Touching the Screen, Striding through the Mirror: The Haptic in Film

bettina papenburg Touching the screen, striding through the mirror: the haptic in film Cinema as an epitome of the primacy of vision Cross-disciplinary research has supported the claim that sight is the dominant sense in the West (cp. classen/howes/synnott 1994; foucault 1973; jay 1993; le breton 1990). Doubtless too is the insight that the sense of touch ranks comparatively low in our hierarchy of senses (cp. benthien 2000; classen 1997, 2005; jütte 2000).76 As Constance Classen77 has remarked, sight has been given such importance in Western intellectual history that one might now be tempted to rename the five senses; somewhat ironically, she suggests that vision, aurality, taste, smell and touch have been superseded by the colonial gaze, the patriarchal gaze, the Marxist gaze, the psychoanalytic gaze and the subversive glance (cp. classen 1998: 143). Cinema, by virtue of the prevalence of such metaphors as ›the camera-eye‹ and ›the gaze‹, can be taken to epitomize the primacy of vision. The deliberate focus on visuality within film theory has been reinforced by the prevalence of models that present film in terms of frame, window, screen and mirror. Since the 1990s, however, this general conceptual tendency has been countered by a range of phenomenological 112 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM approaches to film experience (as introduced by Vivian Sobchack within the North American film studies discourse; cp. sobchack 1992).78 These approaches bring the spectator’s body back into focus by accentuating the role of touch and contact in regard to film aesthetics whilst drawing attention to the inter-modality of film experience.79 In line with these approaches I hold that the experience of cinema is essentially a synaesthetic experience; or, in other words, a multi-sensory experience. In order to corroborate this contention the present essay will focus on the importance of the haptic for cinematic aesthetics. To clarify: my use of the term ›haptic‹ follows the psycho-physiological classification of sense impressions, insofar as I use the word to refer to cutaneous sensations.80 I thus limit the scope of my enquiry to sensations such as touch, temperature and pain, whilst excluding other haptic dimensions such as that of the kinaesthetics (the sense of movement) and proprioception (the perception of one’s body). The question that concerns me here is as follows: how does cinema, understood as a cultural technology of visual apperception characterised by an aesthetics shaped by distance – i. e. by sight and hearing – involve impressions of closeness and touch? My concern here is thus one particular form of inter-modality; namely, that of the overlap between touch and vision. In order to pursue this I consider films that focus on the representation of hands, and that emphasise touch. In consequence, this article differs from the phenomenological approach to cinematic experience; whilst I consider the relation between film and spectator as a bodily and affective configuration, thus remaining in keeping with the phenomenological tradition (as it is represented by marks 2000, 2002 and sobchack 1992, 2004, among others), I depart from it insofar as I seek to expand the realm of cinematic space. This expansion is to be achieved by viewing filmic examples through the lens of inter-modal metaphors (in extension of the observations presented by lakoff/johnson 1980, 1999), and by considering them in the light of cultural anthropology’s sense-based epistemologies (following classen 1993; douglas 1984; wolff 1976). In what follows I will il- 113 BETTINA PAPENBURG lustrate – by way of a series of case studies – that the assumed boundary separating filmic representations of touch from the phenomenology of haptic film experience is somewhat permeable.81 The vitalism, rhythm and intensity, that provides certain films with their immersive appeal seems to flow from a deliberate and excessive representation of hands and acts of touching; representations of tactility that affect the spectator physically and emotionally, and which draw her/him into the film’s narrative. In consequence, it matters a great deal in terms of cinematic aesthetics that hands and skin should be on display rather than anything else. By elucidating the interweaving of representations and evocations of tactile experience in a set of films from a range of different genres, time periods and national contexts, I aim to develop some suggestions as to the interplay of the senses within film spectatorship, which I consider here under the rubric of immersive experience. The inseparability of touch and vision In order to fully develop the interrelation of touch and vision we might first consider the basis of their relationship, as presented in the findings of classical anthropological research on the human sensorium. Evidence provided by biological anthropology emphasises that a bi-pedal gait and stereoscopic vision evolved at the same time (cf. mühlmann 1962; mühlmann/müller 1966). This key evolutionary development enabled the co-ordinated action of eye and hand in grasping objects, thus allowing the use of tools (cp. leroi-gourhan 1980). The act of grasping, which arises from the mutual dependency of both visual and haptic activity, extends into the realms of cognition and everyday language. The common expression ›grasping an idea‹ hints at the fundamentally inextricable relation between visual, haptic and cognitive activity in our collective imagination. Experientially it makes no sense to separate touch and vision nor to uncouple these so-called ›sense perceptions‹ from ›mental activity‹. 114 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM In keeping with the tradition of the sociology of knowledge as it has been introduced by Karl Mannheim, the German immigrant Kurt H. Wolff has addressed this insoluble intertwining of sensory experience and concept formation via the epistemological concepts of ›surrender‹ and ›catch‹. He describes these two concepts as attitudes of the researcher in the process of knowledge acquisition and states that they are inseparable form one another, presenting them as two different yet interwoven movements. By ›surrender‹ he means the act of giving oneself to the world (Hingabe); an attitude that he calls »total experience« or »total involvement« (wolff 1976: 22). Surrendering to the occasion and to the object of knowledge implies a desire to identify with it, to assimilate it, or – as anthropologists say – ›go native‹. This attitude is countered and complemented by the ›catch‹ (Fang). Wolff describes the catch in terms of »understanding, conceiving, considering so that others can be told what has occurred« (wolff 1976: 23). In other words, to ›catch‹ in this sense is to pin experience down verbally, to find concepts, to grasp what one surrenders to. Whereas surrender seems to be a form of immersion, the catch constitutes reflection on the immersive experience. In introducing the concepts of ›surrender‹ and ›catch‹, Wolff aims at what might be described as a form of ›reflexive immersion‹: a self-awareness that arises through an awareness of the Other and facilitates the cognising and communicating of the knowledge that one has ›caught‹. In relation to the theme of the present publication it is interesting to note that in the second half of the twentieth century the ethnographic methodology introduced by Bronislaw Malinowski was described as ›immersion therapy‹. Following the methodological principal of »experience of Otherness via the Self« (cp. köpping 1999: 209), the fieldworker conducting ethnographic research is required to oscillate between detached observation and active involvement with his/ her research partners. It comes as no surprise that the ethnographic paradigm, which combines an attitude of distance with the embrace of closeness, recalls the hybrid sensory root of intelligence. 115 BETTINA PAPENBURG Through her studies of the sensual origin of words the anthropologist Constance Classen has hinted at the competition between visual and tactile terms for referring to the so-called higher cognitive functions.82 Earlier evidence produced by Walter Ong (1977) and Stephen Tyler (1984), among others, suggests that intellectual activity in the West is primarily addressed in visual terms. We speak about thinking by using words such as point of view, overview, observation, enlighten, and focus. The Greek and Latin roots of terms such as consider, speculate, idea, theory, and wit correspond to this, and refer to the domain of the visual (cp. classen 1993: 60ff). We say ›I see‹ to mean ›I understand‹. In opposition to the arguments of Ong, Tyler et al., Classen asks us to consider the fact that words rooted within the tactile or kinaesthetic domain outnumber those that stem from that of the visual. As examples she gives: apprehend, brood, cogitate, comprehend, conceive, grasp, mull, perceive, ponder, ruminate, and understand. She observes that »[t]he predominance of tactile imagery in words dealing with intellectual functions indicates that thought is, or was, experienced primarily in terms of touch. Thinking was therefore less like looking than like weighing or grinding, and knowing was less like seeing than like holding« (classen 1993: 58). Building on this insight, Classen develops a critique of objectivism and dismantles its status as the ideal and telos of Western science. She argues that an understanding of intelligence through visual metaphors implies the conception that knowledge is derived from distance and detachment. In contrast, to speak about intelligence by way of tactile metaphors is to convey an idea of knowledge as being something that one arrives at through close inspection, and through an intermingling with one’s subject of inquiry. Classen holds that »[t]he use of tactile and kinaesthetic terms for thought expresses a more active involvement with the subject matter than visual terms do. To understand is to stand under or among, to be part of the picture, whereas to see is to view the picture from without« (classen 1993: 58). Classen’s point is that intelligence is a composite metaphor comprising word fields that relate to vision (distance) and others that relate to touch (closeness). A consideration of Clas- 116 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM sen’s observations as to the pre-eminent relevance of haptic metaphors for an understanding of human thought processes raises the following question: what do her findings imply for the representation, enactment and performance of touch within visual media such as film? Visualizing touch. Intermediality and intermodality The theme of the tactile basis of knowledge recurs in a number of films. In particular, films that represent hands and what film characters do with these hands address tactility as a mode of acquiring knowledge about the world. A very limited selection of these films will be considered here in regard to the following question: how does the audio-visual medium of cinema recaptures tactility? In the film Orphée (France 1950) Jean Cocteau narrates his version of the Orpheus myth. Orpheus, the poet, follows his lover Eurydice to the underworld in order to bring her back from the dead. Cocteau presents this transition between the worlds of the living and the dead by showing Orpheus walking through a mirror. Orpheus walks with his hands first. In his first attempt he is confronted with the intransigence of the material world (cp. fig. 1). In his second attempt, undertaken more vigorously, the solid mirror transforms into liquid, allowing him to pass through it into another realm in which the imaginary reigns; a realm in which brute facts and resistant material become subject to the imagination (cp. fig. 2). However, once Orpheus arrives in the underworld, he is bereft of his tactile capacities as he wears a pair of magic gloves that hamper his sense of touch. What is remarkable about the mirror in this scene is not so much its capacity to reflect an image, but rather its ability to constitute a site for paradoxical sensations. When looking at the mirror Orpheus knows from previous experience that it is solid. This common-sense assumption is subsequently undermined by his tactile impressions, resulting in a synaesthetic dissonance that is expressed as wonderment. The co- 117 BETTINA PAPENBURG ordinated action between touch and vision produces sense impressions that contradict one another. Fig. 1: Striding through the mirror The idea of film as a mirror, or indeed as a broken mirror, has dominated film theory from the mid 1960s until the mid 1980s. Psychoanalytically informed approaches to film have theorised the mirror as a topos of filmic representation, and – in relation to Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage – as a mirror of the unconscious. I do not want to follow these lines of thought directly, but would like to suggest that the mirror motif can be seen here as a door leading to another order of reality; i. e. as an entry point into the underworld. The mirror indicates a threshold, a border or demarcation line, which marks as well as creates the separation of two different modes of perception. In thus distinguishing different ways of perceiving – or, to use phenomenological terminology, modes of ›beingin-the-world‹ – the mirror points towards a splitting of the sensorium. In particular, the relation between tactile and visual perception is reconfigured through encountering the mirror. The films that concern me 118 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM here present the mirror neither as an instrument of looking at oneself, nor as a medium for inspecting one’s own or the collective unconscious, but as an object of touch and as an index of fictitious reality. The mirror thus becomes a symbol for reflection; not in the sense of a simple mirroring of reality, but rather as a starting point for reflections upon the ontological status of representations of reality. Fig. 2: The viscous mirror In the Wachowski brothers’ film The Matrix (usa 1999) the mirror both symbolizes and indicates another order of reality; a different perceptual modality, which implies the following conundrum: either this alternative, virtual, or imaginary reality cannot be trusted, or that which we take to be reality is itself an illusion. As Leitner correctly notes in this publication (leitner 2011: 107), such playing with the uncertainty of the ontological and epistemological status of reality via the enactment of immersive experiences is part of a long-standing tradition in Science Fiction film and writing going back to Stanislaw 119 BETTINA PAPENBURG Lem’s novels Summa technologiae and Futurological Congress and, one might add, to Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception. From a theoretical perspective this recurrent topos may be approached by turning to philosophical positions that engage in a critique of ideology, as Leitner has chosen to do. Following theorists such as Slavoj Žižek, however, who reactivate the paranoia accompanying conspiracy theories, precludes a consideration of the significant issue of human agency. My suggestion, therefore, is to turn to the philosophy of scepticism as an alternative way of positioning oneself in relation to the apparent paradox