I have to say that I am in love with this French man’s words.
“From street to street, from poster to poster, people finally bury themselves in a dim, anonymous, indifferent cube.” Inside the cube(movie theatre), people sit in the auditorium, “by their human condensation, by their absence of worldliness, by the relaxation of postures,” with other people, experience the darkness, see the “festival of affects known as a film” projected by a beam of “visible and unperceived” light glancing off people and piercing the darkness, get into a new story showed by the image and sound inside the screen.
Outside of the movie theatre, people walk, a little confused, “coming out of hypnosis.”
From inside to outside, Barthes almost provides a whole process of watching a film. When I sort out these sentences of watching a film, I suddenly find that for me, the charm of Barthes’s words is that he magnifies the details that I have never observed or thought carefully, not only the inside atmosphere of the movie theatre but also people’s mood.
The reason I write “Barthes almost provides” is that I think there is another step of watching a film: encountering the film through audiences’ own life. The films only present the stories to viewers, so the audiences have to understand the films or stories by their insights into their own life.
–2020/02/02
This morning, I listened to a podcast, and some content mentioned in it reminded me of the movie theatre.
When it comes to church, we all think of such things as colored glass, candles, high roofs and perspective of space. All the characteristics of this space are far away from the secular world. The atmosphere inside and outside the church is completely different. You can’t help becoming calm. As soon as you enter this space, you will clearly realize that there are some things you can do in this space while there are some things you can’t do. It’s this very clear division from the outside that makes the activities inside the church create a very unique sense of cohesion and belonging for the participants. It’s this that induce the charm of church to the believer.
So does the movie theatre! When it comes to movie theatre, we all think of darkness and the projector’s beam of light. All the characteristics of this “cube” are far away from the outside world. You can’t help becoming quiet. As soon as you enter this space, you will clearly realize that there are some things you can do in this space while there are some things you can’t do. For example, you cannot talk loud. This clear division from the outside makes the activities inside the movie theatre create a very unique sense of cohesion and belonging for the audiences. It’s this that induce the charm of movie theatre, and seeing a film in the television or the computer or a phone cannot has such effects.
–2020/02/03
Jing Yan, 3035759208
Appreciate your comparison between the experience of being in a cinema to a church! I can relate how certain space (buildings, open space, etc) possesses a certain vibe and mood to the users. Barthes treats the movie theatre as an escape, an alternate world to what is “outside”, which provided him with “… the most venerable of powers: healing” (p.345). Some might find their healing in libraries, place of worships, or even the ocean, Barthes found it in the cinema. These spaces provide, as you pointed out, a distinct atmosphere that engulfs the audience and brings them into a trance (or hypnosis). An atmosphere that is inducing (if not supporting) the activity within such space: inward reflection toward oneself.