story idea: animation, alien is alone on his planet, sees there is a family of aliens on a different planet laughing together and having fun, alien sees them and becomes sad. alien starts thinking about his own family wondering where they are. he notices a star in the distance, as he gets closer the star starts shining down onto his planet at an object. the alien finds a phone that the star was shining on. the ancestree app is on the phone. the alien uses it and finds family members that then join him on his planet.
visual pleasure and narrative cinema 1975
she argues that hollywood/mainstream/narrative cinema manipulates visual pleasure. it 'codes the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order'
scopophilia = pleasure/obsession in looking
Jacques Lacan was a french psychoanalyst. he gained an international reputation as an original interpreter of Freud's work. Lacan believed that ordinary consciousness can legitimately be aware only of its own incapacity. Lacan's desire refers always to unconscious desire because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of psychoanalysis.
the mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. this was his first contribution to psychoanalysis which he described as "psychoanalytic experience". by the early 1950s, he came to regard the mirror stage as more than a moment in the life of the infant; instead, it formed part of the permanent structure of subjectivity. it refers to childhood, a toddler looking in the mirror helps them to shape their identity.
Lacan's theory of Lack poses that people who are missing something in their lives become increasingly more obsessed with it until it becomes the only thing they value. the lack has a different effect on the mind, given that there are three different lacks; imaginary phallus/symbolic castration, the real breast/imaginary frustration, symbolic phallus/real privation.
the three orders is a concept by Lacan:
- the imaginary: is created in the ego during the mirror stage. when an infant passes through a stage in which the external body is shown, this image produces a psychic response that leads to a mental representation of the infant.
- the symbolic: this is where the "father figure" comes in. the child is faced with the reality of the lack because it realises that it will never be the ideal desire of the mother. the idea of the 'lack' is essential to the symbolic order.
- the real: at the limit of symbolic order, the real is the unknown. for instance, if an accident occurs, we create an explanation of that accident, but that explanation itself is not the real anymore. the real can not be explained through language.
Sigmund Freud was the founding father psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and also a theory which explains human behaviour. he believed that events that happen in our childhood help to shape personalities and influence adult life.
freud developed a topographical model of the mind in (1900), whereby he described the features of the mind's structure and function:
- the conscious: the small amount of mental activity we know about
- the subconscious: things we could be aware of if we wanted or tried
- the unconscious: things we are unaware of and can not become aware of
later (1923), freud developed a more structural model of the mind with id, ego and superego which have been most commonly conceptualised as three essential parts of the human personality.
the id is the unorganised part of the personality structure that contains a humans basic, instinctual drives. it is the only component of personality that is present from birth. it is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires and impulses, particularly our sex and aggression drives.
the ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with the reality. just as the id is the unconscious part of the human personality, the ego is the conscious and logical part. the ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious and unconscious mind. it operates on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id's desires in realistic, logically and in socially appropriate ways.
the superego is the component of personality that provides guidelines for making judgements. it represents the norms and qualities of the individual, his family and the society and is an ethical constraint on the behaviour. the superego operates on the moral principles and is able to differentiate between good and bad, what is right and wrong.
the id, ego and superego are inter-related. in order to create a normal personality, there must be a proper balance in the relationship among these three forces.
Black Swan (2010) is a movie that treats freud's theory in an artistic way. it shows a lot of elegance and sexuality. it represents the freudian theory of human personality in distinctive ways by using different kinds of relationships and by looking from different perspectives. around the end of the movie, it is shown that all the psychological conflicts and fights with the other characters was Nina's fight with 'her selfs' and her passion to perform the role of the black swan perfectly which requires to be her rebellious and seductive self represents the id. her dance teacher in the movie thinks she is beautiful, fragile and fearful as the white swan should be, but the black swan is the evil sister who seduces the love of the white swan, she has to be passionate, seductive and impressive.