of being unable to know what is true, whilst still allowing for our capacity to act.83 I would thus contend that the sf narratives mentioned above invite, express and foster a sceptical attitude in the spectator by staging paradoxical situations that undermine belief in the reality of reality. As regards the problem that concerns me here, the question that seems to be of particular interest is as to how authors and filmmakers address the transition between competing orders of reality in terms of the sensual perception of materiality. In other words, what role do they assign to the senses in the portrayal of situations that preclude unambiguous knowledge of truth? The protagonists’ touching of the mirror in The Matrix forms the prelude for a fundamental transformation of his perceptions, leading to a liminal period marked by great uncertainty as to his bodily being-in-the-world. In this respect The Matrix’s use of mirror imagery is directly comparable to Orphée’s transformation of a solid mirror into a materialised metaphor for Orpheus’ encounter with liminal space and time. In the very moment that the protagonist touches the mirror the solid object transforms into a viscous material that sticks to his fingers. The mirror’s substance subsequently coats his hand, arm, chest and throat, entering his mouth and running down his throat. The skin and the mucous membrane that are covered by the expanding mirror transform into a metal-like golden substance. This dissolution of the body’s boundaries creates a moment of horror, both in the protagonist and in the spectator. 120 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM The viscous mirror is a paradox and a novel metaphor at the same time. It refers to the problem of anomaly and ambiguity; and, as the anthropologist Mary Douglas has made abundantly clear in her famous study Purity and Danger, anomalies escape classification (douglas 1984: 37). They sit in-between categories and resist classification. Ambiguity arises precisely from that which cannot be classified. Although classificatory systems aim at reigning in anomalies and ambiguities they are never able to completely rule them out. In returning to the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Douglas has given treacle as an example (douglas 1984: 37f.) on the basis that it is viscous and thus cannot be classified as solid or liquid. Rather, it is »an aberrant fluid or a melting solid« (douglas 1984: 38). It is through playing with classificatory boundaries that these very boundaries are thrown into question. Ambiguity thus points to possible boundary transgressions and to the fact that our system of (sensory) classification might not be as stable as it seems. Douglas’ reflections raise the question of the semantics of the sequence from The Matrix described above. Upon encountering the mirror the protagonist literally grasps the viscosity of the simulated world. It does not run through his hands like water, but rather sticks to his fingers and envelops the inside as well as the outside of his whole body so completely that it becomes a ›second nature‹ to him. By presenting his immersion in virtual reality as a second skin, this sequence stages the reversal of the enveloping process precisely through uncovering what has, up to that point, been hidden from him: namely, the electronic second skin, which had been transmitting all kinds of fake sense impressions. In light of this semantic context the protagonist’s skinning/ sloughing is doubly indicative: while pointing towards the delusion that he has fallen victim to, it simultaneously indicates a transition that expels him from the shared illusion. This sequence thus stands at a decisive turning point within the film’s narrative. In the previous scene, the protagonist has decided to see the world ›as it really is‹, that is, to detach himself from the per- 121 BETTINA PAPENBURG ceptual mode that immersed him seamlessly into a simulated environment. Following the logic established in The Matrix, the emblem of touching a mirror condenses the idea of throwing the protagonist out of the simulation that he had been immersed within. The act of touching the mirror as enacted in The Matrix thus inverts the manner in which it is presented in Orphée, insofar as it constitutes the unplugging of the deluded protagonist, thereby sobering him up and throwing him out into ›the real world‹. However, in a similar fashion to The Matrix, Orphée’s own mirror sequence plays upon the idea of the paradoxical relationship of tactile and visual sensations. Perceptual uncertainty is established through dissonant sense impressions falling apart and collapsing into one another. Metaphors at the intersection of sight and touch This sometimes contradictory yet fundamentally intertwined relationship between sight and touch is reflected in everyday language, as is evidenced by research into the cultural force of metaphors. In their seminal study on metaphor, the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson argue that metaphors significantly structure the way we perceive the world, what we value and how we orientate