Thesis
Screens all the way down: Identification and gaze through the embedded screen
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
05/2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004276
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/124895
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between the film viewer and various types of film screens, and specifically how that relationship is complicated when the narrative film on screen represents another screen within: the "embedded screen." Using primarily psychoanalytic film studies and visual media studies I examine what it means when the viewer's gaze runs parallel to that of the character's as the viewer watches the primary screen, but both watch the embedded screen together. Through looking at different patterns of this phenomenon in narrative film, the goal is to think more about how screen watching can affect us in general, given that screens have become so ubiquitous in the daily lives of many. I also aim to demonstrate how the embedded screen reveals the ways in which screens can be used to build connections or to enact harm. The different chapters focus on how the embedded screen directs both the audience's and characters' gazes in different spatial and temporal directions, how the embedded screen can be used to showcase feelings of power or subjugation for the characters and impart those feelings to the viewer, and how characters moving through the embedded screen as a portal between filmic dimensions can act as an analogy for viewer immersion or suggest an imaginative blending of narrative and reality. All chapters together highlight some different ways in which the embedded screen complicates the nature of the gaze and viewer identification. The act of gazing is compounded through the embedded screen; the viewer becomes an audience of an audience but can potentially identify with the characters more strongly because of this shared act of watching a screen together.
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Details
- Title
- Screens all the way down
- Creators
- Hayden Gann
- Contributors
- Donna M. Campbell (Advisor) - Washington State University, English, Department of
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Identifiers
- 99900896413701842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis