Cinema and experience

Riddle me this: I watch films at home. I watch films on my phone. I watch films on my laptop while I scroll through TikTok, where I am watching a two-minute clip from another film. I watch the first thirty minutes of a film, pause, and watch the remainder three days later. I watch films at a theatre but get up twice to go to the bathroom. I watch an analysis of a film I found hard to follow on YouTube. Scrap all that. I never watch films; rather, I actively engage and communicate with them. Who am I? You guessed right, I am Francesco Casetti’s conception of the spectator.  

            The spectator, or rather the post-modern viewer, is the contemporary replacement of what used to be the subject. While the subject’s relationship with films is a one-sided passive immersion into a projected image, the spectator is actively connected to films through a complex network of performative relations. When spectators were still subjects, the viewing experience would be associated with a certain space: a dark theatre with no distractions other than maybe another subject that would not stop talking. Their gaze would thus be centralized and focused on the screen. Spectators are different. A spectator’s attention is always divided and will at most skim the surface of a film, without the possibility of any emotional investment. The spectator is also not limited to a movie theatre: they can interact with a film regardless of time or space. Casetti argues that the spectator’s role in the film-viewing experience transcends that of watching, the meaning of the film is formed by their engagement; the spectator is an actor.

            This idea of the spectator relies on two assumptions: all spectators are active agents that intentionally watch a film, and most film viewers are spectators rather than subjects. While not necessarily false, these assumptions can generalize the contemporary film viewer and reduce them to a single entity. I can for example assure you that my grandparents, like many other extremely passive film-viewers, who often stumble on a film while flipping through the channels, do not intentionally choose a film to watch. Are they not a clear example of the post-modern viewer? Also, meaning-making, for Casetti, is reserved for the spectator rather than the film. This idea ignores a film’s capacity to evoke meaning through its formal qualities. Another exception to spectatorship is the purist, a contemporary viewer who swears by the ways of the subject and will thus centralize their gaze on the big screen. Casetti hints at the possibility of the return of purists when he discusses ‘re-relocation’: the fact that theatres remain popular while films can now be easily watched anywhere else. It is clear that Casetti’s reductionist theory requires some nuance.

            On the other hand, the concept of the spectator helps to understand the significance of the viewer’s context to their experience with a film. With its slow pacing, occasional dialogue and stretched out scenes, Still Life demands a centralized gaze for meaning-making. A decentralized and multitasking spectator who is playing Clash Royale on their phone while watching Still Life, might overlook these formal qualities meant to immerse the viewer in the slowness and absurdity of the character’s lives, and just see a  picturesque Chinese landscape containing a sweaty man, a pretty woman, and an occasional apartment building flying off into space.