The Subordination of the Camera Eye to the Human Subject

The Subordination of the Camera Eye to the Human Subject

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Film, as a medium of sight, exists primarily as a mode of representation.

By the recording of images, a perspective of reality is created and maintained

during viewing. The relation between what the camera records and what the

viewer perceives is a direct one, which is sustained through the material

assumption of the filmic reality as an actual one (The suspension of belief).

Citing examples from Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), 2001: A Space Odyssey

(Stanley Kubrick, 1968), Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929), and

Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) this paper will contend that these films

assert the prevailing domination of the human viewpoint over that of the “cineeye.”

Beginning with Psycho, an analysis of vision and subjectivity can be

composed. The themes of vision are brought up immediately. The first shot in

the film, the lowering camera gradually moving through a hotel window, evokes

familiar positions of perception that are generally associated with scopophilia.

Literally the love of sight, scopophilia is most famously explained by Freud as

vision connected with sexual desire as in the act of voyeurism. This process of

watching, along with surveillance, is a recurring perspective of analysis within the

visual framework. This famous opening shot begins high in the sky, the generally

accepted position of god, perhaps suggestive of the objective, godlike nature of

the camera as the anti-connotative creator of vision. Is this the supposed

implication? As the problem is dissected by Bela Balasz, it is impossible to

connote the objectivity of the filmic experience without simultaneously making the

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viewer aware that they were reco...

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