Jenn Thảo Nguyễn

Reading Jaehne’s article on Szabo’s work, alongside E&H’s Chapter 7 and Hugo Munsterberg’s monograph, heightened my excitement for this unit on memory studies and cognitivist film theory, as it aligns most directly with my interests in this discipline. Elsaesser and Hagener argue that “Film replays to its viewers their own processes of perception—and this with a precision achievable only via experiment” (FT 173). This “perception-testing” through film’s propensity for experimentation demonstrates cinema’s unique ability to serve as a new medium of philosophy. By capitalizing on our prolonged engagement with visual stimuli, cinema not only tests but also shows, facilitating the direct communication of philosophical ideas — often abstract or inaccessible — in a way that writing alone cannot.

I am particularly curious to explore Deleuze’s notion of the film image as a “special state of matter”, especially his claim that it exists beyond semiotics and heightened perception, moving away from the Archimedean point. The idea that the film image abandons calculability and logical chains of connection challenges his argument about its capacity to philosophize, as philosophy traditionally relies on the foundation of logical deduction. One of my key takeaways from E&H’s chapter was their discussion on how cognitivist film theory is now working to “specify the distinctions between film perception and everyday perception” (FT 187), shifting away from the early focus on ontological realism and the camera’s indexicality. Although the book intentionally avoids a teleological framework, I find this shift bridges the gap between canonical film theorists and contemporary film theory, particularly through its inclusion of digital cinema as an even more vital mode of perceptual testing in its own right.

A final thought arose from the introduction of self-reflexive or meta-cinematographic images — images that make the spectator aware of perceiving images. I wonder if this awareness could be seen as a form of apparatus-revelation, as described in Baudry’s theory. When I watch a film and recognize a cinematic reference included by the filmmaker, does this break my immersion in the narrative and introduce the intertext of the reference? In doing so, does it reveal that I am perceiving cinema within cinema, thereby re-engaging my perception by distinguishing cinematic perception from general perception? I argue that this meta-perception corresponds to Sobchack’s concept of meta-sensory phenomenology, where cinema allows us to acquire a new history of sensorium — one in which we can “taste ourselves tasting, smell ourselves smelling”. In this way, cinema not only facilitates this meta-sensory experience but also allows us to build an archive of meta-perception, creating a mise-en-abyme of cinematic perception, where a single filmic frame reverberates into its many recognized referents.