC, 185).
The point here is, not that believers need to believe truly in the efficacy
of the sacrament in order to participate in its benefits, since ‘His presence
“does not depend on the individual’s faith in order to be the Lord’s real gift
of himself to his Church”’ (OBOB, 53; ARCIC-ED, 8). Rather, the clear infer-
ence is that anamnetic participation is contingent on a shared conviction
about the authenticity of Roman Catholic doctrine and the submission of
individual volition and intent to the episcopacy.
This interpretation is underlined by official instruction on the Roman
Catholic stance towards other Christians. With regard to the Eastern (Ortho-
dox) Churches, the Roman Church admits a high value to their institu-
tions, because ‘their liturgical rites, ecclesiastical traditions and their
ordering of Christian life’ is within the ‘tradition which has come from the
apostles through the Fathers and which is part of the divinely revealed,
undivided heritage of the Universal Church’ (OE, 1). The reason for the
attitude of respect is because these churches, having equal claim with Rome
to apostolic succession, ‘possess true sacraments, above all . . . the priest-
hood and the Eucharist [in other words, they share a similar ecclesiology
and Eucharistic theology], whereby they are still joined to us in closest inti-
macy’ (UR, 15 – compare IQ, V). This contrasts with ‘those Christian com-
munities rooted in the Reformation’ (OBOB, 41), which Rome considers
not to have ‘preserved the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its
56 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders’ (UR,

22 – compare IQ, V). Thus, the Bishops do not hesitate to articulate the full
implication of their position:

It is therefore essential that the one who presides at the Eucharist be

known to be established in a sure sacramental relationship with Christ,
the High Priest, through the sacrament of Holy Orders conferred by a
bishop in the recognised apostolic succession. The Catholic Church is
unable to affirm this of those Christian communities rooted in the Refor-
mation. Nor can we affirm that they have retained ‘the authentic and full
reality of the Eucharistic mystery’. (OBOB, 41)

In short, the right reception of the Eucharistic sacrament depends upon

the right Eucharistic theology, which, in turn, is predicated on the right
conception of and attitude towards the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is for
reasons of control over the authority to dispense Holy Orders, and with it
the control of sacred power and the construction of sacred realities, that
the Eucharist is so carefully bounded by legislation. The effect of this has
been the politicization of the Eucharist, and its translation into a badge of
membership.15
I will return to the worshipper’s participation in the ‘reality’ of Episcopal/
ecclesial ideology, in Chapter 8. My point, in this final sub-section, has been
to show that the formation of the faithful, through identification with the
priest, is directed towards the formation of their desires and thoughts to the
extent that they participate in the ideological ‘reality’ of episcopacy and
conform to the rule of the Church and its bishops.

My aim in this chapter has been to consider those aspects of liturgical

representation that can usefully be paralleled with aspects of film. My argu-
ment is that such parallels are possible insofar as each of these media of
representation offers an ‘other’ for identification, a narrative to be joined
and an (ideological) ‘reality’ in which its subjects participate.
It should be clear, from this exploration of the operations of liturgical
representation, that the key to worshippers becoming participants in the
ideological ‘reality’ of episcopacy is their identification with priestly repre-
sentation. Worshippers make a complex identification with the priest as the
liturgical ‘other’ who represents them before God, but who also represents
both Christ and the episcopacy to the people. By identification with the
priest worshippers become participants in the salvation narrative – in the
 Liturgical Representation 57

countless repetitions of the Mass, they reiterate their need of forgiveness;

they situate themselves within the patronage of the Church, the ‘universal
sacrament of salvation’ (LG, 48); and, in and through the Anamnesis, they
re-member themselves into flow of the salvation narrative. In addition, by
identification with the priest they most importantly submit their volition
and intellect to the rule of the bishops. There should be little doubt then
that, within the terms of Roman Catholic theology, the liturgy is properly
understood as a representational medium, whose explicit and intended
aim is (at least in part) the participation of its subjects in Episcopal ideo-
logy. In the next chapter I will show the extent to which cinema parallels
these heads.
 Chapter 5

Cinematic Representation: ‘others’, Narratives

and Ideological ‘realities’

Throughout the early 1970s the issue of realist representation and the trans-
mission of ideology dominates Screen’s theoretical interest. Formulated as a
set of questions the journal’s preoccupation could be put like this: how does
the cinematic impression of reality operate as a vehicle for transmitting and
replicating the dominant ideology? how is the cinematic reality implicated
in the construction of subjectivity? Screen’s clear assumption is that in the
cinema subjects participate in an ideological ‘reality’.
The main inspiration for Screen’s interest in representation as a vehicle for
reproducing ideology was the political context in France during May–June
1968 (Harvey 1978; Roud 1983). Several French film journals mapped the
impact of May 1968 (Turim 1973), in particular Cahiers du Cinéma broke
from the idealist representational realism of Bazin, its apolitical founder,
and inaugurated the search for a ‘materialist’ cinema. This is the funda-
mentally (Althusserian) Marxist agenda adopted by Screen, an agenda that
regards realism as ‘simply the repetition of the forms of the ideological
(“naturalised”) representation of reality dominant in a particular society’
(Heath 1973, 11).
The main target of Screen’s search for a materialist cinema is mainstream
Hollywood, the cinema of realist representation, insofar as its portrayal of
‘reality’ naturalizes the ideology it transmits. However, as will become clear,
the heads of ‘other’, narrative and ideological ‘reality’ all fit within the
agenda of the theories developed in Screen. My point is that the theoretical
frame developed to address this agenda makes it possible to find and
explore parallels between film and liturgy as media of representation.
In order to explore the ability of cinematic realist representation to natu-
ralize the ideology it transmits, in what follows I will refer to the genre of
post-Cold War ‘terrorist hi-jack’ films, including films such as Die Hard
(1988), True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), Air Force One (1997), The
Peacemaker (1997) and The Siege (1998). I have three reasons for choosing
 Cinematic Representation 59

this genre over another. First, these films present strong lead characters for
audience identification; secondly, they make clear value statements about
‘our’ American way of life; finally, they feature an Other, the identity of
whom is predominantly religious (Muslim), and who serves to aid both
audience identification and participation in the ideological ‘reality’ of Hol-
lywood realism. Using these films as reference, I will consider the film star/
hero as cinematic ‘other’; the narrative of ‘ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-
situation’ (with a subtext of overcoming chaos and restoring order) as the
narrative into which spectators are sutured; and the ideology of ‘our’ Amer-
ican way of life as a cinematic ‘reality’ in which spectators participate
(perceived to be threated by the Muslim ‘Other’).

The Cinematic ‘other’: The Film Star/Hero

Translations of articles considered significant were central to Screen’s pub-

lishing strategy, and include a Cahiers collective piece in which the journal’s
editors set out to ‘read’ actively John Ford’s 1939 film, Young Mr Lincoln
(Cahiers du Cinéma [1970]1972). While not reckoned by any of the usual
canons to be a classic film, the editors nevertheless consider Lincoln to be
‘classic’ in the sense that it is ‘based on analogical representation and linear
narrative (“transparence” and “presence”)’ ([1970]1972, 6). For Cahiers’ edi-
tors reading actively means regarding the film as a text overdeterminedly
related to the ideology that produced it, making films ‘say what they have
to say within what they leave unsaid’ ([1970]1972, 8). This, they argue, is
not a case of finding ‘secret meaning’, but rather of revealing the, always
displaced, ‘structuring absences’.1
With respect to the character of Lincoln (Henry Fonda), the editors
argue that, in order to function on the level of myth, the historical politi-
cian is depoliticized in order to be returned to the political project of pre-
War Republicanism. For example, Lincoln’s first political speech is emptied
of the political dimension, allowing his character to trivialize politics and
mask the ideological undertaking of the film. In this way, political meanings
are repressed by a moralizing discourse that rewrites history. Significantly,
the character of Lincoln is offered for identification in a way that makes the
personal political.
Yet filmic characters are more than that which appears on screen: they
are inextricably bound up with, and freighted with their associations to the
actors who portray them. In his definitive study of film stars and their social
meaning, Richard Dyer defines stars as ‘images in media texts’ (Dyer 1998, 10).
60 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

For Dyer, stars are representations of people, but unlike characters, they
have an existence that endures beyond and is independent of their fictional
screen appearances. This independence gives the star a greater reality than
their screen characters, and serves to disguise the fact that stars are as much
constructed personalities as any fictional character. As a consequence, ‘the
value embodied by a star is . . . harder to reject as “impossible” or “false”,
because the star’s existence guarantees the existence of the value s/he
embodies’ (1998, 20). In other words, stars collapse the distinction between
their authenticity as a person and the authentication of the narrative char-
acters they play. This operation of stardom is in part due to a noticeable
shift in audience perception of stars, a shift from stars as ‘embodiments of
ideal ways of behaving’ to stars as identification figures, ‘embodiments of
typical ways of behaving’ (1998, 22).
Specifically, Dyer considers how Will Rogers and Shirley Temple embody,
and so reinforce, the social values of the American Dream. His point is that
the star’s image may be related to the contradictions in ideology by the
processes of displacement or suppression. So, with reference to social real-
ism, Dyer proposes that stars depoliticize spectator consciousness by indi-
vidualizing it, ‘rendering the social personal’. By being ‘experienced . . .
individuated . . . and having an existence in the real world’, stars displace
the political on to the personal, so masking spectator awareness of class
membership by reconstituting social differences in the audience. In this
way, films and stars are ideologically significant, both in the general sense
of cutting audiences off from politics, and in the narrower sense of
reinforcing a given political standpoint: ‘The personal is always political’
(1998, 28).
Dyer is clear that ‘stars are supremely figures of identification . . . and this
identification is achieved principally through the star’s relation to social
types’ (1998, 99). One example of this is the character of John McClane
(Bruce Willis) in John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988).
Located by Steve Bradshaw as the film whose global success showed
Hollywood that terrorism could replace Communism as the enemy of
choice (Bradshaw 2002), Die Hard develops the ‘lone cop battling against
overwhelming odds in an isolated situation’ formula (Walker 1996, 206).
Regular guy McClane has his character flaws: besides being nervous of
flying, this married man has a ‘roving eye’. Little wonder then that, like so
many in the audience, his marriage is rocky. In fact, he and his wife Holly
(Bonnie Bedelia) have become estranged, while he remains a humble
NYPD cop, she has taken a job in Los Angeles as Nakatomi Director of
Corporate Affairs. McClane is unable to handle Holly’s success, but instead
 Cinematic Representation 61

of using their reunion at the Nakatomi Christmas party to work at their

relationship, McClane picks up a conversation they had had at their last
meeting six months earlier and challenges his wife about reverting to her
maiden name, Gennero.
Although superficially a simple action spectacular, replete with gratui-
tously violent explosions and gunfights, Die Hard is a subtly complex, multi-
layered film. The first of the of post-Cold War terrorist action genre, Die
Hard is at heart an old fashioned cowboy film, whose central theme is the
imposition of the rule of law on the wild and contumacious West (NYPD
cop in LA). But, while McClane may be a flawed enforcer, he is enabled to
transcend his defects, overcome the bad guys and recover his girl, because
he has internalized an identification with a Hollywood cowboy. In one
scene, terrorist leader, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) wants to know who
McClane is: Is he another American brought up on too many movies? Does
he think he is John Wayne, Rambo or Marshall Dillon? McClane masks his
anonymity, by assuming an identity he – and many in his audience – may
have assumed as a child: that of cinematic ‘other’ Roy Rogers.
McClane’s choice of Rogers is appropriate. The ‘King of the Cowboys’,
star of more than 90 feature-length Westerns, was one of the most beloved
figures in show business, winning the Motion Picture Herald’s title ‘Most Pop-
ular Western Star’ every year from 1943–54 (Robertson 1991, 71). Accord-
ing to Maltin, by the late 1940s a new production team reinvigorated Rogers’
persona ‘with color photography, more adult plot lines, and an almost
sadistic emphasis on violent action’.2 To this extent, McClane’s ‘social type’
performs the very identification that the film offers to the spectators in the
cinema theatre. In effect, he plays out on screen the role of the thirty-some-
thing male, who as a child lost himself in identifying with his film star, role-
model hero, and whose actions are now unconsciously directed by that hero
as he performs his own heroics. He, in turn, is watched by thirty-something
males, who as children lost themselves in identifications with film star
heroes, and who identify now with the reflection of themselves performing
the heroics of which they would like to believe themselves capable if, like
anti-hero McClane – who is flawed as they are – they are thrust into an
extreme situation.
My point here is to demonstrate parallels between liturgy and film in
terms of the way they each invite their constituent subjects to identify with
an other: specifically, the ways in which identification with the priest maps
identification with the film star. I want to argue that the film star represents
in ways that parallel the priest’s representations in persona Christi and in
nomine totius populi. Insofar as the priest represents in persona Christi he
62 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

represents the universal, in him the people see embodied the Christ who is
perfect in every way, the aspiration of the faithful; but insofar has he repre-
sents in nomine totius populi he represents the particular, and in him the
people see embodied themselves – in him they see that which is weak and
sinful caught up with and transformed into Christ; in him their humanity
redeemed.
In a parallel sense, this dynamic can be seen operating in film stars like
Willis. As a film star, Willis represents the aspirations of his fans: the achieve-
ment of the glamour of celebrity with its wealth, fame and relative power.
While as ‘social type’ McClane, Willis embodies the particularity of a certain
type of film fan, specifically, those who identify with the reflection of them-
selves as they would like to be – like them, he may be flawed, but like him
they can be other than they are.
But, as will become clear, the most significant comparison between priest
and film star is the fact that both serve as the key to their constituents
becoming participants in the relative ideological ‘realities’. However, to
develop this idea I need now to consider the cinematic narrative into which
spectators are invited to ‘stitch’ themselves, in particular the ‘ordinary-guy-
in-extraordinary-situation’ narrative.

‘Ordinary guy/extraordinary situation’: The

Overcoming-the-Other Narrative

Politically, the Cahiers editors locate the Young Mr Lincoln in the historical,
economic context of the late 1930s, in particular the support of 20th Cen-
tury Fox for Hoover’s Republican and capitalist policies over Roosevelt’s
New Deal. The editors argue that, in the context of this support, the
depoliticized Lincoln functions as a myth pressed to serve the Republican
agenda – after all, in the character of Lincoln the personal is political. It is
not difficult to sustain an argument that contemporary post-Cold War ‘ter-
rorist hi-jack’ films serve a similarly mythic function, in this case, not to
oppose Democratic domestic policy, but to reinforce a particular manifesta-
tion of the fear of the Other,3 which Samuel Huntington calls the ‘Clash of
Civilizations’ (Huntington 1998, 126). In which case, the heroic character
personalizes the political.
The basic plot of the post-Cold War ‘terrorist hi-jack’ film is simple
enough. Even with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Western democracy, and particularly its capitalist base, remains
under threat. The Soviets may now be allies, but a smorgasbord of radical
 Cinematic Representation 63

heterogeneity is emerging as the new enemy of our Western lifestyle. Natu-

rally, as leader of the ‘free’ world, the ferocious hostility of these seditious
extremists is directed at the United States. Within this context, hi-jack mov-
ies track the emergence of one or other terrorist grudge, build the tension
of imminent disaster, and successfully resolve the crisis, typically through
the actions of one man.
With the exception of Die Hard, which strictly predates the end of the
Cold War, Hollywood terrorists have an ideological motivation.4 As the post-
Cold War political landscape takes shape, the enemies of the new era are
crystallising out as rogue Soviet satellites and Islamist militants.

Soviet satellites
American leadership of the newly freed world is so established in Air Force
One (1997) that the Russian President can introduce the US President,
James Marshall (Harrison Ford), to the assembled Russian leaders as ‘my
friend’. However, the acceptance of American support by the born-again
capitalists now incumbent in the Kremlin is seen as betrayal by the Kazakh-
stani Nationalists whose activities Marshall helped to quell.
If Gruber is a vaguely drawn Eurovillain, the ideology of Marshall’s nem-
esis Egor Korshunov (Gary Oldman) has the potential to be more clearly
articulated. In the event, it remains oblique.

The terrorist boss ostensibly comes from Kazakhstan and yet he warbles
on tremulously about Mother Russia. As a nationalist, he ought to hate by
rights the old Communist regime but a tear still comes to his eyes when
he hears his imprisoned comrades singing ‘The Internationale’. (Macnab
1997, 43)

What Air Force One does articulate through Korshunov is a terrorist who
is motivated by fanatical belief, and it is this fanaticism, because of its
unpredictability, that is the real terror, the real threat of post-Cold War
terrorism.
Hence the warning by Dr Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman) to Colonel Thomas
Devoe (George Clooney) in The Peacemaker (also released in 1997), that the
real threat is not the man who wants ten nuclear weapons, but the man who
wants only one: in this case, a Bosnian Serb ‘peacemaker’, Dusan Gavrich
(Marcel Iures). In losing his wife and daughter in Sarajevo, Gavrich found
his lust for revenge, which he targets at Western complicity in the Bosnian
64 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

bloodshed by preparing to detonate a nuclear warhead at the peace confer-

ence he will attend in New York. The film offers something of an apologetic
for the terrorist when it has Gavrich recording a videotape he intends to be
found after his successful attack. However, because the attack lacks any
ideology other than personal revenge, the video is more suicide note than
coherent apologetic.

Islamist militants
In the terrorist spoof film, True Lies (1994), Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik) is,
like Gruber, a generic figure. Leader of the fictional ‘Crimson Jihad’, Aziz
threatens major US cities with nuclear destruction because he blames the
United States for killing Muslim women and children and their cowardly
bombing of Muslim cities. Only his demand that America ‘pulls all military
forces out of the Persian Gulf area immediately and forever’ gives Crimson
Jihad any ideological location. But, whether Aziz is Iranian, Iraqi or Saudi
based Wahhabi, the point is he represents the emerging threat as it is begin-
ning to be perceived: no longer Soviet Communism, but satellite factions
around the known Western world, in particular the ‘threat’ posed by Islam.
The Islamist threat is more clearly articulated in the character of ‘Al-Tar’
(David Suchet) in Stuart Baird’s 1996 film, Executive Decision (1996). Yet,
while the threat posed by ‘Al-Tar’ is personal, the motivating ideology is
again unclear. According to Dr David Grant (Kurt Russell), ‘Al-Tar’ is
ancient Arabic for ‘revenge’, and Nagi Hassan, aka ‘Al-Tar’ sees himself and
his co-religionists as the true warriors of Islam, who are destined to deliver
Allah’s vengeance into the infidel’s belly. When his second-in-command
objects that this is not their mission, ‘Al-Tar’ shoots and kills him. Some
specific ideological connection is given to ‘Al-Tar’ through the terrorists’
bomb-maker, Jean-Paul Demou (Robert Apisa). This French Algerian, who
had been an Iraqi nuclear engineer, lost his family in the 1991 Gulf War.
Like Gavrich, Demou seems to be inspired by something like personal
revenge; unlike Gavrich, ‘Al-Tar’ has a bigger picture in mind, the downfall
of US cultural imperialism. As Bradshaw puts it, ‘Suchet’s character repre-
sented the new religious terrorist, a suicide bomber bent not on political
concessions but on killing as many infidels as possible’ (Bradshaw 2002).
In Edward Zwick’s The Siege (1998) the terrorists’ profile is self-consciously
more nuanced. Zwick speaks of America at the time existing in a ‘kind of
radical innocence’, and the film’s screenwriter, Lawrence Wright, observes
that terrorists use terror as theatre, ‘to shock people out of their normal
 Cinematic Representation 65

sensibilities and cause them to focus on the terrorist and what their griev-
ances are’ (Bradshaw 2002). Whether their film is as effective is a moot
point. Eventually it transpires that the terrorist cells operating in New York
are acting out of a sense of betrayal. Having been trained as a covert net-
work run and financed by the CIA through agent Elise Kraft, aka Sharon
Bridger (Annette Bening), the followers of Sheik Achmed Bin Talal had
fought against Saddam Hussein. Following a policy change the Arabs were
abandoned by their former US ‘friends’ and as a result, Kraft admits to
FBI Agent Anthony ‘Hub’ Hubbard (Denzel Washington), they were but-
chered. Because of her former involvement, and sense of responsibility,
she helped to get student visas for those who remained, including her
lover Samir Nazhde (Sami Bouajila). The precise identity of these shadowy
assailants remains unclear, although the scene in which Kraft discusses
with Hubbard her sympathy with the Palestinians, whose suffering is seduc-
tive, is clue to their identity. However, during the Gulf War PLO leader
Yasser Arafat sided with Saddam in the mistaken belief ‘that America would
not attack and that the crisis would be resolved through negotiation between
the Arab countries’ (Dawoud 2001, 165). The fact is that the terrorists’ ideo-
logical identity is as much a mystery in The Siege as in all the other films
of this genre.
Despite the diegetic voices of reason and protests of loyalty, Zwick seems
surprised at the response his film elicited.

Many questioned whether it was legitimate or even inflammatory to talk

about these things, because was I in fact vilifying Arab Americans by sug-
gesting that there might be such a thing as militant Islam that might be
radical enough to perpetuate terrorism here? (Bradshaw 2002)

But, as Bradshaw observes, the fact is that ‘Many say Arabs and Muslims are
Hollywood’s favourite scapegoat and that Islam is being depicted as a dis-
ease spreading throughout the West’ (Bradshaw 2002).
Yet it matters little that the politics of this group of films is uncertain,
confused, or even misleading. These films are not so much articulating an
accurate portrayal of the international situation post-Communism, as narr-
ativizing the perceived threat of the Other, and offering it to US cinema
audiences and those political, economic and cultural allies who consume
their cinematic product. That they are considered to be uncannily presci-
ent has more to do with the fact that, in describing the possible, they focus
the fear posed by the Other – former Soviet or Islamist militant terrorists as
ciphers for that fear.
66 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

As far as demonstrating parallels between liturgy and film, insofar as their

constituent subjects are ‘stitched’ or sutured into the respective narratives,
it is all too easy to argue that, because post-Cold War ‘terrorist hi-jack’ mov-
ies can be treated as a cinematic salvation narrative (complete with cine-
matic saviour figure), these films offer a parallel to the sacramental narrative
of the Cross. And, even though I am not interested in finding overworked
cinematic analogues to obvious theological trops, it remains the case that the
‘ordinary-guy-restoring-order’ narrative represents a modern, non-theological
salvation myth,5 a hero story countlessly retold and reworked. However, as
will become clear, the most significant comparison between liturgy and
cinema is that, through identification with an ‘other’ (liturgical or cine-
matic), their constituent subjects become ‘stitched’ into a narrative, and so
enabled to participate in ideological ‘reality’.

Participation in the Ideological ‘reality’ of Hollywood Realism

Until the advent of digital technology the ‘commonsense’ assumption was

that ‘the camera never lied’. This view was commonplace despite the fact
that since the illusionary work of Méliès, a former stage magician (e.g. Voy-
age à travers l’impossible, 1904), and the remarkable Dziga Vertov, the Soviet
cinematographer whose Man with a Movie Camera (1929) provocatively
exploited the full capability of the camera, cinematic special effects units
have routinely created images that could never have been photographed in
the ‘real’ world.
Bazin’s give this commonsense assumption theoretical formulation in his
notion of the ‘ontology of the photographic image’. Foundational to Bazin’s
understanding and privileging of cinematic realism is what he considers to
be ‘the essentially objective character of photography’ that endows the pho-
tographic image with a ‘quality of credibility absent from all other picture-
making’ (Bazin [1945]1967, 13). His key point is that with photography,

between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes

only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image
of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of
man. ([1945]1967, 13)

The centrality of cinematic ontology to Bazin’s thinking is recognized

in Eric Rohmer’s expression, ‘the objectivity axiom’ (Rohmer 1959, 38).
Indeed, Bazin assumes photographic ontology to be self-evident, and
 Cinematic Representation 67

attempts to extend it, through a series of metaphors, to account for the

difference between photograph and object: so, the photograph is ‘the
model of which it is the reproduction’ (Bazin [1945]1967, 14); a ‘luminous
impression in light’, ‘a mould’ (Bazin [1951a]1967, 96); or dramatically,
‘like the veil of Veronica pressed to the face of human suffering’ (Bazin
[1953]1967, 163).
The main challenge confronting Bazin was the paradoxical relation of
cinematic realism to cinematic art. Put as a question, this can be stated as:
how is cinematic realism to be considered ontologically connected to its
object given that the genius of cinema consists in creating the illusion of
reality?
Bazin is aware of this paradox and, in the context of discussing the aes-
thetics of reality, accepts that reality is in fact revealed through the vehicle
of cinematic language. As he puts it, ‘realism in art can only be achieved . . .
through artifice’ (Bazin [1948b]1971, 26). However, he resists yielding all
to art and elsewhere states: ‘Reality is not art, but a truly “realistic” art can
create an aesthetic that is incorporated in reality’ (Bazin [1948a]1997, 5–6).
His argument is that the contradictory relation between cinematic realism
and art is both necessary and unacceptable to an aesthetic of reality. Necessary,
because of the trade-off between preserving and discarding narrative ele-
ments that serve either the illusion of reality or ‘authentic reality’; and unac-
ceptable, because the choice is made ‘at the expense of that reality which the
cinema proposes to restore integrally’ (Bazin [1948b]1971, 26). Conse-
quently, Bazin defines realism as ‘all narrative means tending to bring an
added measure of reality to the screen’ ([1948b]1971, 26).
Given Screen’s preoccupation with the question of representation, Bazin’s
notion of realist representation as ontology is the target of sustained attack
by the journal. In part, this is a reaction against the traditions of main-
stream British ‘Leavisite’ film criticism, which the Screen editors regard as
‘subjective taste-ridden criticism’ (Screen 1971, 5), the product of a ‘demand
for a surface realism’ (Screen 1972, 2).6 Introducing a special number on
semiotics, Stephen Heath rubbished the former tradition and restated the
clarion call for a new direction in film study: ‘there is a crucial and urgent
necessity to finish with the flow of (ideologically complicit) drivel that
currently and massively passes as “film-criticism”’ (Heath 1973, 9).
In expressly articulating its project as ‘locating film as a specific system
of production and consumption’ (Screen 1971, 5), Screen is interpreting
Althusser’s ideas about how capitalist ideology is reproduced in the labour
force in terms of its unconscious effect on spectators as they consume the
68 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

ideological product of the capitalist cinema industry. And if Althusser pro-

vides the premise, Screen looks to the cinesemiotics of Christian Metz and
the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan for the theoretical resources to explain
the processes by which capitalist ideology is replicated through cinema.
In a series of articles published through the 1960s,7 Metz had taken up
Roland Barthes’ programmatic for a semiotics of the cinema,8 and from
these he sets out to inquire whether cinema is properly a language (lan-
gage) or a language system (langue). Somewhat surprisingly, he concludes
that cinema might be considered ‘a language without a system’. Metz’ essays
act as founding texts in the Screen’s search for ‘a precise description of
the object of cinesemiotics’ (Willemen 1973, 2), in order to expose realist
representation as construction.
Writing about the impression of reality in the cinema, Metz develops
Barthes’ thinking on photographic reality (Metz [1965]1974, 3–15).9 From
this Metz questions why it is that the impression of reality is more vivid in
film than in a photograph. His obvious, and immediate answer is that the
illusion of movement ‘imparts corporality to objects and gives them an
autonomy their still representations could not have’ ([1965]1974, 7). Con-
sidered phenomenologically, movement is insubstantial, it is seen but not
touched, and the distinctions of ‘object’ and ‘copy’ dissolve

on the threshold of motion. Because movement is never material but is

always visual, to reproduce its appearance is to duplicate its reality. . . . In
the cinema the impression of reality is also the reality of the impression,
the real presence of motion. ([1965]1974, 9)

The irony is that Metz’ materialist view of cinematic codes is based in a

Bazinian idealist metaphysics of presence. However, allied to this metaphys-
ics is a simultaneous and necessary absence of the actors’ bodily presence.
Drawing, for example, on the work of Henri Wallon, Metz contrasts the way
bodily presence in the theatre situates the spectator in relation to real
actors, inevitably disrupting the impression of reality, while bodily absence
in the cinema is necessary for the spectator to invest actors with a reality
that is the product of identification. Metz concludes:

It is because the world does not intrude upon the fiction and constantly
deny its claim to reality – as happens in the theatre – that a film’s diege-
sis can yield the peculiar and well-known impression of reality. ([1965]
1974, 11)
 Cinematic Representation 69

The result is that the spectator is disconnected from the real world, but
makes a connection with the filmic diegesis, and accomplishes a ‘“transfer-
ence” of reality’ ([1965]1974, 11).
Addressing directly Bazin’s theories of cinematic realism, Metz’ argument is
that the idea of cinema ‘as a mystical revelation, as “truth” or “reality” unfolded
by full right, as the apparition of what is (l’ étant), as an epiphany’, derives
from phenomenology (Metz 1975, 54). Metz’ objection to this is that, while it
may be the case that ‘the topographical apparatus of the cinema resembles
the conceptual apparatus of phenomenology’ and that the ‘“there is” of phe-
nomenology proper (philosophical phenomenology) as an ontic revelation
referring to a perceiving-subject (= “perceptual cogito”)’ has affinities with ‘the
inauguration of the cinema signifier in the ego’ (1975, 55), this is only the
case because the objective determination of the cinema makes it so.

The ego’s position in the cinema does not derive from a miraculous
resemblance between the cinema and the natural characteristics of all
perception; on the contrary, it is foreseen and marked in advance by the
institution (the equipment, the disposition of the auditorium, the mental
arrangement that internalises the two), and also by more general charac-
teristics of the psychical apparatus (such as projection, the mirror struc-
ture, etc.). (1975, 55)

In other words, far from being a natural, to-be-expected phenomena, the

representation of reality, the ‘well-known impression of reality’, is the prod-
uct of the cinematic signifier, and as such it is a construct of the institution
of the cinema.
Althusser’s influence on Screen was pervasive, even if largely unacknowl-
edged, a fact that has been extensively noted by the journal’s critics and
supporters.10 Althusser’s notion of interpellation described the process of
ideological replication, the transformation of infants into speaking subjects,
according to which ideology is ‘the system of the ideas and representations
which dominate the mind of a man or a social group’ (Althusser 1971,
149). In developing his thesis, Althusser located the operations of ideology
within a psychoanalytic frame, informed by his particular understanding of
Lacan’s concepts of the Real and the Imaginary (1971, 154), and argued
that ideology represents not the real conditions of human existence but
imaginary relations to the real world:

What is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real

relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary
70 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

relation of those individuals to the real relation in which they live.

(1971, 155)

According to Antony Easthope, Screen drew an important implication from

Lacan, namely the idea that ‘The subject does not exist outside or prior to
discourse but is constituted as an effect within discourse in a specific rela-
tion of imaginary and symbolic’ (1983, 129). The idea that the subject could
be constituted by the film text, lent power to ideas about cinema’s ability
to position subjects who mistook its representations for reality. As Colin
MacCabe puts it,

The advantage of Lacan over other versions of psychoanalysis was that the
text, whether literary or filmic, ceased to be the representation of the
author’s psychic conflict but became the enactment of a series of conflicts
shared by author and reader. (1976, 12)

The point of the argument is that, being so constituted by the film text,
spectators become participants in ideological ‘reality’, such as the ideology
of Hollywood realism.
I have already suggested that in the post-Cold War era contemporary
‘terrorist hi-jack’ films function mythically to reinforce the fear of the Other.
Bradshaw’s documentary argues that writers of action movies had a prob-
lem following the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War:

The commies were over, in other words, all of a sudden we woke up and
we couldn’t use the commies for a villain, and peace and quiet is bad for,
you know, action films. (2002)

The solution, according to Bradshaw, was to find a new villain in the terror-
ist – specifically the Muslim or Islamist terrorist.
The fact is that, Hollywood found a ready-made replacement for Com-
munism in Islam, and for at least three reasons. First, the oil crisis of 1973
impacted not only Western economies and the West’s sense of its own secu-
rity, it shifted Western perceptions about Muslims. According to Edward
Said, it was the OPEC embargo, which so dramatically effected fuel bills and
inflation, that for Western minds melded Arabs and Iranians, Pakistanis
and Turks into a single group, defined now by their shared religion as Mus-
lims. The significant point here is that Muslims became associated with
American dependence on imported oil regularly referred to as “being
at the mercy of foreign oil producers” (Said 1997, 36–7). Secondly, the
 Cinematic Representation 71

Iranian revolution and hostage crisis of 1978–79 represented an ongoing

humiliation to the United States. As Fawaz A Gerges comments:

By holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, Khomeini’s Iran inflicted

daily humiliation on the United States, eliciting an intense degree of hos-
tility and a deep and unfamiliar sense of powerlessness. Eventually Iran
became a national obsession. (1999, 42–3)

Said argues that the trauma of the hostage experience continues to inform
American demonology of Islam: ‘The preoccupation with Iran continues
into the 1990s. With the end of the Cold War [Iran], and along with it
“Islam”, has come to represent America’s major foreign devil’ (Said 1997,
7). Thirdly, the more recent development of actual ‘Islamist’ terrorism.
Most significant here was the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Cen-
tre in February 1993 – the day ‘America lost its innocence’.11 The effect of
this attack was to deepen Americans’ fears about the security threats associ-
ated with Islamists (Gerges 1999, 45), linking Muslims with domestic terror-
ism in many American minds. Consequently, Muslim extremists were
immediately linked with the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in
Oklahoma City, with individual US Arabs becoming targets of harassment
(Gerges 1999, 48).
In this post-Cold War context, the ‘Green Peril’ replaced the ‘Red Men-
ace’ (Gerges 1999, 51; Said 1997, xix) in the oversimplified lexicography of
US media reportage, where ‘“Islam” denotes a simple thing to which one
can refer immediately’ (Said 1997, 41).
Although his book about the media determination of Western percep-
tions of Islam does touch on the influence of cinema, film features little in
Said’s thinking, and he prefers to concentrate on the press and journalistic
practice (Said 1997, ii–lii). However, Said does acknowledge that films play
a role in ‘delivering Islam’ to the American public, ‘if only because to the
extent that a visual sense of history and distant lands informs our own, it
often comes by way of the cinema’ (1997, 47). Thus, ‘reflecting powerful
interests in the society served by the media’ (1997, 47), the new wave of
large-scale feature films have, as their main purpose, ‘to first demonize and
dehumanize Muslims in order, second, to show an intrepid Western, usually
American, hero killing them off’ (1997, xxvi–xxvii).
While Said discusses media influence on public opinion, Gerges is inter-
ested in how perceptions of Islam inform and determine government
policy. He argues that, while the press may not be part of the foreign-policy
establishment, it has been a
72 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

willing participant in foreign-policy making insofar as it helps ‘establish

the boundaries within which policy can be made’. This is evident in the
case of Islam and of Muslims, who are often portrayed in a negative light,
thus placing them at a considerable disadvantage in US public opinion.
(Gerges 1999, 51)

Like Said, Gerges’ discussion of the media role in constructing American

perceptions about Islam focuses largely on the press. But his conclusion,
‘that the media’s coverage of Islam and Muslims sheds much light on the
making of US policy’, must recognize the significance of cinema’s contribu-
tion to the ‘climate in which policy is made’ (1999, 51).
It is in this context, of demonising Islam and Muslims, that post-Cold War
‘terrorist hi-jack’ film texts offer spectators participation in the ideological
‘reality’ constructed by Hollywood realism. Said’s observations are particu-
larly relevant at this point. Recognizing that, in general, the media does not
act ‘out of base motives’ to pervert ‘a “real” Islam [that] exists somewhere
out there’, Said describes “Islam” as both an objective and a subjective fact
(Said 1997, 44–5). By subjective he means that people have their reasons
for constructing their understanding of the Other, in this case Islam and, in
particular, that non-Muslim outsiders have the impulse to ‘fix, personify,
stamp the identity of that which they feel confronts them collectively or
individually’.

This is to say that the media’s Islam, the Western scholar’s Islam, the West-
ern reporter’s Islam, and the Muslim’s Islam are all acts of will and inter-
pretation that take place in history, and can only be dealt with in history
as acts of will and interpretation. (1997, 44–5)

Cinema’s significance was not lost on those Arab and Muslim American
groups who protested against 20th Century Fox studio’s release of The Siege
in August 1998. Their complaint was precisely because the film deals ‘with
fanatical Muslim extremists who detonate bombs in New York’.12

The Siege (1998)

The protest of American Arabs and Muslims against The Siege suggests that
the found themselves represented as the minority ethnic Other for the
majority ethnic identity. The obvious corollary is that the main characters
offered for identification represent the normative ethnicity. In fact, The Siege,
 Cinematic Representation 73

which of all the post-Cold War terrorist action genre films tries to be intel-
ligent and politically adept, and which is certainly the most chillingly pre-
scient of these terrorist films, is interesting in the identifications it does
offer. According to Jeff Beatty, Military Advisor on The Siege, as Assistant
Special Agent-in-charge of the FBI Counter-intelligence Task Force,
Anthony Hubbard represents,

from a Hollywood point of view, a pretty accurate portrayal of where our

consciousness was about the reality of the threat. I think that law enforce-
ment would react very close to that way in the late 90s. They just weren’t
there. (Bradshaw 2002)

In other words, Hubbard represents the sophisticated, hi-tech naiveté of

end of the Millennium US law enforcement. But more than this, Hubbard
is a man who has seen it all, and still believes in the system.

With his FBI coffee mug and his natty monogrammed shirts, Hub’s an
organisation man of heroic proportions: an ex-paratrooper who studied
law, a Catholic liberal who believes in the system. Compared with [Major
General William] Devereaux (Bruce Willis) and [Elise Kraft/Sharon]
Bridger (Annette Bening ), he’s a total square. While the other charac-
ters tend to drift in and out from moral twilight zones as the plot requires,
Hub remains front and centre. (Hollings 1999, 54)

Hubbard’s lack of cynical realism in his law enforcing professionalism is

established mid-picture in a conversation with Kraft. Suspicious of all true
believers, including ‘Hub’, Kraft caricatures Hubbard’s Catholic back-
ground, and faces him with the moral challenge him that, while it is easy to
tell right from wrong, the challenge of realpolitik is to choose between
wrongs, to discern which wrong is more right.
According to Beatty, Hubbard is in a form of denial, and when Islamist
extremists hijack a New York bus he thinks in terms of ‘old style terrorists
who’ll want to use the hostages as bargaining counters’ (Bradshaw 2002).
In short, Hubbard represents those Americans in the cinema audience who
will travel with the Agent from naivety to awareness.
In suggesting that the film’s main character offered for identification rep-
resents the majority ethnicity, it should be noted that Hubbard himself is
African American. This is a clear indication of how far Hollywood iconogra-
phy has moved from the heady days when Sidney Poitier became the first
74 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion
®
(and until 2002 the only) black male actor to win an Academy Award for
Best Actor.13 But Hubbard’s team includes a Chinese, Tina Osu (Lianna
Pai), and a Jew, Danny Sussman (David Proval), a white American of Euro-
pean origin, Mike Johanssen (Mark Valley) and even a Muslim, the Leba-
nese, Frank Haddad (Tony Shalhoub). The point is that Hubbard’s
colleagues are as ethnically mixed as the American Dream would prescribe.
The lack of subtlety in this coded statement about American society’s inclu-
sivity narrativizes the ideology that Americans can successfully distinguish
those Muslims who love America from Muslims who do not, and will
embrace the former while punishing the latter. The fact that in the three
days following the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre ‘more than 200
violent attacks against Muslim Americans were recorded’ (Gerges 1999, 48)
suggests otherwise.
The fact that the film opens ‘with President Clinton on television in the
wake of the Somalia bombing, warning that “America takes care of its own”,
intercut with video footage of the devastated Federal Building in Okla-
homa’ (Hollings 1999, 54) underscores the confusion. And a major part of
the reason why this confusion exists, as Said observes, is the abstraction of
‘Islam’. Thus, in discussing the 26 January 1991 column by the Los Angeles
Times’ Islam expert, Said notes that, while Robin Wright acknowledges the
‘danger of simplifying a “myriad of Countries” . . . the only picture in the
five column piece was of Ayatollah Khomeini’.

