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The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience
Cinema is a sensuous object, but in our presence it becomes also a sensing, sensual, sense-making subject. Thus argues Vivian Sobchack as she challenges basic assumptions of current film theory that reduce film to an object of vision and the spectator to a victim of a deterministic cinematic apparatus. Maintaining that these premises ignore the material and cultural-historical situations of both the spectator and the film, the author makes the radical proposal that the cinematic experience depends on two "viewers" viewing: the spectator and the film, each existing as both subject and object of vision. Drawing on existential and semiotic phenomenology, and particularly on the work of Merleau-Ponty, Sobchack shows how the film experience provides empirical insight into the reversible, dialectical, and signifying nature of that embodied vision we each live daily as both "mine" and "another's." In this attempt to account for cinematic intelligibility and signification, the author explores the possibility of human choice and expressive freedom within the bounds of history and culture.
- GenresFilmPhilosophy
354 pages, Paperback
First published December 3, 1991
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329 people want to read
About the author
Vivian Sobchack
21 books14 followersVivian Sobchack was the first woman elected President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and is on the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute. Her essays have appeared in journals such as Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Comment, camera obscure, Film Quarterly and Representations. Her books include Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film; The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience; and Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, and she has edited two anthologies: Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change; and The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. Her research interests are eclectic: American film genres, philosophy and film theory, history and phenomenology of perception, historiography and cultural studies.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 11, 2017
As far as primers for the relationship between film and phenomenology, scholars agree that there is no substitute for Sobchack's account of how viewers interact with the medium in an embodied fashion. This is something the book certainly delivers on. However, I have two issues with the text, one large and one small.
The large one is that Sobchack seems convinced that the physical film that one views acts as its own perceiving, expressing body. The film is not just in inanimate object that one perceives, but is at certain points equated to a living, breathing being, replete with sense organs and even those not related to sense but to life--like a heart. I don't quite buy this argument. The problem is that the great stuff that she has to say about viewers and their relationship to film is great, but so intermingled with her thoughts on the cinematic "body" that they are sometimes tough to distinguish.
Which leads to the second, smaller point: at the outset Sobchack makes a commitment to expressing her thoughts and philosophy in as plain a language as she possibly can...which she fails at. The book is great, but incredibly dense. Some of this is to be expected due to the specialized nature of philosophy in general and phenomenology in particular, but some seems unnecessarily convoluted and hard to follow.
All this being said, I appreciate the book's rather deliberate and explanatory pace as it winds through its main material and arguments. Rather than jumping right in with a complicated discussion of film itself, Sobchack begins with extended discussions--you could even call them lessons--on phenomenology itself and the prevailing thought of some philosophers about particular topics and ideas that become relevant to the later discussion of film proper. This approach, while arduous and sometimes tough, ultimately pays off and allows you to really get a better grasp on how all the pieces fit together in the later chapters.
The large one is that Sobchack seems convinced that the physical film that one views acts as its own perceiving, expressing body. The film is not just in inanimate object that one perceives, but is at certain points equated to a living, breathing being, replete with sense organs and even those not related to sense but to life--like a heart. I don't quite buy this argument. The problem is that the great stuff that she has to say about viewers and their relationship to film is great, but so intermingled with her thoughts on the cinematic "body" that they are sometimes tough to distinguish.
Which leads to the second, smaller point: at the outset Sobchack makes a commitment to expressing her thoughts and philosophy in as plain a language as she possibly can...which she fails at. The book is great, but incredibly dense. Some of this is to be expected due to the specialized nature of philosophy in general and phenomenology in particular, but some seems unnecessarily convoluted and hard to follow.
All this being said, I appreciate the book's rather deliberate and explanatory pace as it winds through its main material and arguments. Rather than jumping right in with a complicated discussion of film itself, Sobchack begins with extended discussions--you could even call them lessons--on phenomenology itself and the prevailing thought of some philosophers about particular topics and ideas that become relevant to the later discussion of film proper. This approach, while arduous and sometimes tough, ultimately pays off and allows you to really get a better grasp on how all the pieces fit together in the later chapters.
March 9, 2024
Wow wow wow. Kind of rocking my world right now. Articulates so much that I wish I had articulated before. Makes the terms of a discourse available to me that were not so before. Much to digest.
Of course essential to her argument is her distinction that film is a viewing subject, not a human subject. Film is not conscious in the way humans are conscious, film does not have drives or a phenomenal self-model or neural correlates, but its vision is “equivalent in structure and function to that same competence performed by filmmaker and spectator” (22). I bring this up more for myself because sometimes she does fall into rhetoric that suggests a film is LITERALLY a consciousness, but I think this passage indicates that that’s not what she’s trying to argue.
I’ll have to read what she says about electronic embodiment! The last ten pages of the book left me wanting to learn more about how electronic audiovisual media is disembodied. I suppose that’s why we have Shane Denson!
Of course essential to her argument is her distinction that film is a viewing subject, not a human subject. Film is not conscious in the way humans are conscious, film does not have drives or a phenomenal self-model or neural correlates, but its vision is “equivalent in structure and function to that same competence performed by filmmaker and spectator” (22). I bring this up more for myself because sometimes she does fall into rhetoric that suggests a film is LITERALLY a consciousness, but I think this passage indicates that that’s not what she’s trying to argue.
I’ll have to read what she says about electronic embodiment! The last ten pages of the book left me wanting to learn more about how electronic audiovisual media is disembodied. I suppose that’s why we have Shane Denson!
September 15, 2017
an essential read for those interested in the phenomenology of film viewership.
the basic claim is that film viewing comprises receiving the communication of an embodied intentional state, viz. to view a film means adopting someone else's mind, body, and eyes. though there are many rich observations more. there is significant influence of Merleau-Ponty but Sobchack has a truly original voice.
it does take many pages before the book really takes off. be prepared to spend some time muddling through dense text. but it is worth the effort.
the basic claim is that film viewing comprises receiving the communication of an embodied intentional state, viz. to view a film means adopting someone else's mind, body, and eyes. though there are many rich observations more. there is significant influence of Merleau-Ponty but Sobchack has a truly original voice.
it does take many pages before the book really takes off. be prepared to spend some time muddling through dense text. but it is worth the effort.
December 13, 2019
“The film lives its perception without the volition—if within the vision—of the spectator. It visibly acts visually, and therefore, expresses and embodies intentionality in existence and at work in the world. The film is not, therefore, merely an object for perception and expression; it is also the subject of perception and expression” (Sobchak, Address 167).
“Enabled by its mechanical and technological body, each film projects and makes uniquely visible not only the objective world but the very structure and process of subjective, embodied vision—hitherto only directly available to human beings as the invisible and private structure we experience as ‘my own’” (Sobchack, Address 298).
“Enabled by its mechanical and technological body, each film projects and makes uniquely visible not only the objective world but the very structure and process of subjective, embodied vision—hitherto only directly available to human beings as the invisible and private structure we experience as ‘my own’” (Sobchack, Address 298).
June 18, 2025
She's a brilliant writer and thinker when she gets going, but sometimes I wish she would say more with less. Still an essential text in film phenomenology.
December 18, 2024
This is a hard-going phenomenology of the cinema, grounded in the so-called existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, or in semiotic phenomenology. The big philosophical move by Ponty is in embodying Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, where the Ego is conceived as a non-bodied conscious entity, endowed with intentionality, or freely-directed perception. Ponty concurs with all of this, but grounds consciousness in a body-in-the-world.
Sobchack finds this conception of being-and-seeing-in-the-world very useful when applied to cinema, which is what she does in this book.
Before she moves on to do so, though, Sobchack undergoes a careful elucidation of these ideas, comparing Ponty’s phenomenology with Husserl’s, Lacan’s theory of being, Young’s phenomenology of gender, and other theories she deems relevant. Thus, this is not a loosely argued exposition of a phenomenology of cinema, but a heavy and highly technical one.
This book is significantly more dense than most theories of film, which usually have a lot more film criticism mixed in. Nonetheless, I find Sobchack’s work very important to the history of film theory and worth plowing through.
The dynamics of the “film’s body” is in my view her most important contribution. In a material conception of cinema, it is the case that the camera, the screen and projector yield a complex mechanical and technical system that enmeshes the spectator - and as Sobchack eloquently points out - the film itself, in a web of perceptions and expressions. The cinema has a “body” that perceives and is perceived like ours, but I must say that in terms of aesthetics, the images produced by the camera are generally “non-bodied”. It seems to me that we experience cinema aesthetically as something more like Husserl’s transcendental ego as opposed to what Ponty formulates. But again, Sobchack is right in reminding us of the origins or the material sources of that image, which is “embodied”.
Sobchack finds this conception of being-and-seeing-in-the-world very useful when applied to cinema, which is what she does in this book.
Before she moves on to do so, though, Sobchack undergoes a careful elucidation of these ideas, comparing Ponty’s phenomenology with Husserl’s, Lacan’s theory of being, Young’s phenomenology of gender, and other theories she deems relevant. Thus, this is not a loosely argued exposition of a phenomenology of cinema, but a heavy and highly technical one.
This book is significantly more dense than most theories of film, which usually have a lot more film criticism mixed in. Nonetheless, I find Sobchack’s work very important to the history of film theory and worth plowing through.
The dynamics of the “film’s body” is in my view her most important contribution. In a material conception of cinema, it is the case that the camera, the screen and projector yield a complex mechanical and technical system that enmeshes the spectator - and as Sobchack eloquently points out - the film itself, in a web of perceptions and expressions. The cinema has a “body” that perceives and is perceived like ours, but I must say that in terms of aesthetics, the images produced by the camera are generally “non-bodied”. It seems to me that we experience cinema aesthetically as something more like Husserl’s transcendental ego as opposed to what Ponty formulates. But again, Sobchack is right in reminding us of the origins or the material sources of that image, which is “embodied”.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews