Psychology of Spectatorship - Psychoanalytic Approach to Media Analysis

elective courses

Main objectives of the course:

 Analyzing the media content according to the main concepts of

Psychoanalytic Field of Psychology as well as gaining the ability to

apply the core Psychoanalytical Theories into a discussion about

broadcast productions, cinematography, informative programs,

advertisements, computer games and other present forms of

audiovisual communication.

 Identify the aim of authors‘ strategies introduced in currently

produced, ubiquitous media as well as formulate their possible effects

on spectators.

 Identify and apply the main psychoanalytical techniques in „the

science of storytelling“ via varied media platforms: interactive and

social media, non-linear storytelling, digital and parallel

communication, etc.

Watching a movie is a viscerally appealing experience – not only on a

sensory and perceptual level* but also on a higher stage of cognitive

processing, which involves understanding of audio-visual communication,

semantic interpretation of content, reasoning and making inferences. We

are responsive to a movie not only in a cognitive way but also on an

emotional level – audience experience a heightened states of arousal

while viewing an audio-visual creation or performance, as well as easily

integrate / identify with characters and images perceivable through

screen or stage. That makes film a substantially suggestive medium. The

impact of audio-visual messages communicated to us via varied media

platforms (radio or television broadcast, cinema industry, digital

visualizations, internet, social and interactive applications) shapes our

attitudes, emotional responses, interpretations as well as decision

making.

However, these influential contents are often based on the

classical threads that we know already since our childhood, and which

have been aptly defined by the psychoanalytic theorists. Stories, that we

watch and follow, refer often to our previous experiences activating

memories, primal fears, unconscious issues and unexpressed desires.

Through the lense of those activated psychological constructs are the

media messages received and further interpreted. The course Psychology

of Spectatorship - Psychoanalytic Approach to Media Analysis aims in

highlighting the psychoanalytic theories, notions and techniques that can

help us analyze how the surrounding media are being shaped and how do

they shape us, the spectators.

Film and psychoanalysis have always been considered as siblings – the

birth and development of early cinema coincided with a renaissance in

psychoanalytic theory. The primary source and inspiration for many

prominent film theorists (for example Christian Metz, who pioneered the

application of semiology to film) was Jacques Lacan and, to a further

extent, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Psychoanalitical school has provided

a very useful toolset for discussing the relationship between cinema and

the spectatorship. The analogy between these two domains has been

primarily built up through the metaphor of dream work** , in which

stories told via images constitute a “royal road to the unconscious” (S.

Freud): "Psychoanalytic film theory emphasizes the notion of production

in its description, considering the viewer as a kind of desiring producer of

the cinematic fiction. According to this idea, then, when we watch a film it

is as if we were somehow dreaming it as well; our unconscious desires

work in tandem with those that generated the film-dream.” (Robert

Clyde Allen, 1992)

(** notice an exemplary analogy between the Freudian theory of „dreamwork”

and the name of the Steven Spielberg’s studio „DreamWorks”,

which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and

television programming)

Everyone learns the customs of the culture (s)he grows up in. In our case

and in the case of our children – we learn the stories and threads mostly

through our current audio-visual culture. However Lacan inverted this

statement claiming that we are rather spoken by the culture itself and

that our sense of self is formed through the actions and messages of

others, thus through our encounters with the culture. The process of

identity formation is being deeply enriched by our engagement with

media: we are shaping and being shaped, we are what we watch and

hear, we are what we make and say. Underpinned theoretically by the

concepts form the Lacanian psychoanalysis, a serious discourse appears

concerning the parallel roles of film spectatorship: we, the viewers, are

the receivers and the producers in the same time.