He, and Iran, embodied all that was objectionable about Islam, from ter-
rorism and anti-Westernism to being ‘the only major monotheistic nation
offering a set of rules by which to govern society as well as a set of spiritual
beliefs.’ That even in Iran there was a major, on-going dispute about what
those rules were, and even what ‘Islam’ was, plus a vociferous debate that
contested Khomeini’s legacy, were not mentioned. It was enough to use the
word ‘Islam’ to cover what ‘we’ were worried about on a world scale. (Said 1997,
7, emphasis added)

As I noted above, the ambiguity surrounding the actual political allegiance

of the Palestinians in The Siege matters little. What does matter is that the
film narrativizes the perceived threat of the Other, and so reinforces the
ideology of Hollywood realism. By the time that Zwick was making his film
‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’ and to some extent ‘Palestinian’ had become terms to
cover what worried ‘us’.
 Cinematic Representation 75

I have tried to show in this chapter the extent to which cinema parallels
liturgy around the heads of identification with the cinematic ‘other’; the
cinematic narrative into which spectators are stitched; and the cinematic
‘reality’ in which subjects participate. As with liturgy, it should be clear that
the key to spectators’ participation in the ideological ‘reality’ of Hollywood
realism is their identification with the film star/hero. At the level of the
universal, this cinematic ‘other’ embodies (incarnates) the fans’ aspirations
towards the ‘sainthood’ of celebrity status, while at the level of the particu-
lar the character embodies a certain ‘social type’ – ‘regular (if flawed) guys’
just like them, who overcome difficult situations.
Again, as with liturgy, identification with an ‘other’ is in the context of a
narrative, into which spectators are ‘stitched’ by the processes of identifica-
tion with the film star/hero. Whereas liturgically, in the sacramental narra-
tive of the Cross, worshippers are stitched into a salvation story, cinema
spectators are stitched into a narrative in which the ordinary guy overcomes
the Other in an extraordinary situation. In particular, I have been discuss-
ing those films that narrativize the perceived threat of the Muslim Other.
These films represent only one genre that constructs the salvific narrative as
redemption of the threat to ‘our’ American way of life – the ‘regular (if
flawed) guy’ (just like us) overcomes the threat of the Other in order to
restore the status quo of ‘our’ American social order.
It should be clear that I am arguing that, in a way that can be paralleled
to the operations of liturgical representation, by identification with the
cinematic ‘other’, spectators are stitched into a narrative and so become
participants in the (ideological) ‘reality’ that is the construction of Holly-
wood realism.
In all this, I have sought to avoid forcing a parallel based on an assump-
tion that the symbolic representation of liturgy can be simplistically and
unproblematically paralleled with the realistic representational of cinema.
Rather, I have, in effect, given a set of ‘co-ordinates’ that can act as refer-
ence points by which film and liturgy can be paralleled as representational
media. These co-ordinates are the three heads: identify with an other; nar-
rative suture; and ultimately participation in an (ideological) ‘reality’. Now
I must address the question: what can film theory contribute to understand-
ing liturgy as a representational media that affects the development of
subject identity?
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 Part Three

What Can Film Theory Offer

Liturgy?
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction to Part Three

I want here to explore psychoanalytic film theory in order to identify those

concepts that I am proposing will be of use to religious studies to explain
how religious identity is constructed in relation to the sacramental narra-
tive of liturgical representation. Specifically, these will be the closely associ-
ated concepts of narrative space and suture.
Screen adopted Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the journal’s interpretation
of Lacan has been foundational for those British thinkers who appropriated
his ideas for purposes other than psychoanalysis; in other words, those
who have deployed Lacan in cultural criticism. However, the influence of
Althusser has been formative on Screen’s theoretical development to the
extent that it skewed the journal’s appropriation of Lacan and obscured
some of the potential of psychoanalysis to contribute to film theory. This
(mis)appropriation, which resulted from the politicization of Lacan by
the Althusserian Left and in particular their abstraction of Lacan’s dream
theory into a general theory of signification, is embedded in what is
effectively Screen’s basic interpretation of Lacan as presented by Colin
MacCabe (1975).
Here, I will want to indicate the possibilities and limitations offered by
psychoanalytic film theory, which I will do by looking at two concepts that
emerged from the debates within and around Screen as attempts to explain
the operations of representation. I believe these concepts can be applied
with profit to liturgical representation. I will consider Slavoj Žižek’s return
to suture, and I will end with a critique of the subject sutured in cinematic
discourse. This critique will provide a framework with which, in Chapter 7,
to ‘give Lacan himself a chance’ (Žižek 2001b, 2). Specifically, the frame-
work will be concerned with the cinematic impression of reality as an
unconscious effect, cinematic discourse understood in terms proper to
Lacan’s linguistic theory of dreams; and the suturing of subjectivity in rela-
tion to the subject’s identification with a represented other.
 Chapter 6

Cinematic Identification: Suture and

Narrative Space

What emerged from the frequently acrimonious debates within and around
Screen over the value of psychoanalysis for developing film theory is that the
idea that psychoanalysis offers a theory of the ‘material history of the con-
struction of the individual’ (Heath 1976/77, 60) articulated in the concept
of suture or pseudo-identification. In terms of cinematic technique discus-
sion has focused on the point-of-view shot and the ‘narrative organisation of
look’, which I will discuss in this section. In terms of logical development,
I will consider first the notion of narrative space before describing the neo-
Lacanian concept of suture.

Cinematic Perspective and Narrative Space

Because the cinema spectator is present in the theatre, he or she is by defi-

nition absent from the screen. Consequently, direct identification between
the spectator and the actor is not possible. According to Metz, the spectator
is in the cinema to look at an other, in other words, to be a perceiver, in fact
to be ‘all-perceiving’:

absent from the screen, but certainly present in the auditorium, a great
eye and ear without which the perceived would have no one to perceive
it, the constitutive instance, in other words, of the cinema signifier. . . . as a
pure act of perception . . . as a kind of transcendental subject, anterior to
every there is. (1975, 51)

For Metz, film is an ambiguous mirror. On the one hand, it is like that of the
mirror stage in that spectators are prey to the imaginary; on the other hand,
insofar as it returns everything but the spectator, it is unlike that of the
mirror stage: ‘the cinema is more involved on the flank of the symbolic, and
 Cinematic Identification 81

hence of secondariness, than is the mirror of childhood’ (1975, 52). In a

move that locates the spectator as voyeur in front of the screen, Metz argues
that spectators in fact identify with their own look (1975, 54).
Metz is relying on Jean-Louis Baudry (1985), whose theorization of the
techniques of cinematic representation relates to cinematic apparatus and
the identification of the subject with the camera in the manifestation of the
‘transcendental subject’.1 For his part, Baudry is aware that in cinema both
images and camera position move, and he argues that this movement threa-
tens ‘the unifying and “substantializing” character of the single-perspective
image [implying] a multiplicity of points of view which would neutralize the
fixed position of the eye-subject’ (Baudry 1985, 535). However, he argues
also that it is the very mobility of the camera that provides the conditions
for the manifestation of the ‘transcendental subject’, a subject unfettered
by the limitation of objective reality. In these terms, the world becomes for
the subject ‘an intentional object’, implied by and in turn implying the
action of the subject who sights it: ‘The multiplicity of aspects of the object
in view refers to a synthesizing operation, to the unity of this constituting
subject’ (1985, 537). Baudry’s argument is that, since subjects constitute
meaning, and continuity is necessary for the constitution of meaning, the
continuity of the images is attributable to the subject. His case is that conti-
nuity appears in cinema in the negation of difference and that it is appar-
ent in the narrative continuity of the filmic space.
If Baudry is correct, his substantial point concerns the combined effects
on the spectator of the cinematic apparatus and the techniques of camera
mobility. His point is that it is the techniques of camera mobility that give
rise to the spectator’s identification with the ‘transcendental subject’: being
held within the narrative by the camera’s movements, the spectator assumes
the camera’s viewpoint and knowledge as his or her own. In this way, the
spectator becomes the all-seeing and all-knowing one.2 In Baudry’s view the
cinematographic apparatus occupies a position between ‘objective reality’
and the film as the finished product. As such the camera is a site of inscrip-
tion between operations that mask the transformations of reality. (Baudry,
and others, draw an analogy between the debt owed by the perspective of
the camera’s monocular vision to Quattrocento, and the implication of this
perspective with inherent ideology. Based as it is on the principle of a fixed
point which organizes the visualized objects, Baudry argues that the ideo-
logy of this perspective specifies the position of the ‘subject’.)
Barely acknowledging Baudry, Heath points to the corollary that, while
in cinema Quattrocento perspective operates to create an impression of rea-
lity, it is a reality that is ‘neither absolutely two-dimensional nor absolutely
82 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

three-dimensional, but something between’ (Arnheim 1958, 20, cited in

3
Heath 1976, 78). Heath argues that, as the product of camera mobility, this
‘between’ is the space of cinematic narrative, which he terms ‘narrative
space’. Heath connects Baudry’s attribution of the continuity of the images
to the subject with the observation that classical Hollywood narrative cin-
ema made no attempt to hide out of frame space. On the contrary, Holly-
wood narrative works to contain out of frame space, recapturing it through
narrativization, thereby giving movement coherence, and fixing metonymy
as a ‘taking place’. Heath considers cinematic space to be both ‘in frame’
and ‘out of frame’. In frame, space is controlled by the demands of narrative,
and is that space that holds ‘signifier on signified’, narration on narrated.
On the other hand, out of frame, it is the transitions from shot to shot, which
‘pose acutely the problem of the filmic construction of space, of achieving
a coherence of place and positioning the spectator as the unified and unify-
ing subject of its vision’ (Heath 1976, 85). This is Baudry’s ‘transcendental
subject’, the subject unfettered by the limitation of objective reality.
For Heath, the cohesion and continuity of narrative rely on the ‘negation
of space for place’ (1976, 86), the centring of the spectator in the flow of
narrative. It is to this end that spatial cues – camera movements (establish-
ing shots, tracks and pans) and editing (dissolves, fades) – are utilized. The
result is ‘picturedness’, the simultaneous effect of actual event and picture,
‘a filmic construction’ (1976, 87); and it is at this point that the technique of
shot/reverse-shot, or point-of-view shot, becomes crucial in ‘the joining of
a film’s constructions, the stitching together of the overlaying metonymies’
(1976, 92). It is precisely because of the assumptions attendant on shot/
reverse-shot that the film is able to place its space. This is what Heath con-
siders the operation of suture (Heath 1977/78).
In terms of film theory, cinematic identification is closely bound up with
cinematic signification and visual perception. In Lacanian psychoanalytical
terms this maps onto the ‘neo-Lacanian’ concept of suture,4 introduced into
film theory by Jean-Pierre Oudart ([1969]1977/78). Like Baudry, Oudart
represents the post-1968 concern with exposing the technologies of ideol-
ogy, specifically within cinema. As such, both are concerned with how the
cinematic impression of reality operates as the instrument of the dominant
bourgeois, capitalist ideology. Both writers are clearly influenced by Althuss-
er’s notion of ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (Althusser 1971) and regard
‘cinematographic apparatus’ as another instance of culture’s implication in
the apparatus of state ideology, interpellating, or addressing individuals as
subjects of the dominant ideology. Specifically, Oudart explores the relation-
ship of the spectating subject to ideologically inscribed representation.5
 Cinematic Identification 83

Jean-Pierre Oudart and Stephen Heath: Suturing the

Subject in Cinematic Discourse

Oudart takes his lead from Jacques-Alain Miller (1977/78), who uses
Lacan’s distinction between the subject (content) of the statement or utter-
ance (énoncé), and the act of stating or uttering (énonciation); that is, between
the subject designated in the statement and the subject making the state-
ment (Oudart [1969]1977/78; E 298). For example, in the paradoxical
statement ‘I am lying’, the subject ‘I’ who makes the statement is not fully
represented by the subject ‘I’ (the signifier) of the statement; there is a lack
in the signifier of the subject that means that the subject signified is not
fully represented (there is an ‘I’ who is telling the truth about lying). Lacan’s
point is that the speaking subject never can be fully represented in lan-
guage, and the consequence of this lack is that the subject is compelled to
procure a ‘fictional’ subjectivity through a ‘pseudo identification’ (S 11, 117).
In short, the subject sutures an ego as an identification assigned or signified
by an other. For Oudart, cinematic discourse performs the psychoanalytic
process articulated in the concept of suture, insofar as the lack opened by
the cinematic énonciation is sutured within an imaginary identification.
Oudart orientates his thought within the flow of signification that closes
the lack opened by the énonciation, and thereby positions cinema as cine-
matic discourse, best understood by considering what is at stake in the pro-
cess of ‘reading’ film:

Every filmic field is echoed by an absent field, the place of a character

who is put there by the viewer’s imaginary, and which we shall call the
Absent One. At a certain moment of the reading all the objects of the
filmic field combine together to form the signifier of its absence. At this
key-moment the image enters the order of the signifier, and the unde-
fined strip of film the realm of the discontinuous, the ‘discrete’. ([1969]
1977/78, 36)

Oudart has in mind here the shot/reverse-shot process, and he considers

the pleasure experienced by the spectator in the initial shot, the cinematic
image in the ‘filmic field’. This is a short-lived pleasure, disrupted the
moment the spectator becomes aware of the frame, at the margin of which
cinematic materiality threatens to disrupt the ideological positioning of the
spectator. At this point, the spectator is ‘rescued’ when, through the shot/
reverse-shot sequence, the image ‘enters the order of the signifier’, and
becomes a signifier of absence. Now, the filmic field becomes the problematic
84 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

field of representation. The absence (lack) constructed by the shot is per-

ceived in the spectator’s imaginary as the ‘Absent One’, located in the imag-
inary space of the ‘absent field’, leaving the spectator ‘aware’ that the filmic
representation signifies for an absent field outside the image.6
Oudart’s contention is that in a cinematic statement constructed around
a shot/reverse-shot framework, the lack is abolished when someone (or
something) is placed within the filmic field, ‘the filmic space defined by the
same take’ ([1969]1977/78, 37). The second shot annuls the threat by
showing that the first was the point-of-view of a character within the fic-
tional diegesis. The Absent One is thereby re-appropriated into the filmic
field, the spectator’s initial relation to the film is sutured, and the cinematic
discourse is embraced into the imaginary. It is by this process of shot/
reverse-shot that the field of absence and the field of presence are sutured
to form the imaginary of the filmic space in which the signifier is echoed
and retroactively anchors itself in the filmic field. The result is that the spec-
tator is distanced from what had been an uncomplicated relation to the
film, losing innocence as a viewer, and being implicated in the cinematic
discourse. Arguing that art is a discourse constructed according to codes,
themselves the product of ideology, Oudart holds that the discourse prede-
termines how the subject should read the ‘text’, while the text itself masks
and naturalizes the presence of the figurative codes. Operating beneath
perception, the codes create an impression of ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, which is
threatened when the spectator becomes aware of the frame, but which is
overcome by the shot/reverse-shot process, ‘the system of suture’.7
From his initial attempt to specify ‘the logic of the signifier in cinema’
(Heath 1977/78, 57), Oudart draws attention to a situation in which the
subject is productive of cinematic discourse, while being at the same time
the reason for its production. Citing Miller, Oudart states that suture primar-
ily represents ‘the relationship of the subject to the chain of its discourse’
(Oudart [1969]1977/78, 38; Miller 1977/78, 24).

We must hold together the definitions which make the subject the effect of
the signifier and the signifier the representative of the subject; it is a circular,
though non-reciprocal, relation. (1977/78, 34)

As I indicated above in highlighting Althusser’s general importance for

film theory and particular importance for the concept of suture, Oudart’s
intention is to give a psychoanalytic account of cinematic interpellation,
which he sees as the ‘establishment of an imaginary as real . . . by the persis-
tence of the ideological effects of the representational system’ (Oudart
 Cinematic Identification 85

[1971b]1990, 203). To this end, he develops Serge Daney’s analysis of ocu-

larcentric epistemology, photology, ‘that obstinate will to confuse vision and
cognition, making the latter the compensation of the former and the for-
mer the guarantee of the latter, seeing in directness of vision the model of
cognition’, parodied as ‘I see, therefore I am aware’ (Daney and Oudart
[1970]1990, 116, 117), alongside notions about the jouissance of reading.
Daney had directly challenged Bazinian realism, arguing that ‘The visual is
neither the double nor the outrageous, false or inaccurate misrepresenta-
tion of something else; the visual is something else’ ([1970]1990, 115–16).
In consequence, the ‘real’ is not innocent and cinema is complicit in a
‘photological’ visibility, and guilty of transmuting profilmic material, neu-
tralizing its signifiers. Daney also charged directors like Howard Hawks,
‘the filmmaker of an always total pleasure’ ([1970]1990, 121), with regard-
ing the only important effect as that of pleasure: ‘ceaselessly investing signi-
fieds in new signifiers and making themselves masters of a chain where
nothing allows the end to be envisaged, masters of a frenetic transitivity
which condemns them to say nothing real, never to come to a stop’
([1970]1990, 121).
In continuity, Oudart argues that the profilmic object is misrecognized
‘by a spectator who reduces his knowledge about the object to his vision of
the object, who bases his knowledge on his vision, and does not want to
know anything about it, lost as he is in his jouissance’ ([1970]1990, 123). It
is this jouissance that is the ideology operating ‘where it could not be seen,
in the place from which it was seen’ ([1970]1990, 123), namely in the ‘doubly
imaginary place’ where it addresses ‘a spectator who was the metteur en scène
of his own fantasy, installed by the apparatus of phantasmagoria’
([1970]1990, 124). This leads Oudart to propose that cinema’s principal
question concerns not the subject as cause and master of a knowledge
obtained merely by seeing clearly, but rather with a radically decentred sub-
ject, ‘master of his misrecognition, or of a half-knowledge masking another
truth’ (Daney and Oudart [1970]1990, 131); a misrecognition privileging
the impression of reality in order to ‘conceal the materiality of projection’
and perfect its ‘écriture of verisimilitude’ ([1970]1990, 132): ‘The true refer-
ent of this cinema was almost never primarily the real, but the imaginary’
([1970]1990, 133).
In explicating the operations of the impression of reality, Oudart distin-
guishes the ‘reality effect’ [effet de réalité] from the effect of the real [effet de
réel] (Oudart [1971a]1990, 190). In semiotic terms, the reality effect consti-
tutes the pictorial codes standardized and codified within Quattrocento
perspective. Referring specifically to Diego Velázquez’, The Maids of Honour
86 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

(1656), Oudart generalizes the point that figures within the painting
address an absent other and consequently this turns representation into a
spectacle seen by a spectator excluded from its field of representation. Oud-
art considers that the excluded spectator is involved in representation in a
phantasmic way, inscribed as a subject ‘in a figurative system which will pres-
ent its effects of the real as effects of optical reality . . . which are the traces
of the inscription of the subject in the form of a lack’ ([1971a]1990, 191).
Oudart once again rejects the Bazinian notion of analogical realism, here
in favour of a Lacanian, psycholinguistic interpretation, in which he consid-
ers the effet de réalité, the figurative structure produced by the specific pictorial
codes of Western painting, to be the result of the processes of signification
as described by Lacan. Oudart’s point is that because figures in post-Renais-
sance Quattrocento painting signify lack, which structures the representation
and inscribes the spectating subject within that structure, the subject
assumes the existence of the human figure represented. He sums up thus:

the attribution of a real referent to the figures in the representation . . .

is a function of the subject’s exclusion from the representation and his
inscription in the discourse of the representation or the narrative. If the
sign, like the figure, makes things present, that is because the signifying
chain implies a subject who by virtue of his metonymic inscription in the
chain, makes the meaning effect (the narrative, the figurative representa-
tion) as it were the predicate of a subject (in this case the subject of the
enunciation, produced as an effect of the discursive structure). ([1971a]
1990, 192)

Against this, Heath is critical of what he describes as ‘the muddled status of

the concept’ (Heath 1977/78, 62).8 For Heath, the proposition of cinema
as cinematic discourse raises a crucial problem about the precise under-
standing with which film theorists work. Returning to Metz, Heath draws
attention to the correspondence that he finds exists between the linguistic
sentence and the filmic image.9 Heath argues that Metz intends the single
shot as an énoncé (a statement). For Metz, the shot is ‘there-for’, addressing
an implied spectator, which it does with an ‘innocence’ whose énonciation
(the act of stating or uttering) is unspecified. In this case, the spectator is
confronted with an image that appears complete, but which is in itself lim-
ited by what it addresses, namely the subject. So, the image enters the signi-
fying chain and completes (its meaning/signification) with the subject it
entertains. In arguing that in order to understand cinema as discourse it is
necessary ‘to understand the relation of that address in the movement of
the image, in the movement of and between shots’ (1977/78, 63), Heath
 Cinematic Identification 87

means that cinema as discourse may be taken to be the constant production

of a subject address, through the play of incompleteness-completion that
functions in representation.
For Heath, suture is, ‘the effecting of the join of the subject in structures
of meaning’ (1977/78, 74).10 Since ‘a film is a series of acts of meaning’
(1977/78, 74), it follows that it may be that chain of discourse in which
the subject is joined to its signifier (a filmic character) that signifies the
subject’s lack. Since in a film a spectator is offered multiple subject posi-
tions, the effects of ideology are to be measured across that multiplicity of
positions. For Heath, cinema’s ideological mechanism is specified in the
operation of the suture, the never-ending process of construction and recon-
struction, of absence and presence, of flow and bind, closed in narrative;
narrative closure is the moment which ‘shifts the spectator as subject in its
terms . . . [It] is scene and movement, movement and scene, the reconstruc-
tion of the subject in the pleasure of that balance’ (1976, 99–100).
I will have much more to say about suture in the following chapter. For now
it is enough to note that Heath’s consideration of suture suggests a return of
the concept to its psychoanalytic origins, now marked with a concern for the
subject’s implication in ideology. Rightly understood, cinema as discourse
may be taken to be the constant production of a subject address, through
that play of incompleteness-completion that functions in representation.

Slavoj Žižek: When Suture Fails

Slavoj Žižek has, at various points, attempted to read ‘the most sublime
theoretical motifs of Jacques Lacan together with and through the exem-
plary cases of contemporary mass culture’ (Žižek 1991, vii), in particular
the mass culture of Hollywood. Yet, despite producing several book-length
treatments of this type of ‘looking awry’ he came late to directing his
interest to the concept of suture.
However, in his attempts to revitalize film theory by reinstating Lacanian
psychoanalysis within its discourse (Žižek 2001b), Žižek confronts the crisis
for intellectual ascendancy between Theory and Post-Theory. (His ques-
tions are political, and concern whether cultural studies informed by ‘Post-
Theory’ can counteract global capitalism. His answer is negative, insofar as
such an approach ‘accepts the inherited notion of “humanity”’ (2001b, 4).)
To counter what he sees as the reductive reading developed by Screen, Žižek
argues for the existence of ‘another Lacan’ and finds the theory of suture to
be that aspect of psychoanalytic theory capable of both reinstating Lacan
within cinema theory and of revitalizing film theory – and for that matter
88 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

critical thought itself. Here, I will indicate, briefly, how Žižek attempts to
reinstitute suture as a concept central to Lacan’s thought and integral to
film theory.
Žižek defines suture as the mapping of external difference onto the inside:
‘the difference between image and its absence/void is mapped onto the
intra-pictural difference between the two shots’ (2001b, 33). Žižek notes
William Rothman’s objection that in the ‘Oudart/Dayan scenario’, the
viewer is ‘authorised to see what happens to be in the axis of the glance of
another spectator, who is ghostly or absent’ (Rothman 1975, 48).11 Žižek
observes that for Rothman the ultimate threat of the point-of-view shot is
that it will ‘evoke the spectre of a free-floating Gaze without a determinate
subject to whom it belongs’ (Žižek 2001b, 33).12 Notwithstanding Žižek’s
unattributed observation that ‘Post-Theorists speak of the “missing Gaze”’
(2001b, 34), he rightly follows Joan Copjec in arguing that it is crucial for
Lacan’s notion of Gaze ‘that it involves the reversal of the relationship
between subject and object’ (2001b, 34; Copjec 1994, 15–38). And he
extends this to argue that, since the Gaze is on the side of the object, and
stands for the blind spot in the field of the visible, the Gaze is intimately
connected to Lacan’s objet petit a, ‘the blind spot without which nothing
would be really visible’ (Žižek 2001b, 34).
Žižek explicates this connection with reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s
ability to render the Gaze. Typically, in the subject’s approach to an uncanny,
threatening object, often a house, ‘we encounter the antinomy between the
eye and the Gaze at its purest: the subject’s eye sees the house, but the
house – the object – seems somehow to return the Gaze’ (2001b, 34–5). But
what is elementary in Hitchcock is seen to be an inversion of the suture pro-
cedure, a ‘“suturing” of the gap opened up by the point-of-view shot which
fails’ (2001b, 35, emphasis added).13
For Žižek, the important question arising from Hitchcock’s techniques
concerns what happens when ‘the exchange of subjective and objective
shots fails to produce the suturing effect?’ And his solution is to propose
the ‘function of interface’ (2001b, 39). As a primary example of interface,
Žižek refers to an image from Orson Welles’ 1941 debut film, Citizen Kane,
in which, during an election campaign, the eponymous Kane stands in
front of a gigantic poster of his photograph. The effect of this image is that
‘the “real” Kane is redoubled by his spectral shadow’ (2001b, 39). Žižek’s
point is that, when the ‘standard suture’ fails,

when the gap can no longer be filled by an additional signifier, it is filled

by a spectral object, in a shot which, in the guise of the spectral screen,
 Cinematic Identification 89

includes its own counter-shot. In other words, when, in the exchange of

shots and counter-shots, a shot occurs to which there is no counter-shot,
the only way to fill this gap is by producing a shot which contains its own
counter-shot. (2001b, 54)

In such cases, the suture is achieved, not by the second shot, but by the spec-
tral counter, ‘the fantasmiatic supplement that fills its hole’ (2001b, 54).
For Žižek, the most significant mistake made with regard to conceptual-
izing suture is to see it is an articulation of the inscription of the exterior in
the interior in such a way as to efface the trace of its own production,
thereby naturalizing the product as a consistent whole. Žižek argues that
interface has this effect when an external reality is sutured ‘by a subjective
element, an artificial supplement that has to be added to it in order to gen-
erate the effect of reality’ (2001b, 55); for Žižek, this artificial supplement
is the objet petit a, ‘the subjective element constitutive of objective-external
reality’. However, he rejects the idea, which he finds in ‘standard (cine-
matic) suture theory’, of the subject as ‘the illusory stand-in . . . for its absent
cause’ (2001b, 55), and argues instead that the kind of self-enclosure that
can successfully erase the decentred traces of its production is a priori
impossible.
Returning to his critique of Post-Theory, Žižek argues that Post-Theory
has no room for the notion of suture precisely because Post-Theory ‘insists
on multiple relatively independent levels’ (2001b, 56). As Bordwell and Car-
roll put it: ‘What is coming after Theory is not another Theory, but theories
and the activity of theorizing’ (Bordwell and Carroll 1996, xiv). In contrast,
Žižek proposes a definition of suture as ‘the structurally necessary short-
circuit between different levels (style, narrative, the economic conditions of
the studio system of production, etc.)’ (2001b, 56). Žižek’s point is that
because in suture external difference is always internal, ‘the external limita-
tion of a field of phenomena always reflects itself within this field, as its
inherent impossibility to fully become itself’ (2001b, 57). In other words, no
amount of ‘theories’ or ‘theorizing’ about film aesthetics or history can be
subversive precisely because ‘These external conditions leave the internal
logic intact’ (2001b, 57). And for Žižek, psychoanalysis in general, and
suture, as the mapping of external difference onto the inside, in particular,
are ultimately subversive theories.

We can see how, in this precise sense, suture is the exact opposite of the
illusory, self-enclosed totality that successfully erases the decentred traces
of its production process: suture means that, precisely, such self-enclosure
90 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

is a priori impossible, that the excluded externality always leaves its traces
within – or, to put it in standard Freudian terms, that there is no repres-
sion . . . without the return of the repressed. (2001b, 58)

Žižek admits that the ‘time of suture seems to have irrevocably passed: in
the present-day cultural studies version of Theory, the term barely occurs’
(2001b, 31). So it remains to be seen just how much Žižek’s work on suture
will revitalize film theory. But his suggestion that the concept has a future
as well as a past within film theory, and that suture is in effect a concept cen-
tral to Lacan’s thought, prepares the way for me to re-read Lacan’s theory
of subject construction in terms of suture.
My intention here is to relate this return to Lacan back to my thesis that
the film theory concepts of suture and narrative space can contribute to
understanding the operation of liturgy on the construction of religious
identity. It is clear that Žižek’s Lacan is the Lacan of the real as impossible,
and his constant references are to the Thing, the embodiment of jouissance,
‘the impossible/real foreign kernel, [which is] irreducible to the symbolic
order [and which] can only be approached in a suicidal heroic act of trans-
gression, of excluding oneself from the symbolic community’ (Žižek 2001a,
19); to objet petit a.
This much noted, Žižek himself points out that there are many Lacans cur-
rently on offer. Taking a lead from Miller (2000), Žižek lists four: the struc-
turalist Lacan who emphasizes the determining form of the ‘big Other’, the
symbolic order; the Lacan of the ‘Ethics’, who emphasizes jouissance as the
impossible Real; the post-1968 Lacan of the four discourses; and the Lacan
of Seminar XX (Žižek 2001a, 29–31). Žižek’s Lacan (the ‘another Lacan’ who
can revitalize cinema theory), is that of the Ethics, this is the Lacan who can
supply what Marx overlooked by ‘focusing on the ambiguous overlapping
between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment’ (2001a, 19). However, it is
worth observing that, to the extent to which he emerges fully formed in Semi-
nar VII, Žižek’s ‘another Lacan’ effaces the trace of its own production.

Critique of the Subject Sutured in Cinematic Discourse

The weakness with the way film theory has appropriated the concept of
suture is precisely in terms of the way it has been informed by the agenda of
post-1968 Althusserian-Marxism. I have already indicated the relative mer-
its of Althusserian contribution to film theory, both negative (a hardening
of psychoanalysis into a linguistic theory of culture) and positive (an account
 Cinematic Identification 91

of the ideological processes of interpellation), but I now want to argue that

embracing his Marxist-structuralism has caused some important difficulties
for film theory.
Oudart clearly intends a psychoanalytic account of the processes of inter-
pellation, which he sees in classically Althusserian terms as the ‘establish-
ment of an imaginary as real . . . by the persistence of the ideological effects
of the representational system’ (Oudart [1971b]1990, 203). Developing
Daney’s analysis of ocularcentric epistemology, as the confusion of vision
and cognition, Oudart argues that in cinema, the profilmic object is misrec-
ognized when the spectator reduces his knowledge about the object to his
vision of it, a misrecognition that privileges the impression of reality in order
to ‘conceal the materiality of projection’ (Daney and Oudart [1970]1990,
132). Thus, Oudart’s claim that the ‘true referent of this cinema was almost
never primarily the real, but the imaginary’ ([1970]1990, 133), is in effect
an Althusserian rejection of Bazinian realism, which regards ideology as the
representation not of the real conditions of human existence but the imagi-
nary relation to the real world.
This interpretation poses the first difficulty for film theory insofar as it
reduces the cinematic impression of reality to an Althusserian caricature of
the very theoretical frame within which the interpretation is supposedly
founded: Lacanian psychoanalysis. The second difficulty is posed when
Oudart explicates the operations of the impression of reality, ‘the reality
effect’ (effet de réalité), by focusing on the codes standardized and codified
within Quattrocento perspective. So, on the basis that cinema’s true referent
is not the real of Bazinian realism but the imaginary of Lacanian psycholin-
guistics, Oudart considers how the effet de réalité is the result of the processes
of signification, how it is produced semiotically by the codes of representa-
tion, described by Lacan. In other words, because Quattrocento painting
typically signifies lack, spectating subjects become inscribed within the
structures of the representation.
Oudart’s point, that in cinematic discourse the lack opened by cinematic
statements is abolished when someone is placed within the filmic field, the
filmic space, is an argument that cinematic discourse performs the psycho-
analytic process of suture: the lack is sutured by the subject’s imaginary iden-
tification. And in terms of its ideological effect, the spectator loses innocence
as a viewer and becomes implicated in the cinematic discourse. Heath’s
comment, that suture effects the join of the subject in the structures of
meaning, make this explicit.
Specifically, then, the second difficulty with Oudart’s interpretation of
suture, informed as it is by the structuralism of this Althusserian Marxist
92 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

agenda, is in terms of his application of Lacanian psycholinguistics. The

point is that Oudart and others effectively attempt to psychoanalyse Quat-
trocento perspective and the effects of its codes in the mistaken belief that, if
ideology represents the imaginary, and if the codes (the shot/reverse-shot
process) construct the imaginary of the filmic space, then exposing the
codes will lay bare the ideology itself.
I want to argue that this interpretation is problematic in three important
ways. First, with regard to the cinematic impression of reality, notwithstand-
ing the obvious problems with Althusser’s understanding of the Lacanian
categories of the imaginary and the real, Oudart fails to realize the poten-
tial of Lacan’s analysis precisely because he fails to understand that the
relationship between the impression of reality and narrative space is one of
unconscious effect. Secondly, Oudart is over dependent on a structural lin-
guistics that does violence to Lacanian psycholinguistics, and to that extent
he fails to understand the subtleties of Lacan’s linguistic theory of dreams.
Finally, commitment to Althusserian Marxist-structuralism leads Oudart
and Heath to make the mistaken proposition that subjects are sutured when
they are joined to the structures of meaning. I will argue in fact that subjec-
tivity is sutured in the identification with an other.14

What emerges from this discussion is that psychoanalytic film theory deve-
loped its concepts of narrative space and suture in relation to the cinematic
techniques of narrative and the point-of-view shot, and that these theories
are focused in terms of the spectating subject’s construction of fictional
subjectivity, a pseudo-identification.
Equally, it is apparent that the term suture is used in two related ways. In
the first case, the term suture is used to describe the technique of shot/
reverse-shot. What Heath describes as the stitching together of a film’s over-
laying metonymies has its theoretical roots in Baudry’s notion of the ‘tran-
scendental subject’. For Baudry, the effect of narrative cohesion and
continuity is attributable to the subject, who identifies with the ‘transcended
subject’ constructed by the very mobility of the camera, and assumes the
camera’s knowledge as their own.
But the term is used in a second way to describe the subject’s pseudo-
identification. In this sense, Oudart argues that as a cinematic statement
the shot/reverse-shot technique opens a lack that is retroactively anchored
in the cinematic statement, when the subject sutures an identification with
the cinematic signifier in the imaginary. As Heath puts it, the apparently
complete image enters the signifying chain of cinematic discourse and is
 Cinematic Identification 93

completed, given cinematic meaning/signification, by the spectating sub-

ject. For Heath, the concept of suture is the concept of the subject’s pseudo-
identification in (cinematic) structures of meaning.
However, these film theorists are too influenced by Althusser. I have
argued that their interpretation is problematic and has led to a failure of
understanding in three areas. First, it has failed to understand cinematic
impression of reality as an unconscious effect; secondly, it has failed to
understand cinematic discourse in terms proper to Lacan’s linguistic theory
of dreams; and thirdly, it has failed to understand the suturing of subjecti-
vity correctly in relation to the subject’s identification with a specular image,
a represented other.
My purpose in identifying the associated concepts of narrative space and
suture is to use them to explain the construction of religious identity in rela-
tion to the sacramental narrative of liturgical representation. I intend to
attempt this in Chapter 8. However, as I have demonstrated in this chapter,
psychoanalytic film theorists have (mis)appropriated Lacan and, conse-
quently, it will be necessary for me to make a ‘return to Lacan’ in order to
explore his theory of subject construction.
 Chapter 7

Suturing Suture: Joining theTheory Together

Many regard Lacan’s Saussurean reading of Freud as his enduring legacy to

psychoanalysis. However, Lacan himself sees his ‘return to the work of
Freud’ as his distinctive contribution, a re-emphasis of the Freudian uncon-
scious (E, 57, 114, 116).1 During his early psychiatric work on psychosis,
Lacan criticizes the positivism and anthropological implications of ‘institu-
tional psychology’. But, beginning in the early 1950s, he begins to advocate
the radical nature of Freud’s ‘discovery’, attacking the obsession with resis-
tance analysis that was preoccupying the then analytic orthodoxy of ego
psychology in general and Anna Freud in particular, and characterized by
Lacan as ‘the ego is structured exactly like a symptom’ (S 1, 6). Lacan regards
the prevailing ‘theoretical cacophony’ and ‘crisis of analytic technique’ as
the result of misreading Freud’s metapsychological work, effectively in a
humanist direction (S 2, 13–14) and the subsequent abandonment of the
genius of analysis. Regarding himself as herald of the return, Lacan calls
the analytic community back to Freud:

It is in relation to him that I ask you whether we will allow ourselves to be

fascinated by his fabrication or whether, by rethinking the work of Freud,
we cannot retrieve the authentic meaning of his initiative and the way to
maintain its beneficial value. ([1951]1982, 64)

Lacan is convinced that, ‘The meaning of a return to Freud is a return to

the meaning of Freud’ (E, 117), and by definition a return to the meaning
of Freud’s subject: the ‘I is an other’, the ‘ex-centric’ subject, ‘decentred in
relation to the individual’ (S1, 43).
In returning to Lacan, I intend to move between the early and later
Lacans in order to allow the middle, Structuralist theories of the uncon-
scious structured as a language, to be informed by the earlier theories, in
particular his ideas about the complexes. I consider this to be as legitimate
a way to re-read Lacan as any other. In addition, I suggest that reading
 Suturing Suture 95

Lacan in this way, will enable a more accurate understanding of his theory
of subject identity, and will demonstrate that, although the concept can
rightly be described as neo-Lacanian, suture is in fact central to Lacan’s the-
ory of subjectivity. My assumption here is that informing the concepts of
suture and narrative space with a more Lacanian interpretation of Lacan will
strengthen the contribution film theory is able to make to understanding
the operation of liturgy on the construction of religious identity.
In this chapter, I will argue that giving ‘Lacan himself a chance’ (Žižek
2001b, 2) can constructively re-inform psychoanalytic film theory in three
related ways.
First, I will suggest that Lacan’s theory of the complexes reveals the opera-
tion of cinema’s impression of reality to be premised upon, and a perform-
ance of, the subject’s own Imaginary ‘reality’, the subject’s predisposition to
construct a subjective impression of reality.
Secondly, while film theorists may have correctly understood cinematic
discourse in terms of Lacan’s signifying chain, I will suggest that Lacan’s
dream theory reinterprets the cinematic discourse as a performance of the
unconscious discourse of the subject’s desire, funded by the psychic strat-
egy of negation/disavowal.
Finally, I will suggest that the neo-Lacanian theory of suture – the stitching
together of subjectivity by the subject in relation to representation – reveals
the subject’s predisposition to construct an ego that is narcissistically con-
fused with the imago of the cinematic One-Like, the specular film star
other.
In the next chapter, I will apply the theoretical insights of this chapter to
liturgical representation, and attempt to learn something about the con-
struction of liturgical subjects.

Cinematic Impression of Reality as Unconscious Effect

In this section, I will discuss Lacan’s understanding of the subject’s truth

insofar as it relates to the Symbolic and Imaginary realities,2 in order to map
analytic discourse to the cinematic impression of reality. I will show that real
(actual) events, like weaning, cause psychic trauma and leave a permanent
trace on the subject’s psyche. So great is the trauma that the subject oper-
ates a strategy of negation/disavowal, which simultaneously refuses the real
and reinstalls the Real of the lost imago. I will show that, for Lacan, the
imago is a foundational element of the complex, and that the nature of the
complex is representational. My point here will be to indicate that, for
96 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Lacan, complexes transmit an appearance, or impression of reality. From

this, I will show that, while the complexes operate in the Imaginary, the
analytic process is an attempt to articulate the Real as the subject’s history
narrated in the Symbolic. Having established that the complexes represent
the subject’s Imaginary reality and that the subject’s truth emerges as a Sym-
bolic reality in the language of analysis, I will argue the cinematic impres-
sion of reality maps to Lacan’s Imaginary reality and can be regarded as
premised upon, and a performance of, the subject’s own Imaginary ‘reality’,
the subject’s predisposition to construct a subjective impression of reality.

Symbolic reality, Imaginary reality and the real of the subject’s truth
The place from which to begin developing a Lacanian understanding about
the impression of reality is Lacan’s concern with the subject’s truth: the
subject’s truth as an un(yet-to-be-)spoken narrative.
Lacan is acutely concerned with the idea of truth. However, as Malcolm
Bowie correctly observes, Lacan’s conception of truth does not pertain ‘to
the world as it is for the scientist, but to the world as it was, is and shall be
for the speaking subject’ (Bowie 1991, 112). For Lacan, the subject’s truth
emerges within the context of analysis as the analysand integrates a repressed
history to arrive at the revelation of truth, coming to know, by bringing into
speech, by narrating that which has been for them unknown: ‘In the dis-
course of analysis, the subject develops what is his truth, his integration, his
history’ (S1, 283).
The clear inference here is that history is truth, or, put another way, that
the subject’s personal (subjective) history is the subject’s personal (subjec-
tive) truth. This personal truth might also be termed analytical truth, or the
truth found through analysis, since the aim of analysis is somehow ‘to assist
the subject in the revelation of himself to himself’ (S2, 206). To that end,
Lacan came to regard analysis as a praxis that treats the Real by the Sym-
bolic, along the way encountering the Imaginary (S11, 6). In other words,
analysis is conducted in the medium of language (the Symbolic), it deals
with the stuff of the unconscious (the Imaginary), and ultimately aims to
reveal the content of the subject’s truth (the Real). As Lacan puts it: ‘The
whole progress of the analysis is to show [the analysand] the distinction
between these two planes, to unstick the imaginary and the real’ (S1, 241).
It is important here to note that Lacan draws a distinction between the
‘Real’ and ‘reality’. Lacan’s translator commentator and Lacanian analyst
Bruce Fink suggests Lacan’s distinction should be understood in terms of
 Suturing Suture 97

‘the Real’ equating to the psychic trauma, while ‘reality’ is that which is
symbolically constructed: ‘the symbolic creates “reality”, reality as that which
is named by language and can thus be thought and talked about: the “social
construction of reality”’ (Fink 1995, 25). However, Lacan also holds that the
complexes transmit an appearance of reality. The point here is that, while
the Symbolic articulates or constructs a symbolic reality, the complexes rep-
resent an imaginary reality: and in both cases, the reality effected is funded
by the Real – effecting a doubly-determined, overdetermined subjective
impression of reality.

Imagos and the representational nature of the complex

Foundational in the early Lacan is his notion of the imago,3 the concept is
embedded in his theory of Mirror Stage identification and denotes archaic,
unconscious ‘prototypical images’ that arise from the infant’s primordial
experience. These images remain ‘the subject’s more or less fixed projec-
tion on the world and others’ (Benvenuto and Kennedy 1986, 73) and their
effects on the subject, and the subject’s relation to the environment can be
regarded as both formative and informative (Julien 1994, 32). Lacan’s con-
ception of the imago emphasizes both the ‘subjective determination of the
image’ and its strong association with people, notably in the paternal,
maternal and fraternal imagos (Evans 1996, 84). However, Lacan does not
regard the imago as an isolated phenomenon, but as a ‘fundamental
element of the complex’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 13–14). The key point here is
that, while the Imaginary stereotype of the imago may relate to an individ-
ual, ‘the complex is a whole constellation of interacting imagos’ (Evans
1996, 27). In this way, regarding the imago as unconscious prototype, Lacan
makes explicit the representational nature of the complex to which the
imago is allied.
According to Lacan, Freud defined the complex in terms of an uncon-
scious agency that reveals itself through slips, dreams and symptoms (Lacan
[1938]1988, 13).4 But, in Lacan’s view, complexes transmit an appearance
of reality by reproducing what he describes as a ‘certain aura of reality’
([1938]1988, 13) in their form and function: in form, the complex repre-
sents reality ‘in what is objectively specific to a given stage in psychic deve-
lopment’; in function, it is ‘an existential illustration of a reality fixed into an
unalterable form each time that certain experiences occur which might
demand an objectification transcending that reality’ ([1938]1988, 13). If it
is the case that, in both Symbolic construction and Imaginary complex,
98 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

reality is in fact funded by the Real, this poses the question: What are the
realities that the complexes represent?
Lacan holds the family to be the pre-eminent incubator of stable com-
plexes. Further defining complexes as ‘playing the role of “organizers” in
psychic development’ ([1938]1988, 14), Lacan details the weaning, intru-
sion and Oedipus complexes. Beginning with weaning, he follows Melanie
Klein in arguing that from the beginning human children lack any aware-
ness of separation between their own body and that of their mother. Out
of its experience of unbroken, primordial continuity of being, the child
creates an ‘imago of the nurturing relationship’ between itself and the
breast ([1938]1988, 14). As with all imagos, the contents of the nurturing
relationship imago are the product of feelings specific to the evolution of
the individual and take their form as they are mentally organized by the
individual. However, the consequence of the evolution of this primary
imago, produced prior to any awareness of object-form, is that its contents are
not directly represented within consciousness. Instead, their trace is felt in the
mental structures that shape subsequent psychic experiences. (The reason
that the contents of the primary imago are represented only indirectly will
become clear below when I outline Lacan’s account of ‘the laws of conden-
sation and displacement’ (S7, 61)5 by which the psychic representation –
Vorstellungen, imagos, dreams – operate.)
Weaning, then, disrupts the primordial, Imaginary idyll; it is an experi-
ence of violence that causes ‘psychic trauma’ and leaves a ‘permanent trace
in the human psyche’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 14). Little wonder, then, that the
threat of loss creates in the child a desire for an Imaginary reality, which it
(re)constitutes by a strategy of refusal – negation/disavowal – of the real
(actual) experience of weaning.6
Lacan is here making an important connection between the representa-
tive nature of the complex (its ability to communicate knowledge and con-
figure affective organization), the operation of the imago, and ‘the ordeal
caused by the shock of the real ’ ([1938]1988, 13, emphasis added). His argu-
ment is that although weaning implies the tension of acceptance or refusal
it is a tension that is only resolved through ‘an intellectual intention’
([1938]1988, 14).7 And, because the infant as yet lacks the (still to be con-
structed) ego that could affirm or deny the ‘intention’, the contrary poles
continue to co-exist unconsciously in a relationship of essential ambiva-
lence. Lacan’s point is that, in the absence of an ego that intends, there is
no contradiction in the child’s strategy of negation/disavowal, which is
simultaneously a refusal of the real (actual) and reinstallation of the Real
 Suturing Suture 99

(subject’s truth) (Lacan [1938]1988, 14). In other words, the child refuses
the real (the intrusion of the sibling) and, in its desire to sustain the imago
of the nurturing relationship, constitutes an Imaginary reality on the basis
of its desire for the Real (breast), the (forgotten/lost) remainder in the
Imaginary. The point here, as I anticipated above, is that complexes repre-
sent Imaginary reality based on the desire for a lost Real.
My argument is that what I am calling a predisposition to construct an
Imaginary reality is the subjective impression of reality upon which the cin-
ema’s impression of reality will be premised and upon which it will operate.
The important point to note here is that the psychic trauma, the shock of the
Real leads to the refusal of the real, and sets a pattern for the resolutions of
all future intersubjective traumas within the parameters of a dialectical
structure that will foreground the psychic strategy of negation/disavowal.8
Given that Lacan is concerned with the subject’s truth, it is appropriate
here to inquire about the connection between the subject’s truth and the
Real. And the first point to make is that, for Lacan, the Real is exterior to
the Symbolic: ‘The real . . . does not exist, since it precedes language . . . it
“ex-ists”’ (Fink 1995, 25), and because the Real is exterior Lacan asserts
that ‘the real, or what is perceived as such, is what resists symbolisation
absolutely’ (S1, 66). This has led some commentators to posit the radical
incomprehensibility of the Real. For example, in her feminist introduction
to Lacan, Elizabeth Grosz takes an extreme position for what she describes
as the ‘anatomical, “natural” order’ of the Real in which, ‘The Real cannot
be experienced as such: it is capable of representation or conceptualization
only through the reconstructive or inferential work of the imaginary and
symbolic orders’ (Grosz 1990, 34). For Grosz, our very experience of the
Real is mediated.9 However, it is in the very nature of the analytic process
that the analysand be enabled to ‘verbalize experiences which may have
occurred before the analysand was able to think about them, speak of them,
or formulate them in any way at all’ (Fink 1995, 25). It is not so much that
the Real cannot be symbolized, but that the Real is ‘that which has not yet been
symbolized, remains to be symbolized’ (1995, 25). Lacan should not be taken
to be asserting anything more than that the Real resists articulation. To put
it differently, the Real funds the subject’s truth, as a subjective impression
of reality, as a narrative that resists narration. The point is that the process
of analysis is the struggle to narrativize what is Real for the subject as the
subject’s truth.
Thus, to reiterate a point I made above, while the subject’s truth emerges
in language during analysis, constructing a Symbolic reality, the complexes,
100 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

which underlie the subject’s truth, represent an Imaginary reality: in both

cases the reality effected is funded by the Real – the subjective impression
of reality.

Anamnesis: the subject’s participation in the impression of reality

Lacan’s analytical focus, then, is on the discourse of the unconscious. How-
ever, as an unconscious discourse, the subject’s truth eludes ‘that circle of
certainties by which man recognizes himself as ego’ (S1, 8) precisely because
there is something unknown, something outside the field of the ego, which
speaks as I, and turns the speaking subject into the subject qua deceiver:

Freud shows us that in the human subject there is something which

speaks, which speaks in the full sense of the word, that is to say something
which knowingly lies, and without the contribution of consciousness.
That restores . . . the dimension of the subject. (S1, 194)

The problem posed to analysis is to hear the truth in spite of what the
analysand says and, ‘because [the subject] always says more than he means
to, always more than he thinks he says’ (S1, 226), Lacan remains confident
that the truth will be heard. Despite the fact that the analysand does not
know the meaning of what he or she says (S2, 244–5), dreams, slips of the
tongue, jokes all name that place, ‘somewhere between an error and a lie’,
where the truth irrupts, grabbing ‘error by the scruff of the neck in the
mistake’, to unfold the subject’s discourse (S1, 265). Lacan’s claim is that
this is because speech is polysemic:

Speech never has one single meaning, nor the word one single use. All
speech always possesses a beyond, sustains various functions, encompasses
several meanings. Behind what a discourse says, there is what it means
[veut dire], and behind what it means, there is again another intended
meaning [vouloir-dire], and nothing will ever be exhausted by that – except
that it comes down to this, that speech has a creative function, and that it
brings into being the very thing, which is none other than the concept.
(S1, 242)

The fact that the subject’s truth lies behind what the subject says indicates
to Lacan that the unconscious is, and remains, unknown, ‘misrecognized’
by the subject of the ego (S2, 43), a subjective impression of reality that
 Suturing Suture 101

informs the narrative of the subject’s historicized present, what Žižek terms
‘the “effect of truth”’ (Žižek 1992, 33).
To this point, the only originality in Lacan is his stress on returning to
Freud’s unconscious. However, from 1954 Lacan begins to employ Saus-
sure’s linguistic categories (albeit with a distinctive and distorting twist),10
and the result is that analytic communication comes to be understood as a
concern, not with the significant (the signified), but with signifying (the
signifier).11 Lacan warns his training analysts against ‘falling back upon
meanings that can only mask from you the original mainspring of the signi-
fier insofar as it carries out its true function’ (S3, 188).
Lacan insists that any notion of referential meaning must now be under-
stood in terms of the signifier of unconscious meaning (the unconscious
signified). This can be seen to reflect a situation in which the subject’s nar-
rative of the historicized present is profoundly informed by his subjective
impression of reality. Consequently, when the subject speaks, meaning will
not be found in the words used, because ‘The truth is outside of the signs,
elsewhere’ (S1, 262). Instead, meaning, truth, the subject’s truth, the Real,
is to be found in ‘that chapter of my history which is marked by a blank or
occupied by a falsehood . . . the censored chapter’ (E, 21). For Lacan’s sub-
ject, the truth is written in the hysterical symptom, ‘deciphered like an
inscription’, in childhood memories, in a subject’s own particular vocabu-
lary, and ‘the traces which are inevitably preserved by the distortions neces-
sitated by the linking of the adulterated chapter [of my history] to the
chapters surrounding it, and whose meaning will be re-established by my
exegesis’ (E, 259). As such, the subject’s truth will not be found at the sur-
face of the analysand’s words, but beyond and behind discourse, in a way
that is contingent upon the individual subject’s impression of reality, which
is in turn funded by the Real. In other words, the analysand’s personal (sub-
jective) truth is located somewhere in the analysand’s personal (subjective)
history, the anamnesis as recalled by the analysand.12 (Anamnesis will be
important when I come to apply psychoanalytic film theory to liturgical
representation.)
For Lacan, as for Freud, anamnesis is not a question of memory but of
rememoration of the subject’s history (history as it is in the subject’s memory).13
And for Lacan’s subject, life events are charged with psychic significance in
non-proportional relation to their historicity,14 but nonetheless character-
ized by their own temporality: ‘History is not the past. History is the past in
so far as it is historicized in the present – historicized in the present because
it was lived in the past’ (S1, 12).15 In these terms, the contours of the sub-
ject’s history can be plotted by the features of life events such as weaning,
102 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

which will be seen to be the cause of ‘psychic trauma’. Lacan’s point is that,
wherever else it might be found, the subject’s truth, as the narrative
informed by the subjective impression of reality, can be located anamneti-
cally, in the subject’s memory.

Mapping imaginary reality to cinema’s impression of reality

To this point, I have shown that, for Lacan, complexes represent the sub-
ject’s imaginary reality, which analysis seeks to bring into symbolic reality as
the subject’s truth emerges in language. I want now to map the cinematic
impression of reality to the subject’s imaginary reality, and show how it can
be considered as a performance of the subject’s predisposition to construct
a subjective impression of reality.
In shaping their understanding of narrative space, film theorists have
described the cinematic techniques that constitute spectators in a solipsistic
identification with their own look. In Baudry’s terms, the cinematic appara-
tus and the techniques of cinematic representation relate the subject with
the camera in a way that manifests a transcendental subjectivity, a subject
unfettered by the limitations of objective reality. Baudry’s argument, that
the continuity of the image is attributable to the subject, represents a form
of the subject’s truth insofar as it is predicated on the belief that meaning is
constituted by subjects. For Baudry, transcendental subjects constitute
meaning as they identify with the perspective offered by the representa-
tional techniques of the cinematic apparatus.
While superficially it may seem that Baudry resonates with Lacan’s con-
ception of truth as it is for the subject, at a perceptual level it is not the
same. For Lacan, the subject’s truth is necessarily concerned with the sub-
ject’s history, albeit a repressed history – analysis is directed towards the
revelation of the subject’s truth, the bringing into speech, the narration of
what has been. However, Baudry does connect with Lacan in terms of the
subject’s relation to narrative. As I have shown, the subject’s truth, what is
real for the subject, is the product of psychic trauma (the Real), a loss that
unconsciously informs every aspect of the subject’s consciousness. This
trauma informs the unconscious historical narrative that resists conscious
narration by the subject in the anamnesis. However, as Lacan makes clear,
this history is not past but historicized in the present: it is a narrative
informed by the subjective impression of reality.
If Lacan is correct in his theory of the subject’s truth, he is in fact describ-
ing the extent to which subjects are always already situated within a narrative.
 Suturing Suture 103

That this is an un(yet-to-be-)spoken narrative that resists symbolization

should not obscure the recognition that it forms an unconscious (psycho-
analytic) narrative space within the Imaginary in which the subject is consti-
tuted. I will show in the next sections how the operation of cinematic
narrative space is predicated on the subject’s identification with cinematic
representation. My point here is that the cinematic impression of reality,
constructed through narrative, is predicated on the Imaginary narrative
space that constitutes the subject, that the cinematic impression of reality
re-positions the cinematic subject within its own narrative and so performs
the unconscious (psychoanalytic) process. In other words, subjects believe
the fiction of their own impression of reality and are ready to believe other
fictions – in this case, the fiction of cinema’s impression of reality, the illu-
sory product of the techniques of cinema perspective: a reality that is ‘nei-
ther absolutely two-dimensional nor absolutely three-dimensional, but
something between’ (Heath 1976, 78) – which, as I will show, acts as a kind
of anamnesis of their own desire.
In part, I am necessarily anticipating what I have yet to discuss, namely
that the subject’s prehistoric psychic trauma is productive of a loss that the
subject desires to recover. However, as I will show, for Lacan, what is lost can
only be found in its pleasurable association, and consequently the subject is
caught in a play of representation: instinctively representing the ‘lost’
desires as displaced onto representational substitutes, subjects suture a fic-
tional, pseudo-identification with the representation of their desire. In the
main, the focus for Baudry and the Cahiers and Screen theorists has been
Hollywood narrative cinema. More than any other, this cinema has pro-
vided subjects with desirable representations, film stars as objects of identi-
fication, substitutes onto which the ‘lost’ desire can be displaced. I will have
more to say about this below.
Lacan’s argument is that subjects are directed by the powerful, if uncon-
scious, narrative of the Imaginary, which determines conscious behaviour.
In other words, the unconscious narrative constructs the subject within
its flow. My point is that cinematic narrative, as a type of anamnesis, per-
forms the unconscious (psychoanalytic) process. In the next chapter, I will
highlight the connection between this performance and the operation of
liturgical anamnesis. However, since I have already anticipated some of
what I want to say about how subject’s are constituted in and through the
pseudo-identification with representation, I must now discuss in more detail
how Lacan’s theory of subject construction (the relationship of identifica-
tion with representation within which subjects are constituted) maps with
film theory’s description of cinematic representation and the subject’s
104 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

pseudo-identification with cinematic representation in terms of suture. Spe-

cifically, I want to explore Lacan’s linguistic theory of dreams, as the repre-
sentation of the Real of desire, in relation to cinematic discourse.

Cinematic Discourse and Lacan’s Linguistic

Theory of Dreams

In this section, I will discuss Lacan’s dream theory, insofar as it accounts for
the subject’s repetition of displaced desire, in order to map the analytic
discourse to cinematic discourse, to the subject’s suturing into the signify-
ing chain of unconscious, displaced desire. I will show that in Lacan’s mind
the Thing and the objet petit a are associated insofar as they represent the
lost object, which can only be found (or represented) in their pleasurable
associations. I will show Lacan’s subject circles, but never attains, the object
of desire because of its displacement on to the pleasurable association. This
is because the unconscious representations of desire are organized psycho-
linguistically by ‘the laws of condensation and displacement’ (S7, 61). In
other words, the dream-image is only a signifier, and for Lacan signifiers are
representative not significant. Consequently, the subject’s desires are not
directly represented within consciousness and they resist narration in the sub-
ject’s anamnesis.
I will argue that, for Lacan, the dream-image and the signifier have a sig-
nifying interchangability insofar as the unconscious mechanisms operative
within the dream and the signifier display a common structure, and that it
follows that if ‘the dream is a metaphor of desire’, then the signifier is simi-
larly a metaphor of desire. For this reason, by repeating the dream, and by
extension other specular images, subjects repeat the representation in order
to find again the pleasure associated with the lost object of desire. From
this, I will argue that cinematic discourse maps the unconscious discourse of
the signifying chain, the discourse of unconscious, displaced desire.

The (overdetermined) ‘Thing’: ‘dumb reality’ and (forbidden) objet petit a

That imaginary reality is constituted through the psychic strategy of nega-
tion/disavowal should not obscure Lacan’s conviction that the child’s desire
remains attached to the Imaginary ‘object of desire’: objet petit a[utre],16 the
lost (only ever to be found in ‘its pleasurable associations’) object (S7, 52),
at once Imaginary and intimately bound to the Real; the remainder, ‘the
remnant left behind by the introduction of the symbolic in the real’ (Evans
 Suturing Suture 105

1996, 125). For Lacan, objet petit a is the breast of the primordial, Imaginary
idyll (S11, 168), the object of desire long since lost in weaning.
Lacan’s notion of objet petit a is indebted to, and clarified by, his thinking
on the Thing, which emerges early in Seminar VII, the seminar on ethics.17
Effectively, Lacan regards the Thing as an overdetermined concept. Serving
as both the subject’s truth and the object of desire, the Thing is, in one
sense, the object of language (S7, 54) – ‘dumb reality’ (S7, 55), the Thing
in the Real that is ‘the beyond-of-the-signified’, that which resists symboliza-
tion absolutely, the narrative that resists narration – and in another sense,
jouissance – the Thing as the (forbidden) object of (incestuous) desire
around which the subject circles but never arrives (Evans 1996, 205).
Locating the Thing in terms of his thinking on the development of the
moral law, specifically as it relates to Freud’s incest taboo, Lacan’s articula-
tion positions his concept in terms of the mother. The significance of incest
is stressed by Freud, both in its prohibitive function, as providing the ‘under-
lying principle of the primordial law’,18 and in its alluring operation, as ‘the
fundamental desire’ (S7, 67). Since the law operates only ‘in the realm of
culture’, Lacan notes that, ‘the result of the law is always to exclude incest in
its fundamental form, son/mother incest, which is the kind Freud empha-
sises’ (S7, 67). With Freud, Lacan finds the incest law operative in the uncon-
scious in relation to the Thing, specifically in terms of its insatiability:

desire for the mother cannot be satisfied because it is the end, the termi-
nal point, the abolition of the whole world of demand, which is the one
that at its deepest level structures man’s unconscious. (S7, 68)

In Lacan’s mind, objet petit a – the breast lost in weaning – and the Thing – as
the mother – have obvious association. The fact that either can be found
only in their ‘pleasurable associations’ is not contradicted by the subject’s
continued search for its ‘prehistoric Other that it is impossible to forget’
(S7, 71). Lacan’s position is that it is more the case that objet petit a has been
misplaced, or forgotten, than actually lost.
In effect, Lacan identifies the Thing with Freud’s impulse ‘to find again’,
which establishes the impulse as the orientation of the human subject to
the object (S7, 58). In other words, the unconscious, operating according
to the pleasure principle, searches for the never-again-to-be-attained lost
object:

the step taken by Freud at the level of the pleasure principle is to show us
that there is no Sovereign Good – that the Sovereign Good, which is das
106 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Ding, which is the mother, is also the object of incest, is a forbidden good,
and that there is no other good. Such is the foundation of the moral law
as turned on its head by Freud. (S7, 70)

For Lacan, the Thing is characterized by absence and strangeness (S7, 63).
Excluded, posited as exterior, ex-isting, the Thing is alien, and as such, ‘on
the level of the unconscious only a representation can represent’ (S7, 71).
As Lacan expresses it,

It is a matter of that which in the unconscious represents, in the form of

a sign, representation as a function of apprehending – of the way in which
every representation is represented insofar as it evokes the good that das
Ding brings with it. (S7, 71–2)

These unconscious representations are, in Freud’s terms, Vorstellungen, rep-

resentations19 organized according to the laws of memory, and related to
the operations of the pleasure principle (S7, 58).20
Locating representation ‘between perception and consciousness’, at the
site of Freud’s ‘other scene’, Lacan insists that the ‘small curds of represen-
tation’ are structured like the signifier (S7, 61), which he finds implicit
in Freud’s reference to Vorstellungsrepräsentanz. Consequently, Vorstellung
becomes ‘an associative and combinatory element’ (S7, 61), and Lacan’s
view is that, at the level of the unconscious, representations are organized
by the possibilities of the signifier, by which he means organized, not by the
laws of grammar, but by ‘the laws of condensation and displacement, those
that I call the laws of metaphor and metonymy’ (S7, 61). Although not
explicit, this language of representation and unconscious organization is
dependent on his pre-1953 language of imago and complex, now firmly
installed into a linguistic frame and charged with the energy of desire.

Lacan’s linguistic theory of dreams

Lacan’s subject, constituted with reference to the subjective impression of
reality, circles (but never arrives at) the object of desire. This is because the
unconscious representations, the ‘pleasurable associations’ of the desired
Thing, are organized by ‘the laws of condensation and displacement’; con-
sequently, desire is always displaced. It is these ‘laws’ of condensation and
displacement that form the basis of the psycho linguistics that Lacan devel-
ops in relation to his theory of dream representation, and which I will argue
will enable film theory to understand cinematic discourse in terms of
 Suturing Suture 107

subjects caught in representation. Ultimately, I will suggest that film theo-

ry’s corrected understanding of cinematic discourse (of subjects caught in
representation) can be applied to liturgical representation. Lacan’s linguis-
tic theory of dreams, specifically his thinking about condensation and dis-
placement, metaphor and metonymy,21 is related to the analyst’s attempts to
interpret the analysand’s language. Foundational to his work on dream lan-
guage is Freud’s characterization of a dream as a rebus or ‘picture puzzle’
(PFL4, 382; S1, 266). In taking up Freud’s comparison, Lacan argues that
‘the dream has the structure of a sentence’ (E, 57). However, despite advis-
ing trainee analysts to take the dream literally (E, 159), the comparison
should not imply that dream meanings are communicated term for term,
‘the value of the image as signifier has nothing whatever to do with its signi-
fication’ (E, 159). Rather, in the same way that the representational nature
of the complex is allied to the imago, insofar as ‘the complex is a whole
constellation of interacting imagos’, so the representational importance of
the dream is that it is an interlacing network of signifiers: ‘Each signifying
element of the dream, each image, includes a reference to a whole set of
things to be signified, and inversely, each thing to be signified is repre-
sented in several signifiers’ (S1, 266).
Lacan’s point is that the analysand’s speech is related ‘not only verbally,
but through all his other means of expression’ (S1, 266), and, although this
is offered pictorially as a rebus, it nevertheless has the structure of a sen-
tence, in other words, a form of rhetoric: ‘syntacti cal displacements’ and
‘semantic condensations’ (E, 58).22
In making good Freud’s lack of linguistic categories, Lacan characteristi-
cally gives Saussure his own distorting twist, inverting the Swiss linguist’s
revolutionary ideas about linguistic signs.23 Freud’s demonstration of dream
distortion as the general precondition on which dreams function was
worked out at the point of comprehending how distressing- and anxiety-
dreams can at the same time be wish-fulfilments. Locating distortion, or
transposition, within the Saussurean frame, Lacan designates it ‘as the slid-
ing of the signified under the signifier, which is always active in discourse
(its action, let us note is unconscious)’ (E, 160). In this move, Lacan inverts
Saussure’s arrangement, which places the signified above signifier, so giving
priority to the signifier as the determinant element. And in a second, related
move, Lacan inserts a bar between the two elements (S/s) radically sepa-
rating the signifier, and all but liberating it entirely from the signified.
The point is that Lacan’s inversion of Saussure emancipates the signifier,
privileging it to the extent that the signifier’s primacy transforms it into
‘a meaningless material element in a closed differential system’ (Evans
1996, 186). As a result, the signification of this ‘pure’ unanchored signifier
108 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

is dependent on the way in which it is condensed or the place to which it is

displaced within the structure.
Lacan extends his application of linguistics into Freud’s observation that
the dream work manifests two major strategies: condensation and displace-
ment – ‘what we call the two “sides” of the effect of the signifier on the signi-
fied are also found here’ (E, 160).24 Acutely aware that ‘Dreams are brief,
meagre and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of the dream
thoughts’ (PFL4, 383), Freud found it impossible either to determine the
amount of condensation in a dream, or to be certain about whether a
dream’s interpretation had been, or could be, exhausted. His observation
was that large numbers of dream thoughts are capable of being represented
in a single element (PFL4, 387). Thus, in condensation, two or more ideas
become compressed into a composite figure (Grosz 1990, 87), the dream-
image being overdetermined. Lacan describes this as ‘the superimposition
of the signifiers’ and links condensation closely with metaphor (E, 160).
Mapping this to his inversion of Saussure’s linguistic sign, the overdeter-
mined condensation acts as a nodal point of primary signification related to
an associative signifying chain. The point is that ‘in dreams and other
unconscious formations, the chains of associations are repressed or fore-
closed and only the primary signifiers are manifest’ (Samuels 1993, 37).
Freud’s second major strategy of the dream work, displacement, can be
observed insofar as the dream is ‘differently centred from the dream-thoughts –
its content has different elements as its central point’ (PFL4, 414). In displace-
ment, the unconscious, deviant wish transfers its transgressive intensity onto
a more innocent delegate and so avoids exceeding the bounds of censor-
ship (Grosz 1990, 87). For Lacan, the German term Verschiebung is close to
the idea of ‘veering off of signification’ found in metonymy (E, 160).
Lacan’s contention that the dream has the structure of the sentence is
then not that of term-for-term analogue, but that both follow the ‘laws’ of
condensation and displacement. Having established that dreams display a
linguistic character, Lacan is clear that the dream-image should be under-
stood as signifier, and he credits Freud with showing ‘in every possible way
that the value of the image as signifier has nothing whatever to do with its
signification’ (E, 159). In other words, the dream-image is a signifier, and
nothing else; it has no intrinsic, archetypal or symbolic meaning.

The signifier as representative not significant

So far, I have shown that Lacan’s subject, constituted with reference to a
subjective impression of reality, circles but never arrives at the object of
 Suturing Suture 109

desire: the unanchored signifier, liberated and privileged by Lacan, con-

densing and displacing the representation of desire along the signifying
chain; the object of desire being represented by pleasurable association. In all
this, the dream-image, as unconscious representation, has the value of a
signifier.
The point I want to underline here is that Lacan’s signifiers are repre-
sentative not significant. In other words, the meaning of dreams, as signifi-
ers, is connotative and, for this reason, the subject’s desires are not directly
represented within consciousness: the shock of the Real, the psychic trauma, resists
conscious narration in the subject’s anamnesis. Discussing the suggestion
that signifiers are representative in relation to the subject’s desires may
appear to lead away from understanding cinematic discourse in terms of
subjects caught in representation. However, in Lacan’s discourse of the
unconscious the subject’s desire is always ‘the desire of the Other’. And
insofar as the dream can be considered a specular image that parallels the
Mirror Stage image in representing the subject’s ‘desire in the other’, the
subject will be seen to be caught (captivated) in representation (E, 18).25
Although his use of linguistic categories dates from 1954, Lacan is slow to
define his understanding of the term ‘signifier’. When he does, it is in typi-
cally idiosyncratic and conceited style: ‘My definition of a signifier (there is
no other) is as follows: a signifier is that which represents the subject for
another signifier’ (E, 316). His point is that, when it produces itself in the
field of the Other, the sign represents something for someone (S11, 31) in
the sense that a lawyer might represent a client for another lawyer (Hill
1997, 31). In other words, the primary function of the signifier is repre-
sentative not significant (Fink 1995, 26).
The association here with Vorstellungen is important, insofar as it links
imagos and complexes together with the representational language of
dreams, the laws of condensation and displacement and the lost objet petit a
structured within an economy of desire. Crucially, these psychic mecha-
nisms intimately relate the Symbolic representations with the Imaginary
desire for a lost Real and the subject’s truth.
Lacan’s definition of the signifier (that which represents the subject for
another signifier) locates the signifier within a structure composed of other
signifiers, ‘the signifying chain’ (E, 153). It is within this chain that the sig-
nifier operates ‘according to the laws of a closed order’ (E, 153), paradig-
matically and syntagmatically substituting and combining, to produce the
effects of metaphor and metonymy (E, 258–9). Both dream and signifier
proceed by the same means, metaphor and metonymy, opening the royal
way to the unconscious (E, 258–9). However, if the signifier and the dream
110 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

are representative rather than significant, then the question arises, how
does the signifying chain carry meaning?
Lacan’s answer is that meaning does not so much ‘consist’ in the ele-
ments of the signifying chain as ‘insist’ along them (E, 153): by which he
means that, meaning is connoted rather than denoted. This mode of insist-
ence, or connotation, can be examined at the level of the sentence, where
the signifier is seen always to anticipate meaning (E, 153–4). For Freud it
was axiomatic that dreams represent the fulfilment of a wish (PFL4, 200–13),
and Lacan situates dreams within the economy of desire, specifically, ‘the
desire of the Other’ (E, 264; Evans 1996, 37–8). If it is the case that the sig-
nifier is understood in relation to the dream-image as signifier, then Lacan’s
question is obvious: ‘to whom does the dream reveal its meaning before the
arrival on the scene of the analyst?’ In posing this question Lacan assumes
‘that the dream is made for the recognition’, specifically, the recognition of
desire (E, 260). For Lacan, desire for the lost object is to be grasped – can
only be grasped – in interpretation.
Lacan makes explicit the signifying interchangability between the signi-
fier and the dream, and the compatibility of their linguistic mechanisms
insofar as they relate to desire. Thus, while some may claim that ‘a dream is
just a dream’, Lacan returns to Freud’s recognition of the workings of desire
in the dream (E, 256). From this a parallel can be drawn between the func-
tioning of the Mirror Stage image, as the intermediary offering the subject
both ‘the semblance of his own mastery’ and awareness ‘of his desire in the
other’ (S1, 155), and the function of the dream-image: in both cases the
specular image is a signifier, operating according to the ‘laws of the signi-
fier’ (E, 161), that is, of condensation and displacement.
For Lacan, the whole of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams explains the
unconscious mechanisms operative in the dream and in the signifier (con-
densation, substitution, sliding, etc.), on the basis of their common struc-
ture: ‘that is, the relation of desire to that mark of language that specifies
the Freudian unconscious and decentres our conception of the subject’
(E, 258). In short, ‘the dream is a metaphor of desire’ (E, 258), and it
follows that the signifier is similarly a metaphor of desire.

The repeated real, the real as missed encounter

In this section, I am arguing that, properly understood, Lacan’s dream the-
ory reinterprets film theory’s conception of cinematic discourse as a perfor-
mance of the unconscious discourse of the subject’s desire.26 My argument
 Suturing Suture 111

is that this is particularly the case with regard to Lacan’s thinking about how
subjects are caught or captivated in representation, in other words, how
subjects are signified by representation. In Lacan’s terms, subjects are con-
stituted in relation to representation the content of which is not directly rep-
resented within consciousness but is articulated according to the laws of
condensation and displacement, the content of the unconscious discourse
operating according to the laws of the unanchored signifier. My point is
that Lacan’s discourse of the unconscious maps with cinematic discourse.
I am arguing that, constituted with reference to a subjective impression of
reality, the subject circles the object of desire, ‘the desire of the Other’,
which is represented by the pleasurable associations that connote the subject’s
desires, which is the effect of the shock of the Real, the psychic trauma resist-
ing conscious narration in the subject’s anamnesis, and which is signified in
the specular image, the representation that captivates.
By 1964, Lacan is discussing the dream in relation to the subject’s desire
specifically as it repeats the psychic trauma (S11, 55). Borrowing terms from
Aristotle, Lacan translates tuché as ‘the encounter with the real’, and argues that
the Real is beyond the automaton, ‘the return, the coming-back, the insist-
ence of the signs, by which we see ourselves governed by the pleasure prin-
ciple’ (S11, 53–4). In these terms, the Real is ‘that which always lies behind
the automaton’ (S11, 54), the repetition.
Lacan makes it clear that, in analytical terms, the encounter with the
Real, the Real as encounter, the encounter as missed encounter, is nothing
other than the psychic trauma (S11, 55). It is this psychic trauma that is
repeated in the dynamics of the pleasure principle. In effect, the trauma
reappears, frequently unveiled, insofar as the dream bears the subject’s
desire to repeat the trauma (S11, 55). Lacan understands this apparently
perverse irony as an urge towards homeostasis, ‘the restitutive function of the
psychic organisation’, the mechanism that ‘absorbs, moderates the irruption
of quantities of energy coming from the external world’, and returns the
traumatized subject to a state of equilibrium (S2, 60), regulated by the
dynamics of the pleasure principle (S2, 62).
Freud illustrated this dynamic through his observation of the little boy
and the wooden reel (PFL4, 283–4). Glossing Freud’s observation, Lacan
argues that the activity ‘symbolizes repetition. . . . aimed at what, essentially,
is not there, qua represented – for it is the game itself that is the Repräsen-
tanz of the Vorstellung’ (S11, 62–3). The counterpart of the representation is
the dream, which Freud spoke of as the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, and which
Lacan translates as ‘the place of the representation’ (S11, 60). This is, then,
112 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

[T]he place of the real, which stretches from the trauma to the phantasy –
in so far as the phantasy is never anything more than the screen that
conceals something quite primary, something determinant in the func-
tion of repetition. . . . This, indeed, is what, for us, explains both the
ambiguity of the function of awakening and of the function of the real in
this awakening (S11, 60).27

The trauma as the encounter with the Real, like the Real itself, is resistant
to signification. For this reason it is ‘specifically held responsible for the
limits of remembering’ (S11, 129).
The point here is that subjects repeat, or return to, the representation
most obviously by repeating the dream. And behind the repetition is the
desire to re-encounter that which has been missed, to find in the pleasura-
ble association the lost object of desire, the Real of the psychic trauma. In
other words, the repetition, in the dream, but also in other Vorstellungen,
other specular images, provides ‘the place of the representation’, the dis-
course of the unconscious. It is here, that the content of the unconscious
discourse is articulated according to the laws of condensation and displace-
ment. And, I submit, it is for this reason that the discourse of the uncon-
scious, understood in terms of Lacan’s linguistic theory of dreams, maps to
the cinematic discourse.

Mapping unconscious desire to cinematic discourse

The key point in Lacan’s dream theory is essentially quite simple: the dream-
image, and by association the specular image, operates according to the
‘laws of the signifier’. The complexity of his theory is in the nature of the
signifier’s operation.
As I have tried to make clear, because the specular image operates as a
signifier according to the complex ‘laws of the signifier’, what you see is not
what you get. Just as ‘the dream is a metaphor of desire’, so too is the specu-
lar image, the Mirror Stage image, and potentially, all specular images,
including those of the cinema. In the next section, I will deal with the
mechanisms of identification, but in terms of the cinematic discourse and
the techniques of cinematic representation, Oudart’s Althusserian discus-
sion of the Absent One is too simplistic. His argument, that the spectator’s
perception of absence signifies for an absence that in the second shot is
sutured into the fictional diegesis, situates the spectator as passive. Like-
wise, Heath’s structuralist claim that cinema offers the spectator multiple
 Suturing Suture 113

positions of ideological subjectivity. Both film theorists completely disre-

gard the subject’s own active unconscious discourse: the subject’s desire for
representation, the content of which is not directly represented within conscious-
ness, which, by the processes of condensation and displacement along the
signifying chain, finds those pleasurable associations that connote desire –
the subject’s lack that will suture the subject into the discourse; the subject’s
circling of ‘the desire of the Other’ that finds representation in the specu-
lar image that captivates; the subjective impression of reality grounding the
subject’s personal history, personal truth as the desire to repeat the psychic
trauma that resists conscious narration in the subject’s anamnesis.
From this I want to suggest that cinematic discourse can be mapped to
the discourse of the unconscious insofar as subjects are sutured into the
signifying chain of the unconscious discourse, by the ‘laws of the signifier’,
precisely because it is the discourse of their unconscious, displaced desire.
Here again, I am necessarily anticipating what I have yet to explore about
the suturing of subjectivity in relation to the specular image, the repre-
sented other. However, it is enough here to recognize that while Oudart
understands suture to concern the subject’s relationship to the signifying
chain of discourse, his concentration on Lacan’s structural linguistics fails
to explore the operations of the signifying chain adequately. Misunder-
standing the signifying chain, Oudart fails to give full consideration to the
operation of the signifier, the specular image.
My point here is that, in the techniques of representational cinema, what
the subject perceives is not so much the solipsistic identification with their
own look, as Baudry suggests, but the solipsistic identification with the
unconscious contents of their own desire. In other words, the lack that the
subject perceives in the shot/reverse shot is the lack in their own being.
Oudart is right to say that suture is the joining of the field of absence with
the field of presence. But to the extent that suture is an ‘effecting of the join
of the subject in the structures of [cinematic] meaning’ (Heath 1977/78,
74), it is the joining of absence (or lack) in the subject with the field of pres-
ence in the specular image, the cinematic signifier. This is the point at
which the cinematic discourse is situated, the imaginary of the filmic space.
In this way, the subject is sutured into the signifying chain, the diegesis of
the cinematic discourse, by identifying with the specular image, which itself
condenses or displaces the subject’s desire to repeat the Real. And, in this
way, as I suggested above, the suturing of the spectating subject into the
diegesis of narrative space maps the analytic experience to the cinematic
impression of reality.
114 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

In Chapter 8, I will suggest that as Symbolic constructions of reality (cin-

ematic/liturgical representation) map with subjective Imaginary reality
(the subject’s doubly-determined, overdetermined subjective impression of
reality), then subjects are sutured into the narrative of the ideological rep-
resentation. However, before I can make this case I must consider in detail
the mechanisms of identification: how subjects suture identity with an other,
in particular with the cinematic specular other.

Suturing Identity with a Cinematic Other, Suturing

Subjectivity

Having suggested a Lacanian foundation for the cinematic impression of

reality – as an impression funded by the subject’s (un(yet-to-be)spoken nar-
rative) truth – and the cinematic discourse – as rooted in the subject’s cap-
tation in and by representation (in the signifying chain where the specular
image condenses or displaces the subject’s desire to repeat the Real) – in
this section, I will discuss the neo-Lacanian concept of suture: the joining or
stitching together of identity (subjectivity) by the subject in relation to a
(mis)recognized representation, itself located within a narrative flow that
creates an impression of reality. My aim here will be to map analytic dis-
course to the spectating subject’s narcissistic identification with the cine-
matic other.

Identification with represented desire: a ‘genetic theory of the ego’

Once again, Lacan’s early work on the complexes provides the context to
begin tracing his thought on subject identification. Specifically, it is in the
context of his thinking on weaning, intrusion and the Oedipus that Lacan
first published his ideas on the Mirror Stage, in which he discusses the
power of the specular image and the narcissistic structure of the ego (Lacan
[1938]1988, 17–18).
Although he locates ‘captation by the imago of the human form’ at
between six months and two and a half years (E, 19), Lacan never regards
the Mirror Stage as a single moment in the child’s development. Rather,
because it ‘reveals some of the subject’s relations to his image’ (S1, 74), it
has a determining influence on the child’s behaviour (E, 19). For this rea-
son, Lacan describes the Mirror Stage as a drama whose momentum is from
‘insufficiency’ – the lack of motor co-ordination of neo-natality, and the
fragmented body-image (Lacan 1953, 15) – to ‘anticipation’ – the satisfaction
 Suturing Suture 115

offered by the prospects of integration and the image of its own totality
(E, 4; 21). Lacan terms this his ‘genetic theory of the ego’, in which the
subject’s relation to his body is in terms of an identification with an imago,
‘the psychic relationship par excellence’ (Lacan 1953, 12).
Describing this identification as the ‘jubilant assumption of his specular
image’, Lacan observes that it occurs in the pre-linguistic infans stage. In
other words, identification with the specular other takes place in the Imagi-
nary at a point before the subject enters the Symbolic register, specifically,
‘before it [the subject] is objectified in the dialectic of identification with
the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as
subject’ (E, 2). Lacan’s point is that, at the Mirror Stage, ‘The body in pieces
[the imago of the fragmented body] finds its unity in the image of the
other . . . its own anticipated image’ (S2, 54). The unity of the Mirror image
is that of ideal unity, a Gestalt of the subject’s own body (E, 18–19). For
Lacan, the Gestalt is an exteriority, its form more constituting than consti-
tuted, and its appearance to the subject ‘in a contrasting size that fixes it
and in a symmetry that inverts it’: the Gestalt both ‘symbolizes the mental
permanence of the I ’, and ‘prefigures its alienating destination’ (E, 2). In
other words, because the unified Gestalt inaugurates the ego from a point
external to the subject, the ego is both a fiction, the ‘Ideal-I’ that situates
‘the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direc-
tion’ (E, 2), and a factor for the subject’s own alienation.
The point to underscore here is that the subject’s relation to the image
occurs in the Imaginary register. In Lacan’s terms the Imaginary refers,
first, ‘to the subject’s relation to its formative identifications, which is the
true meaning of the term “image” in analysis’, and secondly, ‘to the relation
of the subject to the real whose characteristic is that of being illusory, which
is the facet of the imaginary most often highlighted’ (S1, 116). As such, it is
an event that is narcissistically charged, and related by the libidinal drives to
the sexual instinct, which is similarly located in the Imaginary register (S1,
122). For Lacan, narcissistic and Imaginary become interchangeable terms:
‘the different phases of imaginary, narcissistic, specular identification – the
three adjectives are equivalent when it comes to representing these matters
in theory’ (S1, 188).

