CHRIS MARKER'S LA JETÉE

The psychoanalytic, Feminist, and Philosophical Aspects of Chris Marker's La Jetée

The psychoanalytic, Feminist, and Philosophical Aspects of Chris Marker's La Jetée

Psychoanalytic film theory, despite its relatively late development, has become one of the most widely practiced theoretical approaches to cinema studies today. This is largely owing to the fact that psychoanalysis and film technology were born in the same era, and essentially grew up together. Thus, as cinema quickly came to focus on ways of rendering subjective experiences--the innermost psychological depths of the characters it portrayed--it naturally drew upon the newest conception of subjectivity offered in the field of psychology, namely the psychoanalytic conception of it. La Jetée is a French film of science fiction of Chris Marker, released in 1962 and lasting 28 minutes. Psychoanalytic reading of The La Jetee that offers the author seeks to show how the trial described in poetic fiction film can be touching, in the imaginary dietetic, a piece of real.

Psychoanalytic film theory unmasks the psychic mechanisms functioning in the unconscious of: filmmakers, characters, viewing audiences, and specific instances of cinematic discourse. In the remainder of this discussion, I will demonstrate how the last three variations of psychoanalytic film theory can expose the machinations of the unconscious as they are at work in the central character, the audience, and the cinematic discourse of Chris Marker's La Jetée. (I won't presume to venture any guesses as to what is on Marker's unconscious mind).

This part of the paper presents a philosophical, feminist, and psychoanalytic aspects of Chris Marker's La Jetée working in part as a metaphor for cinema while questioning multiple boundaries and definitions, including that of cinema itself (boundary 2, Volume 28, Number 1, Spring 2001, Duke University Press, pp. 75-90). In what sense is La Jetée a “film,” anyway? It is composed of 28 minutes of montaged photographs, with one brief, blink-of-an-eye (literally) exception. Friedlander locates this exception to the film's formal rules as part of its key. Consciousness and unconsciousness are integral to life and to cinema, to say nothing of the film's narrative content. In a word, the film has us “look” at the “gaze.” This is not a Mulveyan gaze, but more like the gaze of cinema. Of most essential import is, can the gaze return itself? Can a film return the gaze of the spectator? As a production - a reproduction - and an artifact that creates the impression of movement intended for viewing, one might consider it non-real, unreal. Friedlander forces the issue, however, probing the ramifications of our prejudices concerning “the real.”

By way of introducing the topic of feminist film theory, I will draw upon the work of Laura Mulvey, whose seminal essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," set the highest standards of academic rigor for all subsequent work in this field. In this essay, Mulvey demonstrates that the visual pleasure (i.e., the joy of watching) that audiences derive from classic Hollywood cinema is simply an extension of the way our culture has joyfully envisioned the ...