The sensation of the look: The gazes in Laurence Anyways
The sensation of the look: The gazes in Laurence Anyways
This article analyses the gazes, looks, stares and glares in Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012), and examines their affective, interpretive, and symbolic qualities, and their potential to create viewer empathy through affect. The cinematic gaze can produce sensations of shame and fear, by offering a sequence of varied “encounters” to which viewers can react, before we have been given a character onto which we can deflect them, thus bypassing the representational, narrative and even the sympathetic power of the medium to create “raw”, apparently unmediated sensations. Through the POV shot and direct address, the viewer is the object of the gazes it receives, and experiences their hate and rejection before actually being presented with the film’s narrative object of the gaze – the film’s protagonist, a transwoman named Laurence. It examines how the viewer, after being affected, interprets and misinterprets the emotions behind the gazes, and then cognitively attaches the gazes’ importance to the narrative. It analyses how the gazes not only create viewer empathy for Laurence, but also create a shared experience between Laurence and the viewer that enhances this empathic connection. It concludes by considering the symbolic importance of the gaze, and Laurence’s desire for the gaze as a marker of agency and acknowledgement.
affect; gaze; film phenomenology; transgender experience; empathy; Xavier Dolan
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Schultz, Corey Kai Nelson
4df94248-6850-4238-acb3-6e0f1a7a4205
February 2018
Schultz, Corey Kai Nelson
4df94248-6850-4238-acb3-6e0f1a7a4205
Schultz, Corey Kai Nelson
(2018)
The sensation of the look: The gazes in Laurence Anyways.
Film-Philosophy, 22 (1), .
(doi:10.3366/film.2018.0059).
Abstract
This article analyses the gazes, looks, stares and glares in Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012), and examines their affective, interpretive, and symbolic qualities, and their potential to create viewer empathy through affect. The cinematic gaze can produce sensations of shame and fear, by offering a sequence of varied “encounters” to which viewers can react, before we have been given a character onto which we can deflect them, thus bypassing the representational, narrative and even the sympathetic power of the medium to create “raw”, apparently unmediated sensations. Through the POV shot and direct address, the viewer is the object of the gazes it receives, and experiences their hate and rejection before actually being presented with the film’s narrative object of the gaze – the film’s protagonist, a transwoman named Laurence. It examines how the viewer, after being affected, interprets and misinterprets the emotions behind the gazes, and then cognitively attaches the gazes’ importance to the narrative. It analyses how the gazes not only create viewer empathy for Laurence, but also create a shared experience between Laurence and the viewer that enhances this empathic connection. It concludes by considering the symbolic importance of the gaze, and Laurence’s desire for the gaze as a marker of agency and acknowledgement.
Text
Schultz_LaurenceAnyways-AcceptedMan2
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 15 October 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 17 January 2018
Published date: February 2018
Keywords:
affect; gaze; film phenomenology; transgender experience; empathy; Xavier Dolan
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 415050
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/415050
PURE UUID: 5d080296-2b91-4e16-bb97-db6d0abecc78
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Date deposited: 24 Oct 2017 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 05:50
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Author:
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
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