Libidinal investment, narcissistic identification: ‘dialectic of identification’

In his discussion of the libidinal economy, Freud posited a primitive auto-
erotic phase in which the child’s thumb sucking can be interpreted as a
116 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

‘search for some pleasure’, and the child’s lips ‘behave like an erotogenic
zone’ (PFL7, 97, 98). From his study of ‘sensual sucking’ Freud observed
‘three essential characteristics of an infantile sexual manifestation’:

At its origin it attaches itself to one of the vital somatic functions; it has as
yet no sexual object, and is thus auto-erotic; and its sexual aim is domi-
nated by an erotogenic zone. (PFL7, 99)

Lacan regards this primitive auto-eroticism as libidinal (S1, 113–14), consti-

tuting objects of interest. He argues that, through the libidinal investments,
the subject’s instinctual development unfolds its world as a bipolar con-
struction, ‘on one side the libidinal subject, on the other the world’ (S1,
113). Freud understood narcissism as an investment of libido in the ego –
an ego-libido distinct from object-libido (PFL11, 68) – brought about by ‘a
new psychical action’ (PFL11, 69). For Lacan, the Mirror Stage, with its
erotic attraction to the specular image, supplies that ‘new psychical action’.
However, the situation is made more complex in that, at this early point of
development, in the Imaginary there is little to distinguish the ‘embryonic’
ego and object. Since both are sites of libidinal investment, the two become
confused: ‘It is because they are strictly correlative and because their appear-
ance is truly contemporaneous that the problem of narcissism arises’ (S1,
165). Lacan notes Freud’s postulation that with primitive narcissism, ‘it is
impossible to distinguish the two fundamental propensities, the Sexuallibido
and the Ichtriebe. They are inextricably mixed together’, and analytically
indistinguishable (S1, 119). Lacan’s point is that the Libidotriebe [sex-drive]
and the Ichtriebe [ego-drive] must be articulated within the framework of
Imaginary relation: ‘The libidinal drive is centred on the function of the
imaginary’ (S1, 122).
Articulating the two drives leads Lacan to posit two narcissisms: one asso-
ciated with the ‘real image’ the other with the ‘specular image’. The initial
narcissism is associated with the corporeal image ‘on the level of the real
image’, where it ‘makes possible the organisation of the totality of reality
into a limited number of preformed frameworks’ (S1, 125). However, it is
not easy to give a precise definition of what Lacan means here, although he
seems to understand the initial narcissism to be attached to an unmediated
primitive self-image. Much clearer is his thinking that the secondary narcis-
sism is related to ‘the reflection in the mirror’ (S1, 125), the specular image.
It is this secondary narcissism that has the captivating effect on the subject,
which both holds the subject’s fascination and literally captures, imprisons,
the subject in a ‘disabling fixation’ (Evans 1996, 20). Secondary narcissism
 Suturing Suture 117

constitutes the subject’s narcissistic identification: ‘This is what the theory

calls secondary narcissism, which it does not distinguish from narcissistic
identification’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 21). In this ‘first captation by the image’
Lacan discerns ‘the first stage of the dialectic of identification’ (E, 18), which
he consistently explicates in terms of his idiosyncratic, Kojèvean, psycho-
analytic (subject/subject) interpretation of Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic
(Hegel [1807]1977).28
Lacan observes the dialectic of identification in the alienating operations
of the weaning, intrusion and Oedipus complexes, as well as in puberty and
adolescence – the succession of subjective crises each of which produces its
new synthesis in the ego’s mechanisms, ‘in a form that is always more alienat-
ing for the drives that are frustrated in the synthesis, and always less ideal for
those that are normalized in the process’ (Lacan [1950]1997, 21). The alien-
ation produced in these crises is the result of the fundamental psychic phe-
nomenon of identification. Referring to the Mirror Stage, Lacan comments:

the identification of the preverbal subject with the specular image is the
most significant model, and also the most original moment, of the funda-
mentally alienating relation in which the being of humans constitutes
itself dialectically. . . . each of these identifications develops an aggressiv-
ity that cannot be adequately explained by drive frustration. . . . this
aggressivity expresses the discordance that is produced in the alienating
realization. ([1950]1997, 21)

Lacan’s point here is that human being is not self-generating but consti-
tuted dialectically (Lacan 1963, 84–5). Lacan argues that the dialectic of
identification is responsible for producing consciousness from unconscious-
ness, being from ‘a certain non-being on which he raises his being’ (S3,
189). For Lacan, the conscious subject is the product of an intersubjectivity,
which he argues is founded on the mechanisms of jealousy and paranoia,
mechanisms that in his view accurately perform the master-slave dialectic.

The confusion of identity: jealousy, paranoiac knowledge and transitivism

Freud’s conviction that jealousy is not rational but rooted in the uncon-
scious, ‘a continuation of the earliest stirrings of the child’s affective life,
and it originates in the Oedipus or brother-and-sister complex of the first
sexual period’ (PFL10, 197), led him to distinguish normal, projected and
delusional jealousies. Freud considered normal jealousy to be a compound of
118 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

the grief caused by the loss of the loved object, and of the ‘narcissistic
wound’, and that in addition, it is linked to ‘feelings of enmity against the
successful rival’, a self-criticism that holds the subject’s ego accountable for
the loss (PFL10, 197). By contrast, Freud regarded projected and delusional
jealousies as pathological forms of jealousy, which have their origins in
‘unfaithfulness in real life or from impulses towards it which have suc-
cumbed to repression’ (PFL10, 198). The idea of projected jealousy became
an important element in Lacan’s theory of paranoia29 and specifically in his
notion of paranoiac knowledge.30 As Sandra Carroll observes: ‘In projec-
tion an internal perception is suppressed, and its content, after undergoing
a certain kind of distortion, enters consciousness in the form of an external
perception instead’ (Carroll 1995, 111).
Lacan’s doctoral work on psychosis (1932), together with his research on
the Papin sisters (1933b) and his reading of Freud on Schreber (S3; PFL9,
129–223), leads him to argue that the subject’s confusion of identity with
the partner is because ‘the human ego is the other’ (S3, 39). Lacan’s point
is that, originally an ‘inchoate collection of desires’, the subject, in the
beginning, ‘is closer to the form of the other than to the emergence of his
own tendency’ (S3, 39). Consequently, ‘the initial synthesis of the ego is
essentially that of an alter ego’ (S3, 39). Lacan terms this ‘the imago of the
One-Like’, and, on the basis that it is ‘linked by a certain objective similarity
to the subject’s own body’, he describes the structure of this imago as ‘tan-
tamount to a demand for similarity between subjects’ (Lacan [1938]1988,
16–17). Paranoiac knowledge, then, is knowledge founded on jealousy and
the rivalries it sparks.
Reflecting later on his work on paranoia, Lacan highlights the fact that it
is ‘the earliest jealousy that sets the stage on which the triangular relation-
ship between the ego, the object and “someone else” comes into being’,
and that this jealousy circulates around the object of desire, the ‘object
desired by someone else’ (Lacan 1953, 12). For Lacan, the critical point is
that jealousy represents ‘not so much a deep-seated rivalry as a mental iden-
tification’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 16). He argues that, when brought together
in pairs, children aged between six months and two years, an age coincid-
ing with weaning and the onset of the Mirror Stage, become aware of ‘a
rival, ie of an “other” as an object’ ([1938]1988, 16). Typically, the observ-
able reactions between the children include showing off, seduction and
tyranny, in each case their communication reveals not interpersonal but
intrapersonal conflict in which ‘each partner confuses the part of the other
with his own and identifies with it’ ([1938]1988, 16). The picture is com-
plex in that the children are not only structured as rivals, they are caught in
the processes of identification. Lacan observes, with Freud, the fact that a
 Suturing Suture 119

child who has hit another can say ‘The other beat me’. The child is not lying,
‘he is the other, literally’ (S3, 39; PFL10, 159–93).
For Lacan, this demonstrates that there is ‘an unstable mirror between
the child and his fellow being’, a see-saw, a confusion of identity (S1, 169).
The point at which the see-sawing occurs is the point where the Mirror
Stage vanishes. Borrowing from the work of Charlotte Bühler and the Chi-
cago School, Lacan describes this phenomenon as transitivism, ‘the identifi-
cation with the imago of the counterpart and the drama of primordial
jealousy’ (E, 5; 1953, 16). This is the point when the subject’s knowledge
becomes decisively mediated through the ‘desire of the other’; from here
on the subject’s objects will be constituted in an ‘abstract equivalence by the
co-operation of others’ (E, 5). This is what Lacan means when he com-
ments that, ‘All human knowledge stems from the dialectic of jealousy’ (S3,
39). For Lacan, this becomes possible, precisely because ‘the human ego is
the other’. Lacan argues that the construction of the desiring subject takes
place around a centre ‘which is the other insofar as he gives the subject his
unity, and the first encounter with the object is with the object as object of
the other’s desire’ (S3, 39).

Procuring subjectivity: circulating the ‘rim’ and superimposing the lack

In his discussion of the Mirror Stage, Lacan argues that identification effects
alienation. His argument is that, in finding representation in the Gestalt, the
subject is alienated by the fictional Ideal-I. His thinking is clarified in his
1964 discussion of the splitting of the subject, where Lacan again makes
recourse to the structure of the sign: S/s. By now, the bar has become the
cut, or put topographically, the rim, around which the subject circulates in
‘the operation of the realisation of the subject in his signifying dependence
in the locus of the Other’ (S11, 206). When Lacan says that, ‘Everything
emerges from the structure of the signifier’ (S11, 206), he is in continuity
with his claim that ‘Jealousy is the archetype of all social feeling’ (Lacan
[1938]1988, 18). In other words, he is on the intersubjective terrain of tran-
sitivism, in which the subject’s self-awareness comes from the other. His
point is that, ‘The relation of the subject to the Other is entirely produced
in a process of gap’ (S11, 206).

Procuring subjectivity: the double operation of the ‘rim’

In the relation between the subject and the Other, Lacan distinguishes two
operations of a circular ‘rim process’. The first operation is constituted in
120 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

terms of alienation, what Lacan terms the ‘vel’ of alienation (S11, 210). This
vel involves an either/or choice, which amounts to ‘an exclusive choice
between two parties, to be decided by their struggle to the death’ (Fink
1995, 51). His point is that the subject must choose whether or not to join
itself with the signifier. His classic illustration is the threat of the highway-
man: ‘Your money or your life! If I choose the money, I lose both. If I choose
life, I have life without the money, namely, a life deprived of something’
(S11, 212). In these terms, the subject is caught between choosing ‘being’
or ‘meaning’. It is not possible to have both; it is a matter of either/or.

If we choose being, the subject disappears, it eludes us, it falls into non-
meaning. If we choose meaning, the meaning survives only deprived of
that part of non-meaning that is, strictly speaking, that which constitutes
in the realisation of the subject, the unconscious. In other words it is of
the nature of this meaning, as it emerges in the field of the Other, to be
in a large part of its field, eclipsed by the disappearance of being, induced
by the very function of the signifier. (S11, 211)

The echoes of the master-slave dialectic are obvious (S11, 212–13) insofar as
what is at stake in the vel of alienation is ‘the subject being assigned the los-
ing position’ (Fink 1995, 51). Fink points out that the sides of the vel are not
even, that in confronting the Other the subject makes a ‘forced’ choice and
immediately drops out. Fink draws attention to Lacan’s concept of the sub-
ject as lack (manque-à-être; literally, lack-of-being). In failing to come forth as
a someone, the subject lacks being: ‘The subject exists – insofar as the word
has wrought him or her from nothingness, and he or she can be spoken of,
talked about, and discoursed upon – yet remains beingless’ (1995, 51–2).
If the first operation constitutes alienation, in the second operation, ‘the
subject finds the return way of the vel of alienation’ (S11, 218). Lacan terms
the return, separation, and the circuit is completed, but with ‘an essential
twist’. Lacan uses the term separation playfully, in ‘all the fluctuating mean-
ings it has in French’, including the meaning ‘to be engendered’. The question
he is addressing is: ‘How . . . has the subject to procure himself?’ (S11, 214).
His answer is found in the operations of desire and ‘the superimposition of
two lacks’ (S11, 214).

Representation and the fading of the subject

The context for the double operation of the rim process is the Mirror Stage,
and Lacan makes explicit how the representation is implicated in the
 Suturing Suture 121

alienation. Lacan’s earlier discussion of Freud’s notion of representations

(Vorstellungen) takes place at the level of the unconscious, where representa-
tions operate according to the laws of condensation and displacement
(metaphor and metonymy) as associative and combinatory elements (S7,
61). Now he maps the representative of the representation (Vorstellung-
srepräsentanz) onto the mechanisms of alienation, and, in this way, argues
that, ‘the first signifier, the unary signifier, emerges in the field of the Other
and represents the subject for another signifier’ (S11, 218). It is not entirely
clear what Lacan intends by ‘the unary signifier’, but if he is taken to mean
the specular image of the Mirror Stage, the effect of the unary signifier is to
inaugurate the aphanisis, the disappearance of the subject.31

[W]hen the subject appears somewhere as meaning, he is manifested

elsewhere as ‘fading’, as disappearance. There is, then, one might say, a
matter of life and death between the unary signifier and the subject, qua
binary signifier, cause of his disappearance. The Vorstellungsrepräsentanz is
the binary signifier. (S11, 218)

In these terms, the binary signifier is the cut, the double edged operation
of the alienating specular image and the separating (castrating) phallus.
And Lacan argues that, in the ‘interval between these two signifiers’, the
desire of the Other circulates, a movement he describes as the disappear-
ance, ‘the fading of the subject’ (S11, 208).

It is in so far as his desire is beyond what she brings out as meaning, it is

in so far as his desire is unknown, it is in this point of lack, that the desire
of the subject is constituted. (S11, 218–19)

For Lacan, ‘There is no subject without . . . aphanisis’. Alienation establishes

the dialectic of the subject (S11, 221), the moment of a ‘fading’ being
closely bound with the subject’s Spaltung or splitting suffered from subordi-
nation to the signifier (E, 313).

Procuring subjectivity: the superimposition of the two lacks

Lacan completes the circular process between subject and other by way of
superimposing the lack (of being) in the subject and the lack (of the phal-
lus) in the (m)Other.
From the mid-1950s, Lacan explicitly notes that ‘the fundamental Hege-
lian theme [is that] man’s desire is the desire of the other’ (S1, 146). From
122 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

1958, in relation to the phallus as signifier, this becomes ‘the desire of the
Other’, where the Other is the mother – the (m)Other – and the phallus
has become a veiled signifier, the ‘ratio of the Other’s desire’.32 Here, desire
is ‘essentially “desire of the Other’s desire”, which means both desire to be
the object of another’s desire, and desire for recognition by another’ (Evans
1996, 37–8). As such, the subject must come to recognize this desire of the
Other: the mother’s desire for the phallus is a desire for what she lacks from
the father (the fulfilment of her demand to be desired by a desiring other).33
Lacan clarifies the meaning of his concept of ‘the desire of the Other’ by
explaining that the context for the formula is the relation of rivalry,

a relation belonging to the order of alienation since it is initially in the

rival that the subject grasps himself as ego. . . . the initial outburst of appe-
tite and desire comes about in the human subject via the mediation of a
form which he at first sees projected, external to himself, and at first, in
his own reflection. (S1, 176)

If the (m)Other’s desire is the phallus, the veiled ratio of the Other’s desire,
the child wishes to satisfy her desire by being the phallus (the child’s desire
having become the desire of the (m)Other). In other words, the child
desires to fill the lack in the (m)Other. In so desiring, the child questions
what it is that the (m)Other is saying to it. Lacan observes that, in the inter-
vals of her discourse is the locus of metonymy (displacement), the place
where ‘desire crawls, slips, escapes, like the ferret’ (S11, 214–15). In reply to
its question ‘He is saying this to me, but what does he want?’ the subject finds an
answer in the previous lack, its own disappearance: ‘The first object he pro-
poses for this parental desire whose object is unknown is his own loss – Can
he lose me?’(S11, 214) The result is that,

One lack is superimposed upon the other. The dialectic of the objects of
desire . . . now passes through the fact that the desire is not replied to
directly. It is a lack engendered from the previous time that serves to
reply to the lack raised by the following time. (S11, 215)

With this, the circular process between subject and (m)Other is completed.
In completing the circular process, the second operation is what Lacan
earlier terms ‘the second moment, the specular moment, the moment
when the subject has integrated the form of the ego’ (S1, 177).
Lacan’s answer to his question about how subjects procure the ego is in
terms of the subject’s suture of a pseudo-identification, which he holds to
 Suturing Suture 123

occur during ‘the moment of seeing’, as a conjunction of the Imaginary,

‘scopic register’, and the Symbolic, ‘invocatory, vocatory, vocational field’
(S11, 117–18).34 For Lacan, the sutured ego is nothing other than the fic-
tional Gestalt, the ideal-ego (Ideal-I) fixed, at the point where the subject
stops as ego-ideal, a

paradigm of all the forms of resemblance that will bring over on to the
world of objects a tinge of hostility. . . . From this point on, the ego is a
function of mastery, a play of presence, of bearing (prestance), and of con-
stituted rivalry. (E, 307)

Modes of subject identification: the Ideal-I and the ego-ideal

Mention of the rivalrous object poses again the problem of the Real in
terms of the infant’s identification with an imago. Lacan’s configuration of
the emerging ego imbricates his notion of the Mirror Stage onto the intru-
sion complex, the two events, manifesting in the pre-linguistic infans stage
from the end of the first six months, being coincident on the ‘the tapering
off of weaning’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 17). Hence he asserts that the ego
becomes aware of itself through ‘the one like me’ ([1938]1988, 19), and
observes that the Mirror Stage, ‘clearly reveals tendencies which constitute
the subject’s reality’ ([1938]1988, 17). This constitution is precisely because
the one like me ‘presents a good symbol of that reality’ ([1938]1988, 17),
and the imbrication is such that Lacan regards the Mirror Stage as ‘a par-
ticular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation
between the organism and its reality’ (E, 4).
Lacan is speaking here in general terms, but the imago’s function in iden-
tification and the formation of the ego is unmistakable. The infant, already
set on a strategy of negation/disavowal by the psychic trauma of weaning,
misconstrues his objective similarity to ‘the imago of the One-Like’ ([1938]
1988, 16) and, assumes that imago, making an Imaginary, transitivist identi-
fication with it such that the ego is inaugurated in the direction of a fiction
(E, 2). Lacan’s description is less prosaic:

Unable as yet to walk, or even to stand up, and held tightly as he is by

some support, human or artificial . . . he nevertheless overcomes, in a
flutter of jubilant activity, the obstructions of his support and, fixing his
attitude in a slightly leaning-forward position, in order to hold it in his
gaze, brings back an instantaneous aspect of the image. (E, 1–2)
124 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Nevertheless, his point is direct: in analytical terms the Mirror Stage is ‘an
identification’ (E, 2).
Prior to the subject’s entry into the ‘master-slave’ dialectic of the intru-
sion complex, Lacan locates a moment in which ‘the I is precipitated in a
primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification
with the other’ (E, 2). Lacan terms this primordial I the ‘Ideal-I’ (je-idéal),
and regards it both as ‘the source of secondary identifications’ and as that
which situates the ‘agency of the ego’ in its fictional direction (E, 2).35
The fictionality is underscored by the fact that the agency of the ego is
understood to be characterized ‘by the phenomenological essence that
[Freud] recognizes as being in experience the most constant attribute of
the ego, namely, Verneinung [negation]’ (E, 15). This means that the asso-
ciation already seen to exist between the imago and the Real, and which is
understood to imply negation/disavowal as an important psychic strategy
(the aim of which is to re-establish the unity of the lost dyad), is now to be
regarded as constitutional within the Ideal-I and integral to the formation
of the ego. In other words, the Ideal-I, which is synthesized between the
imago and the Real as a unified Gestalt, is in fact founded upon the nega-
tion/disavowal of that Real.
In short, the ego is formed in identification with a representation of
desire, an imago, and, regardless of the later subject’s success in synthesiz-
ing a dialectical resolution of his discordance as I with his own reality, the
fictional direction of the agency of the ego ‘will only rejoin the coming-in-
to-being (le devenir) of the subject asymptotically’ (E, 2). Clearly, for Lacan,
the ego is an Imaginary function, ‘a discovery yielded by experience, and
not a category which I might almost qualify as a priori, like that of the sym-
bolic’ (S2, 36–7). Consequently, he argues that it should not be confused
with the subject (S1, 193–4).

Symmetrical identifications: imaginary projection and symbolic introjection

Lacan’s use of the term ‘Ideal-I’, characteristic of his post-war writings, picks
up Freud’s distinction between the Ichideal and the ‘precisely symmetrical’
and oppositional Idealich (PFL11, 88). Dylan Evans notes that, although ‘it
is difficult to discern any systematic distinction between the three related
terms “ego-ideal” (Ich-ideal), “ideal ego” (Ideal Ich), and superego (Über-Ich)’,
the distinction is nonetheless significant, and I suggest it will help to clarify
the precise modes of identification the subject is making. In this case, Ideal-I
‘is the source of an imaginary projection. . . . a promise of future synthesis
 Suturing Suture 125

towards which the ego tends’ (Evans 1996, 52). Evans makes the point that
the Ideal-I is an ever-present companion of the ego. As I have shown, Lacan’s
point is that even before the ego is able to affirm its identity, identity and
image have become confused. Lacan terms the intrusion of image into
identity ‘the narcissistic intrusion’, and regards ‘The world to which this
[mirror] phase belongs is the narcissistic world’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 18). In
other words, the structure of the ego is narcissistic and, as with the pro-
cesses of repression, the libidinal energy for ego identification derives from
‘narcissistic passion’ (E, 21), motivated, at least in part, by the ‘scoptophilic
(the desire to see and be seen) drives’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 18). The plea-
sure in seeing is derived from seeing the One-Like, and since that other is
another of the same, the pleasure of the look is narcissistic. The infant’s
fundamental narcissism is further underscored by Lacan’s assertion that
aggressivity is narcissistic, being ‘the correlative tendency of a mode of iden-
tification’ (E, 16).
The structure of intrusion provides a foundation for the Oedipus com-
plex. According to Lacan, psychoanalysis locates a ‘psychological puberty’
(Lacan [1938]1988, 19) in about the fourth year. Language about the drama
of jealousy and ‘the introduction of a third’ clearly resonates with the Oedi-
pus complex, a parallel Lacan makes explicit: ‘The Oedipus is set in motion
by a triangular conflict in the subject; we have already seen that the play of
forces arising from weaning produces a similar formation’ ([1938]1988,
20). The sexual drives that accompany this ‘puberty’ lie at the heart of the
Oedipus complex and focus the child’s gaze on its near object. Significantly,
Lacan claims the parent of the opposite sex as the near object,36 but, given
the prematurity of the drives, the child’s sexual desires for that parent are
frustrated. The frustration of these drives ‘ties the knot of the complex’,
and the child attributes frustration to ‘a third object whose proximity and
interest make him the normal obstacle to satisfaction, ie the parent of the
same sex [namely, the father]’ ([1938]1988, 19). The tension that results
from frustration is only resolved when the infant succeeds in repressing his
sexual tendency and sublimating the parental (i.e. paternal) image.
This is a move of profound, if problematic, importance. Preserving ‘a
symbolic ideal in consciousness’, the parental image is permanently and
doubly inscribed in the psyche: in the superego, as the agent of repression,
and in the ego-ideal, as the agent of sublimation ([1938]1988, 19).37 In
other words, the imago of the father is translated into superego and ego-
ideal. Taken together, they represent the accomplishment of the Oedipal
crisis, the achievement of Oedipal identification. According to Evans, while
the superego can be regarded as ‘an unconscious agency whose function is
126 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

to repress sexual desire for the mother’, the ego-ideal ‘exerts a conscious
pressure towards sublimation’, providing the co-ordinates by which the sub-
ject can adopt a gendered position (Evans 1996, 52). As the symmetrical
opposition to the Imaginary projection of the Ideal-I, the ego-ideal is a Sym-
bolic introjection, ‘an internalised plan of the law, the guide governing the
subject’s position in the symbolic order’ (Evans 1996, 52).
For Lacan, the normal state of the Oedipus complex is sublimation, by
which he means ‘an identificatory reshaping of the subject’ (E, 22). In other
words, the sublimation that concludes the Oedipus complex is in fact a
secondary identification (ego-ideal), the result of the introjection of the
imago of the parent of the same sex (Lacan [1938]1988, 22), and the paral-
lel to the narcissistic identification with the imago of the One-Like (Ideal-I).

Because of the subject’s identification with the imago of the same-sex par-
ent, the superego and the ego ideal can reveal traits similar to individual
characteristics of that imago in the subject’s experience.This is what the
theory calls secondary narcissism, which it does not distinguish from nar-
cissistic identification. ([1938]1988, 21)

The parasitic nature of sublimation is underscored in relation to the struc-

tural rivalry of Oedipal identification. Lacan admits this is not self-evident.
Indeed, it can only be conceived ‘if the way is prepared for it by a primary
identification that structures the subject as a rival with himself’ (E, 22).

Mapping suture to identification with a cinematic other

I want here to argue that Lacan’s theory of the suturing mechanisms of
narcissistic, specular identification with the One-Like offers to explain the
suturing of cinematic subjectivity with the specular, film star other.
The point to underscore is that the subject’s relation to representation,
and by definition therefore to the sutured identity itself, occurs in the Imag-
inary register. This is the psychic location where the complexes transmit an
impression of reality and where signifiers operate by the laws of condensa-
tion and displacement. According to Lacan the relation of subject to image
is narcissistic precisely because it is founded on the mental identifications
of jealousy, the subject’s identity becoming confused with ‘the imago of the
One-Like’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 16): consequently, Lacanian subjectivity is
constituted in the splitting of the subject.
This reinterprets – or interprets correctly – Lacan against psychoanalytic
film theory, which proposes that subjects are sutured by being joined into
 Suturing Suture 127

the structures of meaning. Against this, I am arguing that subjects are

sutured when they identify with an other, and that (when it comes to cin-
ema) this identification stitches the subject into the narrative space of
the filmic diegesis, to become a participant in the ideological ‘reality’ of
Hollywood realism.
I have already dealt with film theory’s work on suture, where I noted in
particular that, due to their commitment to Althusser, Oudart and Heath
wrongly propose that subjects are sutured when they are joined to the struc-
tures of meaning. As a result of giving preference to the subject’s Imaginary
relation to reality, Screen downplayed the place of character-actor/star as a
focus for a psychoanalytic interpretation of spectator identification and so
became theoretically confused with reference to the way female spectator-
ship in particular, and identification in general, have been theorized. How-
ever, despite the cul-de-sac into which this theoretical confusion led,
attempts to abandon Lacanian theory have ended in a return to analytic
categories, either explicitly or implicitly. In either case, the spectator can
be understood to forge an identification with the screen character-actor/
star in a way which profoundly informs their own identity in the direction
of the ideology.
Laura Mulvey’s theory of female spectatorship and the male gaze is typi-
cal of Screen’s Althusserian appropriation of Lacan, and although she domi-
nated feminist film theory in the 1980s, she nonetheless typifies the
theoretical confusion.38 For Mulvey (1975), the issues of spectatorship and
identification are closely bound together. Mulvey theorizes female specta-
torship around the voyeuristic male gaze and regards cinema as the mimetic
analogue of voyeurism that situates woman as the cinematic sexual subject
within an economy of male desire and privileged (phallic) power. Conse-
quently, when the spectating woman sees the woman within the filmic
diegesis as icon for the male gaze, Mulvey argues that she is actually denied
the possibility of spectating as a woman; that she has ceased merely to view
the diegetic woman and has begun to identify with perspective of the male
gaze. The difficulty with Mulvey’s thesis is that, positioning women in a rela-
tionship of ambiguity to their own gender, she leaves their identification
oscillating between poles on the feminine/masculine binary.39 At best
female spectators identify as spectators from a position assigned by men,40
but even more significantly, Mulvey is unable to account for the pleasure
women derive from viewing film in their own terms.
In contrast to Mulvey, Jackie Stacey (1994) aims to account for the
complexity of women’s identification with female film stars by adopting a
cultural studies perspective that mediates between the woman as ‘effect of
128 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

discourse’ and the ‘real’ woman in the audience. Stacey argues that, despite
the foreclosure of female spectatorship by feminist psychoanalytic film the-
ory, real women find pleasure in, and make identification with, cinematic
images of women. Stacey proposes that to explore ‘the ways in which female
identification contains forms of desire which include, though not exclu-
sively, homoerotic pleasure’ requires an understanding of what she terms
‘eroticising identification’ (1994, 29). This is borne out by Stacey’s qualita-
tive inquiry. When she questions ‘real’ women about the nature of their
identification with female Hollywood stars of the 1940s and 1950s (Stacey
1994, 138–70), her respondents signal a recurring theme of homoerotic
pleasure, speaking freely of their love and devotion to their favoured star.41
Like Stacey, Richard Dyer (1998) distances himself from psychoanalysis.
In his definitive study of film stars and their social meaning, Dyer investi-
gates the circulation of what he terms ‘star images’, questioning how these
images influence the ways spectators understand both their own identity
and that of others. Dyer frames his study in terms of the operations of ideol-
ogy, which he regards as the mediating context in which stars are created
by the forces of capitalist production and audience consumption. (In effect
the production-consumption dialectic could be taken to represent the dif-
ferent perspectives of Mulvey – ideological production – and Stacey – audi-
ence consumption.) Dyer’s concern is not so much with the ideological
content of the star phenomenon, but with ‘what specific kind(s) of ideo-
logical work it does, or tries to do, the nature of its “ideological effect”’
(1998, 20).42
I have already noted Dyer’s observation that stars are ‘representations of
people’ whose independence of their fictional screen appearances gives
them greater reality than their screen characters, but also disguises the fact
that stars are as much a construction as any fictional character. To reiterate
Dyer’s point, stars collapse the distinction between their authenticity as a
person and the authentication of the characters they play. Again, as I noted
above, Dyer considers that stars like Will Rogers and Shirley Temple embody,
and so reinforce, the social values of the American Dream, values which at
times can seem under threat. But, in addition to this embodiment, Dyer
proposes that stars also have the ability to compensate people for qualities
lacking in their lives (1998, 28).
For Dyer, this compensation shifts spectator attention from the threat-
ened value to a lesser, ‘compensatory’ value. Citing Robert K Merton’s study
of Kate Smith’s US war-bond drive, Dyer highlights how Smith’s success
was dependent on the image of the 1930s popular singer: ‘there was a con-
gruence between Smith’s image and the themes used to sell the bonds
 Suturing Suture 129

(eg patriotism, self-sacrifice, etc.) but above all . . . Smith’s sincerity’ (1998,
29). Smith’s radio broadcasts corroborated her image of sincerity insofar as
she worked tirelessly and without pay. In other words, ‘Smith’s image is a
condensation of various traditional values “guaranteed” by the actual exist-
ence of Smith as a person, producing her as an incarnation of sincerity’
(1998, 29).
Having said this, a question remains concerning the relation of the imago,
the representation, Vorstellung, the specular other, to the subject’s Real. Put
in cinematic terms, the question concerns the relation of the cinematic
One-Like, the specular film star other, to the spectator’s solipsistic identifi-
cation with the unconscious content of their own desire.
In effect, imagos and the complexes into which they coalesce re-present
the Imaginary reality that is based on the desire to recover a lost Real. Lacan
is quite clear that the psychic trauma (of weaning) orientates the infant
according to a strategy of negation/disavowal, a strategy that refuses real
(actual) experience in favour of Imaginary reality (re)constituted by the
representational power of the complex and its allied imago. For Lacan,
the Imaginary reality, constituted in terms of the child’s desire, is the breast,
the Imaginary objet petit a. But, because signification of objet petit a is always
according to ‘the laws of condensation and displacement’ (S7, 61), the sub-
ject ‘finds’ again the lost object only in ‘its pleasurable associations’ (S7, 52)
with another signifier. It is for this reason that the specular other can be
interpreted as the condensed or displaced signifier of the spectator’s uncon-
scious desire. This is why, in cinematic terms, the specular film star other
can be interpreted in terms of the spectator’s solipsistic identification with
the ‘Ideal-I’, the unconscious content of their own desire, an identification
that facilitates the suturing of cinematic subjectivity with the specular, film
star other.
Giving ‘Lacan himself a chance’ (Žižek 2001b, 2) has enabled me to
reconsider three areas associated with film theory’s failure to understand,
and therefore correctly apply, psychoanalytic film theory’s conception of
suture. Specifically, these areas are: the cinematic impression of reality; cin-
ematic discourse; and the suturing of cinematic subjectivity. My assumption
has been that a more Lacanian interpretation of suture and narrative space
is necessary, particularly if film theory is to contribute to understanding the
liturgical construction of religious identity; and my conclusion from this
‘return to Lacan’ is that the cinematic experience maps with analytic
(unconscious) experience. So, I am suggesting several related things.
First, I am suggesting that the subject’s powerful, if unconscious narra-
tive, funded by the subject’s Real, which constructs a subjective impression
130 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

of reality, predisposes the spectating subject to interact with cinematic

impressions of reality as a performance of the Imaginary ‘reality’.
Secondly, I am suggesting that the operations of Imaginary reality, the
discourse of the unconscious funded by the psychic strategy of negation/
disavowal, predisposes the spectating subject to interpret the narrative
diegesis of the cinematic discourse, as a performance of the unconscious
discourse of the Imaginary reality.
Thirdly, I am suggesting that the mechanisms of the desire of the Other,
the Imaginary, narcissistic, specular identification with the imago of the
One-Like (Ideal-I), which operate to suture subjects into the signifying nar-
rative chain, predispose the spectating subject narcissistically to confuse
themselves with the imago of the cinematic One-Like, the specular film
star other.
My argument here is that, operating according to the same psychic proc-
esses of negation/disavowal by which the subject comes to ‘believe’, and so
participate in, the Imaginary reality of the refusal of the Real, the cinematic
subject comes to ‘believe’, and so participate in, the cinematic reality that is
always already ideologically informed.43 By extension, I want to suggest that
the liturgical subject similarly comes to ‘believe’ and so participate in the
ideologically informed Episcopal/ecclesial reality. In the final chapter, I will
apply these insights to a consideration of liturgical subject construction.
 Chapter 8

Suturing Religious Identity in the

Sacramental Narrative

The argument I am developing is that psychoanalytic film theory can illumi-

nate the operation of liturgical representation insofar as it is implicated in
the construction of religious identity or liturgical subjectivity. Having seen
the ways in which existing religious film analysis has failed to treat film qua
film as a representational medium, I established how film and liturgy can be
regarded as parallel media of representation. I then identified concepts
within psychoanalytic film theory that religious studies can use to explain
the construction of religious identity in relation to the sacramental narra-
tive, and I ‘returned to Lacan’ in order to clarify further the psychoanalytic
film theory concept of suture.
What has emerged from is an understanding of suture as a mapping of the
subject’s own predispositions and psychic strategies. The subject, is already
psychically predisposed towards a subjective impression of reality. In this
subjective the realm, where the unconscious discourse of the desire is funded
by the psychic strategy of negation/disavowal, the subject narcissistically
confuses him/herself with the imago of the other, and constructs a pseudo-
identification. What is important is that, because it articulates the uncon-
scious desire of the subject’s internal discourse, this pseudo-identification
reinforces the subjective impression of reality towards which the subject has
a prior predisposition.
This account may suggest that the subject reaches a point of completion,
a stasis point from which no further development is either necessary or pos-
sible. However, because of the alienation inherent in the construction of
subjectivity, sooner or later the subject will find him/herself no longer signi-
fied by the signifier with which s/he is narcissistically confused; the desire
for representation will be revived and the process will turn another cycle.
I want to suggest, then, that what might be called ‘the process of suture’
be thought, not as a linear process leading to stasis, but as a cycle, repeti-
tive and self-reinforcing. Having explained in depth the first half of this
cycle, I want, in this final chapter, to concentrate on the second half of
132 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

the process: identification, narrative suture and participation. This will ena-
ble me to demonstrate how the insights gained from theorizing representa-
tional cinema in terms of psychoanalysis can illuminate understanding of
liturgical subject construction.
First, I will consider the worshipper’s identification with the priest as a
liturgical representation. I will argue that the narcissistic (mis)recognition
of the worshipper with the priest is an identification sustained, on the one
hand, by an erotic attraction, and on the other, by a negation/disavowal
(the worshipper negating/disavowing the priest’s personality, the priest
negating/disavowing his own sexual being/fulfilment). In short, I will
argue that liturgical subjectivity is a pseudo-identification sustained by a
mutual negation/disavowal, the effect of which alienates worshippers from
themselves and leaves the priest bearing the worshipper’s weaknesses.
Secondly, I will consider the operation of narrative suture. I will argue
that, in the collusion that surrounds the identification between the priest
and the worshipper, each party signifies for the other, and that the content
of the signification is dependent on the place assigned by the Other within
the signifying chain. I will show that, by their identification with the priest,
the liturgical subject’s unconscious discourse of desire is reinscribed into
the salvific/pastoral practice of the sacramental narrative.
Finally, I will consider the worshipper’s participation in the ideological
‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority. Taking the liturgical moment of
reinscription as the Eucharistic Anamnesis, I will argue that in the moment
of identification with the priest and reinscription in the sacramental narra-
tive, the worshipper first of all becomes a participant in the sacramental
‘reality’. However, identification with liturgical representation alienates
worshippers from their own desire to the extent that participation is in an
‘empty Word/speech’. From this, I will argue that the initial participation is
made in the context of a ‘full Word/speech’, the authoritative, Episcopal
interpretation that imposes a truth about the subject’s desire upon the wor-
shipper, and that, consequently, worshippers become participants in the
ideological ‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority.
For the sake of developing my arguments, in the following sub-sections
I will make reference to case studies drawn from film and autobiography.

Identification with the Priest as a Liturgical Representation

Constructing the priest as a liturgical representation

In Leo McCarey’s heart warming, but implausible, The Bells of St. Mary’s
(1945), the formulaic follow-up to his previous runaway success, Going My
 Suturing Religious Identity 133

Way (1944),1 a new Roman Catholic priest assumes parochial duties in a

large US city parish. His duties include managing the church’s somewhat
dilapidated junior high school, and on arrival, Father Chuck O’Malley
(Bing Crosby) finds the buildings neglected and the school on the verge of
closure. In fact, the institution is only being kept afloat by the dedicated
commitment of the sisters, led by the erstwhile Sister Benedict (Ingrid Berg-
man), who run the school. Between them, Fr O’Malley and Sr Benedict set
about securing the school’s future, eventually persuading an irascible local
entrepreneur, Horace P. Bogardus (Henry Travers), to donate to the school
his newly constructed office block (built on land he had previously bought
from the school to pay for repairs to the old building). In the space of a
school year, Fr O’Malley’s folksy, home-spun wisdom not only brings Bogar-
dus back to the Church, but also succeeds in reuniting a long estranged
couple and their daughter – and for good measure the singing priest cheers
the sisters with a charming rendition of ‘The Bells of St. Mary’s’.
No doubt some of the success of McCarey’s sequel2 can be attributed to
its ‘feel good’ qualities, particularly as it was a wartime release. Indeed, both
films are relentlessly reassuring, if not downright romantic, in their unerr-
ing belief in the goodness of human nature, the values of honest hard work,
and the efficacy of simply ‘being nice’. But, this aside, I am interested in the
casting of Bing Crosby as Fr O’Malley and the nature of the spectator’s
identification with him.
At the time, Crosby was at the height of his powers. Emerging as a singer
in the late 1920s and early 1930s, his ‘baritone was virile and passionate, yet
warm, relaxed and subtle, his style seemingly effortless and . . . at the time,
ground-breaking’.3 After radio had made him a household name, with
songs about ‘not needing a bundle of money to make life happy [the] right
message for the decade of the Great Depression’,4 Crosby made the crosso-
ver into acting, initially via Mack Sennett ‘two-reelers’. In 1940 he began his
long running partnership with comedian and off screen friend Bob Hope
in The Road to Singapore, a minimally plotted burlesque of comedy, adven-
ture, music and romance that franchized into a succession of Road to . . .
movies. By 1946, following his work with McCarey, Crosby had become the
highest Hollywood earner, grossing $325,000, and for five consecutive years,
between 1944–48, he topped the Quigley Poll, an annual poll of exhibitors
that determined the top box-office draws (Robertson 1991, 75, 94).
Crosby was a natural talent, whose strength lay in his relaxed, easy-going,
intimate style, and spectators identified with him. I suggest that, more than
identify with, they felt that they could be Crosby, that what he represented
was actually attainable by them. As David Thomson expresses it, Crosby’s
singing ‘had all the charming naturalness that every amateur crooner
134 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

believed lay within his grasp’ (Thomson 1995, 159). From the position I
developed in the previous chapter, I suggest that this can be accounted for
as follows. The spectators’ relation to Crosby, as the specular image, is typi-
cally narcissistic, they are literally captivated (imprisoned) out of jealousy
by his screen image – the projected jealousy that constitutes ‘paranoiac
knowledge’, the confusion of identity in which ‘the human ego is the other’
(S3, 39): the spectator’s desire to be Crosby. The ‘desire of the Other’ – the
‘desire of Crosby’ – being a narcissistic identification, first alienates the
spectator, who, by associating with his chosen icon (adopting a style of sing-
ing or a way of tilting his hat to a jaunty angle), assumes the Other’s ‘being’
over against his own ‘meaning’. But the ‘desire of Crosby’ is an ambiguous
desire: it is both the desire to be the object of Crosby’s (the Other’s) desire,
and the desire for recognition by Crosby (the Other).
Having been alienated from himself, the spectator must now return, in
other words procure an identity, more accurately a pseudo-identity with the
‘desire of the Other’. The obvious question here is: what might Crosby’s
desire be? I suggest that it must at least be the desire for recognition by an
Other, that is the desire for fans or followers, the desire for an audience,
which is a form of power, an association with the phallus. Thus, the spectator
having first of all ‘disappeared’, in the sense of lacking being, superimposes
his own lack (desire for being) onto what he perceives to be the desire of the
Other (the desire for recognition, the desire for the phallus) and procures
the pseudo-identity that is the assumption of the desire of the (m)Other.
The suggestion that in procuring a pseudo-identity with Crosby the male
spectator is simultaneously assuming the desire of the (m)Other may seem
tendentious. However, the point so often missed by Lacan’s commentators
is that the signifier of desire (the specular image) is precisely a signifier that
operates according to the ‘laws’ of the signifier, the ‘laws’ of condensation
and displacement. Thus, as an element in the unconscious discourse of
desire, the desire for the (m)Other is condensed and displaced from the
Real into an Imaginary, in accordance with the learned strategy of nega-
tion/disavowal, which is allied to the narcissistic confusion and which
effects the fictional identification of the subject’s ego. The corollary of this
is that Crosby is a single cinematic representation that, for certain specta-
tors at least, signifies an unconscious desire, the precise contents of which
would be the subject of innumerable discussions as each spectator assumes
the position of analysand to develop ‘his truth, his integration, his history’
on the analyst’s couch.
The point is that the spectator, in relation to the specular image, has
constituted an ego by the (mis)recognition of himself in relation to a
representation of desire – Crosby as an Ideal-I. And because the pleasure of
 Suturing Religious Identity 135

the look is narcissistic, and because there is an erotic attraction to the spec-
ular image, one should not rule out the suggestion that the pleasures associ-
ated with seeing Crosby on screen include an erotic attraction, either
hetero- or homoerotic. (Although Crosby was principally a comedic rather
than romantic lead, nevertheless, even as Fr O’Malley he is able to generate
a subtle but compelling sexual ‘chemistry’ with Sr Benedict.5)
There should be no doubt that, in the off screen world, the priest who
says daily mass in his Roman Catholic parish is to be considered an Ideal-I.
This is clear from the Vatican II Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (PO),
when it details the ‘Priests’ call to perfection’ (PO, 12–14). While it is the
case that all baptized Christians are to consider themselves ‘obliged even in
the midst of human weakness to seek perfection’ (PO, 12), the priest, who
by the sacrament of Holy Orders is configured to Christ the priest, is ‘bound
by a special reason to acquire this perfection’ – he is, in effect, to be both
Ideal-I and ego-ideal.
I have already noted the complexity of identifications associated with
priestly representation. In Chapter 4, I drew attention to the instruction
that, in his representative function as both Christ (in persona Christi) and
the people (in nomine totius populi), the priest should encourage the faithful
to ‘associate . . . with himself in offering the sacrifice to God the Father
through Christ in the Holy Spirit’ (CP, 60); in other words, to identify with
the priest and so participate in the Eucharist. Consequently, it is the priest’s
duty to lead his flock ‘not only by word but also by example’ (SC, 19), and
so to promote an active participation in the liturgy that is both internal and
external. And, while it might be the case that the priest is obliged to limit the
intrusion of his personality in the performance of his Eucharistic duties
(CP, 313; EP, 11, 17), the fact remains that he is the source of the laity’s
instruction about both the nature of Christ and his own representative
function as in persona Christi, configured, as he explains, to Christ. As such,
he is the primary reference for the calibration of lay identity.
In Chapter 5, I noted Dyer’s definition of film stars as people who repre-
sent people but who have an existence that endures beyond, and is inde-
pendent of, the fictional screen characters they play. The implication is that
stars are themselves complex identities. For example:

Bing Crosby is a man;

Bing Crosby is Fr O’Malley;
Bing Crosby is a fictional film star persona.

Spectators, of course, make their initial identification with the diegetic

character performed by Bing Crosby, in this case, Fr O’Malley. But they also
136 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

make a more sustained identification with the fiction that is Bing Crosby
the star. As I discussed with reference to Bruce Willis, Crosby’s character,
Fr O’Malley, represents a social type, in this case, a second generation Irish
Catholic, whose family has presumably made good in America, having ful-
filled their ambition to escape the poverty that drove them to leave Ireland.
And as a star, Crosby will represent the aspirations of his fans who want to
identify with the reflection of themselves as they would like to be. The point
is that Crosby is able to represent the universal and the particular insofar as
his fans negate/disavow his integrity as a real (actual) man.
I suggested, in Chapter 4, that there is a case to be made that the star’s
representation parallels the priest’s dual representation: in persona Christi
and in nomine totius populi – both represent a universalized aspiration; both
represent an embodied particular. But I want to suggest here that this paral-
lel can be developed further. Insofar as both are obliged to limit the intru-
sion of their personality in the performance of their representative duties,
the star and the priest are both fictional representations: both are constructs
and both are sustained by an erotic attraction and a negation/disavowal.

Priestly representation (i): a fiction sustained by erotic attraction

All priests are charged with the duty to ‘promote the liturgical instruction
of the faithful and also their active participation, both internal and exter-
nal. . . . and in this matter they must lead their flock not only by word but
also by example’ (SC, 19, emphasis added). And because priests lead by exam-
ple, they deserve to be loved: ‘The faithful for their part ought to realize
that they have obligations to their priests. They should treat them with filial
love as being their fathers and pastors’ (PO, 9). The point is that, as good
shepherds, priests should evoke an emotional response in their flock, if not
an emotional attachment.
Whatever else it may be, the worshipper’s relation to the priest, like the
spectator’s relation to Crosby, is a relation to a specular image, an Ideal-I.
As such, this relation is typically narcissistic. My argument is that, motivated
by jealousy, the worshipper is captivated by the image of the priest as a
specular other and desires to be what the priest signifies. Something of this
is evident in the diegesis of Roland Joffé’s film, The Mission (1986).

The Mission (1986)

Joffé’s film relates the historical events surrounding a Jesuit mission to the
Guarani Indians and its leader, Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons), who is
 Suturing Religious Identity 137

inspired by the Christian message of love and moved by the martyrdom

of a priest he had previously sent to the Guarani. The commitment of
Fr Gabriel to the spiritual and material wellbeing of his people and his
mission is absolute, and he is an exemplary embodiment of the call to be
a good shepherd. So, when Papal Emissary Cardinal Altamirano (Ray
McAnally) arrives to inspect the mission, Fr Gabriel introduces the Cardi-
nal to the Indians, whose work on the plantations returns them a share in
the community’s profits. Learning that the plantation’s income for the pre-
vious year was 120,000 escudos, Altamirano inquires how it was distributed.
When he is told that the profits are shared equally among the community,
the Cardinal recalls, with an air of privileged dismissal, that he has heard
this is a doctrine taught by a radical French group; he is made visibly uncom-
fortable by the priest’s unselfconscious reminder that the doctrine was that
of the Christ’s early followers.
Fr Gabriel’s shepherding extends beyond the Guarani to the mercenary
cum slave trader, Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro). After killing his
brother in a dual over Carlotta (Cherie Lunghi), Mendoza is ‘rescued’ by
Fr Gabriel who challenges him to do penance by joining the mission and
serving the Guarani Indians. Mendoza not only accepts Fr Gabriel’s provo-
cation, he eventually becomes a Jesuit priest himself. What completes his
conversion is the inspiration of Fr Gabriel. In other words, Mendoza desires
to be a Jesuit because he wants to be what Fr Gabriel signifies.
However, the mission is caught up in Rome’s struggle to retain its tempo-
ral authority in Europe and its power politicking with the Spanish and
Portuguese trading empires, and ultimately the intention behind the
Altamirano’s visit is revealed when the mission is handed over to the slave
trading Portuguese. Faced with the choice of waging a hopeless and pitiful
fight against the combined might of Spain and Portugal, the convert,
Mendoza, appeals for Fr Gabriel’s support. Fr Gabriel’s response, that he
lacks the strength to live in a world in which might is right, indicates that
his deep commitment to pacifism is an expression of the way of love.
The film’s ‘Foreword’ indicates the ‘truth’ of the historical events repre-
sented, even if the film itself is revisionary and polemical, not to say ‘woe-
fully pretentious’ (Thomson 1995, 366). Joffé portrays the Guarani Indians
as noble savages, living carefree in a paradise playground. But, acknowledg-
ing that the South America Indians continue the struggle for their land and
culture, Joffé’s ‘Afterword’ makes clear that his film is inspired by, and dedi-
cated to, the many priests whose faith and love have motivated them to
support justice for the Indians, even at the cost of their lives.
The point I want to underline here is, as I have shown with Crosby, that
the desire of the Other is an ambiguous desire. Mendoza desires to be what
138 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Fr Gabriel wants – a follower; but he also desires recognition from

Fr Gabriel: in which case, Mendoza is first alienated from his own being and
then procures his pseudo-identity in relation to the ‘desire of the Other’.
This assertion might be thought undermined by the fact that, when threat-
ened by the approaching Portuguese and Spanish mercenaries, Mendoza
reverts to type and takes up his sword to defend the Guarani. However,
Mendoza is only following the example of Fr Gabriel, who, uncharacteristi-
cally for a Jesuit, rather too easily discards a lifetime of obedience to his
superiors, and refuses to abandon the mission and the Indians. In taking up
the sword Mendoza seeks Fr Gabriel’s blessing.6
In wanting to be what the priest signifies, Mendoza is clearly attracted to
Fr Gabriel. Jeremy Irons, the gaunt faced British actor who plays Fr Gabriel,
has been described as ‘the thinking woman’s pin up’.7 Whereas Crosby was
typically a comedic lead, Irons is associated with the romantic lead, and the
narcissistic confusion that enables identification with Irons as Fr Gabriel
can be seen to be charged with an erotic attraction. What is true in the
film theatre seems equally the case in the filmic diegesis where Mendoza
appears to be caught up in the homoeroticism circulating within the all
male Jesuit community. Desiring to be what Fr Gabriel wants, Mendoza is
alienated from his own being but procures a pseudo-identity in relation to
what Fr Gabriel signifies. In other words, Mendoza negates/disavows the
real (actual) separation from his (br)Other, the cause of which was the
intrusion of his own passion and sword, with his narcissistic identification
with Fr Gabriel. He seems at times to be captivated by Fr Gabriel’s very
image. In this way, The Mission articulates something of the erotic attraction
that circulates between the priest and his congregation.
My point here is that, in relation to the priest as a specular image, the
worshipper constitutes a pseudo-identity, looking at the priest and narcis-
sistically (mis)recognizing himself in relation to the liturgical representa-
tion of his own desire – the priest as an Ideal-I. And because the pleasure of
the look is narcissistic, because there is an erotic attraction to the specular
image, the pleasures associated with seeing the priest – on screen or on the
presbyterium – include an erotic attraction, be that hetero- or homoerotic.
In consequence, the priest can be regarded as one who evokes an erotic
attraction, but, as I will show, must himself negate/disavow his own sexual
being/fulfilment, his ‘human weakness’ (PO, 12), in order to procure his
identification with Christ, the Ideal-I, and so be identified as an Ideal-I, a
liturgical representation of Christ.
 Suturing Religious Identity 139

Priestly representation (ii): a fiction sustained by negation/disavowal

The extent of the negation/disavowal surrounding Crosby’s star image is evi-
denced by the ‘revelation’ that behind the apparently unaffected image of
natural charm ‘he was, in fact, a rather bitter man, a fierce parent, and a cold
companion’ (Thomson 1995, 160). Such was the inconsistency between
Crosby the star and Crosby the man that in 1983, six years after his death, Gary
Crosby, the eldest of his four sons from his first marriage, published an auto-
biography, Going My Own Way (1983), in which he details the physical and
8
emotional abuse he and his brothers suffered at the hands of their father.
For the priest, the negation/disavowal, the limitation of personality, is
institutionalized to the extent that Presbyterorum ordinis unambiguously states
that the priest’s configuration to Christ through Holy Orders remedies his
human weakness by the holiness of Christ.

[When] every priest in his own way assumes the person of Christ he is
endowed with a special grace. By this grace the priest, through his service
of the people committed to his care and all the People of God, is able the
better to pursue the perfection of Christ, whose place he takes. The human
weakness of his flesh is remedied by the holiness of him who became for us a high
priest ‘holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners’ (Heb. 7.26).
(PO, 12, emphasis added)

While some may indeed find strength in ordination to overcome the weak-
ness of their ‘flesh’, this is manifestly not the case for all.

Father John McNeill 9

In his spiritual and psychological autobiography, Roman Catholic scholar
and former Jesuit priest Father John McNeill relates his very personal strug-
gle to reconcile his homosexuality with his strong religious faith. Fr McNeill
frankly admits his ambivalence about his vocation, which was still ‘based
primarily in my fear that as a gay man the only way I could get to heaven was
by denying and suppressing my sexuality and my desire for human love’
(McNeill 1998, 42). In his own mind the only way to accomplish that denial
was to enter a religious order in the hope that there he would find the envi-
ronment and the support for a life of celibacy.
The youngest of five children, the death of his mother when he was only
four was the irrevocable intrusion that precipitated Fr McNeill’s ‘psychic
140 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

trauma’ and initiated his personal strategy of negation/disavowal. The pro-

found impact of this death was cruelly compounded during her wake on
Christmas Day 1929, as he watched a cat stalk its prey, he suddenly felt the
whole universe, including God, was hostile. ‘I concluded that God had
taken my mother from me because I was a bad child; God was punishing me
for my wickedness’ (1998, 2). Fr McNeill’s subsequent spiritual develop-
ment was troubled by an image of God as the God of fear,10 an image that
was fed by home – where, months after his mother’s death his father mar-
ried his deceased wife’s sister, she sacrificing her job and boyfriend, he
abandoning any possibility of a sexual life, in order to bring up the children
who were aware of ‘the burden of our responsibility for our parents’ frustra-
tion and unhappiness’ (1998, 10) – and school, St Joseph’s Collegiate Insti-
tute, run by the Christian Brothers, where education was secondary to the
emphasis on discipline.

My fear of God and of Jesus was based in part on the distorted image I grew
up with concerning Jesus’ role as judge. During high school, I was exposed
to many a retreat master’s traditional talk on sin, death, judgement, and
eternal hellfire . . . designed to scare us into being good. (1998, 18)

And the ‘scare’ tactics included a particular and predictable attitude to sex-
ual pleasure. The young men from Irish, Italian, and Polish blue-collar
families who attended St Joseph’s in 1938 were taught that all sexual plea-
sure outside marriage was serious sin, and that taking the slightest pleasure
in any sexual thought or fantasy would be mortal sin. Despite this, Fr McNeill
candidly admits: ‘Once I experienced the sexual pleasure of masturbation,
I became compulsively involved with it. For the next twenty years, I was in a
constant struggle to try to suppress my sexual desires’ (1998, 17, 18).11
Although, after ordination, Fr McNeill was effective as a counsellor to gay
men, his compulsive acting out of sexual needs in casual encounters in
Parisian toilets filled him with shame, guilt and self-hatred, almost to the
point of suicide; the pain intensified due to the failure of prayer and pen-
ance. Yet, the experience of finding first a short term, then a life partner led
Fr McNeill to realize that his compulsions were motivated by a ‘drive toward
intimacy’, and actually to accept ‘gayness as God’s gift and a special bless-
ing’ (1998, 61). However, having negated/disavowed the intrusion of his
mother’s real (actual) death with the threat of punishment by the God of
fear, having sought to repress his sexuality because he had been scared ‘into
being good’, Fr McNeill’s reintegration as a man able to experience ‘sexual
intimacy in the context of human love’ (1998, 61) was simultaneously his
 Suturing Religious Identity 141

disqualification as an Ideal-I. Fr McNeill had compromised his commitment

to celibacy, integral to his commitment as a Jesuit – a commitment to limit
the intrusion of his personality into the performance of his representative
duties; literally, in Lacanian terms, a call to the impossible (since for Lacan
the Real is impossible).12
So, just as Bing Crosby is simultaneously a man, Fr O’Malley, and a
fictional film star persona, in the same way:

Fr McNeill is a man;
Fr McNeill is a priest;
Fr McNeill is a fictional liturgical persona.

In other words, in accepting ordination, Fr McNeill made his identification

with a liturgical representation (with Christ as the Ideal-I) – choosing alien-
ation from his own ‘being’ in order to accept ‘meaning’ as a priest – and
became himself a liturgical representation (of the Ideal-I) available to oth-
ers for their identification. (The complexity of these identifications is such
that the liturgical representation with whom Fr McNeill identifies (Christ,
the Ideal-I) is itself informed by the many priests with whom Fr McNeill has
previously identified – The Christian Brothers, fellow Jesuits, etc.)
The point here is that, far from the ‘human weakness of his flesh’ (PO,
12) being remedied by configuration to Christ, the priest’s psychic strategy
is institutionalized as he negates/disavows his human weakness in order to
identify with the liturgical representation (of the Ideal-I) and in order to
identify as a liturgical representation (of the Ideal-I).

The worshipper’s solipsistic identification with priestly representation

In the process of identification, subjects identify with a liturgical represen-
tation, which they assume to be a Gestalt, but which is in fact itself a frac-
tured subject, institutionally self-alienated by the Church’s demand to
negate/disavow the ‘human weakness of his flesh’:

the priest is a man;

the priest is a priest;
the priest is a fictional liturgical persona.

For the priest himself, identification with his calling is one stage removed
from his real (actual) self, in all its ‘human weakness’, whereas the worship-
per’s identification, with the fictional persona, is removed a stage further,
142 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

the effect of which is a double negation/disavowal of the priest as a man.

This is because the fictional persona with which worshippers identify is
related to the priestly function and not his ontology – effectively worship-
pers negate/disavow, they limit the intrusion of, the priest’s personality.
Consequently, the man himself is occluded, mistaken for the function.
As far as the construction of liturgical identity is concerned, the corollary
is important. In constructing his own identity, the worshipper relates the
fiction (that to which he aspires) directly to his own ontology, and the dis-
junction between what the worshipper is told and believes he should be
(perfect) as compared with what he knows to be the case about himself is
unbridgeable.

Like all Christians they have already received in the consecration of bap-
tism the sign and gift of their great calling and grace. So they are enabled
and obliged even in the midst of human weakness to seek perfection,
according to the Lord’s word: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect [τελειος]’ (Mt. 5.48). (PO, 12)

Dyer may be right to suggest that the star’s image condenses various tradi-
tional values which are ‘“guaranteed” by the actual existence of [the star] as
a person’ (Dyer 1998, 29). However, for the priest there is no such guaran-
tee, because there is no recognition of the priest as an actual person.
What can be said, then, about the worshipper’s relation to the priest as
fictional persona, the priest as star? In my discussion of the cinematic One-
Like, I argued that this was the relation of the spectator’s solipsistic identi-
fication to the unconscious content of their own desire. To return to Lacan,
the roots of this content are buried in the subject’s Imaginary, in the psy-
chic trauma that initiates the strategy of refusing – negating/disavowing –
the real (actual) experience in order to pursue an Imaginary reality, the
pursuit of objet petit a found only in its ‘pleasurable associations’. As is appar-
ent in the pathos of Fr McNeill’s casual Parisian encounters, what is con-
sciously sought is not what is unconsciously desired. As Fr McNeill puts it:

I realize now that, throughout my life, my intense longing for intimacy with
God had as a source my childhood longing for a closer relationship with
my father, a longing made more intense by my gay longing for male inti-
macy. My father’s emotional distance and his discomfort with me, because
I was so different from my brothers, fed my fear that God, too, would take
distance from me and dislike who I was as a gay man. (McNeill 1998, 5)
 Suturing Religious Identity 143

The point here is that, in identifying with Christ as the liturgical representa-
tion, the Ideal-I, the worshipper identifies solipsistically with the uncon-
scious content of his own desire, condensed or displaced onto a (mis)-
recognized specular other (signifier of unconscious desire), which has the
effect of alienating him from himself.
The consequence of this is that, the priest literally bears the weaknesses
(sins) of his people before God, a high calling approximated to by some, a
heavy cross of guilty failure shouldered by others. If he fails, overcome by
the human weakness of his own flesh, his failure is the failure of the wor-
shipper’s unconscious desire, the ‘Ideal-I’ – an injury inflicted against the
worshipper’s psychic health. But, if he is successful, he has the potential to
inspire a community with hope. The stakes are indeed high.
The representational parallels that I have identified between the star and
the priest can be seen to be sustained by a simultaneous erotic attraction
and a negation/disavowal. Worshippers constitute their pseudo-identity
when they narcissistically (mis)recognize themselves in relation to the litur-
gical representation, the priest as an Ideal-I, the specular representation of
his own displaced desire. Because the (mis)recognition is narcissistic, the
attraction to the specular image is erotic (hetero- or homoerotic), and as
such, the priest evokes an erotic attraction. However, in order to procure
his identification with Christ, the Ideal-I, and be identified as the liturgical
representation of Christ, the priest is compelled himself to negate/disavow
his own sexual being/fulfilment, in other words, the priest’s negation/
disavowal is institutionalized.
In this section, I have argued that, identifying with Christ as the Ideal-I
through the priest as his liturgical representation, the worshipper is iden-
tifying solipsistically with the unconscious content of his own condensed
or displaced desire and that the effect of this is the alienation of the wor-
shipper from himself. However, my observation is that, in this alienation,
the priest bears the worshipper’s weaknesses before God in such a way that
his failure fails the worshipper’s unconscious desire, injuring the worship-
per’s psychic health, but his success inspires the worshipping community
with hope.
Having accounted for the liturgical subject’s narcissistic confusion with
the liturgical representation (the imago of the other), I want now to con-
sider how the articulation of the worshipper’s unconscious desire, through
this identification, stitches, or sutures, the worshipper into the sacramental
narrative, leading to participation in the ideological ‘reality’ of Episcopal/
ecclesial authority as a liturgical subject.
144 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

Joining the Narrative and Participating in Its ‘reality’

Signifying for: the reinscription of desire into the sacramental narrative

In my discussion about mapping unconscious desire to cinematic discourse,
I outlined how, for Lacan, the subject’s desire for representation slides
along the chain of signification, being condensed and displaced, as the
subject finds pleasurable associations that connote desire. The reason for
this condensation and displacement is that the content of the subject’s
desire is not directly represented within consciousness precisely because it
is unconscious desire: the subject, lacking meaning and desiring represen-
tation, sutures a pseudo-identification with a specular other as the pleasur-
able association signifying or connoting that desire.
As with the worshipper, the priest’s meaning is given according to the
signifying position he assumes within a chain of signification, in this case,
the signifying chain of Eucharistic liturgy. And although that signification
necessarily fails fully to denote the priest, meaning is nevertheless connoted
to him to the extent to which he is associated with the worshipper’s uncon-
scious desire.13 My point is that in the sacramental narrative of the Cross,
the priest bears the identifications of his people before God and they iden-
tify with him as he performs his liturgical functions. There, in the place
where he limits the intrusion of his own personality, where his own identifi-
cation with the liturgical representation fails or succeeds, he is in nomine
totius populi.

The Exorcist (1973)

Agnostic Jewish director, William Friedkin, has understood something like
this structuralist positioning. Friedkin’s The Exorcist relates the desperation
felt by a mother, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), over the increasingly
bizarre behaviour manifest by her 12-year-old daughter, Regan (Linda
Blair). Exhausted by the failure of doctors and psychiatrists to cure or even
begin to explain her daughter’s condition, MacNeil is advised that the only,
if unlikely, hope she has left is an exorcism. According to the Director of
the Barringer Clinic who suggests it, is a ‘stylized ritual’ that works by the
force of suggestion: the victim believed in possession and that belief can be
used to help find relief.
The narrative structure of Friedkin’s film is instructive with respect to the
role of the priest, interpreting him as the focus of an identification the
meaning of which is connoted by his position within the chain of liturgical
signification.
 Suturing Religious Identity 145

The thematics of The Exorcist are constructed around a number of related

binary oppositions: good versus the reality of evil; religion versus science;
spirituality versus psychiatry. Much of the tension in these oppositions is
embodied within the character of Father Damien Karras, SJ (Jason Miller).
As a consultant psychiatrist Fr Karras may be among the best, but as a Jesuit
priest he is losing faith, if not in God, then in the efficacy of his priestly
ministry. Sent by his Order to study psychiatry, he has come to trust in the
effectiveness of science over traditional pastoralia. But Friedkin is inter-
ested in the power of religion in situations where science has little to offer.
Thus, when Fr Karras admits to MacNeil that, since learning about mental
illness, paranoia, schizophrenia and the other psychopathologies he stu-
died at Harvard, exorcisms no longer happen, the atheist mother explodes
that her daughter doesn’t need a psychiatrist, she needs a priest.
By the inclusion of two reverse parallel sequences, Friedkin’s film is
divided into three more or less equal parts.14 Each sequence of three scenes
has a central scene detailing Fr Karras celebrating the Eucharist. The first
sequence, comes at a point before MacNeil and Fr Karras have met, when
MacNeil still holds faith in science and Fr Karras, whose mother has just
died, is confronting his doubts about his priestly calling.15 In this sequence,
when he says Mass, Fr Karras is seen, first (in close-up) offering prayers for
the repose of his mother’s soul, and then (in long shot), during the Com-
munion Rite, where he prays aloud words adapted from the prayer of the
Centurion (Mt. 8.8), which he follows with, ‘May the body of Christ bring
me to everlasting life.’ This scene is preceded by one in which Regan fights
against Doctor Klein’s (Barton Heyman) injection prior to examination,
and followed by a scene in which the doctor discusses with MacNeil his
diagnosis of lesions in the temporal lobe.
In the second sequence Fr Karras is seen (in close-ups of head and hands)
saying the words of consecration. This liturgical scene, almost twice the
length of the first, is preceded by Fr Karras discussing the situation with
MacNeil, and followed by his ‘examination’ of Regan. In his original script,
William Peter Blatty suggests that Fr Karras’ fingers, ‘holding the host,
tremble with a hope he dares not hope: that the words he has just spoken
might be literally true’ (Blatty 1998, 111). However, another reading is
equally possible.
The chiastic parallelism of these sequences is clearly intended, and the
point of interest is the way Friedkin edits the shots of Fr Karras saying Mass:

A: Medical examination of Regan

B: Mass (26 seconds)
C: Discussion with doctor
146 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

C1: Discussion with priest

B1: Mass (48 seconds)
A1: Priest’s ‘examination’ of Regan

As Kuleshov observed, the succession of one shot by another alters ‘the

apparent meaning of the component shots’ (Kovacs 1976, 34), and the resul-
ting metaphor that sparks between the shots changes according to the
sequence. In the first, Friedkin cleverly describes Fr Karras’ interiority: the
priest’s pastoral practice has become intimidated by his psychiatric exper-
tise and Friedkin articulates Fr Karras’ sense of impotence by juxtaposing
the ancient Communion Rite within the sophistication of modern scientific
knowledge. However, in the second sequence, having discovered that psy-
chiatry itself is impotent, the words of Institution seem no longer obsolete,
but are returned to the heart of Fr Karras’ pastoral ministry.16 In dealing
with the broken body of Christ, Fr Karras is in nomine totius populi; and when,
in the coming exorcism, he deals with the broken body of Regan, he will
take the ultimate step of limiting the intrusion of his personality in order to
take the child’s place and bear her weakness in a final, fatal identification.
Here, Fr Karras’ meaning, his signification as a priest is given (or returned)
by his position within the contrasting chains of signification. Within the
first narrative sequence, the liturgy is incongruous, situated, as is Fr Karras
himself, within the signifying chain that is scientific discourse. However,
within the second narrative sequence, the liturgy, sutured into a different
signifying chain, the discourse of pastoral practice, where it makes renewed
sense. The knowledge that validated the first narrative is found by experi-
ence to be deficient, while in the second narrative, the desperation of mother
and priest re-validates a prior knowledge and in so doing re-validates an
existing practice.
The idea that the significance of the liturgical representation is deter-
mined by its place within a signifying chain is important beyond discussions
of the ‘Kuleshov effect’ and cinematic editing. This is because the significa-
tion of the liturgical representation is radically affected by the other signi-
fiers in the chain – and particularly so if the liturgical representation is
relocated into an alternative signifying chain. This importance is again
illustrated filmically.

On the Waterfront (1954)

Elia Kazan’s film, On the Waterfront was inspired by a series of Malcolm
Johnson articles written in the New York Sun about a wildcat strike on the
 Suturing Religious Identity 147

New York docks in 1951. The exploited longshoremen protested against

the mob-controlled union abuse of workers by loan-sharking, ‘shape-ups’
and ‘kick-backs’, and the contract murders and beatings of dissidents.
According to Jesuit film scholar, Neil Hurley, screenwriter Budd Schulberg
was attracted to the story and wrote the character of Father ‘Pete’ Barry
(Karl Malden) into his script (Hurley 1991, 96). Basing his character on the
Jesuit, Father John Corridan, featured in Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
series,17 Malden’s Fr Barry is converted to his zeal ‘for justice and the wel-
fare of the men in his non-territorial parish’ (1991, 98) by what he witnesses
on the quayside. After the death of Joey Doyle, a dissident stevedore who
had been about to expose the mob, Fr Barry comforts the man’s grieving
sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) with old the cliché about time and faith being
great healers. However, the priest finds his ineffectual response confronted
by Edie’s indignation. When Fr Barry tells her that he will be in the church
if she needs him, Edie fiercely rejects his expression of impotent pastoral
concern, rebuking him that no saint was ever heard of hiding in church
and demanding to know who killed her brother.
This outburst weighs on Fr Barry, who, like many other off screen priests
and ministers converted to the social gospel, realizes what his priestly for-
mation had not prepared him for, and he concedes, with Edie, that docks
are his parish.
The incongruity of a priest regarding the dock as his parish, of an eccle-
siastic engaging the economic, becomes clear when a group of dock work-
ers explain to Fr Barry how the corrupt system works. Complaining that
there is no place safe enough to talk without the risk of violence, the priest
offers the church as a safe place. ‘Kayo’ Dugan’s (Pat Henning) expletive
reply sums up the dockers’ incredulity.
The commonsense understanding that, just as it is implausible to situate
the Church (or the liturgy) within a scientific discourse, it is equally implau-
sible to situate the Church within an economic discourse (because it has no
meaning, it lacks credibility, within the signifying chain). However, Fr Barry
does precisely what his Jesuit college Fr Karras does, insofar as he restores
credibility by situating his priestly action (liturgical representation) within
the discourse of pastoral practice. And from that place of traditional iden-
tification, in nomine totius populi, he becomes available to bear the dockers’
identification into the unfamiliar terrain of social and economic justice. So,
when Dugan is ‘accidentally’ killed while working in a ship’s hold, Fr Barry
preaches an impromptu sermon, telling his congregation that the crucifix-
ion didn’t only take place on Calvary, but that the killing Joey Doyle, the
maiming of ‘Kayo’ Dugan and the pressurizing of any good man to keep
148 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

silent are all crucifixions. Told to get back to his church, Fr Barry retorts
that the docks is his church and that Christ is to be found on the water-
front.18 By standing with them, and interpreting their sufferings as a cruci-
fixion, the priest stitches the identifications of his people into the discourse
(the signifying chain) of social and economic justice reinscribed as the
sacramental narrative of the Cross.19
In my earlier discussion about mapping cinematic discourse to the dis-
course of the unconscious, I argued that subjects are sutured into the signi-
fying chain of the unconscious discourse of displaced desire by the ‘laws of
the signifier’ (E, 161). It is important at this point to note that, because it is
unconscious, the nature of identification with priests like Frs Karras and
Barry cannot be assumed to be a purely ‘religious’ identification: the atheist
mother and the New York dockers may now associate with the Church, but
their motivations are necessarily mixed. The point is that identification with
the priest is always a condensed/displaced identification, which is equally
always unable fully to represent the subject. In other words, it is a ‘best fit’,
and those who identify with him are sutured into the signifying chain of the
sacramental narrative because their desire for representation, which oper-
ates by the ‘laws of the signifier’, identifies with the priest (as the signifier
of their desire) as the signifier slides along the signifying chain of their own
unconscious discourse.

The Fugitive (1947)

An example of this slippage can be seen in John Ford’s The Fugitive. Based
on the Graham Greene novel, The Power and the Glory (1940), Ford relates a
‘true’ story set in a small fictional state somewhere north or south of the
equator. On the run, following ‘the revolution’, a nameless fugitive priest
(Henry Fonda) is hunted by an idealist revolutionary, Police Lieutenant
Rafael (Pedro Armendáriz). Rafael’s commitment to the cause is made
apparent when we learn that he sacrificed the girl he loved, Maria Dolores
(Dolores del Rio) to fight for a better world. But, the abandoned pregnant
Maria, rejected by her father, compelled to make her living from ‘loose
living’, is the human face of the suffering the revolution has brought. When
charged with finding and eliminating the last known priest in the new
republic, Rafael explains that his simple strategy is to take hostages, shoot
them if the priest is not surrendered, and then take more hostages. For
Rafael, the cost in lives will be worthwhile, because religion and religious
people must be driven out of the country.
 Suturing Religious Identity 149

Ford’s film explores questions about hope and human identity, and
frames the signifying of unconscious desire within the drama of a manhunt.
Rafael, sanguine with revolutionary zeal, fails to understand that the revolu-
tion has merely exchanged one corrupt system for another. He also fails to
comprehend that the battle is not for minds but hearts. So, when pursuit of
his quarry unwittingly takes him to the village where the fugitive is hiding,
the Lieutenant in turn cajoles, threatens and ridicules the villagers to betray
their priest.
Yet, if his tactic is to contrast the superstitions of priestcraft with the mate-
rial advance promised by the revolution, his intention is ideological. The
success of the revolution demands the elimination of all competing ideolo-
gies: especially one that can control hearts and minds – that intends to
control hearts and minds, volition and intellect, what the worshiper ‘knows
and desires’ (OBOB, 9, emphasis added). And finally, having captured the
fugitive, Rafael sees his chance. Seizing on the priest’s weakness in the face
of execution, he tempts him with remission if only the priest will publicly
repudiate his faith and admit to the people that he has been lying to them.
Rafael’s real ignorance is about the depth at which identity is constructed
within the human psyche. But the fugitive priest would be wrong if he
thought the villagers’ desire to protect him was motivated solely from reli-
gious ardour. As I noted, Ford’s film is a framing of the signifying of uncon-
scious desire: the unconscious desires of Rafael, of the fugitive priest and of
the villagers. And, importantly, the ways in which each signifies for the other.
Most explicit here is the way in which the villagers signify for the priest.
Managing a short-lived escape to the safety of a neighbouring state, the
fugitive recuperates in a clinic where he makes his ‘confession’ to a doctor,
uncomfortable at the priest’s candour. Although he had endured the revo-
lution for five years, the early period was relatively easy, if not actually excit-
ing; but as other priests fled the terror, this cleric began to regard himself
as a brave man, possibly a martyr. However, while as a public figure he may
be able to deceive others, the priest admits he was unable to deceive himself
and, because he realizes that his behaviour was inspired only by pride, he
concludes it was not, and could not be, courageous. It is of course question-
able whether the quality of an action is undermined by its motivation,
but the point here is that, for the first time, this priest recognizes his own
unconscious desires: that his service was motivated and that he wanted
something from the people – and wanted it so badly that he risked his life
pursuing it, literally a confrontation of meaning over being, a matter of
either/or (S11, 211). In his identification with the people, he is, in effect,
identifying solipsistically with the contents of his own unconscious desire.
150 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

But if, in identifying with the signifier Martyr, the priest desires recogni-
tion (unconsciously desiring representation as an Ideal-I), the villagers’
protection is equally motivated. In a brief moment, following Rafael’s deci-
sion to take hostages and his arrival in the village, Ford shows us how the
priest’s presence has changed the people. Whereas, when the priest arrived
the streets had been empty, now the happy village folk joyfully process to
market, singing and celebrating with traditional folk songs. The implausi-
bility of this rapid spiritual transformation only highlights the point that
the people have invested their hopes for a counter-revolution, a return to
life as it had been, in this troubled priest. For the villagers, the revolution
was an intrusion into what they now remember as the ‘good life’. In that
life, while individuals may or may not have been particularly religious, the
Church was at the centre. Now their aspirations for a return have become
displaced onto the priest, the only tangible relic of that lost idyll – and their
pleasurable association.
In effect, there is a collusion in the identifications made between priest
and people, each signifies for the other, according to the place assigned by
the Other within the signifying chain of their respective discourses of
desire. While the villagers signify for him his unconscious desire for recog-
nition, veneration as a martyr, the priest signifies for them their conscious
political desire for a return to the life stolen from them, lost by the trauma
of the intrusive revolution, which is itself predicated on a displaced uncon-
scious desire within each individual for a return to their personal Real. The
priest’s failure here is not actual but potential. It is not the impurity of his
motives but the possibility that he may betray the identification of the vil-
lagers and recant his faith. But, by remaining true to their identification,
he sutures them into the sacramental narrative of the Cross, not on this
occasion through saying the Mass,20 but because his very life has become an
embodiment of its sacrifice. As with the other cases discussed (MacNeil,
the longshoremen), the villagers illustrate the way in which identification
with the priest sutures worshippers into the sacramental narrative of the
Cross, reinscribing their own particular motivations according to its salvific/
pastoral practice.

The worshipper’s participation as a subject of Episcopal/ecclesial ‘reality’

My aim, in this chapter, is to demonstrate that insights gained from theoris-
ing representational cinema in terms of psychoanalysis can be applied to
the theorizing of liturgical subjectivity. My argument, in this final section, is
 Suturing Religious Identity 151

that, just as in the cinema spectators participate in an impression of reality,

which maps to, and can be regarded as premised upon, the subject’s predis-
position to construct a subjective impression of reality, so too in liturgy:
worshippers participate in an impression of reality that maps on to, and is
premised upon, their predisposition to construct a subjective reality.
In Chapter 6, I noted that Baudry’s theory of the ‘transcendental subject’
was at odds with Lacan’s conception of the subject’s ‘truth’ as necessarily
concerned with the subject’s (repressed/forgotten) history. However, Baudry
nevertheless connects with Lacan’s understanding of the subject’s relation
to narrative. In articulating his theory of the subject’s ‘truth’ as the uncon-
scious historical narrative that resists conscious narration, Lacan stresses
the extent to which subjects are always already situated within an un(yet-
to-be-)spoken narrative. In his psychoanalytic practice, Lacan insists on the
value of taking an anamnesis, or history, from the subject, as the first step
towards bringing this as un(yet-to-be-)spoken narrative into speech. In
other words, to bring into the Symbolic that which is (lost) in the Imagi-
nary. However, Lacan’s anamnesis is a narration of the subject’s history
informed by the subjective impression of reality. For Lacan, the object of
analysis is effectively to bring the subject’s anamnesis from being an ‘empty
Word’ into a ‘full Word’; from false speech to true speech.21 As David Macey
puts it: ‘If language and speech are the medium of psychoanalysis, the lib-
eration of full speech is its objective’ (Macey 1988, 147).
My point here is that, in the same way that subjects participate in the sub-
jective impression of ‘reality’ that is constructed by their own ‘empty Words’,
spectators, by identifying with the star and being stitched into the cinematic
narrative, accept the ‘empty Word’ of Hollywood and participate in its
cinematic impression of reality constructed, as it is, towards the ideology of
‘our’ American way. As such, the cinematic narrative acts as a type of anam-
nesis, mapping cinema’s impression of reality to Lacanian Imaginary reality
and thereby performing the subject’s Imaginary ‘reality’.
Given that I am arguing that what is the case with theorizing representa-
tional cinema finds parallel with theorising liturgy, the implication to be
drawn from this should be obvious. In the same way that spectators parti-
cipate in the ‘reality’ constructed by the ‘empty Words’ of Hollywood,
worshippers, by identifying with the priest and being stitched into the sac-
ramental narrative of the Cross, accept the ‘empty Word’ of the Church and
so participate in the ideological ‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority.
It is important to keep in mind what Lacan intends by the terms ‘full
Word/speech’ and ‘empty Word/speech’. As he expresses it: ‘Full speech is
152 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

a speech full of meaning [sens]. Empty speech is a speech which has only
signification’ (Evans 1996, 191). The value of the terms is in their ability to
express the extent to which subjects are able to articulate their desire: the
one form of speech being ‘closer to the enigmatic truth of the subject’s
desire’, while in the other ‘the subject is alienated from his desire’ (Evans
1996, 191). However, Lacan remains confusing here. Does he equate the
‘full Word/speech’ with the Symbolic? If he does, and in my view this is
the way to understand him, then he should be understood to mean that the
objective of psychoanalysis is liberation into the Symbolic. But in that case,
in which Order does the ‘empty Word/speech’ operate? Is it also in the
Symbolic, or is it better placed in the Imaginary? I suggest that Lacan under-
stands ‘empty Word/speech’ as the subject’s own ineffectual attempts at
liberation into the Symbolic. However, the attempt is doomed and results
only in alienating the subject from his desire.
These distinctions, although somewhat ill-defined, nevertheless can be
helpful in mapping liturgical anamnesis to Lacan’s notion of the anamnesis
and its strategic and tactical value for the analysand’s liberation into the
Symbolic.
There is a very clear and immediate parallel between liturgical and psy-
choanalytic anamnesis in Lacan’s definition of the anamnesis as a rememora-
tion of the subject’s history, particularly when ‘history’ is understood not as
‘the past’, but as ‘the past in so far as it is historicised in the present – his-
toricised in the present because it was lived in the past’ (S1, 12). Lacan’s
point is that the anamnesis is an ‘empty Word/speech’ insofar as it alienates
the subject from his desire.
From my accounts of liturgical representation and the sacramental narra-
tive of the Cross, it should be clear that liturgical anamnesis can equally be
considered an ‘empty Word/speech’ insofar as it too alienates the worship-
per from his desire.
To be specific, in the Anamnesis, worshippers engage in a rememoration, a
re-membering of the salvific events as if present at Christ’s sacrifice. In this
rememoration, worshippers recall the sacrifice of the Cross (narrative) in
the context of their desire for unity (identification) with Christ through the
priest, and participate in the ‘reality’ that they are sinners in need of for-
giveness. However, these identifications are sustained by erotic attractions
and negations/disavowals within the worshipper (who desires to be what the
priest signifies yet simultaneously negates/disavows the ‘human weakness
of his flesh’), so installing the priest as a fiction. As participants in the sac-
ramental ‘reality’, worshippers are fictionalized by the collusions made in
order to identify. The effect of this is that worshippers are alienated from
 Suturing Religious Identity 153

their desire (for freedom, liberation, justice), as it is condensed/displaced

and reinscribed within the sacramental narrative of the Cross.
However, if it is the case that liturgical anamnesis is indeed an ‘empty
Word/speech’, the fact that it is set in the context of the Eucharistic liturgy,
the liturgy, makes it an ‘empty Word/speech’ set in the context of a ‘full
Word/speech’, which imposes on the worshipper ‘the enigmatic truth of
the subject’s desire’. In other words, the context of the Anamnesis is the
authoritative interpretation of the human condition (sinners need forgive-
ness), articulated and passed on by the Episcopacy, which regards its inter-
pretations as an exposition of ‘the enigmatic truth of the subject’s desire’.
In this way, the Anamnesis, which alienates from the worshipper’s desire, is
rehabilitated within the ‘full Word/speech’ of the ideological (Symbolic)
‘reality’ of Episcopal/ecclesial authority.
According to the Vatican II document Presbyterorum ordinis, priests have a
threefold function, they are: ‘Ministers of God’s Word’ (PO, 4), ‘Ministers
of the Sacraments and the Eucharist’ (PO, 5), and ‘Rulers of God’s People’
(PO, 6). Consequent upon these functions there should be ‘close links
between liturgy, catechizes, religious instruction and preaching’ (IO, 7) in
order ‘to foster the formation of the faithful’ (IO, 5). The point here is that
the liturgy is accurately understood as a medium of religious instruction, of
which a part is necessarily concerned with the hierarchical nature of the
priesthood, the liturgy and the Church.
As I indicated above with reference to priestly representation, the inten-
tion behind the formation of the faithful through liturgical instruction is
internal and external participation. Effectively this entails the submission – by
those who desire unity with Christ – of volition and intellect to the power of
Christ as represented in the Church’s ministers. In other words, through its
officers, the Church’s determination, if not control, of the internal desires
and thoughts of the people, shifts the power of liturgy from being a vehicle
for spirituality to being a powerful technology of the ideological ‘reality’ of
Episcopal/ecclesial authority. And if liturgy has become the technology of
such authority, the priest as liturgical representation has become the signi-
fier of that authority. The point is that in identifying with the priest, as the
signifier of their unconscious desire, worshippers de facto participate as sub-
jects of Episcopal/ecclesial authority.
In this section, I have tried to account for the way in which worshippers’
identification with the priest sutures them into the sacramental narrative of
the Cross. I have argued that, when the priest and people identify with each
other, there is a collusion between them, to the extent that each signifies for
the other depending on the place assigned to them by the Other within the
154 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

signifying chain of their respective discourses of desire. I have tried to show

how their discourse of desire is reinscribed according to the salvific/pastoral
practice of the sacramental narrative.
The liturgical moment of reinscription takes place in the Anamnesis, the
moment of the worshippers re-membering of the salvific events as if present.
Thus, in the context of their desire for identification with Christ, worship-
pers identify with the priest as he offers the sacrifice of the Mass, re-membering
the sacrificial narrative, and so become participants in the sacramental
‘reality’. These identifications are, of course, a fiction, sustained by the wor-
shipper’s attractions and negations/disavowals. The identifications install
the priest as a fiction, but also fictionalize the worshippers, alienating them
from their own desire.
Consequently, the liturgical Anamnesis is an ‘empty Word/speech’. As
participants in the sacramental ‘reality’, worshippers are defined as sinners
needing forgiveness. Because the ‘empty Word/speech’ is set in the context
of an authoritative interpretation, the ‘full Word/speech’ that imposes ‘the
enigmatic truth of the subject’s desire’, the definition is accepted and the
worshipper becomes a participating subject in the ideological ‘reality’ of
Episcopal/ecclesial authority.
 By Way of Analysis

My aim, in this book, has been to demonstrate that insights drawn from
psychoanalytical film theory, the so-called Screen problematic, can be used
to understand how liturgical representation is implicated in the construction
of liturgical identity.
In this chapter, I want to make explicit the methodology that has emerged,
particularly in Part 2, and that I am suggesting can be used by religious film
analysts to engage more effectively and more systematically with film. It is
based on the observation that a film offers the spectator a character-actor/
star with whom to identify (a pseudo-identification). Motivated by their nar-
cissistic desire to (mis)identify with the other, the spectator is then stitched
(sutured) into the narrative space of the film, which is always already ideo-
logically constructed. It may, of course, be a feature of the ‘postmodern
condition’, at least in the consumerist West, that people participate in
multiple realities, resisting some, embracing others. However, the extent to
which the spectator does participate in the ideological ‘reality’ constructed
by cinema is the extent to which they become a subject of that reality.
The first task, then, in analysing a film, is to consider the character-actor/
star offered for (mis)identification. As became clear in considering The Bells
of St. Mary’s, this person is a composite of the on screen character and the
off screen actor-star: having seen a particular actor-star in other films, the
spectator brings a set of expectations into the cinema, which are usually
confirmed, but which can often be challenged to cinematic effect. The
operation of the relationship between character-actor/star facilitates the
spectator’s identification, without which the film will not be effective –
the spectator needs to sympathize with the character-actor/star in order to
be joined into his story.1
The second task is to consider the narrative, what happens to the
character-actor/star: to read, through a hermeneutic of suspicion, the
values that are signified, on the one hand, by what happens and, on
the other hand, by what does not happen; by what is said and by what not
said. These unconscious values constitute the ‘reality’ is constructed by the
film, a ‘reality’ that is always already ideologically loaded and in which the
spectator will become a participant.
156 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

For the purpose of demonstration, I will apply this method to three films.
The criteria used for choosing these films are far from scientific, although
they are no more or less arbitrary than most of the selection criteria chosen
by religious film analysts. I selected films found from my local, south Lon-
don library on the basis that they represented different genres and that
they were all from the same year (as it happens, a blockbuster, a romantic
comedy and a children’s film all released during 2005). And, because of
unwarranted criticism that ‘participants in the theology/religion-film
debate who highlight aesthetics will be more drawn to art-house films, whilst
those who are interested in films’ emotional impact will work more with
popular films’ (Marsh 2004, 131), I selected films that most people would
consider to be ‘popular films’ – Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan), Bewitched
(Nora Ephron) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton).

Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan)

To identify with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in Batman Begins is to iden-

tify with a character who embarks on a classic example of what comparative
mythologist Joseph Campbell terms ‘the hero’s journey’. For Campbell, this
the journey is the universal ‘monomyth’, in which the hero

ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatu-
ral wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory
is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the
power to bestow boons on his fellow man. (1993, 30)

The structure of the monomyth is familiar to cinema goes because, accord-

ing to script reader and story analyst Christopher Vogler, Campbell had
‘found that all storytelling, consciously or not, follows the ancient patterns
of myth and that all stories . . . can be understood in terms of the Hero’s
Journey’ (Vogler 1998, 10). While Vogler’s claim that the monomyth inter-
prets ‘crudest jokes to the highest flights of literature’ (1998, 10) may seem
exaggerated, Campbell’s impact has been openly acknowledged by Star
Wars director George Lucas, and Campbell’s ‘principles’ seem particularly
evident in Batman Begins.
Adapting Campbell, Vogler maps the hero’s travels through 12 stages
across three Acts. Act One finds the hero (1) in his ordinary world, where
he receives (2) his call to adventure ; a reluctant and fearful hero, he initially
(3) refuses the call before (4) meeting a mentor and (5) crossing the first threshold.
In Act Two, the hero (6) encounters tests, allies, enemies as he ‘begins to learn
 By Way of Analysis 157

the rules of the Special World’ and as his character develops under stress in
preparation for (7) his approach to the inmost cave, the most dangerous place
where he must (8) face his fear, complete his ordeal and so receive (9) the
reward of his quest. In the final Act, the hero (10) finds the road back and is
(11) purified in one last ordeal of death and resurrection before, finally, he
(12) returns with the elixir, which he shares for the good of others (Vogler
1998, 15–26).
The ordinary world of Bruce Wayne is the privileged world of a billionaire’s
son where he lives with his parents and faithful butler, Alfred (Michael
Caine). In the first scene, the young Wayne develops a fear of bats when,
chasing his friend Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), he falls down a shaft and
disturbs a crevice of the creatures. After descending the shaft to rescue the
boy, his father paraphrases a Confucian proverb that provides an important
theme throughout the narrative: ‘Our greatest glory is not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall.’
Wayne’s ordinary world idyll is more profoundly shattered when, attend-
ing a performance of Boito’s opera, Mefistofele, the boy becomes distressed
by bat-like devils and the family leave the theatre. Outside in an ally, an
armed robber, Joe Chill (Richard Brake), leaves Wayne an orphan in
exchange for his father’s wallet and his mother’s pearls. Fourteen years on,
with Chill up for parole, Wayne receives his call to adventure. Rachel, by now
a lawyer, challenges his idea of justice and tells his him that Carmine
Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) is the gangster corrupting everything his father
stood for. Demanding he look beyond his own pain, Rachel paraphrases
Irish philosopher, Edmund Burke’s axiom that evil triumphs when ‘good
men [like Wayne] do nothing’.
Initially, Wayne refuses the call, until he confronts Falcone who restates the
call in terms of the privileged Wayne’s ignorance of real suffering and, more
importantly, his fear. Wayne’s quest to understand Falcone’s world, and so
conquer his fears, leads to meeting a mentor, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson),
who introduces him to Ra’s Al Ghul, a man feared by criminals, but a man
who can offer Wayne a path. Stepping on to the path and crossing the first
threshold, Wayne ‘finally commits to the adventure and fully enters the Spe-
cial World of the story for the first time’ (Vogler 1998, 18).
At least to this point, director/co-writer Nolan keeps to Vogler’s timings
of quarter-half-quarter and, after 30 minutes of his 134-minutes film, he
begins Act Two on cue – although he lifts the narrative above the pedes-
trian, disorientating the spectator by fracturing the chronology.
Told by his mentor that he is ‘ready’, Wayne’s journey now turns inwards
and Ducard tells him that to overcome fear he must become fear. Wayne is
consummate in accomplishing his first test, single combat with his mentor,
158 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

but his refusal to execute a criminal without trial precipitates a fight to the
death with Ducard, now turned ‘Threshold Guardian’ (Vogler 1998, 57–60),
and the League of Shadows. Yet, despite his former mentor’s warning, that
his compassion will not be shared by his enemies, and for this reason it will
be his weakness, Wayne further demonstrates compassion, risking his life to
save Ducard from certain death.
Returning to Gotham, Wayne discovers new allies – Lucius Fox (Morgan
Freeman), head of Applied Sciences at Wayne Enterprises, and Sgt Jim Gor-
don (Gary Oldman) – and new enemies – in particular, Dr Jonathan Crane
(Cillian Murphy), a corrupt psychopharmacologist at Arkham Asylum.
Located on the Narrows, a place where even cops only go in force, Arkham
is Wayne’s inmost cave, where he faces his fear and completes his ordeal, bat-
tling Crane and his weaponized hallucinogenic drug. In Vogler’s plan, hav-
ing survived death the hero ‘takes possession of the treasure she has come
seeking’ (1998, 22). In this case, Wayne seizes Rachel, the treasure he has
come to save, and her emergence as the reward of his quest betrays the film
as essentially a love story.
According to Vogler, some of the best chase scenes spring up at the point
where the hero is pursued on the road back (1998, 23). In Batman Begins, the
chase scene opens the Final Act in which powerful (Jungian) archetypes
now become clear. First, the symbol that Wayne desired to be in order to
shake people out of their apathy is seen to be his ‘Shadow’ archetype
(Vogler 1998, 71–5), a dark monster that Alfred warns threatens to con-
sume him in actions that will turn him into a vigilante and destroy the Name
of the Father.2 Equally shocking, Ducard is revealed for the ‘Shapeshifter’
(Vogler 1998, 65–70) archetype he in fact is. As Wayne’s one time mentor,
Ducard shifted constantly between advisor and attacker – now offering
guidance, now meting out gruelling punishment. Here he reveals his true
identity as Ra’s Al Ghul, returned to be the purging fire needed to ‘purify’
Gotham. Ducard/Ra’s Al Ghul leaves Wayne for dead in the inferno he has
made of Wayne Manor. But the fire is the final ordeal of death: injured and
almost broken in spirit, Wayne’s resurrection comes when Alfred restates the
dead father’s Confucian proverb and evidences that this loyal retainer has
retained faith in the young Wayne. Now purged, Wayne as Batman rises to
defeat his nemesis and return with the elixir, which he shares for the good of
others (Vogler 1998, 15–26).
Batman Begins is a near perfect example of ‘the hero’s journey’ in cinema-
tic practice. What is interesting about Vogler’s interpretation and applica-
tion of Campbell’s monomyth is that he notices its implication as a vehicle
for ideology. Whether the monomyth is as culturally ubiquitous as Campbell
 By Way of Analysis 159

claimed, Vogler notes the cultural imperialism of American values and

assumptions communicated by Hollywood in general, and films that exploit
the hero’s journey in particular (Vogler 1998, xv–xvi). Answering his own
question, ‘Is the Hero’s Journey an instrument of cultural imperialism?’
he writes:

While it is universal and timeless, and its workings can be found in every
culture on earth, a Western or American reading of it may carry subtle
biases. One instance is the Hollywood preference for happy endings and
tidy resolutions, the tendency to show admirable, virtuous heroes over-
coming evil by individual effort. My Australian teachers . . . made me
aware of what assumptions were being carried by Hollywood-style films,
and of what was not being expressed. (1998, xvi)

Batman Begins, like so many Westerns in which the lone good-guy, by force
of (at times flawed) character, imposes the law on the wayward frontier –
and into the bargain wins the girl – naturalizes as universal values that are
very definitely culturally specific. Identifying with Wayne/Batman, specta-
tors are stitched into the lone good-guy, law-enforcing, girl-getting narrative
and, because it seems so natural, they become willing participants in its
culturally specific, ideologically constructed reality.

Bewitched (Nora Ephron)

Synopsis
Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman), a ‘real life’ witch, leaves home in search of
‘normal’ life in the Valley. By chance, she meets Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell),
who, in order to revive his acting career, has agreed to play Darrin in a
remake of the TV sitcom series Bewitched. Jack wants to play opposite an
unknown female actor, someone who will not upstage him, and he thinks
Isabel’s nose twitch is perfect for the part of Samantha. On set, Isabel, des-
perate to fall in love like ‘normal’ people, confuses what Jack says in charac-
ter (as Darrin to Samantha) for Jack speaking directly to her (as Isabel).
But, when she later overhears him speaking candidly with his agent/man-
ager, Isabel realizes that she is being used and takes her magical revenge.
After several twists of plot, which includes the couple falling in love, Isabel
confessing her real nature, further misunderstandings and a final happy
reunion, the actors settle down to their fairy-tale, happy ever after.
160 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

The process of spectator identification is made problematic in Bewitched

because, with some craft, writers Nora and Della Ephron offer a multi-
layered doubling of character. To begin with, although Kidman has top
billing, Ferrell has an equal presence in the romantic comedy. Then the
Ephron sisters layer Kidman (as Isabel) and Ferrel (as Jack) with nostalgic
connotation by associating them to the characters in the 1960s/70s TV
series, Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) and Darrin Stephens (Dick York-
Dick Sargent).
On one level, then, the actor Kidman denotes the character Isabel, but as
the spectator identifies with the character, Isabel makes connotative refer-
ence back to Kidman – this is the usual extent of what might be called a
loop of denotation/connotation. However, at another level, in Bewitched the
character Isabel makes an additional connotative reference to Samantha,
who in the original series was denoted by Montgomery. The result is that,
identifying with the character Isabel, the spectator’s identification is
informed not only by connotation with Kidman, but also by connotation
with Samantha and further with Montgomery. (A parallel set of connota-
tions applies to Ferrell/Jack/Darrin/York-Sargent.)
While Bewitched may hold some appeal to younger audiences, it is for
those baby-boomers who fondly remember the original TV series that these
complex identifications work best. However, the multi-layered identifica-
tion may also have worked against the film’s success precisely because it
disrupts the spectator’s expectation. My memories of Samantha are that she
was a confident woman; in control of her magical talents and sure of her
own mind – she withstood eight seasons (1964–72) of her family’s attempts
to sabotage her marriage to Darrin. Casting Kidman as female lead, particu-
larly following her lead role in Frank Oz’ remake of The Stepford Wives of the
previous year, spectators may have been forgiven for being surprised by the
casting against type.
Bewitched has within it the seeds of social critique, which its writers might
have cultivated along the lines of addressing and perhaps overcoming issues
of cultural difference. This would have placed the film in some degree of
continuity with the original TV series, which occasionally challenged racist
attitudes, as when Tabitha (Erin Murphy), Samantha and Darrin’s daugh-
ter, makes black polka-dots appear on her skin and co-ordinating white
polka-dots on the skin of her black friend because she wanted people to
treat them both alike. (Montgomery was herself politically liberal, criticiz-
ing the Vietnam War in the 1960s and standing in support of her co-star
Sargent at a Gay-Pride rally in the 1990s.) That the Ephrons choose not to
cultivate this critique of difference may be down to a lack of courage; but it
 By Way of Analysis 161

is more likely that this critique was simply too obvious. Instead, they develop
the narrative around Isabel’s search for identity and explore the construc-
tion of identity in relation to representation. It is into a narrative of identity
as performance that identifying with Isabel stitches the spectator.
Arriving with broomstick and Mary Poppins-like carpetbag, the opening
shots of Isabel suggest a confident, competent, young woman-about-town.
But the illusion is dispelled in her first dialogue, which she has when her
father, Nigel (Michael Caine), materializes while she is shopping to furnish
her new home. Isabel is revealed as privileged but naïve; an immature
woman who feels she needs to break from her family because she wants to
be ‘normal’; she wants to argue about paint with someone who is com-
pletely hopeless – someone she loves. In identifying with Isabel, the specta-
tor identifies with an adolescent desire to define her identity by rejecting
the family she sees as abnormal and adopting a persona that she thinks
will normalize her. (If the intended audience is indeed the baby-boomer
generation, the fact that their own recollections of, what was in all probabi-
lity, a difficult adolescence are likely to be, by now, fading reminiscences
glossed with the fondness of selective amnesia, means that the pleasures of
identification will be in being re-membered into their sepia-tinted past.)
To begin with, Isabel is unsure of herself; her self-esteem is very low until
she is persuaded by a Public Service Announcement that the remedy is to
find herself a job. A sequence of serendipities leads to her working with
Jack and to the on-set confusions and her infatuation – the direct result of
her naivety. When, eventually, Isabel comes to understand that all Jack really
wanted from her was a foil to make him look and sound good, she wonders
aloud what Samantha would do. Having watched the TV series, and having
completely absorbed her character, Isabel now begins to think and act like
Samantha; with assured confidence, she turns her magical talents on Jack
with humiliating and comic effect – having found her identity as Samantha,
Isabel becomes more of what might have been anticipated from Kidman in
the role. In the final scene, against her protest that she can’t be normal and
be with Jack because she’s a witch and she can’t be a witch because what she
really wants is to be normal, Jack persuades her to stay with him by invoking
the identity Isabel has adopted: it’s possible because Samantha did it.
While some Christian online reviewers3 notice the witching content of
Bewitched and discuss the likelihood of the film enticing vulnerable young
girls into participating in witchcraft, it seems the greater ‘danger’ comes
from the narrative of identity as performance and the possibility that spec-
tators might perform the identity of celebrity. Identifying with Isabel and
being stitched into her narrative, the spectator is affirmed as a participant
162 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

in the powerful ideology of the cult of the individual focused in celebrity:

the idea that the pursuit of individual fulfilment is natural and right, and
that it can and should take priority over traditional family values. Whether
such participation is a positive or a negative is a question suitable for theo-
logical discussion.
There is nothing unique about the way Bewitched affects ideological par-
ticipation. Bewitched is but one more example of how the values of a particu-
lar ideology are naturalized, indeed, like Isabel, made ‘normal’. But it is a
useful example of the way in which analysing the unconscious operations of
cinematic representation uncovers the specifics of the subject’s construc-
tion within an ideology and provides, at times, unanticipated questions for
theological or religious analysis.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton)

As a youngster, in those unworried days before US and Japanese animated

pulp TV came to dominate children’s programming, I would get home
from school, kick off my shoes, grab a biscuit and switch on the telly. Then,
for 15 minutes, I would surrender my imagination to some beguiling story-
teller and allow them to weave me into the narrative world of BBC’s Jack-
anory. My delight at one particular story, read in February 1968 by Bernard
Cribbins, stayed with me into early parenthood, when I snuggled into bed
with a small boy and a bar of chocolate to read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory with my then 5-year-old son.
Being an ordinary 10-year-old, in a very ordinary working family, wearied
at the end of one more ordinary day in one more ordinary primary school,
what was so great was that Charlie Bucket was just like me. In fact, as direc-
tor Tim Burton put it, there was nothing in any way special about Charlie,
he was just like the 90 per cent of school kids who never get noticed.4 Except
that, Charlie was noticed, and was about to become the luckiest boy in the
world. Back in 1968, watching Charlie and identifying with him, fostered a
faint hope that, like him, I too might noticed; I too might be so lucky.
I brought the pleasure of this early experience to watching Burton’s
Charlie. But, instead of reprising my childhood delight as I anticipated,
I found that, 40 years on, I was watching as a parent. Instead of sharing
Charlie’s wonder and excitement, I felt protective: I wanted to shield the
on screen Charlie from the pain of his disappointment; he deserved more,
and I wanted him to have it.
So Charlie, ostensibly a children’s film, works at two levels – as many chil-
dren’s films do: for children in the audience, Charlie (Freddie Highmore)
 By Way of Analysis 163

is available for direct identification, and for adults, he is available at a level

once removed. But what is interesting about Charlie is that he works – as an
object of identification – not to stitch us into his story, but as a way of stitch-
ing us into the narrative of chocolatier Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp). Charlie
is an ordinary kid and as an ordinary kid he does nothing, unlike Mel Stuart’s
1971 version, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, scripted by Dahl himself,
in which Charlie has to pass a character test and prove himself worthy of the
prize. Burton’s Charlie shows no character development at all – the kid just
gets lucky. Charlie’s find is enough to get him (and us, the audience) into
Wonka’s factory; after that his contribution is only to nudge the narrative
along. For example, his enthusiasm to model Wonka’s factory from deformed
toothpaste tube tops nudges Grandpa Joe (David Kelly) into relating the
back-story of the mysterious factory. And later, his questions to Mr Wonka –
did he remember being a kid? did he remember his first candy? – nudge
Wonka’s flashbacks and open out his dark psychological past.
If Stuart’s Willy Wonka narrated Charlie’s development, Burton’s Charlie
narrates Wonka’s salvation. Charlie’s extended family may be poor, but it is
complete (he has both parents and both paternal and maternal grandpar-
ents) and full of mutual love and respect – even the blissfully demented
Grandma Georgina (Liz Smith) is accepted as she is (and plays an impor-
tant part in the narrative, inspiring Charlie with hope, embracing him and
telling him in a whisper that nothing is impossible). In contrast, Wonka’s
family is the antithesis. He has no grandparents and we learn nothing of his
mother; but his father, Dr Wilbur Wonka (Christopher Lee), the city’s most
famous dentist, is a towering, oppressive ogre, who seems to pleasure in
depriving a small boy of his ‘trick or treat’ candy, cruelly tipping the indul-
gence into the fire with a sinister, perfect-teeth revealing grin.
Cast in the terms of a Lacanian Oedipal economy, the respected Dr Wonka
represents the Symbolic (signified by the brass plaque by his door), and his
paternal efforts to compel his son to disavow destructive self-indulgence
threaten to castrate the young Willy (signified by the monstrous orthodon-
tic headgear – le ‘non’ du père that makes eating candy an impossibility). The
boy’s lack of a mother fuels his desire to be pleasurably associated with the
lack he desires (connoted in and signified by the forbidden candy – his
mother substitute) and he finally refuses his father’s well intentioned, but
brutally severe orthodontic regime and runs away.
Refusing the paternal Symbolic, Willy is abandoned to the Imaginary;
returning home, he finds his father, together with his actual house, has left
him. Surrendering himself to the Imaginary (because, as he would later tell
Charlie, a chocolatier has to be an independent spirit – no matter what the
cost), Willy Wonka gave himself over to candy and became the chocolatier
164 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

his father had thought too fantastic to permit. By the time he opened his
first candy store on Cherry Street, 20 years before Charlie’s story began,
Wonka was already a chocolate genius. With the whole world wanting his
candy, he opened the largest chocolate factory in history; but challenged by
harsh capitalist (Symbolic) realism in the practices of competitive adults,
Wonka retreated behind the sober façade of his grey-faced factory and took
refuge in his fantastical (Imaginary) empire – there, cut off from adults and
accompanied only by Oompa-Loompas, he indulged his phantasies.
So why, Charlie asks, has Wonka decided now to let five children inside
his chocolate world? Wonka avoids Charlie’s questions, but the fact is that
he needs an heir, someone to watch over his factory and his beloved Oompa
Loompas. Wonka could not trust an adult, hence he invited five children,
the least rotten of whom would win the factory. And the deal? Charlie can
have the factory if he gives up his family: Wonka wants Charlie to make the
same journey he did, abandoning the Symbolic to revel in the Imaginary.
Whether we in the audience have been identifying with Charlie directly
(because we too are only 10 years old) or indirectly (because we are paren-
tally protective adults), we understand the impossibility and the cruelty of
this all or nothing choice. Charlie will never give up his family; he was the
one child prepared to offer his ticket on the open market to raise money to
feed his family. We understand his crushing disappointment, we under-
stand his security within and loyalty towards his family; and we understand
these things because, identifying with Charlie has stitched us into his narra-
tive and we have become participants in his reality. His disappointment has
become our disappointment, and it is visceral.
But Charlie is a salvation narrative and Charlie Bucket will save Willy
Wonka from himself. As Grandma Georgina predicts, things were about to
get better, but it is not until Wonka speaks heart to heart with Charlie that
things pick up for him. Charlie’s offer to go with Wonka Jr to see Wonka Sr
leads to a reunion with the patriarch who, despite his early disapproval of
his son’s chosen career, had nevertheless collected newspaper cuttings doc-
umenting his success as a chocolatier. Their awkward embrace in the great
doctor’s surgery unites the Symbolic and the Imaginary and so ‘saves’ both
Wonkas. We, in the audience, watch the final credits knowing that Charlie
Bucket might have won a factory, but Willy Wonka has found a family.
Identifying with Charlie, stitched into his narrative, we as spectators par-
ticipate in an ideology at odds with that of Bewitched. Whereas Bewitched
narrates an ideology of individual fulfilment over traditional family val-
ues, Charlie naturalizes and makes unquestionable the idea that individual
fulfilment is possible, not through celebrity but through traditional family
 By Way of Analysis 165

commitments. And Charlie’s ‘redemption’ of Wonka is achieved, not by

some grand gesture (although one might counter that giving up the fac-
tory in favour of his family was just such a grand gesture), but by the
simplicity of his innocence as a child uncorrupted by the indulgence of
misguided adults.

Conclusion: A Third Task – Moving beyond the ‘So what!’

Having analysed these films for character-actor/star (mis)identification,

and having then considered the ideologically loaded narrative ‘reality’ con-
structed by the films in which the spectators participate, there remains a
final task for religious film analysis: to bring the insights of analysis into
dialogue with theology/religious studies.
Superficial reading of any film will yield only superficial themes and make
possible only that kind of superficial theological/religious engagement
that provokes the response: ‘So what!’ Superficially, Batman Begins might be
read as dealing with the age-old themes of good verses evil. A more imagi-
native religious film analyst might see in the film’s comic book violence,
themes of redemptive violence; or, given Wayne’s journey to Ra’s Al Ghul’s
mountain retreat in search of a path to true justice, a religious film analyst
might be interested in how religion itself is presented in the film. There is,
of course, nothing wrong with these readings, they are perfectly possible
readings and therefore perfectly legitimate readings. However, my argu-
ment throughout has been that spectators connect with film at a level
beyond the superficial, that films operate at the level of the unconscious,
that it is connection at this level that affects the pleasure of watching film
and, consequently, it is at this level that effective religious film analysis needs
to be focused. Without this kind of engagement, Bewitched is just a romantic
fantasy about witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a kid’s story about
candy. ‘So what!’
The approach I am proposing, rooted as it is in the project of 1970s Bri-
tish film journal Screen is opaque, labyrinthine, at times ‘intellectually elu-
sive’ (Deacy 2001, 91); so called ‘Screen theory’ is not without its cultured
despisers (Carroll 1988; Bordwell 1989; Bordwell and Carroll 1996; Lyden
2003; Marsh 2004), but in my view it has a singular strength, over and above
other approaches proposed by religious film analysts. Rather than reduce
film to either quasi-literature or quasi-religion, it treats film as film; as the
cinematic experience that it is. In my view, it is only when religious film ana-
lysts actually do this, actually treat film as film rather than simply saying that
166 Film, Lacan and the Subject of Religion

is what they intend to do, only then will they have anything more than their
own subjective presuppositions to dialogue with.
Critically appropriated, the hermeneutic of suspicion I propose offers
theology and religious studies an opportunity to press beyond the ‘demand
for a surface realism’ (Screen 1972, 2) and the ‘subjective taste-ridden criti-
cism’ (Screen 1971, 4–5) it sponsors, by deconstructing the operations of film
as cinematic representation – an opportunity to move theological film criti-
cism towards interpretations that are more politically and culturally incisive
by reading in the gaps (Cahiers du cinéma ([1970b]1976) and thereby deepen
theological dialogue with film and contemporary culture, moving the
emerging discipline of religion/theology and film beyond the ‘So what!’
 Notes

Introduction to Part One

1
For a history of the early response of religion to cinema, see Lindvall (2001).
2
Lyden is with Johnston in wanting to understand film ‘even when we do not agree
with its messages’ (2003, 3). However, he goes on to argue strongly, if unconvinc-
ingly, that films perform a religious function for their audiences and so should be
interpreted through religious categories.

Chapter 1
1
For further discussion on the failure of biblical spectaculars see Wall (1970).
2
In an invited, critical response to Explorations in Theology and Film, David Jasper sug-
gests an alternative formal parallelism based on cinema and theology’s shared
tendency towards ‘systematization’. ‘Like theology, Hollywood thrives on system-
atization. . . . Just as theologians look to philosophy and continually reinvent
religion within the context of changing understandings of our world and its soci-
ety, so the cinema assures us that, in spite of all our fears to the contrary, things will
work out and the story can still be told.’ Citing the example of Apocalypse Now, a
‘demonic celebration of war’, ‘a literal hell for director and actor’, Jasper proposes
that cinema comes closest to stimulating theological reflection, ‘not by its themes
or specific motifs (directors, with the occasional exception like Martin Scorsese
are theologically illiterate, nor should they be expected to be otherwise) but by its
very form and nature’ (1997, 236, 240).
3
Behind Bazin’s convictions about cinematic language as the vehicle through
which reality is revealed lies the influence of the Personalist spirituality of Emman-
uel Mounier, an ‘amalgam of Existentialism and Christianity’. In the period
following the war, Mounier’s Personalism represented something of a ‘third force’
between the depersonalizing freedom of capitalism and the depersonalizing
materialism of communism. Mounier’s stress on the importance of personal moral
choice leading to committed action was a spiritual ethic, concerned with personal
development. Bazin’s film criticism is informed by this ethic, which uncouples the
spiritual from the political and allows the ‘spiritual’ to become the prime social
force (Hess 1974).
4
Thompson retains the convention of Ingarden’s translator, capitalizing Represen-
tation (Repräsentation) in the sense of ‘standing in for’ or ‘imitating’ something,
and representation (Darstellung) in the sense of ‘depicting’ or ‘presenting’.
168 Notes

Chapter 2
1
Interest in film as ‘visual story’ is also central in Johnston (2000, 99–124).
2
According to Alan Lovell, two diverging ideologies informed film education in
post-war Britain. During the 1950s, the educational work of the British Film Insti-
tute (BFI) had been built on an ideology stemming from the 1930s Documentary
movement, which had its premise in the concept that films basically had a corrupt-
ing effect on the moral development of children. It followed from this that the
task of film educators was to equip children to understand the operations of film
in order that they might appreciate ‘good’ films over ‘bad’. This model of film
aesthetics was characteristically a pre-Cahiers, ‘film grammar’ approach, which
regarded film as an essentially realist medium. From the early 1960s Leavisite ide-
ology began to inform the work of the BFI Education Department. Lovell regards
the shift as ‘probably inevitable’ given the decline in the documentary movement
and the ‘radical impact of Leavis and his followers on the teaching of English, in
particular the concern with the effects of the mass media that was an integral part
of that teaching’ (1971, 15). See also Whannel (1969).
3
Malone examines ‘Jesus-figures’ and ‘Christ-figures’, arguing that ‘Jesus-figures’
are representations of Jesus himself, more or less explicitly biblical portrayals of
the historical Jesus such as in King of Kings (Nicholas Ray 1961) or The Greatest Story
Ever Told (George Stevens 1965), while ‘Christ figures’ are characters from history,
fiction, or the arts, presented as resembling Jesus (Malone 1990). The obvious
theological parallel to the ‘Christ of faith’ is made clear in Baugh’s more scholarly
treatment of the image of Christ in cinema. However, in making explicit the view
that Christ-figures are metaphors or analogies of Christ, Baugh demonstrates that
theological interest in the cinematic Christ is in fact May’s preoccupation with
cinematic analogue (Baugh 1997). Telford offers the insights of a New Testament
scholar on the cinematic portrayal of Jesus see Telford (1997).
4
Due to the imposition of trading restrictions, post-Revolutionary Soviet cinema
laboured under severe shortages. These constraints contributed to the develop-
ment of Russian montage as ‘new’ films were created from existing material.

Chapter 3
1
Deacy makes the point: ‘implicit in many aspects of human life, to the extent that
the film industry is one of many contemporary secular agencies that have taken on
many of the functions that we would historically associate with traditional religious
institutions’ (2005, 137).
2
Somewhat incongruously, Lyden makes the following statement about his use of
audience reception studies:

I have made some reference to the need for audience reception studies, espe-
cially insofar as these can lead us to understand better how ordinary film view-
ers (rather than film theorists or critics) understand the films. There are only a
limited number of ethnographic studies surveying audience reaction to films,
so one might think that the absence of extensive data would argue against
 Notes 169

drawing definitive conclusions about ‘what audiences really think’. In fact,

however, we can never draw definitive conclusions about this sort of thing, even
if we should be flooded by audience studies, as ethnography by its very nature
really only allows one to draw conclusions about the population surveyed
(although the conclusions may have wider applicability, if one grants that the
survey group is typical). Given that no amount of data guarantees certainty
regarding generalized conclusions, I have not allowed the absence of extensive
data to prevent me from drawing some tentative conclusions about the way
some audiences may appropriate some films. And, after all, using a little bit of
audience study is better than using not at all, which has often in practice been
the method of film studies. (2003, 137)

For work that is more empirically rooted, see Deacy 2005; Marsh 2007.
3
Heath, a ‘cultural critic’ Lyden might count among those who regard films as
‘purveyors of ideology’ (Lyden 2003, 32), describes the Screen project as an
‘encounter of Marxism and psychoanalysis on the terrain of semiotics’ (Heath
1985, 511). This account resonates with Geertz’ definition (suitably restructured):
a religion (3) formulates conceptions of a general order of existence [ideology],
which it (4) clothes with such an aura of factuality [ideology] that (2) powerful,
pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations are established in men [psycho-
analysis] in such a way that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic
[psychoanalysis/ ideology] based on (1) a system of symbols [semiotics].
4
Marsh appears, more recently, to have moderated his view. Whereas he did pro-
pose film-watching along with sport, TV and education as contenders in ‘a range
of activities currently competing for the sociologists’ attention as “substitiute reli-
gions” or “alternatives to relgion”’ (2004, 4), he now regards cinemagoing and
film-watching as ‘social practices within [the] rich mix of diverse and complex
contexts of meaning making’ that includes sport, contemporary music and televi-
sion (2007, 151).

Introduction to Part Two

1
The term is taken from Julia Kristeva, who regards signification as exceeding the
fixed sense and closed structure of the sign, and who takes the literary or poetic
text as the object of analysis, a ‘signifying practice carried out through langue but
remaining irreducible to its categories’ (1973, 38).
2
Constantine V.: ‘[T]he bread which we receive is an image of his body, taking the
form of his flesh and having become a type of his body’. Nicephourous Antirrheti-
cus, 2.3 in ed. J-P Migne, Patrologiæ Graecæ, vol. 100 (Paris, 1844–64), 337 (cited in
Pelikan 1978, 109).
3
Theodore of Studios defined an image as ‘a likeness of that of which it is the
image, in itself showing by imitation the character of its archetype . . . the true in
the likeness, the archetype in the image’, or again ‘a kind of seal and representa-
tion, bearing within itself the authentic form of that from which it also gets its
name’ (Pelikan 1978, 118).
170 Notes

4
John of Damascus considered an image to be ‘a likeness, an illustration, and a
representation of something, showing forth in itself that which is imaged’ (Pelikan
1978, 119).
5
With specific relation to religious images, Ouspensky (1978) offers an alternative
understanding of what might be termed ‘liturgical reality’. For Ouspensky, the
‘organic bond’ that exists between ‘the veneration of the saints and that of the
icons’ creates a ‘double realism’ in the icon which ‘unites two realities in itself:
the historical, the earthly reality and the grace of the Holy Spirit, the reality of the
world and that of God’ (1978, 195, 196). From this, he concludes (without irony)
that sacred art ‘is a realistic art in the strictest sense of the word’ (1978, 201)
because the icon’s ‘fidelity to historical truth’ preserves ‘Each characteristic trait
of a saint’ and so preserves ‘a direct and living link with the person whom the icon
represents’ (1978, 196). Ouspensky’s claim, that there is an ‘ontological unity
between the ascetic experience of Orthodoxy and the Orthodox icon’ (1978, 208),
is a claim for a liturgical representation as a form of a metaphysic presence, and
marks a significant parallel around the problematic established with Bazinian film
theory.
6
Contrasting the attitudes of the Roman tradition with that of Orthodoxy, Brubaker
notes that, despite the wealth of religious art in Western churches, Rome never
granted the same privilege to images per se that Orthodoxy has given to icons.
Brubaker suggests the contrasting emphases arose from political rather than theo-
logical concerns, and argues that the early medieval West favoured relics to sacred
icons because they facilitated the exercise of ‘holy power’. ‘Access to the holy
power of images was readily available in many locations, including . . . one’s own
home. On the other hand, access to the holy power of relics was constricted to
particular places, and these places were controlled by the church’ (1995, 13).
7
I am here anticipating my application of film theory to liturgical representation,
which will be around the three heads of: identity with an other; suture into a nar-
rative; and participation in ideological ‘reality’. These heads will emerge from my
discussion of what film theory can offer liturgical representation and my reassess-
ment of the insights of film theory in terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Chapter 4
1
Tanner renders ‘configurantur’ as ‘patterned to the priesthood of’ and ‘fashioned
in the image of’ (1990, 1044, 1057).
2
‘The sacrament of Holy Orders, like [Baptism and Confirmation], confers an
indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily’ (CCC,
1582; see also PO, 2).
3
For additional expressions of Christ’s presence, for example in ‘the poor, the sick
and the imprisoned’, see OBOB 45.
4
The Council of Trent (1545-63) propounded Rome’s traditional teaching on tran-
substantiation (Session 13, 11 October 1551, ‘Decree on the most holy sacrament
of the eucharist’, Chapter 4). This is restated in CCC, 1376. A moderated interpre-
tation of Trent is offered by the Anglican/Roman Catholic International
Commission (ARCIC): ‘The word transubstantiation is commonly used in the
 Notes 171

Roman Catholic Church to indicate that God acting in the eucharist effects a
change in the inner reality of the elements. The term should be seen as affirming
the fact of Christ’s presence and of the mysterious and radical change which takes
place. In contemporary Roman Catholic theology it is not understood as explain-
ing how the change takes place’ (ARCIC-ED, 6, n. 2).
5
For Augustine, ‘A sign was “a thing which, over and above the impression it makes
on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of
itself”; but when signs pertained to divine things, they were called sacraments’
(Pelikan 1971, 306).
6
To some extent this controversy grew out of the ambiguity of the notion of the
‘body of Christ’, which could be understood as physically, to mean Christ’s human
body, or sacramentally, to mean the Eucharist (again, it could be taken to mean
the Church). Berengar attacked the identification that ‘there are not two bodies,
that which is received from the alter and that which was received from the womb
of the Virgin . . . [but] one and the same body’ (Pelikan 1978, 192). Although
later coerced to recant his position, Berengar argued that the fathers had distin-
guished between Christ’s physical and sacramental body. For a discussion of ‘real
presence’ theology and the disputes surrounding Berengar, see Pelikan (1978,
184–204).
7
‘The doctrine that sensible things are composites of matter (Greek hule) and
form (morphe)’ (McCord Adams 1995, 384).
8
Writing as late as 1956 on the concept of symbolic reality, Leeming typifies the
Roman position. He comments: ‘The term “symbolic reality” is a translation of the
technical expression res et sacramentum, literally, a thing or reality and a sacrament.
It designates an effect of the rite which is different from grace. In the Eucharist,
the Blessed Sacrament is this symbolic reality; a reality, because the real body of
Christ is present, a sacrament, because it is an abiding sign and cause of grace’
(1956, 251). For Leeming, the sign, or representation of Christ, is a metaphysical
presence, a presence which is at the same time indissoluble from its sign.
9
Commenting on Schillebeeckx, Martos concludes: ‘Schillebeeckx’s success in
translating the ideas of scholastic language was one of the major reasons why the
bishops of Vatican II felt secure in allowing Catholic theologians to reexamine
the traditional teachings of the church and to restate them in nontraditional
ways’ (1981, 143).
10
The Eucharistic tradition of Mark (14.22–25) and Matthew (26.26–29) omits ana-
mnesis from its institution narratives. Set alongside each other, these four texts
suggest the possibility that from the earliest period (between 53/54 CE and 100
CE) two separate, if interdependent, traditions existed: a Pauline-Lucan and a
Marcan-Matthean. The Fourth Gospel lacks an institution narrative, although the
bread of life discourse (Jn 6.26–59) echoes Eucharistic language: ‘Whoever eats
of this bread will live forever. . . . Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have
eternal life’ (Jn 6.51,54). For a discussion of these traditions, see Jones (1992).
11
Differences between Roman and Protestant scholars emerge in their interpreta-
tion of the sacrificial theology operative in anamnesis.
Traditional Roman Catholic Eucharistic theology on the sacrificial nature of
the Mass was restated at the Council of Trent: ‘In this divine sacrifice which is per-
formed in the mass, the very same Christ is contained and offered in bloodless
172 Notes

manner who made a bloody sacrifice of himself once for all on the cross. Hence
the holy council teaches that this is a truly propitiatory sacrifice’ (Session 22, 17 Sept
1562, ‘Teaching and canons on the most holy sacrifice of the mass’, Chapter 2).
In 1963, Vatican II endorsed this position, choosing to speak of ‘Offering the
immaculate victim’ (SC, 47). Bouyer, in rejecting the idea of anamnesis as a ‘sub-
jective, human psychological act’ and asserting instead that it is an ‘objective
reality destined to make some thing or some one perpetually present before God
and for God’, ascribes metaphysical status to the anamnesis whose sacrificial asso-
ciations he finds implicit in its Semitic roots and made explicit in the translation
to Hellenistic mileu (Bouyer 1968, 103–4). Eucharistic objectivity is supported by
Josef Jungmann, who argues for anamnesis as an objective memorial in which the
‘historical fact’ of Jesus’ death and resurrection somehow become present. Jung-
mann concludes: ‘To the extent to which we grant the sacrificial character of the
Lord’s death on the Cross, the sacrificial character of the Eucharist should also
be granted’ (1959, 108).
Gregory Dix represents an Anglo-Catholic perspective, which demonstrates
the impact of protestant Eucharistic theology. Rejecting the idea of ‘fresh destruc-
tion’ as illegitimate for Anglicans, Dix argues that ‘the properly sacrificial action’
is ‘in the fact of the consecration of the sacrament under two kinds separately,
as a representative likeness of the death of Christ’. Consequently, the Eucharist
as anamnesis is ‘the “re-calling” before God of the one sacrifice of Christ in all its
accomplished and effectual fullness so that it is here and now operative by its
effects in the souls of the redeemed’ (1945, 241–3).
The work of ARCIC was to find a common approach to Eucharistic interpreta-
tion, which it located in anamnesis and the concept of ‘sacramental reality’
(ARCIC-ED, 5). However, the extent to which this has mediated the problem is
questionable. Indeed, ARCIC has been criticized both in that its use of the term
anamnesis ‘may conceal the reintroduction of the theory of a repeated immola-
tion’ (ARCIC-ED: E, 3), and for an ambiguity of language which ‘enables mem-
bers of the two churches to see their own faith in the Agreed Statement’
(ARCIC-ED: E, 4). So, conservative Anglican theologian Gregg, in his consider-
ation of the ‘emerging ecumenical consensus’ in the light of the biblical
evidence, has maintained traditional protestant rejection of sacrifice in favour
of memorial understood as commemoration (1976, 32).
However, ARCIC’s work seems to have impacted Roman thinking: Catechism
of the Catholic Church brings sacrifice together with memorial, stating that ‘The
Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of
the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit’ (CCC, 1366);
while the Bishops cite ARCIC in an attempt to clarify protestant misunderstand-
ings about traditional Roman Eucharistic theology: ‘The Mass is the sacrament of
salvation, the memorial of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ’
(OBOB, 29–30).
12
Vergegenwärtigung, In Heidegger the term is linked with the notion of ‘making
present’ (Gegenwärtigen) (1962, 410).
13
An alternative to the historical orientation typified in Childs’ discussion of memo-
rial orientated perspective is the eschatological, future orientation suggested
by Geoffrey Wainwright. In contrast to the trajectory of Western theologians’
Eucharistic treatises, which he characterizes as dealing with the sacrificial merits
 Notes 173

of Christ’s presence insofar as it relates to individual recipients, Wainwright pro-

poses that the notion of anamnesis offers a framework within which to understand
the ‘twofold fact’ that Christ’s coming is still awaited, yet he also comes to his
people in the Eucharistic celebration. Wainwright is persuaded by Jeremias’
interpretation of Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist, not as a reminder for the
disciples but a reminder to God, imploring the final consummation of his salvific
work. There can be little argument that the theological consensus would admit
the promise of future hope as a benefit of Christ’s sacrifice. However, it less cer-
tain that the ecumenical consensus would uphold Wainwritght’s thesis, which he
admits is influenced by the then current ‘theological vogue’ for eschatology. In
any case, the anamnesis would remain ‘a dominically instituted memorial-rite
which, not only serving to remind men but also being performed before God, is
sacrificial at least in so far as it recalls before God with thanksgiving that one sac-
rifice and prays for the continuing benefits of that sacrifice to be granted now’
(Wainwright 1971, 67).
14
In this the Bishops are articulating the governing ideas of the ‘Directory concern-
ing ecumenical matters’ (IQ, IV–compare II).
15
The Eucharist is politicized in two directions: internally, as a form of political cor-
rectness – only those who think and desire aright may partake; externally, because
the practices of other churches stand outside the traditions of apostolic succes-
sion they lack the legitimacy of Church authority and, by definition, salvific
capacity: ‘The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full com-
munion with the Church’ (CCC, 1395). For a statement on the status of sacramental
sharing with particular reference to the nature of Holy Orders, see OBOB, 41.

