Apparatus theory - Citizendia

Apparatus theory, derived in part from Marxist film theory, semiotics, and psychoanalysis, was a dominant theory within cinema studies during the 1970s. Marxist film theory is one of the oldest forms of Film theory. Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis or signification and communication signs and Symbols both Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to Reality, the other Arts individual It maintains that cinema is by nature ideological because its mechanics of representation are ideological. An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics Its mechanics of representation include the camera and editing. A camera is a device used to capture images either as still Photographs or as sequences of moving images ( Movies or Videos. Film editing is an art of storytelling practiced by connecting two or more shots together to form a sequence, and the subsequent connecting of sequences to form an The central position of the spectator within the perspective of the composition is also ideological. Perspective, in context of vision and Visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the Eye based on their spatial attributes or

Apparatus theory also argues that cinema maintains the dominant ideology of the culture within the viewer. Ideology is not imposed on cinema, but is part of its nature.

Apparatus theory follows an institutional model of spectatorship.

Apparatus theorists

(this is an incomplete list)

Jacques Lacan
Louis Althusser
Jean-Louis Baudry
Jean-Louis Comolli
Christian Metz
Laura Mulvey
Peter Wollen
Constance Penley

Apparatus theorists

Further reading