ourselves in life. The relevance of metaphorical meaning for cultural styles, they hold, has been underestimated for too long. Lakoff and Johnson write: »Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor« (lakoff/johnson 1999: 3). Lakoff and Johnson are interested in meaning as it is implicated in, expressed through and re-iterated 122 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM by the use of everyday language. As we usually do not reflect upon the multiple and often metaphorical meanings of the words we use, the values, norms and orientations that work through ordinary language go largely unnoticed. Therefore they are culturally significant. Lakoff and Johnson give some telling examples of metaphors that express acts of seeing in terms of acts of touching: »I can’t take my eyes off her. He sits with his eyes glued to the tv. Her eyes picked out every detail of the pattern. Their eyes met. She never moves her eyes from his face. She ran her eyes over everything in the room. He wants everything within reach of his eyes« (lakoff/johnson 1999: 50; italics theirs). They suggest that in these examples eyes are limbs. What do these multi-sensory metaphors, which turn eyes into hands, skin, beaks, lips, feet and arms, tell us about inter-modal perception? By providing multi-sensory metaphors language seems to accommodate and foster inter-modal perception. When we want to speak about visual experience as tactile experience, we have the proper verbal expressions right at hand. In the English-speaking world it seems to be somewhat normal to understand and experience sight in terms of touch. Sight has come to contain touch, as we speak about seeing as if we meant touching, thus conceiving of the object of the gaze as being touched by the onlooker. David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome (Canada 1983) visualises some of the cross-sensory metaphors that address the intersection of sight and touch. A number of scenes show the protagonist Max Renn (James Woods) – the owner of a private television channel, which specialises in »softcore pornography and hardcore violence« – with his eyes glued to the tv. Moreover, we often see Max unable to take his eyes off the film’s female protagonist, a woman named Nicki Brand (played by Blondie’s front woman Debbie Harry) who fully embodies the tradition of the femme fatale. A combination of the visualisation of these metaphors culminates in a remarkable scene which shows Max sitting with his eyes glued to the tv, unable to take his eye’s off a television image displaying Nicki (cp. fig. 3). 123 BETTINA PAPENBURG Fig. 3: »Can’t take my eyes off you!« Fig. 4: ... his eyes glued to the TV In a hallucinatory fantasy, Max inserts his head into the television screen, on which images of the moving lips of his lover are displayed (cp. fig. 4). Although Max is visually knowledgeable he seems to be comparatively innocent as regards (corpo)real experience and mastery of bodily techniques such as sado-masochistic practices are concerned; techniques 124 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM for which he has, so to speak, a visual inclination. Consequently, it is Nicki who verbally seduces him by saying: »I want you, Max! Come to me. Come to Nicki. Don’t make me wait!« A fast zoom in the frame of the television image pulls the grossly oversized image of Nicki towards Max – and towards us – and focuses on her flirting eyes and seductive mouth. Her lips, which by now fill the entire screen, whisper words of desire. Following the rhythm of Nicki’s breathing, the television set, that was once hard and solid, swells and softens and extends into space like a breathing human belly. The hard black plastic of the television set becomes malleable and, while Max caresses it with his hands, shows arteries, which give its surface the appearance of human tissue, of black human skin through which pulsating arteries are shimmering. The scene culminates when the television screen, on which the image of Nicki’s moving lips is flickering, leaves the solid confinements of the set and extends into the third dimension towards the surprised face of Max, who is both horrified and spellbound at the same time. It is in Max’s fantasy that Nicki’s performance transmits to the material of the television set almost human qualities. In his deluded perception, the electronic device becomes soft as well as able to expand and contract like a breathing human body. The screen’s mimesis brings it even closer to the human body at the highpoint of this scene’s dramatic tension, when it literally opens up at the centre of the image: Nicki’s lips part and, producing smacking sounds of pleasure, swallow Max’s head. Max’s head as a piercing extension, and Nicki’s mouth as a soft intrusion transform the hard surface of the television screen into a pliable, receiving, breathing membrane; into a surface which is permeable in both directions. Evoking tactile experience. Haptic visuality The interplay between vision and touch staged in this sequence can be elucidated by way of the concept of haptic visuality introduced by finde-siècle Viennese art historian Alois Riegl (cp. riegl 2000) and adapt- 125 BETTINA PAPENBURG ed by Laura Marks in her study of film and video art (cp. marks 2002). Marks stresses that haptic images draw in the viewer and challenge attempts to hold on to preconceived ways of seeing. Haptic images do not consume the viewer, and do not allow him/her to control or cannibalize them. They invite closeness, but because they obliterate depth contact is only possible on the surface. Haptic images are incomplete, shot through with holes, and as a result challenge the viewer to complement them. Marks emphasises the latent erotic quality of haptic images. Explaining the difference between haptic images and optical images she writes: »Like the Renaissance perspective that is their progenitor, cinema’s optical images address a viewer who is distant, distinct, and disembodied. Haptic images invite the viewer to dissolve his or her subjectivity in the close and bodily contact with the image. The oscillation between the two creates an erotic relationship, a shifting between distance and closeness. But haptic images have a particular erotic quality, one involving giving up visual control. The viewer is called on to fill in the gaps in the image, engage with the traces the image leaves. By interacting up close with an image, close enough that figure and ground commingle, the viewer gives up her own sense of separateness from the image« (marks 2002: 13). In other words, the blurriness and graininess of an image as well as blank spaces within the frame invite a haptic approach. This suggests that low-resolution images lend themselves more easily to haptic vision (cp. Marks’ argument for video as a haptic medium; marks 2002: 1-20). However, even sharp, clear and deep-focussed images can be approached in a haptical way by coming as close to them with the eyes as to render them blurred. Haptic visuality is transgressive in multiple ways. Referring to Vivian Sobchack’s idea of volitional, deliberate vision, Marks emphasises that »the viewer has to work to constitute the image, to bring it forth from latency« (marks 2002: 13). Thus both Sobchack and Marks understand vision as an active, mutually constitutive process. They conceive of vision as both a conceptual activity and a haptic activity, in which the image is produced by the eye/I that touches the image and is touched by 126 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM it. Haptic visuality thus reactivates the double meaning of the term ›to grasp‹: The viewer grasps the image physically with her eyes and simultaneously grasps the idea that the image seeks to convey. In thus dealing with a double notion of ›grasping‹ the aesthetics of image perception described by Marks resembles the epistemology of ›surrender and catch‹ expounded by Wolff. Marks refers to the perceptual mode of haptic visuality as one in which the viewer ›gives up control‹, an attitude which can be called a surrendering to the image. Kurt Wolff calls this »giving up preconceived notions«. At the same time, haptic visuality refers to ›a volitional, deliberate‹ way of seeing. This emphasis on the active role of the viewer suggests that she aims at making a ›catch‹, or as Marks puts it »to mutually bring forth the image«. In a similar manner to that in which Wolff stresses the oscillation between involvement and concept production in his epistemological approach, Marks accentuates the swinging to and fro between closeness to and distance from the image. As a concept, haptic visuality blurs the boundary between the sense of touch and the sense of vision. It speaks to the open space between touch and vision as produced by the prevalent analytic division of the sensorium. The ›commingling of figure and ground‹ as constitutive for the perception of haptic images sets them apart from the principle of perspective as established in Renaissance art. The flattening of the image and the emphasis on two-dimensionality brings forth an understanding of the image as ›skin‹, as opposed to conceiving it as a representation of space. On this model, the viewer does not enter the image space in the guise of the vicarious body of a represented figure, but rather remains (in) her skin and (retinally) touches, caresses or rubs against the skin of the image. This ›skin contact‹ between viewer and film image described by Marks can be paradigmatically exemplified by the experience of Claire Denis’ film Vendredi Soir (France 2002). By focussing on textures, temperatures and surfaces, and on how it feels to be exposed to them and to touch them, the film manages to evoke tactile sensations in the viewer. Instead of developing a complex narrative the plot is kept simple, thereby suggesting an affinity to video art or experimental film. Two 127 BETTINA PAPENBURG strangers meet in a traffic standstill and spend a Friday evening together on a spontaneous rendezvous. The use of natural light for illuminating the images in combination with muted, non-glossy colours conveys a grainy appeal to the surfaces. The gaze and the imaginary hand of the spectator rest on these surfaces; they get caught in them and evoke an idea of the feel of their texture. Denis contrasts these rough surfaces with the soft, silky skin of the figures, which complies under the touch of caressing fingers. Instead of accentuating the contours of the body parts by backlighting them and by setting a bright focus on the skin, she emphasizes the difference of the colour and texture of the skin in contrast to the dark, structured cloth of the garments. Recalling art films such as Geography of the body (usa 1954, Willard Maas), Denis highly fragments the bodies into close-ups of body parts, thereby undermining the process in which we unambiguosly identify the fragments on display (cp. fig. 5). Her roving ›camera eye‹ continually changes position and perspective and her handheld camera is constantly on the move, caressing the bodies like a hand in what appears to be one long take reminiscent of the idea of endless touching developed by Hegel in relation to the apprehension of sculpture. The interplay of dark images of cloth and bright images of skin lend a rhythmic quality to the sequence and create an impression of flickering, pulsating images on the retina. The spatial disorientation that these images of fragmented bodies evoke is balanced by a prismatic re-unification, achieved through the integrative movement of the camera eye/hand. Marks has asserted that »haptics move eroticism from the site of what is represented to the surface of the image« (marks 2002: 13). Whilst untying the content of the image from the experience of looking at it she writes: »Haptic images are erotic regardless of their content, because they construct a particular kind of intersubjective relationship between beholder and image« (marks 2002: 13). This implies that images from films such as Vendredi Soir can be considered erotic not on the basis of their iconography alone, but additionally establish an erotic relationship towards the viewer by inviting her to intermingle 128 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM Fig. 5: Skin contact with them. The images are thus doubly erotic, as they combine the representation of the caressing bodies of two lovers with techniques such as blurring and the obliteration of depth. The montage of a series of close-ups suggests the collapse of the distance between the viewer and the image, and thus lures him/her into the substance of the image. This also applies to the images in Shinya Tsukamoto’s film Haze (Japan 2005). While Vendredi Soir emphasizes the erotic quality of haptic images, the nightmarish short film Haze, through what amounts to a visual extension and twisting of Mark’s argument, stresses the horrific dimension of skin contact. Tsukamoto’s film realizes the claustrophobic vision of a man who is caught in a narrow black tunnel, neither knowing how he got there nor how and where he might get out. The man asks himself and the spectator whether this experience is a terrible nightmare from which he might eventually awake. He experiences various kinds of torture: he falls into a dark pit; all of a sudden iron bars appear out of the dark and violently hit him on the head and stomach; he desperately tries to climb an iron fence covered with broken glass, which cuts his hands; 129 BETTINA PAPENBURG he grinds his teeth into the glass; he sees bodies being violently cut into pieces by an axe that disappears as quickly as it comes. Fig. 6: Crippled touch Tsukamoto intensifies the horror of this vision by shooting the whole film in almost complete darkness, outlining only the contours of body parts by backlighting them and illuminating the surrounding walls in an eerie pale, greenish light. In a manner similar to Denis’ Vendredi Soir, Haze fragments the protagonist’s body and recombines close-ups, in this case of terrified, wide starring eyes; of a sweaty forehead; of open wounds, and of hands and feet that are unsuccessfully searching for a hold in the relentless roughness of the omnipresent walls and swampy floors. In order to underline the feeling of disorientation, Tsukamoto frequently inverts and rotates his images. As I see it, Tsukamoto effectively stages the experience of the disjunction of vision and touch precisely by using images which have a haptic quality. By staging a situation that shows the protagonist in near darkness, he addresses the fear of the decoupling of vision and touch. If there are no visual clues, touch stands alone and is crippled (cp. fig. 6). No co-ordinated action is possible. The remarkable 130 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM amount of black image space that characterizes the images in Haze has a similar impact on the viewer as the blank image spaces described by Marks: the black/blank spaces function like holes in the image. Instead of inviting the viewer to fill them these holes linger ominously and threaten to swallow the viewer. This huge amount of blackness operates in conjunction with the excessive employment of close-ups to effectively eradicate depth. Consequently, most images seem remarkably flat, almost as if they were representing a single plane. Perspective has vanished – both in the optical