Chapter 5
1
Language about present but silent meaning is clear reference to the kinds of ‘rev-
elations’ typical of psychoanalysis, which, in the editors’ minds, was to be achieved
by the doubly structured overdeterminations of Marxism and Freudianism: politi-
cal ideology and psychoanalysis. Historiographically, the significance of the Cahiers’
article lies in its appropriation of Marxist and Lacanian theory for the purpose of
reading film. However, the editors not only misunderstood Lacan’s concept of the
Law and the role of the Mother, more significantly, they uncoupled Lacan from
the clinical context and put him to work in the kind of socio-political environment
in which he himself had no interest. This move was programmatic for film theory’s
appropriation of Lacan.
2
From Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia, cited at www.dukewayne.com/archive/
index.php/t-2110.html (retrieved 20 October 2008).
3
It will be apparent that I am using the term ‘other’ in two forms, capitalized and
in lower case. This is to anticipate Lacan’s distinction between the ‘little other who
is not really other, but a reflection and projection of the ego’ and the big Other,
which ‘designates radical alterity, an other-ness which transcends the illusory oth-
erness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification’
(Evans 1996, 132–3). Lacan introduced this distinction in the Seminar of 25 May
1955, ‘Introduction of the big Other’ (S2, 235–47).
174 Notes

4
Gruber’s membership of the radical (and fictional) West German Volks Frei move-
ment locates him no more concretely than as the generic Eurovillain, cultured
but unprincipled. Gruber betrays the integrity of his terrorist beliefs in pursuit of
$640 million in negotiated bearer bonds.
5
It is interesting to observe that those writers who do look for the cinematic ana-
logue to theological themes generally assume that the direction of analogical
dependency moves towards the theological. Basing his work on the writings of
Joseph Campbell, Christopher Vogler implicitly challenges this assumption with
his analysis of ‘The Hero’s Journey’ (Campbell 1993; Vogler 1998).
6
On the issue of ‘subjective taste-ridden criticism’ see the exchange between Alan
Lovell and film critic Robin Wood: Lovell 1969; Wood 1969; Lovell 1970.
7
These essays are collected and published in two volumes (C. Metz, Essais sur la
signification au cinema, Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1968, 1972), and partly trans-
lated into English (Metz 1974).
8
Struggling with the possibility of a ‘cinematographic language’, Barthes locates
the problem in terms of contiguity with reality: ‘articulated language’, being a
code based on a system of signs, and as such nonanalogical, while cinema ‘pres-
ents itself . . . as an analogical (and moreover, continuous) expression of reality’
([1963]1986, 277).
9
Barthes had argued that in a photograph the scene, captured mechanically, is
there, and that this involves the unprecedented consciousness, not of the being-
there of the thing, but rather the ‘awareness of its having-been-there’. The result is ‘a
new space-time category: spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority, the photo-
graph being an illogical conjunction between the here-now and the there-then’
([1963]1986, 44).
10
Although MacCabe was a contributor to and editorial board member of Screen
from 1973, when he draws attention to the rebirth of Marxist theory following
the events of May 1968 he makes no specific mention of Althusser, preferring
instead to cite the influence of Bertholt Brecht (1985). David Bordwell correctly
clarifies the Althusser-Brecht axis as ‘Brecht’s critique of representation (as
refracted through Althusser, Barthes, and Walter Benjamin)’ (1989, 91). For
critical assessments of Screen, see Britton 1978; Fuchs 1978; Carroll 1982 and
1988; Bordwell 1989. For critical appreciation, see Easthope 1983 and 1988;
Lapsley and Westlake 1988.
11
www.thesiege.com (no longer active).
12
‘Arab Americans Protest Willis Movie’, StudioBrief, 27 August 1998, Internet Movie
Database, www.imdb.com/news/ni0072485/ (retrieved 20 October 2008).
13
Poitier was awarded Best Actor as the handyman Homer Smith, who finds himself
in a small desert town helping nuns to build their prayed-for chapel in Lilies of the
Field (Ralph Nelson, 1963); Washington won the same award 39 years later for his
role as LAPD detective Alonzo Harris in Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001).

Chapter 6
1
Like Metz, Baudry is informed by Althusser’s concept of interpellation. Here, he
builds on Comolli’s argument, that the camera was designed to accurately
 Notes 175

reproduce reality as its inventors had learned to perceive it. Comolli had argued
that the inventors imposed upon the cinema the visual codes of the conservative
bourgeoisie, codes which progressive filmmakers have long since challenged
([1971]1990). Baudry proposes that the techniques of cinematic representation,
specifically those related to the cinematic apparatus (the camera and its lenses),
are implicated in constituting spectators as transcendental idealist subjects. In
other words, they determine the identifications that the spectators will make.
From the Bazinian base that the camera, as cinematographic apparatus, occupies
a position between ‘objective reality’ and the finished film, Baudry regards the
camera as a site of inscription situated between operations that mask the transfor-
mations of reality. Because of this, the camera’s perspective is analogous to the
Quattrocento perspective projections developed during the Italian Renaissance,
and consequently this perspective can be regarded as inscribed with an inherent
ideology.
2
For Baudry, what the spectator does not realize, however, is that the knowledge
appropriated by the camera, and in turn by the spectator, is knowledge within the
ideological frame of the perspective built into the cinematic apparatus. Not only is
the perspective ideologically constructed, but what is represented is represented
from an already politicized viewpoint. In other words, identification with the ‘tran-
scendental subject’ constructs the spectator in terms of the dominant ideology.
3
This ‘something between’ is taken from Arnheim (1958, 20) and parallels
Wollen’s application to cinema of Peirce’s semiotic categories. Peirce distinguishes
three relations between a sign and its object: an icon, which represents by similar-
ity, as with a portrait; an index, which has some causal relation to its object, as
smoke may be an index of fire; and a symbol, which corresponds to Saussure’s arbi-
trary sign. For Wollen, it is the indexical quality, that between iconic identity
and arbitrary symbol, which helps with understanding how cinema functions in
creating meaning (1969, 122–3).
4
Although Lacan introduces suture as a term in his 1964 Seminar he does not give
it full treatment as an independent concept (S11, 117–18). Suture may be consid-
ered a neo-Lacanian concept insofar as it was developed by Lacan’s student,
Jacques-Alain Miller for the 1965 seminar.
5
Oudart’s key works in this area are available in Browne (1990).
6
For Oudart this risks exposing the film’s operation within ideology. Arguing along
Metzian lines, that art is a discourse constructed according to codes which are
themselves the product of ideology, Oudart contends that the discourse predeter-
mines how the subject should read the ‘text’, while the text itself masks and
naturalises the presence of the figurative codes. Operating beneath perception,
the codes create an impression of ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, which is threatened when the
spectator becomes aware of the frame, but which is overcome by the process of
shot/reverse-shot, the system of suture.
7
Oudart was brought to the attention of English readers by Dayan whose commen-
tary treats the shot/reverse-shot as ‘the system of suture’ operating to hide the
ideological effects of film. However, Dayan develops Oudart only in insofar as he
argues that the articulation of the codes productive of ideological effect are
hidden (sutured) by the narrative, thus ‘Unable to see the workings of the code,
the spectator is at its mercy. His imaginary is sealed into the film’ (Dayan 1976).
176 Notes

8
Heath points out that Oudart and Dayan make both psychoanalytic and linguistic
errors in their attempts to understand cinema as discourse: cinema does not
operate like the mirror stage, it assumes the symbolic, and Dayan in particular
wrongly equates the operations of language and ideology.
9
‘A close-up of a revolver does not mean “revolver” (a purely virtual lexical unit)
but at the very least, and without speaking of the connotation, it signifies “Here
is a revolver!”’ (Metz [1964]1974, 67).
10
Heath recognized that suture is doubly problematic: the description of the par-
ticular discursive specification of cinema and the characterization of the general
logic of cinematic discourse. The first problem deals with the articulation of the
system of suture within the structure of shot/reverse-shot. While Oudart-Dayan
have been heavily criticized – classically by Rothman and Salt – the criticisms have
not damaged suture as a concept, but rather focused attention on ‘the organiza-
tion and hold of the look and looks in film’. See Rothman (1975); Salt (1977).
11
Rothman objects that no ‘ghostly sovereign’ is required to account for the opera-
tion of the point-of-view shot, and he argues that the ‘Oudart/Dayan scenario’ is
wrongly based on a two-shot (view/viewer) figure, whereas it should more accu-
rately be understood as a three shot (viewer/view/viewer) sequence. For Rothman,
this is because ordinarily the point-of-view shot manifests only the power of film
to appropriate a character’s gaze without authorization. The point-of-view shot
does not then compel the viewer to accept a figure as the source of that power.
Commenting on Silverman’s similar caution against identifying the system of
suture too closely with the shot/reverse shot, Mast, Cohen and Braudy note that,
‘The shot/reverse shot is merely one device for encoding anticipation into a film,
for directing our attention and our desire beyond the limits of one shot to the
next’ (Mast et al. 1992, 118).
12
Against this, Žižek objects that the Post-Theory critique of the ‘Gaze’ relies on a
commonsense notion of the spectator; and to develop his argument, Žižek unnec-
essarily works a polemical slight of hand. In describing Rothman’s critique, Žižek
projects onto the Post-Theorists a critique of the ‘Gaze’. However, Rothman, who
is not included among the Post-Theorists, shows no interest in the ‘Gaze’ as a
theoretical concept, nor does the concept occur in Post-Theorists Bordwell and
Carroll.
13
Žižek offers several examples of this Hitchcockian failure of the suture: the shift
from ‘God’s-view’ shot to uncanny subjectivisation in which the subjectivity of the
‘impossible/traumatic subjectivity of the Thing itself’ intervenes; the sudden
intrusion into the subjective/objective shots of a violent element – a ‘blot of the
Real’; or the unexpected objectivization of what at first appeared to be a subjec-
tive shot (2001, 38).
14
The thrust of psychoanalytic film theory has been to argue that subjects identify
with the camera (Baudry) or with the act of perception (Metz). This materialist
trajectory was developed to critique the ‘commonsense’ assumptions of realism.
In proposing that subjects are sutured when they identify with an other I am
suggesting a return to the screen image as a focus for identity, not to advocate a
return to ‘commonsense’, but because I believe that analysis of the screen image
allows for a more effective and less reductive application of Lacan. I am not, how-
ever, advocating ‘the central misconception of film theory’, that the screen image
 Notes 177

is a mirror. For a synopsis of film theory discussions about identity see Lapsley
and Westlake (1988): on identification with perception (Metz 82–3); on identifi-
cation with the camera (Baudry and Heath 140–2); on realism (MacCabe 171–3).

Chapter 7
1
Unless otherwise stated, references to Écrits are from Alan Sheridan’s translation
(Lacan 1977).
2
There is inconsistency among Lacan’s commentators about whether or not to
capitalize his three ‘Orders’, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Unless
quoting Lacan directly, in this chapter, I capitalize to emphasize them as technical
terms.
3
The concept was introduced into psychoanalysis by Jung: ‘The more limited a
man’s field of consciousness is, the more numerous the psychic contents (imagos)
which meet him as quasi-external apparitions’ ([1928]1953, para 295).
4
However, Laplanche and Pontalis note that, although Freud borrowed the term
from the Zurich psychoanalytic school of Bleuler and Jung (who understood it to
mean the unconscious linkage of the subject’s recollections) and used it initially
for its descriptive capacity to single out groups of strongly emotional thoughts, he
soon felt misgivings with the term. ‘The fact is that Freud, unlike many authors
claiming allegiance to psycho-analysis, makes very little use of the term’ (1973, 73).
5
‘Displacement is the replacing of one particular idea by another in some way
closely associated with it. In displacement the psychical charge is transferred
entirely from one representation to another. One of the characteristics of displace-
ment is that it encourages condensation and even enables it to occur. Displacement
is a more general, more permanent operation, of which condensation is, in a
sense, a particular case. In short, dreams are symbolic fulfilments of unconscious
wishes, and the essential function of both condensation and displacement is, of
course, to deceive the censor’ (Sarup 1992, 149).
6
This is not yet the Real of Lacan’s classic triad. It is important to note that in focus-
ing on weaning, the ‘psychic trauma’ is not restricted to the particular of weaning
but concerns the general loss of intimacy, as developed in Freud’s discussion of the
Fort da game (PFL11, 283–4).
7
‘Either the subject seeks to return to the maternal object, where he will be caught
in a refusal of the real and a destruction of the other [sibling as intrusive object],
or, having been confronted by some other object, the subject relates to it as an
object with which he can communicate in a way characteristic of human conscious-
ness, since competition implies both rivalry and accord’ (Lacan [1938]1988, 18).
8
The strategy of negation/disavowal, which constitutes the ego and emerges most
clearly at the Mirror Stage, is itself constituted in the intrusion complex by the
dynamic of jealousy. The centrality of jealousy to Lacan’s thinking on subjectivity
should not be underestimated and will be seen to link with paranoiac knowledge.
9
Hill’s attempt to explain Lacan in terms of the Heisenberg principle similarly
stresses the impossibility of symbolizing the Real (1997, 47). See also Samuels
(1993, 143–4).
178 Notes

10
Introduced to Saussure by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lacan first mentions the linguist
in a seminar devoted to St Augustine’s De locutionis significatione (23 June 1954)
(S1, 247–60). However, characterizing Lacan’s linguistics as a linguisterie, a deri-
vation of linguistics, Macey notes that, ‘the linguistics invoked by Lacan represents
a curiously truncated or incomplete version of the discipline’ (1988, 121). In
addition, Macey highlights that, apart from Saussure and Jakobson, Lacan fails to
discuss any of the major linguistic theorists, such as Hjelmslev, Martinet, Harris or
Chomsky, neither does he discuss the extensive psychoanalytic literature on lan-
guage, all of which he regards as strange given both the extent of Lacan’s
privileging of language and the claims of Screen and Tel Quel that Lacan makes
a major contribution to a materialist theory of language.
11
I will deal with this in more detail below.
12
‘Thus the way that the subject gives an account of himself, with all his hesitations
and omissions, his imaginary formations such as dreams, delusions and phobias,
and his moments of incoherence, are phenomena which reveal the mental life of
the individual’ (Benvenuto and Kennedy 1986, 70).
13
‘I might as well be categorical: in psychoanalytical anamnesis, it is not a question
of reality, but of truth, because the effect of full speech is to reorder the past
contingencies by conferring on them the sense of necessities to come, such as
they are constituted by the little freedom through which the subject makes them
present’ (E, 48).
14
‘At such and such a period, some riot or other in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine is
experienced by its actors as a victory or defeat of the Parlement or the Court; at
another, as a victory or defeat of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. And although
it is “the peoples” (as Cardinal de Retz would have said) who always foot its bill, it
is not at all the same historical event – I mean that the two events do not leave the
same sort of memory behind in men’s minds’ (E, 52).
15
Lacan is clear that history is not the same as memory: ‘One mustn’t confuse the
history, in which the unconscious subject inscribes himself, with his memory – a
word I wouldn’t be the first one to tell you is used in a confusing way. On the
contrary, at the point we have reached, it is important to draw a very sharp dis-
tinction between memory and remembering [remémoration], which pertains to the
order of history’ (S2,185).
16
‘Lacan insists the “objet petit a” should remain untranslated, thus acquiring, as it
were, the status of an algebraic sign’ (Sheridan 1977, xi).
17
The seminars for 9 and 16 December 1959 (S7, 43–70). Although as an explicit
theme the concept of the Thing disappears almost immediately, ‘the ideas associ-
ated with it provide the essential features of the new developments in the concept
of the objet petit a as Lacan develops it from 1963 onwards’ (Evans 1996, 205).
18
Lacan is here dependent on Totem and Taboo (PFL13, 43–224), which he describes
as ‘the Freudian myth’, and which he argues retains value insofar as it reveals an
‘essential connection’ between the order of the law and psychoanalysis (S7, 42).
19
Rose translates Vorstellung with representation: ‘It is representations (Vorstellung
in the sense in which Freud uses the term to signal something repressed)’ (Lacan
[1960]1982, 90).
20
For Lacan, the pleasure principle ‘governs the search for the object’. As the
search for objet petit a encounters a series of satisfactions tied to it and polarised
 Notes 179

by it, the pleasure principle ‘fixes the level of a certain quantity of excitation
which cannot be exceeded without going beyond the limit of the Lust/Unlust
polarity’. In other words, the pleasure principle regulates the search through
pleasure/unpleasure, and in so doing the law of pleasure imposes ‘detours which
maintain the distance in relation to its end’ by the transfer from representation
to representation.
21
In articulating his point that ‘the dream-work follows the laws of the signifier’,
Lacan makes a close association with Russian/American linguist Roman Jakob-
son’s conception of metaphor and metonymy. In his work on language and
aphasic disturbance, Jakobson suggests: ‘The development of a discourse may
take place along two different semantic lines: one topic may lead to another
either through their similarity or through their contiguity. The metaphoric way
would be the most appropriate term for the first case and the metonymic way for
the second, since they find their most condensed expression in metaphor and
metonymy respectively. In aphasia one or the other of these two processes is
restricted or totally blocked’ (1956, 109–10). Lacan finds little to distinguish
these two privileged mechanisms of dream work from their homologous function
in discourse, other than what he refers to as the ‘consideration of the means of
representation’, a condition that ‘constitutes a limitation operating within the
system of writing; this is a long way from dissolving the system into a figurative
semiology on a level with phenomena of natural expression’ (E, 160–1). Typi-
cally, however, Lacan reads Jakobson to suit his own purpose. Jakobson in fact
makes his own, more subtle connections with Freud: ‘Thus in an inquiry into the
structure of dreams, the decisive question is whether the symbols and the tempo-
ral sequences used are based on contiguity (Freud’s metonymic “displacement”
and synecdochic “condensation”) or on similarity (Freud’s “identification and
symbolism”)’ (1956, 113).
22
To illustrate his point, Lacan draws a parallel with the parlour-game ‘charades’,
where communicating solely through gesture limits the players. Lacan observes
that the players’ difficulty is due to their lack of taxematic material to represent
logical articulations: causality, contradiction, hypothesis. In making his point,
that game and dream are limited by the same representational restrictions, Lacan
argues this proves dreams to be ‘a form of writing rather than of mime’. For
Lacan, ‘the dream-work follows the laws of the signifier’ (E, 161). Because they
possess a ‘linguistic structure’ dream-images are capable of being read: ‘a quali-
fied and skilled translation of the cryptogram representing what the subject is
conscious of at the moment’ (S1, 13–14).
23
On the distortions of Lacan’s theoretical piracy, see footnotes 10 and 22 above.
24
Freud observed four operations in the dream work, which he extended to include
‘considerations of representability’ and ‘secondary revision’ (PFL4, 454ff., 629–51).
25
Lacan uses the French term captation with regard to the specular image to mean
both ‘captivation’ (seductive power), and ‘capture’ (imprisonment) (Evans 1996, 20).
26
Glossing Metz, Sarup comments that, ‘when we watch a film we are somehow
dreaming it as well; our unconscious desires work in tandem with those that gen-
erated the film-dream’ (1992, 150). Commenting on Oudart, Silverman echoes
this point with regard to the shot/reverse shot formation, which she suggests
‘derives its real importance and interest for many of the theoreticians of suture
180 Notes

because it demonstrates so lucidly the way in which cinema operates to redupli-

cate the history of the subject’ (1983, 201).
27
For Lacan, fantasy has a protective function. ‘Lacan compares the fantasy scene
to a frozen image on a cinema screen; just as the film may be stopped at a certain
point in order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fan-
tasy scene is a defence which veils castration’ (Evans 1996, 60).
28
Conceiving psychoanalysis in terms of Hegelian dialectic is an orientation pecu-
liar to Lacan, and his psychoanalytical dialectic is dominated by his idiosyncratic
version of the master-slave encounter. Whereas, for Hegel, the evolution of self-
consciousness was implicitly an intrasubjective process, in Kojève’s Marxist inter-
pretation, the process was more explicitly intersubjective. It is the intersubjectivity
of this Kojèvean dialectic that is worked out in Lacan. Whereas Kojève translated
the Hegelian parable into the relations of Capitalism (bourgeois-worker), Lacan
translates it into the evolution of consciousness and the relations of analysis,
which he characterises as two subjects in relation, subject (analyst) to (analysand)
subject, and which he opposes to any Cartesian conception of subject (analyst) to
object (analysand). This master-slave dialectic finds its occasion in the complexes,
specifically the intrusion and Oedipus complexes.
29
Lacan translated Freud’s ‘Über einige Neurotische Menchanismen bei Eifer-
sucht, Paranoia und Homosexualität’, in Revue française de psychanalyse 3 (1932),
391–401.
30
Lacan’s term, connaissance paranoïaque, is variously translated as ‘paranoic knowl-
edge’ (Sheridan: É, 17), ‘paranoid knowledge’ (Benvenuto and Kennedy 1986,
45; Tomaselli S3, passim.) and (by Lacan himself) ‘paranoiac knowledge’ (Lacan
1953, 12).
31
The term belongs to Ernest Jones, who used it to describe ‘the fundamental fear
which lies at the basis of all neuroses’, the disappearance of sexual desire: ‘the
total, and of course permanent, extinction of the capacity (including opportu-
nity) for sexual enjoyment’. This is a fear shared by both sexes, and gives rise to
the Castration complex (Jones 1948, 440). Lacan modifies Jones’ term to mean
the disappearance or fading of the subject that inaugurates the dialectic of desire
(E, 283–4; S11, 207–8, 216–29).
32
For Lacan the phallus is primarily a signifier of lack and not ‘the organ, penis or
clitoris, that it symbolises’ (E, 285). However, Grosz objects that the penis becomes
misappropriated by the phallus (1990, 116–22).
33
Lacan’s comments here have been the subject of intense debate among many
feminists, who object to what appears to be his suggestion that women should be
defined by a lack. Thus, in Seminar XX, Lacan states: ‘“Woman” (la) is a signifier,
the crucial property (propre) of which is that it is the only one that cannot signify
anything, and this is simply because it grounds woman’s status in the fact that she
is not-whole. That means we can’t talk about Woman (La femme)’ (S20, 73). Rose
defends Lacan suggesting that he does not mean women are excluded by biology,
but by culture. Translating ‘not-whole’ (pas-toute) as ‘not all’ she suggests that,
‘Within the phallic definition, the woman is constituted as “not all”, in so far as
the phallic function rests on an exception (the “not”) that is assigned to her.
Woman is excluded by the nature of words, meaning that the definition poses her
 Notes 181

as exclusion’ (1982, 49). Against this, Grosz maintains that Lacan is a biological
determinist: ‘men have the phallus only if some subjects (ie women) do not have
it, because the phallus is predicated on the division of some from all. They define
the others as not-all. No-one is all. Yet women are distinguished from men by
being not-all (men, presumably must be not not-all)’ (1990, 138). Žižek attempts
to resolve the debate on the basis that Lacan’s designation of woman ‘as the
symptom of man’ should be read in continuity with the later Lacan, rather than
the Structuralist Lacan of the 1950s. ‘In this sense, “woman is a symptom of man”
means that man himself exists only through woman qua his symptom: all his ontological
consistency hangs on, is suspended from his symptom, is “externalized” in his
symptom. In other words, man literally ex-ists: his entire being lies “out there”, in
woman. Woman, on the other hand, does not exist, she insists, which is why she
does not come to be through man only – there is something in her that escaped
the relation to man, the reference to the phallic signifier; and, as is well known,
Lacan attempted to capture this excess by the notion of a “not-all” feminine jouis-
sance’ (1992, 155–6).
34
Lacan is here making reference to his little noticed 1945 work, ‘Logical time and
the assertion of anticipated certainty: a new sophism’.
35
Lacan is clear: ‘“Fictitious” does not mean illusory or deceptive as such. It is far
from being translatable into French by “fictif”. . . . “Fictitious” means “fictif” . . .
in the sense that every truth has the structure of fiction’ (S7, 12).
36
In describing the construction of infantile sexuality in terms of a male paradigm,
Lacan uncritically follows Freud.
37
‘[H]ere we have two conceptions which seem to lead in exactly opposite direc-
tions. . . . The super-ego is constraining and the ego-ideal exalting. . . . These are
things that one tends to gloss over, because we move from one term to the other
as if the two were synonymous. It is a question which is worth pursuing in relation
to the transference relationship. . . . the super-ego is essentially located within the
symbolic plane of speech, in contrast to the ego-ideal. . . . The super-ego is an
imperative . . . it is consonant with the register and the ideal of the law, that is to
say with the totality of the system of language. . . . The super-ego has a relation to
the law, and is at the same time a senseless law’ (S1, 102).
38
For a summary of the development of feminist film theory, see Doane, Mellen-
camp and Williams (1984, 1–17).
39
For a challenge to Mulvey’s binary oppositions, see Dyer (1982); Neale (1983).
40
For an alternative, psychoanalytic perspective on female identity/spectation, see
Doane (1982; 1991). Doane makes use of concept of the masquerade as pro-
posed by psychoanalyst Rivière ([1929]1986).
41
I have dealt with Mulvey and Stacey in more detail elsewhere (Nolan 1998b).
42
The term ‘ideological effect’ is taken from Stuart Hall (1977), ‘Culture, the
media and the “ideological effect”’, in James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and
Janet Wollacott (eds), Mass Communication and Society. London: Edward Arnold,
315–48.
43
Glossing Metz, Sarup comments that, ‘the spectator has a capacity for belief, and
. . . this belief in the film involves a basic process of disavowal’ (1992, 150); see
Metz (1975, 67–75).
182 Notes

Chapter 8
1
In total, Going My Way garnered six Oscars®: Best Actor (Bing Crosby); Best Sup-
porting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald); Best Director, Best Original Story (Leo
McCarey); Best Screenwriter (Frank Butler and Frank Cavett); and Best Picture.
The film charts the ups and downs in the relationship between new boy Father
O’Malley (Crosby) and old guard Father Fitzgibbon (Fitzgerald).
2
While Going My Way took $6.5m in US theatrical rentals, The Bells of St Mary’s real-
ized rentals of $8m. Source: Going My Way, www.imdb.com/title/tt0036872/
business; The Bells of St Mary’s, www.imdb.com/title/tt0037536/business (retrieved
20 October 2008).
3
Henry Zecher, ‘American culture began with Bing’, www.henryzecher.com/
bing_crosby.htm (retrieved 20 October 2008).
4
Dale O’Connor, ‘Mini-biography’, www.imdb.com/name/nm0001078/bio
(retrieved 20 October 2008).
5
‘The production was overseen by a Catholic priest who served as an advisor dur-
ing the shooting. While the final farewell sequence was being filmed, Bing Crosby
and Ingrid Bergman decided to play a prank on him. They asked director Leo
McCarey to allow one more take, and, as “Father O’Malley” and “Sister Benedict”
said their last goodbyes, they embraced in a passionate kiss, while the offscreen
priest-advisor jumped up roaring in protest.’ www.imdb.com/title/tt0037536/
trivia (retrieved 20 October 2008).
6
Characteristically, Fr Gabriel refuses, but after embracing Mendoza he gives the
former mercenary a small cross that he himself had taken from a Jesuit martyred
by the Guarani as the film opened.
7
Gustaf Molin, ‘Mini-biography’, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000460/bio (retrieved
20 October 2008).
8
‘In a way, I did understand why Dad’s fans loved him so. When I saw Going My
Way I was as moved as they were by the character he played. Father O’Malley
handled that gang of young hooligans in his parish with such kindness and wis-
dom that I thought he was wonderful too. Instead of coming down hard on the
kids and withdrawing his affection, he forgave them their misdeeds, took them
to the ball game and picture show, taught them how to sing. By the last reel, the
sheer persistence of his goodness had transformed even the worst of them into
solid citizens. Then the lights came on and the movie was over. All the way back
to the house I thought about the difference between the person up there on the
screen and the one I knew at home’, www.nospank.net/crosbyg.htm (retrieved
20 October 2008).
9
As will become clear, I am placing McNeill’s status as a priest ‘under erasure’ (Fr)
to signify that having ‘failed’ to deny the ‘human weakness of his flesh’, the Epis-
copal/ecclesial authorities denied Father McNeill his calling as a priest.
10
Cast in Oedipal terms: the castrating God.
11
Frank McCourt relates a similar tale of suppression and sexual guilt in his experi-
ences with Redemptorist priests (1997, 340–1).
12
‘The real is distinguished, as I said last time, by its separation from the field of the
pleasure principle, by its desexualisation, by the fact that its economy, later,
admits something new, which is precisely the impossible’ (S11, 167). Žižek, argues
 Notes 183

that for Lacan, ‘the horrifying abyss of the Thing’ (objet petit a, described in
Chapter 7 as the Thing in the Real that is ‘the beyond-of-the-signified’) embodies
jouissance, ‘the impossible/real foreign kernel, [which is] irreducible to the sym-
bolic order [and which] can only be approached in a suicidal heroic act of
transgression, of excluding oneself from the symbolic community’ (2001, 19).
13
The priest, of course, finds his own meaning by making his identification with the
representation of his own desire.
14
In the UK video and DVD release, which runs to around 117 minutes, the first
sequence begins at 00:40:52, and lasts for 26 seconds, while the second sequence
begins at 01:20:30, and lasts for 48 seconds.
15
In the scene in which, with his uncle, Fr Karras visits his mother in hospital, his
uncle ruminates: ‘You know it’s funny! If you wasn’t a priest, you’d be a famous
psychiatrist by now. . . . Your mother, she’d be living in a penthouse instead of . . .’
However, the irony is doubled insofar as, had Karras not become a priest, he may
never have had the chance of the university education that is now robbing him of
his vocation.
16
A similar type of metaphorical sparking occurs in The Darkest Light (Eltringham
and Beaufoy 1999). In this small budget British film about how human experi-
ence is interpreted by different faith perspectives, a young boy is treated for
leukaemia. Cutting from an invasive needle piercing the boy’s body, to an over-
head shot of him lying in the foetal position, the camera cuts finally to a Holy
Communion and the priest’s words, ‘The Body of Christ’.
17
According to Hurley, Fr Corridan acted as an (uncredited) special advisor on the
set (1991, 189, n 2).
18
According to Hurley, this dramatic scene is based on an actual sermon delivered
by Fr Corridan to the Knights of Columbus in 1948. ‘Corridan’s prophetic homily
was called “Christ Looks at the Waterfront”, reminding his hearers that Christ
“carried carpenter’s tools in His hands and earned His bread and butter by the
sweat of His brow”’ (1991, 98).
19
Liberation theologian, Jon Sobrino, has developed the idea of a ‘crucified people’
(1994, 254–71).
20
The only liturgical actions offered by the fugitive priest are baptism and the last
rites.
21
‘I might as well be categorical: in psychoanalytical anamnesis, it is not a question
of reality, but of Truth, because the effect of a full Word [parole pleine : Sheridan:
‘full speech’] is to reorder the past contingent events by conferring on them the
sense of necessities to come, just as they are constituted by the little liberty
through which the subject makes them present’ (Lacan [1953]1968, 18).

By Way of Analysis
1
The overwhelming majority of character-actor/stars are male. Hence, the develop-
ment of Feminist film critique.
2
For Lacan the term name of the father is associated with entry into the Symbolic. He
plays with the homophony of le nom du père (the name of the father) and le ‘non’
184 Notes

du père (the ‘no’ of the father) to signify ‘the Oedipal prohibition, the “no” of the
incest taboo’ (Evans 1996, 119).
3
For example: www.crosswalk.com/movies/1336950/; www.pluggedinonline.com/
movies/movies/a0002197.cfm; www.usccb.org/movies/b/bewitched.shtml (retrieved
20 October 2008).
4
Tim Burton speaking on the featurette ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
Chocolate Dreams’, packaged as supplementary material with the UK two-disc
edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2005.
 Bibliography

Bibliography of Religion and Film

The following chronological listing of over 200 English language books on

aspects religion/theology and film has been gathered from a variety of
sources including published bibliographies, journal articles and library and
internet searches. Listing the books by year gives an easy demonstration of
how the discipline has developed.

1932
Burnett, Richard George and Martell, E D, The Devil’s Camera: Menace of a Film-
Ridden World, 2nd edn, London: Epworth Press.

1938
Rice, John R, What is Wrong with the Movies? Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Wing, Alfred Douglas, Films and the Faith, London: SPCK.

1947
Miles, Herbert Jackson, Movies and Morals, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

1961
Getlein, Frank and Gardiner, Harold C, Movies, Morals and Art, New York: Sheed and
Ward.

1967
Jones, G William, Sunday Night at the Movies, Richmond, VA: John Knox.

1968
Schillaci, Anthony, Movies and Morals, Notre Dame, IN: Fides.
186 Bibliography

1969
Butler, Ivan, Religion in the Cinema, New York: AS Barnes.
Gibson, Arthur, The Silence of God: Creative Response to the Films of Ingmar Bergman, New
York and London: Harper and Row.
Summers, Stanford, Secular Films and the Church’s Ministry, New York: Seabury Press.

1970
Cooper, John C and Skrade, Carl (eds), Celluloid and Symbols, Philadelphia: Fortress
Press.
Hurley, Neil P, Theology through Film, New York: Harper and Row.
McClain, C, Morals and the Movies, Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill.

1971
Kahle, Robert and Lee, Robert E A, Popcorn and Parable: A New Look at the Movies,
Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.
Wall, James M, Church and Cinema: A Way of Viewing Film, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

1972
Arnold, James W, Seen Any Good Dirty Movies Lately? A Christian Critic Looks at Contem-
porary Films, Cincinnati: St Anthony Messenger Press.
Konzelman, Robert G, Marquee Ministry: The Movie Theatre as Church and Community
Forum, New York: Harper and Row.
Schrader, Paul, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Berkeley: University
of California Press.

1974
Drew, Donald J, Images of Man: A Critique of the Contemporary Cinema, Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity.

1976
Ferlita, Ernest and May, John R, Film Odyssey: The Art of Film as Search for Meaning,
New York: Paulist Press.

1977
Holloway, Ronald, Beyond the Image: Approaches to the Religious Dimension in the Cinema,
Geneva: World Council of Churches.

1978
Hurley, Neil P, The Reel Revolution: A Film Primer on Liberation, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
 Bibliography 187

1981
Campbell, Richard H and Pitts, Michael R, The Bible on Film: A Checklist 1897–1980,
Metuchen, NJ and London: The Scarecrow Press.
Martin, Thomas M, Images and the Imageless: A Study in Religious Consciousness and
Film, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.

1982
Friedman, Lester D, Hollywood’s Image of the Jew, New York: Frederick Ungar.
May, John R and Bird, Michael (eds), Religion in Film, Knoxville: University of
Tennessee.

1984
Butler, John, TV, Movies, and Morality: A Guide for Catholics, Huntington, IN: Our
Sunday Visitor.
Elley, Derek, The Epic Film: Myth and History, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Keyser, Les and Keyser, Barbara, Hollywood and the Catholic Church: The Image of Roman
Catholicism in American Movies, Chicago: Loyola University Press.

1987
Friedman, Lester D, The Jewish Image in American Film, New Secaucus, NJ: Citadel
Press.

1988
Greeley, Andrew, God in Popular Culture, Chigaco, IL: Thomas More Press.

1989
Billingsley, K Lloyd, The Seductive Image: A Christian Critique of the World of Film,
Westchester, IL: Crossway Books.
Drouzy, Martin and Jørgensen, Lisbeth Nannestad (eds), Letters about the Jesus Film:
16 Years of Correspondence Between Carl Th. Dreyer and Blevins Davis, Copenhagen:
University of Copenhagen.
Gabler, Neal, An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, New York: Crown
Publishers.

1990
Malone, Peter, Movie Christs and Antichrists, New York: Crossroad.
O’Brien, Tom, The Screening of America: Movies and Values from Rocky to Rain Man,
New York: Continuum.
Pavelin, Alan, Fifty Religious Films, Chislehurst, Kent: A P Pavelin.
188 Bibliography

1991
Blake, Richard A, Screening America: Reflections on Five Classic Films, New York: Paulist
Press.
MacDonald, Alan, Films in Close-Up: Getting the Most from Film and Video, Leicester:
Frameworks.

1992
Cosandey, Roland, Gaudreault, André and Gunning, Tom (eds), An Invention of the
Devil? Religion and the Early Cinema. Une Invention de Diable? Cinema des Premiers
Temps et Religion, Sainte Foy, Canada: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.
Hill, Geoffrey, Illuminating Shadows: The Mythic Power of Film, Boston: Shambala.
Kinnard, Roy and Davis, Tim, Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen, New York:
Carol Publishing.
May, John R (ed.), Image and Likeness: Religious Visions in American Film Classics,
Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

1993
Babington, Bruce and Evans, Peter William, Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the
Hollywood Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hurley, Neil P, Soul in Suspense: Hitchcock’s Fright and Delight, Metuchen, NJ: The
Scarecrow Press.
Jewett, Robert, Saint Paul at the Movies: The Apostle’s Dialogue with American Culture,
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.
Kreitzer, Larry J, The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical
Flow, Sheffield: JSOT Press.
Sinetar, Marsha, Reel Power: Spiritual Growth through Film, Liguori, MO: Triumph
Books.
Skinner, James, The Cross and the Cinema: The Legion of Decency and the National Catho-
lic Office for Motion Pictures, 1933–1970, Westport, CT: Praeger.
Walls, David R, Finding God in the Dark, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

1994
Black, Gregory D, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kreitzer, Larry J, The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical
Flow, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Miller, Frank, Censored Hollywood: Sex, Sin and Violence on Screen, Atlanta: Turner
Publishing.
Scott, Bernard Brandon, Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories, Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.

1995
Blake, Richard A, Woody Allen: Profane and Sacred. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
 Bibliography 189

Bliss, Michael, The Word Made Flesh: Catholicism and Conflict in the Films of Martin
Scorsese, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Martin, Joel W and Ostwalt Jr, Conrad E (eds), Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and
Ideology in Popular American Film, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

1996
Couvares, Francis G (ed.), Movie Censorship and American Culture, Washington: Smith-
sonian Institution Press.
Exum, J Cheryl, Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women,
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Miles, Margaret R, Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies, Boston:
Beacon Press.
Walsh, Frank, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry,
New Haven: Yale University Press.

1997
Baugh, Lloyd, Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film, Kansas City, MO:
Sheed and Ward.
Marsh, Clive and Gaye Ortiz, (eds), Explorations in Theology and Film: Movies and
Meaning, Oxford: Blackwell.
May, John R (ed.), New Image of Religious Film, Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward.
Tatum, W Barnes, Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, Santa Rosa,
CA: Polebridge Press.

1998
Black, Gregory D, The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940–1975, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Fraser, Peter, Images of the Passion: The Sacramental Mode in Film, Westport, CT: Praeger.
Maher, Ian, Reel Issues: Engaging Film and Faith, Swindon: Bible Society.

1999
Fields, Doug and James, Eddie, Videos that Teach: Teachable Movie Moments from 75
Modern Film Classics, Grand Rapids, MI: Youth Specialties/Zondervan.
Jewett, Robert, Saint Paul Returns to the Movies: Triumph over Shame, Grand Rapids,
MI: William B Eerdmans.
Kreitzer, Larry J, Pauline Images in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow,
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Kupfer, Joseph H, Visions of Virtue in Popular Film, Boulder, CO: Westview.
McNulty, Edward, Films and Faith, Viaticum Press.
Plate, S Brent and Jasper, David (eds), Imag(in)ing Otherness: Filmic Visions of Living
Together, Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
Stern, Richard C, Jefford, Clayton N and DeBona, Guerric, Savior on the Silver Screen,
New York: Paulist Press.
190 Bibliography

Vaux, Sarah Anson, Finding Meaning at the Movies, Nashville: Abingdon Press.

2000
Alsford, Mike, What If? Religious Themes in Science Fiction, London: Darton, Longman
and Todd.
Bergesen, Albert J and Greeley, Andrew M, God in the Movies: A Sociological Investiga-
tion, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Blake, Richard A, Afterimage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmak-
ers, Chicago, IL: Loyola Press.
Forest, Ben, with Mueller, Mary Kay, God Goes to Hollywood: A Movie Guide for the Mod-
ern Mystic, Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press.
Fraser, Peter and Neal, Vernon Edwin, ReViewing the Movies: A Christian Response to
Contemporary Film, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
Gire, Ken, Reflections on the Movies: Hearing God in the Unlikeliest of Places, Colorado
Springs: Victor.
Johnston, Robert K, Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic.
McNulty, Edward, Let’s Go to the Movies: Alternative Studies for Christian Growth,
Louisville, KY: Bridge Resources.
Stone, Bryan P, Faith and Film: Theological Themes at the Cinema, St Louis, MO: Chalice
Press.
Wilkinson, David, The Power of the Force: The Spirituality of the Star Wars Films, Oxford:
Lion.

2001
Deacy, Christopher, Screen Christologies: Redemption and the Medium of Film, Cardiff:
University of Wales Press.
Lindvall, Terry (ed.), The Silents of God: Selected Issues and Documents in Silent Film and
Religion 1908–1925, London and Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
McNulty, Edward, Praying the Movies: Daily Meditations from Classic Films, Louisville,
KY: Geneva Press.
Malone, Peter and Pacatte, Rose, Lights, Camera . . . Faith! A Movie Lectionary, Cycle A,
Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media.
May, John R, Nourishing Faith through Fiction: Reflections of the Apostles’ Creed in Litera-
ture and Film, Franklin, WI: Sheed and Ward.

2002
Aichele, George and Walsh, Richard (eds), Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections
between Scripture and Film, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
Cunningham, David S, Reading is Believing: The Christian Faith through Literature and
Film, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.
Fields, Doug and James, Eddie, Videos that Teach 2: Another 75 Scenes from Popular Films
to Spark Discussion, Grand Rapids, MI: Youth Specialties/Zondervan.
Godawa, Brian, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment,
Downers Grove, IL: InverVarsity Press.
 Bibliography 191

John, J and Stibbe, Mark, The Big Picture: Finding the Spiritual Message in Movies,
Bletchley: Authentic.
Kraemer, Ross S, Cassidy, William and Schwartz, Susan, Religions of ‘Star Trek’, Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Kreitzer, Larry J, Gospel Images in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow,
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Maher, Ian, Faith and Film: Close Encounters of an Evangelistic Kind, Cambridge: Grove
Books.
Malone, Peter and Pacatte, Rose, Lights, Camera . . . Faith! A Movie Lectionary, Cycle B,
Pauline Books and Media.
Sanders, Theresa, Celluloid Saints: Images of Sanctity in Film, Macon, GA: Mercer Uni-
versity Press.

2003
Bandy, Mary Lea and Monda, Antonio (eds), The Hidden God: Film and Faith, New
York: Museum of Modern Art.
Coates, Paul, Cinema, Religion and the Romantic Legacy: Through a Glass Darkly, Alder-
shot: Ashgate.
Couch, Steve, Matrix Revelations: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to the Matrix Trilogy, South-
ampton: Damaris Publishing.
Cunneen, James, Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film, New York: Continuum
International.
Gertel, Elliot, Over the Top Judaism: Precedents and Trends in the Depiction of Jewish
Beliefs and Observances in Film and Television, Lanham, MD: University Press of
America.
Higgins, Gareth, How Movies Helped Saved My Soul: Finding Cultural Fingerprints in
Culturally Significant Films, Lake Mary, FL: Relevant Books.
John, J and Stibbe, Mark, The Big Picture 2: More Spiritual Insights from Modern Movies,
Bletchley: Authentic.
Lyden, John, Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals, New York: New York Univer-
sity Press.
McNulty, Edward, Praying the Movies II: More Daily Meditations from Classic Films,
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Malone, Peter and Pacatte, Rose, Lights, Camera . . . Faith! A Movie Lectionary, Cycle C,
Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media.
Mitchell, Jolyon and Marriage, Sophia (eds), Mediating Religion: Conversations in
Media, Religion and Culture, London: T & T Clark.
Plate, S Brent (ed.), Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking,
Culture Making, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Reinhartz, Adele, Scripture on the Silver Screen, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox
Press.
Riley, Robin, Film, Faith, and Cultural Conflict: The Case of Martin Scorsese’s The Last
Temptation of Christ, Westport, CT: Praeger.
Runions, Erin, How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schleich, Kathryn, Hollywood and Catholic Women: Virgins, Whores, Mothers, and Other
Images, iUniverse.com
192 Bibliography

Seay, Chris and Garrett, Greg, The Gospel Reloaded: Exploring Spirituality and Faith in
The Matrix, Colorado Springs, CO: Pinon Press.
Vollmer, Ulrike, Seeing and Seen: Film and Feminist Theology in Dialogue, Sheffield:
Sheffield University Press.
Walsh, Richard G, Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film, Harris-
burg, PA: Trinity Press International.
Yeffeth, Glen (ed.), Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix,
Chichester: Summersdale.

2004
Anker, Roy M, Catching Light: Looking For God in the Movies, Grand Rapids, MI:
William B Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Barsotti, Catherine M and Johnston, Robert K, Finding God in the Movies: 33 Films of
Reel Faith, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Burnham, Johnathan (ed.), Perspectives on The Passion of the Christ: Religious Thinkers
and Writers Explore the Issues Raised by the Controversial Movie, New York: Miramax
Books.
Cawkwell, Tim, The Filmgoer’s Guide to God, London: Darton, Longman and Todd.
Corley, Kathleen E and Webb, Robert L (eds), Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of
The Christ: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History, London: Continuum
International.
Dönmez-Colin, Gönül, Women, Islam and Cinema, London: Realktion Books.
Egan, Joe, Brave Heart of Jesus: Mel Gibson’s Postmodern Way of the Cross, Blackrock, CO,
Dublin: Columba Press.
Faller, Stephen, Beyond the Matrix: Revolutions and Revelations, St Louis, MO: Chalice
Press.
Fields, Doug and James, Eddie, Videos that Teach 3: 75 More Moments to Get Teenagers
Talking, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Johnston, Robert K, Useless Beauty: Ecclesiastes through the Lens of Contemporary Film,
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Loughlin, Gerard, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Marsh, Clive, Cinema and Sentiment: Film’s Challenge to Theology, Milton Keynes:
Paternoster.
Pinsky, Mark I, The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust, Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox Press.
Plate, S Brent (ed.), Re-Viewing The Passion: Mel Gibson’s Film and its Critics, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pungente, John J and Williams, Monty, Finding God in the Dark: Taking the Spiritual
Exercises of St Ignatius to the Movies, Boston: Pauline Books and Media.
Wright, Greg, Peter Jackson in Perspective – the Power Behind Cinema’s The Lord of the
Rings: A Look at Hollywood’s Take on Tolkien’s Epic Tale, Burien, WA: Hollywood
Jesus Books.
Wright, Greg and Wright, Jenn (eds), Hollywood Jesus Reviews: 2003–2004, Burien,
WA: Hollywood Jesus Books.
 Bibliography 193

2005
Burston, Daniel and Denova, Rebecca (eds), Passionate Dialogues: Critical Perspectives
on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Pittsburgh, PA: Mise Publications.
Christianson, Eric, Frances, Peter and Telford, William R (eds), Cinéma Divinité:
Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film, London: SCM Press.
Clarke, Anthony J and Fiddes, Paul S (eds), Flickering Images: Theology and Film in
Dialogue, Oxford: Regent’s Park College with Smyth and Hewlys.
Deacy, Christopher (2005), Faith in Film: Religious Themes in Contemporary Cinema,
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Fields, Doug and James, Eddie, Videos that Teach 4: 75 More Moments to Get Teenagers
Talking, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Kniep, Seth, The Truth Behind the Passion Film and How to Respond, PublishAmerica.
Lewerenz, Spencer and Nicolosi, Barbara (eds), Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders
on Faith, Film, and Culture, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Malone, Peter, Can Movies be a Moral Compass? London: St Pauls.
Miller, Monica Migliorino, The Theology of The Passion of the Christ, New York:
St Pauls/Alba House.
Paietta, Ann C, Saints, Clergy, and Other Religious Figures on Film and Television, 1895–
2003, Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co.
Ryan, Judylyn S, Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women’s Film and Literature, Charlot-
tesville: University of Virginia Press.
Stibbe, Mark and John, J, Passion for the Movies: Spiritual Insights from Contemporary
Films, Milton Keynes: Authentic.
Walsh, Richard G, Finding St Paul in Film, New York: T and T Clark International.
Wetmore, Kevin J, The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the ‘Star Wars’
Films, Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Worthing, Mark W, The Matrix Revealed: The Theology of the Matrix Trilogy, CITY: Hind-
marsh, Australia: ATF Press.
Wright, Greg and Wright, Jenn (eds), Hollywood Jesus Reviews: 2004–2005, Burien,
WA: Hollywood Jesus Books.

2006
Beal, Timothy K and Linafelt, Tod (eds), Mel Gibson’s Bible: Religion, Popular Culture,
and The Passion of the Christ, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dwyer, Rachel, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema, London: Routledge.
Exum, J Cheryl (ed.), The Bible in Film: The Bible and Film, Leiden: Brill.
Fredrickson, Paula, On The Passion of the Christ: Exploring the Issues Raised by the
Controversial Movie, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gunn, Mike, with Wright, Greg and Jenn, The Da Vinci Code Adventure: On the Trail
of Fact, Legend, Faith, and Film, Burien, WA: Hollywood Jesus Books.
Humphries-Brooks, Stephenson, Cinematic Savior: Hollywood’s Making of the American
Christ, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Leonard, Richard, Movies that Matter: Reading Film through the Lens of Faith, Chichago,
IL: Loyola Press.
194 Bibliography

Malone, Peter and Pacatte, Rose, Lights, Camera . . . Faith! The Ten Commandments,
Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media.
Paffenroth, Kim, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth,
Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
Sison, Antonio D, Screening Schillebeeckx: Theology and Third Cinema in Dialogue, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wilson, Eric G, Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film, New York: Continuum.
Wright, Greg and Wright, Jenn (eds), Hollywood Jesus Reviews: 2005–2006, Burien,
WA: Hollywood Jesus Books.

2007
Burns, Paul (ed.), Jesus in Twentieth Century Literature, Art and Movies, New York:
Continuum.
Cargal, Timothy B, Hearing a Film, Seeing a Sermon: Preaching and Popular Movies,
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Cohen, Jeremy, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Exum, J Cheryl (ed.), Retellings: The Bible in Literature, Music, Art and Film, Leiden: Brill.
Flesher, Paul V M and Torry, R, Film and Religion: An Introduction, Nashville, TN:
Abingdon Press.
Garrett, Greg, The Gospel According to Hollywood, Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press.
Geivett, R Douglas and Spiegel, James S (eds), Faith, Film and Philosophy: Big Ideas on
the Big Screen, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.
Johnson, William Bruce, Miracles and Sacrilege: Roberto Rossellini, the Church, and Film
Censorship in Hollywood, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Johnston, Robert K (ed.), Reframing Theology and Film: New Focus for an Emerging
Discipline, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Keck, Ron, Finding Redemption in the Movies, Nashville, TN: Serendipity House.
Lang, J Stephen, The Bible on the Big Screen: A Guide from Silent Films to Today’s Movies,
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Lindvall, Terry, Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry, New York: New
York University Press.
McDannell, Colleen (ed.), Catholics in the Movies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McDowell, John C, The Gospel According to Star Wars: Faith, Hope, and the Force, Louis-
ville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
McKee, Gabriel, The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the
Final Frontier, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
McNulty, Edward, Studying Faith and Film: A Guidebook for Leaders, Louisville: West-
minster John Knox Press.
Malone, Peter (ed.), Through a Catholic Lens: Religious Perspectives of Nineteen Film
Directors from Around the World, Lanham: Sheed and Ward.
Marsh, Clive, Theology Goes to the Movies: An Introduction to Critical Christian Thinking,
London: Routledge.
Mitchell, Jolyon and Plate, Brent S (eds), The Religion and Film Reader, London:
Routledge.
 Bibliography 195

Overstreet, Jeffrey, Through a Screen Darkly, Ventura, CA: Regal Books.

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 Author Index

Althusser, Louis 5, 67–8, 69, 79, 82, Eliade, Mircea 48

84, 92, 93, 112, 127, 174n10, Eliot, T. S. 20–1, 36
174–5n1 Evans, Dylan 124–5
Arnheim, Rudolf 175n3
Fink, Bruce 96–7
Barker, Martin 33 Fraser, Peter 14–15, 17
Barthes, Roland 68, 174n8, 174n9 Freud, Anna 94
Baudry, Jean-Louis 81–2, 92, 102–3,
113, 151, 174–5n1, 175n2 Geertz, Clifford 29–32
Baugh, Lloyd 168n3 Gerges, Fawaz A. 70, 71–2
Bazin, André 11–12, 16, 19, 39, 40, 58, Greene, Graham 148
66–7, 69, 85, 86 Grosz, Elizabeth 99
Benjamin, Walter 174n10
Bird, Michael 14 Hall, Stuart 181n42
Bordwell, David 89, 174n10, 176n12 Heath, Stephen 67, 81–2, 83, 86–7,
Bouyer, Louis 171–2n11 92–3, 112, 127, 176n8
Bowie, Malcolm 96 Hegel, Georg W. F. 117, 180n28
Bradshaw, Steve 60, 64, 65 Heidegger, Martin 50, 172n12
Brecht, Bertholt 174n10 Hitchcock, Alfred 88
Brubaker, Leslie 170n6 Huntington, Samuel 62
Hurley, Neil 35, 147
Campbell, Joseph 156, 158, 174n5
Carroll, Noël 89, 176n12 Ingarden, Roman 17–18, 167n4
Childs, Brevard 50–1
Comolli, Jean-Louis 174–5n1 Jakobson, Roman 179n21
Copjec, Joan 88 Jasper, David 167n2
Crichton, J. D. 33, 34 Jewett, Robert 22
Crosby, Gary 139 Johnston, Robert K 9–10, 20, 36
Cunneen, Joseph 14 Jones, Ernest 180n31
Jungmann, Josef 171–2n11
Dahl, Roald 162, 163
Daney, Serge 85, 90 Klein, Melanie 98
Dayan, Daniel 175n7 Kojève, Alexandre 117, 180n28
Deacy, Christopher 25–7, 28, 36 Kreitzer, Larry 22–5
Dix, Gregory 171–2n11 Kristeva, Julia 169n1
Dyer, Richard 59–60, 128, 135, 142
Leavis, F. R. 21–2, 25, 67, 168n2
Eagleton, Terry 41 Lovell, Alan 168n2, 174n5
Easthope, Antony 2, 70 Lyden, John 10, 28–32, 35–6, 167n2
208 Author Index

MacCabe, Colin 70, 79, 174n10 Rothman, William 88

Macey, David 151, 178n10
Malone, Peter 168n3 Said, Edward 70, 71–2, 74
Maltin, Leonard 60 Sarris, Andrew 22
Marsh, Clive 28, 32–6 Sarup, Madan 179–80n26, 181n43
Martin, Thomas 16–17, 19 Saussure, Ferdinand de 94, 101, 107,
Martos, Joseph 48, 49, 50 108, 178n10
May, John 9–10, 20–2, 25, 30, 36 Schrader, Paul 12–13, 16, 17, 18,
Metz, Christian 39–40, 68–9, 80–1, 19, 25
86, 174–5n1 Silverman, Kaja 179–80n26
Miller, Jacques-Alain 83, 175n4 Stacey, Jackie 127–8, 181n41
Mulvey, Laura 127–8, 181n41
Tan, E. S. and Frijda, N. 33
Niebuhr, H. Richard 10 Telford, William 168n3
Thompson, John O. 16–19, 167n4
Ortiz, Gaye 34 Tillich, Paul 10, 14, 20
Ostwalt, Conrad E. 2, 3
Otto, Rudolf 13 Vogler, Christopher 156–9,
Oudart, Jean-Pierre 82, 83–6, 91, 92, 174n45
112–3, 127
effet de réalité 85, 86, 91 Wainwright, Geoffrey 172–3n13
effet de réal 85, 175nn5–7 Wollen, Peter 175n3
Ouspensky, Leonid 170n5 Wood, Robin 174n6

Peirce, C. S. 175n3 Žižek, Slavoj 79, 87–90, 101

 Film Index

Air Force One (1997) Wolfgang Last Temptation of Christ, The (1988)
Petersen 58, 63 Martin Scorsese 26
Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Lilies of the Field (1963) Ralph
Coppola 167n2 Nelson 174n13

Batman Begins (2005) Christopher Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Dziga
Nolan 156–9, 165 Vertov 66
Bells of St Mary’s, The (1945) Leo Mission, The (1986) Roland Joffé
McCarey 132, 155, 182nn1–2 136–8
Bewitched (2005) Nora Ephron 156,
159–62, 164, 165 On the Waterfront (1954) Elia
Kazan 146–8
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Tim Burton 156, 162–5 Passion, The (1897) Auguste and Louis
Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles 88 Lumières 9
Passion Play of Oberammergau,
Darkest Light, The (1999) Bille The (1898) Thomas Edison
Eltringham and Simon Beaufoy Company 9
Die Hard (1988) John McTiernan 58, Peacemaker, The (1997) Mimi Leder
60–1, 63 58, 63

Executive Decision (1996) Stuart Road to Singapore, The (1940) Victor

Baird 58, 64 Schertzinger 133
Exorcist, The (1973) William Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975)
Friedkin 144–6 Jim Sharman 29

Fugitive, The (1947) John Ford 148–50 Siege, The (1998) Edward Zwick 58,
64–5, 72–5
God Needs Men (1950) Jean Soldiers of the Cross (1900) Joseph Perry
Delannoy 11 with Herbert Booth 9
Going My Way (1944) Leo Stepford Wives, The (2004)
McCarey 132–3, 182nn1–2 Frank Oz 160
Greatest Story Ever Told, The (1965)
George Stevens 26, 168n3 Training Day (2001) Antoine
Fuqua 174n13
King of Kings (1961) Nicholas Ray 26, True Lies (1994) James Cameron
168n3 58, 64
210 Film Index

Voyage à travers l’impossible (1904) Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Georges Méliès 66 (1971) Mel Stuart 163

Walking on the Water (1899) Georges Young Mr Lincoln (1939) John Ford
Méliès 9 59, 62
 Subject Index

absent/absence 80, 83–4, 86, 87, 88, biblical spectacular film 13, 17
89, 113 Blair, Linda 144
Absent One, the 83–4, 112 Bresson, Robert 11
active reading 59 Bühler, Charlotte 119
actualization 51 Burton, Tim 162
aesthetics of reality 67
Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) 48 Cahiers du Cinéma 22, 58, 59, 62, 103
American Dream, the 60, 128 Calvin/Calvinistic 12
analysis 94, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 113 castration complex 180n31
Anamnesis celebrity 161–2, 164
active remembering 44, 50, 51, 52, Chaplin, Charlie 22
171–2n11 Chicago School, the 119
analytic 151 Christ (Idea-I) 141, 142, 143
anamnetic participation 52, 55, Christ-figures 3, 168n3
100–2, 135 Christology 26–7, 44
liturgical 4, 6, 40, 44, 50, 51, 52, 53, cinematic
56, 100–2, 103, 104, 109, 113, analogue 3, 19, 20, 21, 25, 34, 35
132, 152, 153, 154, 171–2n11 apparatus 81–2, 102
subject’s analytic 4, 6, 40, 44, 50, 51, discourse 79, 83–4, 86–7, 90–3, 95,
52, 53, 56, 100–2, 103, 104, 109, 104–14, 129, 130, 144, 148
111, 152, 171n11 identification 47, 80, 82
Apollo Theatre, Manchester 1 language 39, 67, 167n3
archetypes (Jungian) 158 narrative 62, 75, 82, 151
ARCIC 171–2n11 One-Like 129, 142
Aristotelian philosophy 48 ‘other’ 59–62, 75, 95, 114–30
Augustine 171n5, 178n10 perspective 80–2
auteur realism 11, 66, 67, 69
filmmaker as 21–5 ‘reality’ 5, 58, 59, 75, 155
theory 22 representation 4, 81, 102, 112,
authorial intent 24 162, 166
autonomy 20–1, 30, 36 sexual subject 127
signifier 113
B-movie narratives 1 star/hero as the ‘other’ of 4, 42,
Bale, Christian 156 59–62, 95
Bazinian realism 12, 19, 85, 86, 91 ‘cinematographic language’ 68
Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) 48, 171n6 cinesemiotics 68
Bergman, Ingrid 133 codes (of discourse) 84, 85–6, 92
Bewitched (TV sitcom) 159–60 Communism 60, 64, 65, 70
212 Subject Index

connotation 39 erotic attraction (hetero-/homo-) 132,

construction 135, 136–8, 143, 152
liturgical identity/subjectivity 15, 17, ethnography 30
19, 95, 130, 155 Eucharist 19, 40, 43, 46, 48, 50, 54, 55,
of the individual 80 56, 135, 145
religious identity 2, 5, 90, 93, 95, 129 as image of Christ 48
spectator identity 2 politicized 56, 173n15
subject identity 3, 90, 92, 103, 119, union with Christ 44
161, 162 Eucharistic
transcended subject 92 prayer of remembrance 40, 44, 52
Crosby, Bing 133–6, 137, 138, 139, 141, sacramental theology 46, 55, 56,
182n1 171–2n11
Exodus 50
De Mille, Cecil B. 9 exorcism 144, 146
De Niro, Robert 137
denotation 39 female Hollywood stars 128
Depp, Johnny 163 Feminist
Dillon, Marshall 60 critique (of Lacan), 180–1n33
disavowal/negation 5, 6, 95, 98, 99, film theory 127–8, 181n38
104, 123, 129, 130, 131, 132, and the male gaze (voyeuristic) 127
134, 135, 138, 139–41, 142, Ferrell, Will 159–60
143, 152, 177n8 film noir 25–6
of sexual fulfilment 6 film star (defined) 4, 59–60, 135
discourse(s) of desire 6, 131, 132, as fictional representation 128, 136
150, 154 filmic space 81, 113
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 23 Fonda, Henry 59, 148
dream Ford, John 150
as metaphor of desire 104, 110, 112 Ford, Harrison 63
structure of a/the sentence 107, 108 formation of the faithful 44, 47, 54,
Dufrenne, Mikel 14 56, 153
Freud, Sigmund 94, 97, 100, 101,
Eastern Orthodox Churches 55 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111,
ego, the 69, 95, 98, 100, 119, 123, 115–16, 118
124, 125 dream as rebus (picture puzzle) 107
as Imaginary function 124 dream work (condensation/
genetic theory of 114–15 displacement) 108, 179n24
narcissistic structure of 114, 125 Fort-da game 111
Ego psychology 94 incest taboo 105
Eisenstein, Sergei 24 Interpretation of Dreams, The 110
Eliade, Mircea 14 jealousy (normal, projected,
Ephron, Nora and Della 160 delusional) 117–19, 126,
Episcopal/ecclesial 134, 136
authority 6, 41, 44, 47, 52, 54, 153 narcissism 116
(ideological) ‘reality’ 4, 41, 44, pleasure principle 105, 106,
46, 52, 53–7, 130, 132, 143, 178–9n20
150–4
priest as representative of 47 gegenwärtigen (making present) 172n12
 Subject Index 213

Hawks, Howard 85 with priest 4, 5, 44, 56, 61, 132–43,

Heideggerian Thomism 49 148
heirophany 14 with ‘transcendental subject’ 81, 92
Heisenberg principle 177n9 with represented ‘other’ 4, 5, 27, 44
hermeneutic of suspicion 155, 166 worshipper’s solipsistic 141, 142,
Hero’s Journey, the 156–7, 158–9 143, 149
heteronomy 20, 29, 30, 36 ideological effect 128, 181n42
High Scholasticism 45, 48–9 Ideological State Apparatuses 82
Highmore, Freddie 162 ideology 2, 4, 35, 58–60, 63–4, 67–70,
Hollywood 26, 35, 59, 60, 61, 63, 65, 74, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 91–2, 127,
70, 73, 82, 87, 151, 159 128, 158
Hollywood realism (ideological implied reader 31
‘reality’ of) 4, 42, 59, 66–75, impression of reality 96, 103, 114, 126
102, 127, 159 cinematic 5, 16, 40, 58, 68, 69, 79,
Holy Name, Church of the 1 81, 91, 92, 93, 95–104, 151
homoerotic pleasure 128 participation in 100–2, 151
hope 143, 144, 145, 149, 150, 162, 163 subjective 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101,
Hope, Bob 133 102, 106, 108, 111, 113, 114,
Hugh of St Cher (d. 1263) 48 129–30, 131, 151
Hugh of St Victor (d. 1141) 48 in nomine totius populi 41, 44, 46, 50,
135, 136, 146, 147
iconoclast controversy, the 39, 50 in persona Christi 41, 44, 45, 47, 50, 135,
iconoclasts 39 136
Constantine V (iconoclast interpellation 69, 82, 84, 91,
emperor) 39, 48 174–5n1
iconophiles 39 Irons, Jeremy 136, 138
John of Damascus 40 Islam 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74
Theodore of Studios 40 as Other 72
identification 132 Islamist
dialectic of 117, 124 militants 63, 64–5
imaginary 83, 91 terrorist 70, 71, 72, 73
mechanisms of 112, 114–30
pseudo-identification 5, 80, 83, Jackanory 162
92–3, 103–4, 122, 131, 132, Jesus 18
134, 138, 143, 144, 155, 161 Jesus-figures 27, 168n3
spectator’s solipsistic 102, 113,
129, 142 Khomeini, Ayatollah 71, 74
with an other 27, 92 Kidman, Nicole 159–61
with cinematic ‘other’ 5, 27, Kieslowski, Krzysztof 14
95, 103 Kracaur, Siegfried 14
with cinematic signifier 92 Kuleshov, Lev; the ‘Kuleshov effect’
with female Hollywood stars 128 4, 146
with film star/actor 61, 62, 75, 80,
103, 127, 133, 151, 155, 160, 161 Lacan, Jacques 5, 68, 69, 70, 79, 83,
with liturgical ‘other’ 41, 44–7, 56, 86, 87–90, 94–130, 141, 142,
75, 132 144, 151–2, 173nn1–2,
with noir protagonist 27 175–83passim
214 Subject Index

Lacanian psychoanalysis 103, 104, 109, 114, 115, 116, 123,

alienation/separation 115, 117, 126, 127, 129, 130, 134, 142, 151,
119–21, 131, 134, 141, 143, 152 152, 163, 164, 177n2
aphanisis (fading of the subject) 121 imaginary projection 124–6
auto-eroticism 116 imago (of the specular ‘other’) 5, 95,
captation 114, 117, 179n25 97–100, 106, 109, 123, 124, 129,
complex(es) 95–6, 97–100, 106, 131, 177n3
109, 129 captation by 114
intrusion, Oedipus and function in formation of ego 123
weaning 98, 114, 117, 123–4, of the fragmented body 115
125, 129 of the nurturing relationship 98, 99
representational nature of paternal, maternal and
97–100, 107 fraternal 97, 125
condensation/displacement 108, relation to complex(es) 107, 109
109, 110, 113, 114, 122, 128, infans (pre-linguistic stage) 115, 123
144, 148, 153 interpretation 110
desire intersubjectivity 117
discourse of 5, 6, 131, 132, 134 jealousy 117–19, 134, 136, 177n8
for lost object 110, 112 jouissance 85, 90, 105, 182–3n12
fundamental 105 lack 83, 86, 113, 119, 120, 121, 122
imaginary object of 104, 106, law 105, 173n1
108–9 laws
of the Other 109, 110, 111, 113, of condensation and
119, 121–2, 130, 134, 137–8 displacement 98, 104, 106, 107,
subject’s (unconscious discourse 108, 109, 111, 112, 121, 126, 129,
of) 110, 113, 132 177n5
to repeat the trauma of metaphor and metonymy 106,
(homeostasis) 111, 113 107, 121
dream-image 104, 108, 109 of the signifier 110, 112, 113, 134,
as rebus (picture puzzle) 107 148, 179n22
understood as signifier 108, 110 of the unanchored signifier 111
dream-work 179n22 libido 115–17
ego-ideal 123–6, 135 linguistic theory of dreams 5, 79, 93,
énoncé (subject/content of statement 95, 104–14
or utterance) 83, 86 lost breast (as objet petit a) 105, 129
énonciation (the act of stating or manque-à-être (lack-of-being) 120
uttering) 83, 86 Master-Slave dialectic (Hegel/
fantasy 180n27 Kojève) 117, 120, 124, 180n28
gaze, the 88, 176n12 mirror stage 80, 97, 109, 110, 112,
gaze/look (narcissistic pleasure 114–21, 123–4, 176n8, 177n8
in) 125, 134–5, 138 (m)Other 121–2, 134
Gestalt 115, 119, 123, 124 name of the father (le nom du père/le
homeostasis 111 non du père) 158, 163,
Ideal-I (ideal-ego) 115, 119, 123–6, 183–4n2
129, 130, 134, 135, 143, 150 objet petit a 88–9, 90, 104–6, 109,
Imaginary (order), the 5, 69, 80, 83, 129, 142, 178n16, 178–9n20,
91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 182–3n12
 Subject Index 215

Oedipus complex 125–6, 163 Symbolic (order), the 70, 80, 90, 95,
on psychosis 94, 118 96, 97, 99, 104, 109, 114, 115,
One-Like (imago of) 95, 118, 123, 123, 151, 152, 163, 164, 177n2
125, 126, 130 symbolic introjection 124–6
paranoia 117–19 theory of
paranoiac knowledge (connaissance the complexes 95
paranoïaque) 117–19, 134, subjectivity/subject
177n8, 180n30 construction 93, 95, 103
phallus 121–2, 134, 180n32 subject identity 95
phantasy 112 Thing, the (das Ding) 90, 104–6,
pleasurable association 103, 104, 176n13, 182–3n12
105, 109, 111, 112, 113, 129, 142, transitivism 117–19, 123
144, 150, 163 unconscious 120
pleasure 104, 111, 165 desire 5, 95, 112–14, 129, 131,
Real (order), the 69, 91, 92, 95, 96, 143, 144, 149, 150, 153
97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, discourse of 112–13
109, 110–12, 123, 124, 129, 134, royal way of, the 109
150, 177n2, 177n6 structured as a language 94
as impossible 90, 141, 177n9, word/speech (full and/or
182–3n12 empty) 132, 151–4
as psychic trauma 95, 97, 98, 99, Lacanian psycholinguistics 92, 106,
102, 103, 109, 111, 112, 129, 178n10
139–40, 142, 177n6 Lee, Christopher 163
encounter with the real Legion of Decency 9
(tuché) 111, 112 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 178n10
funds subject’s truth 99 Light of the World, The (Hunt) 23
shock of 98, 99, 109, 111 liturgical
unconscious refusal of 5, 96, 98, conception of history 50
99, 129 participation 135
remainder 104 representation 43–57, 79, 93, 101,
repetition (of the dream) 111–12 131, 132, 138, 141, 146, 147, 155
return to Freud 94 Eucharistic 40–1
rim, the 119–20 hierarchical nature of 46, 54, 153
S/s (structure of the sign) 107, 119 in nomine totius populi 41, 44,
scoptophilic drives 125 46, 50
signified 39, 82, 101, 107, 108 in persona Christi 41, 44, 45, 47, 50
signifier 39, 82, 83, 84, 101, 107, of Christ 48
108–10, 120, 131, 134 priest as 4, 5, 19, 41, 43, 132–43,
specular image 113, 136, 138, 143 138, 143
specular other 114, 115, 129, 130, with Christ (as Ideal-I) 141, 142
134, 144 subject 6, 19, 132, 143
splitting (of the subject – Spaltung ) subjectivity 19, 41, 131
119, 121, 126 liturgy
subject’s history 101, 113, 152 catechetical aspects of 53
subject’s truth (analytical truth) 96, medium of representation 4
99–100, 101, 102, 105, 151 Lucas, George 156
superego 124, 125, 126 Lumière, Auguste and Louis 9
216 Subject Index

McNeill, Father John 139–41, 142, Oompa-Loompas 164

182n9 ‘ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary
Maids of Honour, The (Velázquez) 85 situation’ 59, 62–6
Malden, Karl 147 Other/other, the 65, 75, 109, 132, 150,
Marx, Karl 90 153, 173n2
Marxism (Althusserian) 3, 58, 90, 91, fear/threat of 62, 65, 70, 74, 75
92, 173n1, 174n10 field of 109, 120, 121
materialist cinema 58 imago of 143
Mass, the 1, 29, 52, 53, 56, 135, 145, minority ethnic 72
146, 150, 154, (m)Other 121–2, 134
sacrifice of 43, 50 Muslim 75
May–June 1968 58, 174n10 prehistoric (impossible to
media of representation forget) 105
(representational media) 4, 18, ‘our’ American way 59, 75, 151
19, 56, 75 Ozu, Yasujiro 12
Méliès, Georges 9
memory 50–1, 101–2 participation 132
metaphor 104, 109, 145, 179n21 anamnetic 52, 55, 100–2, 135
metaphysics of presence 48–9, 68 external and internal (volition and
Bazinian idealist 68 intellect) 54, 135, 136, 149, 153
metonymy 82, 108, 109, in Episcopal (ideological) ‘reality’ 6,
122, 179n21 41, 53–7, 132, 153
midrash 22 in ideological ‘reality’ 4, 5, 27, 44,
Milligan, Spike 6 58, 62, 66–75, 151, 155, 159,
monomyth 156, 158 162, 164
Montgomery, Elizabeth 160 in sacramental narrative 4, 43, 50,
Mounier, Emmanuel 167n3 51, 52, 75, 151
mysterium fascinans 32–3 in sacramental ‘reality’ 49–50, 132,
mysterium tremendum 13, 32–3 152, 154
in salvation narrative 52–3, 56
narcissistic 5, 95, 115, 125, 136 in the sacrifice of Christ 43
confusion 95, 130, 138, 143 in sacrifice of the cross 40, 54, 152
desire 155 Passover 50
identification 114, 115–17, 126, Personalism 167n3
131, 134 phenomenology 69
intrusion 125 photographic ontology 16, 39, 66–7
(mis)representation 132 point-of-view shot (shot/reverse-
structure of the ego 114, 125 shot) 80, 82, 83–4, 88, 92, 113,
narrative 175nn6–7
space 2, 4, 5, 79, 80–2, 92, 93, 95, Poitier, Sidney 72–2, 174n13
102–3, 113, 127, 129, 155 post-Cold War ‘terrorist hi-jack’
suture 132 films 4, 58, 61, 62, 66, 70,
negation/disavowal (see disavowal/ 72, 73
negation) postmodern condition, the 155
Nicene Creed, the 52 Post-Theory 34–5, 87–9, 176n12
numinous 13 Powell, Robert 18, 19
 Subject Index 217

Presbyterorum ordinis (Decree on the comparable cultural

Ministry and Life of Priests, phenomenon 30
Vatican II document) 135, limits to the parallel 16
139, 153 longstanding conflict 9
priest 4, 19 paralleled 4–5, 11, 16, 36, 39–40,
as Ideal-I 135, 136, 138, 141, 143 41, 47, 61, 75, 131, 136, 143, 151
as liturgical ‘other’ 41, 44–7 and literature (interrelation of) 20
as signifier of Episcopal/ecclesial religious film analysis 5, 6, 27, 28, 155,
authority 153 156, 165–6
as specular image 138 anthropological interpretation (film
configured to Christ 45, 53, 135, 139 as religion/religious
in nomine totius populi 41, 44, 46, 50, practice) 4, 10, 28–36
61–2, 135, 136 emerging orthodoxy 19, 25, 27
in persona Christi 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, literary interpretation (film as
50, 61–2, 135, 136 literature) 4, 10, 20–7
priest’s duty 44, 47, 54 methodological weakness 3, 34
priestly representation 19, 41, 43, 44, phenomenological interpretation
45, 46, 47, 53, 54, 56, 135, 153 (film as sacrament) 4, 10, 11–19
as fictional 136, 141, 142, 152, 154 religious identity 47, 90, 93, 95, 131, 142
pro-filmic theory 33 re-member 6, 56, 152, 154, 161
Protestant cinematic Representation (Repräsentation:
sacramentalism 12 ‘standing in for’) 167n4
Protestantism, Cinematic/filmic 11, 19 representation (Darstellung: ‘depicting’
psychoanalysis 3, 35, 79, 80, 89, or ‘presenting’) 167n4
150, 173n1 representation
psychoanalytic film theory 5, 25, 26, 34, of reality 58, 69
79, 92, 95, 101, 126, 129, of reference (the signified) 50
131, 155, 176–7n14 of signification (the signifier) 50
Pudovkin, V. I. 24 return to Lacan 6, 90, 93, 129, 131
reversing the hermeneutical flow
Quattrocento 81, 85–6, 91, 92, (Kreitzer) 22–3
174–5n1 Richardson-Nolan, Marion 6
Rogers, Roy (‘King of the
Rahner, Karl 49 Cowboys’) 60
Rambo 60 Rogers, Will 60, 128
reader-response approach 23, 33 Rohmer, Eric 14, 66
realism (Hollywood/cinematic) 4, 5, Roman Catholic
11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 40, 41, 42, 59, spirituality 43
70, 72, 75 theology 43
realist representation 58, 68 Roman Pontiff, Vicar of Christ 47
reality 40, 96–8 Romans 7, 23
imaginary 96–7, 98–100, 102–4
redeemer-figures 25 sacrament
religion (Geertz’ definition of) 29 Augustine’s definition 48
religion Martos’ functional definition
(liturgy) and film 36 47–8, 50
218 Subject Index

sacramental 67–70, 72, 75, 80, 83, 86–7, 91,

language 49–50 102, 112, 127, 128, 155
narrative (of Christ/of the Cross) 6, as voyeur 81
41, 43, 44, 47–53, 75, 93, 131, female spectatorship 127
132, 144, 148, 151, 153, 154 star/hero (as the ‘other’) 4, 42, 59–62,
‘reality’ 6, 49, 50 95, 129
theology 46, 48, 49 stasis 131
sacramentum et res 48, 49 subject/subjectivity
sacrifice cinematic/spectating 41, 86, 92
of Christ 43 construction 5, 19, 54, 58, 103
of the cross 43, 53 identity 75, 79
of the Mass 43 liturgical 19, 41, 143, 150
Sacrosanctum concilium (Vatican II spectating 113, 114, 130
document) 54 suturing of 79, 83–7, 93
Schillebeeckx, Edward 49, 171n9 submission of volition and intellect
Schleiermacher, Freidrich 35 (desires and thoughts) 54, 55,
Scorsese, Martin 26, 167n2 56, 149, 153
Screen, (British film journal) 2, 21, 41, suture 2, 4, 5, 79, 80, 82, 90, 91,
58, 59, 67–8, 69–70, 79, 80, 87, 92, 93, 95, 103, 104, 112,
103, 127, 165, 174n10, 178n10 113, 114–30, 131, 175n4,
theoretical mix 3 179–80n26
Screen problematic 2, 3, 5, 36, 155 failure of suture 87–90, 176n12
Screen theory 34, 35, 165 neo-Lacanian concept of 5, 80, 82,
Second Vatican Council, the 95, 114, 175n4
(Vatican II, 1962–65) 9, 43, sutured (stitched) 66, 83, 132
49, 171–2n11 into cinematic narrative 4, 65, 75,
semiotic incarnation 46 79, 112, 151, 155, 161, 164
semiotics 3, 35, 67, 85 into sacramental narrative 4,
of the cinema 68 41, 44, 47, 53, 75, 143, 148,
theory of representation 39 150, 153
Sennett, Mack 133 into the signifying chain 113,
sentiment 33, 34, 35 146, 148
signified 39, 82, 101, 107, 108 suturing identity
signifier 39, 82, 83, 84, 101, 107, with cinematic ‘other’ 114–30
108, 150 with liturgical ‘other’ 144
defined 109 religious 53
as metaphor of desire 110 system of suture 84, 175nn6–7
signifying chain 6, 92, 95, 104, 108,
109–10, 113, 114, 132, 144, 146, Tarkovsky, Andrey 14
147, 148, 150, 154 Tel Quel 178n10
signifying practice 39, 40–1, 169n1 Temple, Shirley 60, 128
liturgy as 41 theology/religion-film dialogue 33
Smith, Kate 128–9 theonomy 20
Sobrino, Jon 183n19 transcendental style 12–13, 19
Soviet satellites 63–4, 65 transcendental subject 81–2, 92,
spectator 2, 4, 12–13, 14, 16–19, 24, 27, 102, 151
28, 40, 41–2, 50, 54, 59, 60–2, transubstantiation 170–1n4
 Subject Index 219

Trent, the Council of (1545–63) vorstellung(en) 98, 106, 109, 111–12,

170–1n4, 171–2n11 121, 129, 178n19
tuché (Aristotle) 111 vorstellungsrepräsentanz 106, 111, 121
voyeurism 127
un(yet-to-be-)spoken narrative 96,
103, 151 Wallon, Henri 68
Washington, Denzel 65, 73, 174n13
vergegenwärtigung 172n12 Wayne, John 60
verschiebung 108 Welles, Orson 22, 88
visual story (film as) 3, 20, 168n1 Willis, Bruce 60–1, 62, 135
volition (and intellect) 4, 55, Wholly Other 13
149, 153 worshipper 2, 4, 5, 6, 18, 40–1, 44,
von Sydow, Max 18, 19 46, 47, 50–4, 56, 75, 150