Hyunjoo Kim – 3035821427
Barthes talks about the fascination of films, the hypnosis, and the fascination to be glued. So, in order to be unglued from the film, Barthes gives two suggestions, and honestly, his two solutions are already being adopted in the present, as Netflix videos, youtube videos, Instagram stories, or Tik Tok videos are still films but very detached, distanced from the audience. This totally makes sense, we don’t feel the same way of watching a movie in a theatre than when we watch in our house, using Netflix, even though we are more comfortable in our beds with our laptops. Home cinemas are more accessible but they don’t hypnotize us; Cinemas cannot be replaced. I miss the cinema and watching movies there, particularly during this pandemic situation; I miss being hypnotized and lured into the film itself, in a seat at the cinema.
A good attempt to use examples like Netflix, youtube videos, instagram stories etc. to reflect upon experience at the movie theatre. However, your point of Barthes seeing the “hypnotic” experience as a problem and therefore suggested solutions in his text is debatable. He explained why he love it through leaving the movie theatre at the beginning – “There is something to confess: your speaker likes to leave a movie theatre. Back out on the more or less empty, more or less brightly lit sidewalk[…] he’s sleepy, that’s what he’s thinking, his body has become something sopitive, soft, limp, and he feels a little disjointed […] In other words, obviously, he’s coming out of hypnosis.” (1986, 345) You may wish to explore the ways of seeing through the “narcissistic body which gazes, lost, into the engulfing mirror” and the “perverse body, ready to fetishize not the image but precisely what exceeds it” (1986, 349) to question and discuss whether this is still applicable to the contemporary examples cited.