Reflection in Asphalt

Before I even begin with questions, I want to discuss this idea that Silverman discusses in her Acoustic Mirror, bringing together a connection between film and reflection in a metaphoric sense. She cites Kracauer as suggestion that a movie goer goes to the cinema because he or she yearns for his or her own life (8). I interpreted this as a desire not to compensate for something, but instead to recognize and understand. When we look in a mirror, we attempt to see ourselves, and what we see may not always be entirely accurate, but it's close. Film can do the same thing--as does any art--and represent who we are as people in a way perhaps the viewer has not considered.

I love film. I spend much of time watching movies, thinking about movies, and attempting to make movies. That said, this book's use of psychoanalysis and theory assumed an enormous base of knowledge (explanations from the first chapter about fetishism, castration, lack, gaze, etc. were all explained far too quickly and with a sort of attitude that said "of course, duh, you know this is fact, why am I boring you?")--and as a result I really struggled to understand.

Our goal for these blogs is to take two questions and answer one of them, but I know that my answering of one will be very basic and probably wrong. So in its place, I'll answer a sort of easy one and ask two additional questions.

First, the one I think I can answer--what is the point of studying the female voice in film (as The Acoustic Mirror sets out to do)?
Previous work in film theory has focused on the way that the medium accentuates male gaze. Silverman argues that a similar "gaze" (is there a word for audio-gazing? do i even understand the concept of gaze enough for this metaphor to work for me?) is at work in Hollywood's use of the female voice--film holds the female to the female body. For example, there are few female voiceovers since allowing the female voice to be seen and not heard would put her beyond the reach of male gaze (164).

This leads me to another question--really, why aren't there female voiceovers? Silverman's suggestion mentioned above fits her thesis, but it doesn't seem to really answer the question at all (which is part of my problem with this kind of theory, but that's just my problem). Is it because more men get screenplays produced and few men write about women, or is there something else going on? I thought of my love of Discovery and BBC's Planet Earth, narrated in the US by Sigourney Weaver, but was narrated by David Attenborough for the British broadcast and the DVDs. Although I never heard Attenborough's, friends of mine said it was much better than Weaver's--and I remember constantly feeling strange that she was narrating. Was it a bad narration or is something else at work? I don't know why I have to struggle so hard to think of a film with a constant female voiceover, but I can think of dozens of films with male voiceovers.

Finally, Silverman suggests that viewers accept sound of a film as something "real," and that this stems from the "metaphysical tradition" that sound is immediate (43). She cites Lacan when she says that speech actually leads to absense, and that what you end up with is an "impression of reality" (44). Why is there a need to associate sound in film as something real? Is it only obvious because of the time we've had with the media in the present that clearly sound is NOT real, that the actors are mic'd, that sound effects are added in post (or sometimes even diagetic dialogue is voice-overed, re-recorded)? Do we actually trust sounds the way Silverman suggests (think about being scared at night, you hear creaks and rumbles, and trust sound even less, forcing yourself to turn on the light to know that everything is fine).

I'm including only a picture of asphalt here, to represent how clearly I could see this text: