Apparatus , Genre , and Spectatorship in the Classroom

When I observe my five-year-old grandson, Henry, navigate the levels of difficulty of a video game in which he chooses a hero who has to overcome obstacles and zap anyone who gets in his way, I wonder at his dexterity as he rapidly manipulates the control panel with ten fingers going all at once, his eyes glued to the images on the TV monitor, taking in the action he seems to be controlling. And I also wonder, almost aloud, what this all means in the formation of his inner world, of his attitude and perception of the outer world. Is the enthrallment he expresses a sign of a complete giving over to the game through his identification with the “hero” character and what he/she represents, or is it a sign of an active imagination and desire to affect the game’s outcome, to be himself, its hero? Or is it both—is he captivated and unruly all at once? The instructions I give in my film studies courses do not include new media, of which video games are a big part. But a cursory glance at some of the critical literature on video games indicates a healthy, lively commentary on their effects on players as both spectators and participants, (see Bibliography). The source of my fascination with spectatorship and the effects of media derive from the long history of numerous and diverse critical commentaries on film (old media?) as a site for the formation of representations that affect the way we think of ourselves and others. In other words, film’s relationship to its audience is a conduit to explore the ways in which media exerts a powerful influence on the construction of ideology within the self and the larger culture. A part of my film syllabus focuses on the relationship between media, identity, and ideology. In my introductory film course (ENG 363), I approach the issue developmentally, assuming that many of the students are unaware of the ways in which film exercises its power over the viewer. We first look at the basic elements of cinema and their functions—elements associated with cinema’s eclectic combination of forces: cinematography, editing, mise-enscene, and sound—the technical elements of film and what we term collectively, the “cinematic apparatus.” The next part of the syllabus looks at the systems that utilize these elements in their construction—the narrative systems of classic Hollywood and the art film, and generic systems like the western, the gangster film, the musical, film noir, and the woman’s film. One overarching schematic that links aesthetics with narrative and genre is the cumulative effect on the spectator.