In the article of “leaving the movie theater”, it makes readers to think of the role of cinema in the contemporary society. The title indicates that author wants to describe the experience of watching movie at cinema and he emphasizes on the darkness of the theater that brings audience into a dim, anonymous and indifferent cube. In my opinion, this darkness can give audience a sense of being, engagement in the film. Compared with watching movie at home, the familiar space and darkness is erased, people cannot make themselves into the same situation as the film character, the darkness in

Continue readingReading Response: Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes Rustle of Language is a brief yet embellished short essay on the cinema movie viewing experience. Throughout the paper Barthes strongly emphasises the importance of the cinema as an active element in the movie-viewing experience. Barthes argues the cinema is not merely the physical structure in which an audience views a movie, but rather, through its physical characteristics (the englobing darkness, the “amorous” distance between the audience and the screen and the pluralist nature of being in an audience) it’s able contribute to “hypnotising” the spectator, making it view the movie in a semi-concious trance-like state, which in

Continue readingReading Response: Roland Barthes

A film can narrate, and so as space, which makes the audience’s perception more real. In the theatre, the audience is exposed to more information. For example, it starts from ‘darkness’, allowing the audience to gradually enter the ‘hypnosis’ set by the film, as well as the huge screen and surround sound. This visual and auditory information strengthens the sense of immersion. The theatre provides a source of isolation and increases the audience’s concentration during these hours. In addition, the theatre space also brings more possibilities for the film-viewing experience. For example, as explained in the Star Trek’s documentary, when

Continue readingReading Response: Roland Barthes