Audience Embodiment in the Haptical Film Space

Film theoreticians، in the early stages of practice، emphasized the corporeal characteristics of the medium and the relationship between cinema and the spectator’s senses. Besides، in the opposite direction to the early cinema concentration on audience bodily identification with the film، the evolution of cinematic language and the subsequent prevailing of a dominant narrative system، major streams were formed towards identification with narrative، and what was associated with the realm of the body was transported to the realm of the mind. This transition led to the long supremacy of linguistic and psychological based theories of film. In the decades of the seventies and eighties، the connection between cinema apparatus and the renaissance perspective ideas formed the fundamental discourse of film theories. Writers such as Baudry، Metz and Heath analyzed the liaison between the viewer and the screen based on the perspective model. Optical theory was based on a perceived distance between the subject as a seer and a corresponding object being seen and provided the necessary conditions for the formation of the pattern of western thinkers to ponder the world order from a distance. The emergence of perspective understanding in the renaissance period helped the revival of optical spatial pattern that in turn consolidated the position of the subject and strengthened the distance between subject and object. The central position of the spectator from a distance deciphering the perspective of the composition was emphasized. Once again، the dominance of vision over the other senses was reinforced. Moreover، Giuliana Bruno argues based on the meaning of the Greek orgin word (kinēma، kinēmat- ''movement''، from kinein ''to move'') for cinema، implying that these terms bring to mind motion. The Latin root of the word emotion is also from the same word and evidently suggests a moving force and historically has been marked by moving from one place to another. Bruno believes that motion causes emotion and emotion always contains a movement within. In this regard، film can be viewed as a vehicle for transporting movement. Motions in cinema (including camera movement، movement of bodies and objects، movement and changes of perspective) not only influence narrative time and space but also form movements within the spectator creating emotion and in this respect loosens the existing boundaries of the spheres depicted in the movies. It seems apparent that there have been attempts to return to the body-centered theories of early cinema، and to accentuate the sympathy between the viewer body and the cinematic image. In the other direction of the dominance of optical film theories that ignore corporeal-material existence of the audience members and their sensual dimensions، it is appropriate that the bodily and haptic film theory would be reconsidered. Thus، by lending from Merleau-Ponty idea of the embodied subject، the film experience could be defined based on the experience of the embodiment of the members of the audience in the film space. A film audience with their physical presence، project to the outside، within the film world and interact in creating a cinematic space، based on their lived experiences.