The Cinematic Body
English · University of Minnesota Press · 1993
ISBN PB 9780816622948 · HB 9780816622931 · eBook 9780816685271 / 9781452902494Verify editionO corpo cinemático
Trans. Anna Carolina Negrini Fagundes Martino · PAULUS · 2015
ISBN 9788534941365Core question
Is film viewing first an act of interpretation, or a direct incursion of images into eyes, nerves, muscles, and desire? Can movement, sound, and intensity alter the spectator before meaning is mastered?
Argument
Shaviro releases the spectator from a position fully fixed by apparatus, ideology, or Lacanian lack and describes an unavoidable contact between image and body. Film becomes a material event that seduces and violates, imposes passivity, and produces desire. By joining Deleuzian image ontology to affect and postmodern culture, the book opened a major route toward studies of cinematic embodiment, politics of sensation, and intensity.
Argument structure
The introduction's dispute with psychoanalytic film theory concerns how the spectator's position is formed. The film analyses connect viewing rhythm, disgust, pleasure, and bodily persistence: images alter sensation and desire before the spectator necessarily masters their meaning. Radical passivity becomes central to the relation between image and body.