When I read Metz’ From the imaginary signifier, I couldn’t avoid the temptation to consider myself a fetishist in regards to. I have been always fascinating by the magic of these “shadows” in comparison of theatre, literature or painting.

The first element that intrigued me was the psychoanalytic approach from Freud and Lacan, establishing analogies with the mirror stage and the sense of lack that maintains the object of desire from the distance. As one progresses on the reading, Metz’ arguments will make a statement (i.e. cinema is the most perceptual art since it mobilizes a larger number of axes of perception) and then showed that this affirmation is not an absolute as everything happens in absence, so technically speaking it would be the least perceptual. It is precisely its unique form of perception what makes cinema so different.

Another point that it would be interesting to discuss is position of the spectator in the middle of all duplications: the projection of bringing live to objects by make them appear on camera and the introjection at the level of the consciousness (698). So, when we talk about movies are we also projecting them by bringing them up to the conversation and internalizing the content by reflecting on them?

In terms of the process of identification, what I found revealing is the fact that the subject sees himself/herself as all perceiving rather than saying the identification is with the characters on the movie, which would be a secondary or tertiary identification (700). As technology progresses, this process will present new challenges; I’m thinking about the current popularity of 3D when sometimes it does not add anything different to particular films. Is this perception of projecting reality beyond the screen a replacement for what we used to perceive in a regular movie or a reinforcement? How is the consciousness affected for this special effect of fiction within a fiction film? Do we “wake up” every time we see an object coming out of the screen, and then we go back to a lethargic stage when we forget we see a 3D movie? Or, it might be a mere distraction.