The reciprocity of theoretical feeds between the Film Theory and the

Psychoanalysis is being nowadays extended by professor William Indick

who investigates the theoretical basis of psychoanalysis as a timber for

constructing a conflict in a film scenario, in a theatrical script, within the

content of media message or other creative storytelling (see the list of

topics for the relevance). In the era of new, rich media, ubiquitous

interactivity and interconnectivity, multiple and parallel channels of

communication, psychologists has more and more responsibilities in

defining the mechanisms within the relationship between the media

content and the spectator. Taking advantage of the elaborated theories

within the broad heritage of the psychoanalytic school, the new

generation of psychologists – rising up together with vividly developed

rich media platforms – have a great potential for delivering substantial

knowledge and conclusions on the attitudes, tendencies or difficulties,

that spectators must nowadays deal with. Another premise of the course

is to foster the cooperation between future psychologists and the media

makers (scenarists, creative strategists, filmmakers and graphic designers)

by accentuating the psychoanalytical analysis of the media content and its

reception.

Applying the psychoanalytic approach to the film and media

communication, as well as to the structures of a plot, story and

characters, can elevate the appropriateness of the messages intended to

a particular target public, make them more effective and resonant. The

engagement of theoretical input from the psychologists’ side into the

processes of media creation is nowadays highly demanded.

* see also the course content „Visual Perception of Film and Media” given

in previous years.

Bibliography

Recommended:

Indick, W. (2004). Psychology for Screenwriters: Building

Psychological Conflict in Your Script. Studio City, CA: Michael

Wiese Productions, Inc. Publishers.

Additional reading:

Smith, P. 2005, Inner Drives: How to write and create characters

using the eight classic centers of motivation. Studio City,

Michael Wiese Productions.

Indick, W. (2004). Movies and the Mind: Theories of the Great

Psychoanalysts Applied to Film. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &

Company, Inc. Publishers.

Zizek, Slavoj, 1993, Everything You Always Wanted to Know

About Lacan... But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, London:

Verso.

Zizek, Slavoj, 2008. Enjoy Your Symptom. London: Routledge.

Booker, C. (2004) The seven basic plots, why we tell stories. NY:

Continuum. Butler, C. (2007)

Ke-Ming Lin, "The Lacanian spectator: Lacanian psychoanalysis

and the cinema" (January 1, 2007). Electronic Doctoral

Dissertations for UMass Amherst. Paper AAI3275744.

http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3275744

D. Grodin and T. Lindlof, Constructing the Self in a Mediated

World, Sage, 1996.

Students are expected to have learned after successfully

completing the course:

 Mastering the core concepts of Psychoanalytical School relevant to

the film and media analysis as well as being able to apply those into a

discussion and analysis of the media content.

 Being able to identify the creative strategy of media creators while

analysing a particular casus (a film, a TV show, a computer game, an

audio-visual performance) as well as to identify the technique that

has been used in order to realize such strategy. Subsequently: being

able to compose own strategy while working on a content of an

informative communication, commercial media campaign or on an

artistic audio-visual performance.

 Understanding the difference that the media content makes on

spectatorship while being communicated via different media forms,

e.g.: social media, nonlinear storytelling, digital and parallel

communication, interactive film, augmented reality and semianimated)

book, etc.

Students will be obliged to fulfill the following tasks. Each task will be

separately evaluated

 Written exam:

At the end of the course students will be obliged to take a short,

theoretical test. The test will consist 30 (15 closed and 15 open)

questions concerning the basic terms and concepts from the

psychoanalytic school. In some questions students will be asked to

apply a psychoanalytic theory or a technique to a practical problem

from the media creative domain to solve the casus. The maximum

score for the test is 30 points

 Two practical assignments (homework):

There will be two obligatory pieces of homework, which will be based

on information provided by the instructor during the class. It will

concern a small analysis of a problem (introduced during the class),

which students will have to individually transfer and apply to another

example (casus) form the media domain. Students will subsequently

present and explain their work to the rest of a group of students. Each

presentation should be followed up by a group discussion. The

maximum score for these two tasks is 20 points.

Grading system:

43 - 50 points = grade A

44 - 42 points = grade B

35 - 43 points = grade C

26 - 34 points = grade D

< 25 points = grade F – failed

Attendance rules

No more than 2 unexcused absences are allowed