as well as in the figurative sense of the word. Conclusion This cursory look at a selection of films that either evoke tactile sensations in the viewer, or which employ the staging of tactility for elucidating the problem of alternative realities, produces a sketchy but possibly indicative picture in relation to the question as to how cinema employs the sense of touch in order to both call for and reflect upon immersive experience. This suggests that some of the great number of films that toy with the problem of immersion do so by focusing on paradoxical sensations, in which visuality and tactility are either at odds with one another, with everyday experience, or with both. Such films intentionally uncouple the combination of visual and tactile perceptions that we practice in everyday experience, and to a certain extent undermine our knowledge about the world we live in. They do so either by exhibiting such a discrepancy as part of the narration, rendering it perceptible in the act of spectating, or both. The two films that I have discussed in the most recent passages of this essay, Vendredi Soir and Haze, deal with the topic of immersion via the presentation of characters who give themselves to or are sucked up within situations of high intensity. This immersive experience is represented via concentrating exclusively on one particular sense, namely touch. By blurring, largely obliterating or underplaying the importance of vision 131 BETTINA PAPENBURG for intense and reliable perceptions, these films employ moving images to somewhat surprising ends. Instead of excluding the senses of closeness from the aesthetic experience, they perform the paradox of establishing an excess of tactility through a visual medium. The manner in which they address the spectator’s tactility engages and exceeds visuality. By inviting a tactile approach to the moving image, a particular form of aesthetic experience is fostered. The eye of the spectator is effectively transformed into an imaginary hand, an eye-hand that collapses into the image, commingling with the fragments of other bodies and things on display. This raises the following question: how can this mode of film perception be conceived of as aesthetic experience, as regards the reduction of distance? I would contend that it is the deliberate reduction of the sensorium to visuality and tactility, along with intentional education of the awareness of perceptions that flow from the intersection of these two sensory modalities, that allows one to claim that we are dealing with aesthetic experience. I am unable to determine whether it is a necessary precondition that the spectator has lived through the experience that s/he encounters on the screen in order to effectively enable the re-cognition of what is going on, or whether no such previous knowledge is necessary. The mediatised performance of touch evokes, via the eye, a sense of how the body of a person or things in the surrounding world might feel. In using the word ›feel‹ I emphasise the tactile sensation over the emotional or affective sensation, despite the fact that the two cannot be neatly separated, and – as is suggested by the word ›feeling’s‹ sensory basis – are essentially intertwined. By contrast, the three films that I have discussed at the beginning of this article allude to the contradiction between everyday experience and aesthetic experience, and do so by reflexively addressing the problem of mediatization for facilitating immersion. This is achieved by staging the transgression of the border between the world of the living and a mythical underworld as a stride through the mirror (Orphée), by grossly overemphasizing the effects of video consumption as perceptual distortion (Videodrome), or by playing with the idea that the 132 TOUCHING THE SCREEN, STRIDING THROUGH THE MIRROR: THE HAPTIC IN FILM world as we know it is a computer simulation (The Matrix). While in the context of these films the act of touching mirrors or screens reveals the illusionary nature of aesthetic experience, it equally discloses the seductive appeal and cannibalistic threat that lies at the core of fictional worlds. The motif of transforming the material of solid projection surfaces such as mirrors or television screens into soft, pliable, liquid or viscous substances points to the ambiguity that inheres within representations of reality, and indeed to the problem of liminality as it arises for the perceiver who stands at the threshold between different orders of experience. The key scenes discussed above highlight the issue of immersive experience by staging the sensory uncertainty that marks and creates these thresholds. While visual and tactile sense impressions correspond to one another, they remain at odds with everyday experience. By literally exhibiting the amorphous state of reflexive surfaces in terms of material ambiguity, these films eloquently address the problem of the medial and mythical doubling of reality. This observation raises the question of whether particular immersive scenarios amplify or oppose modern culture’s disqualification of the sense of touch. The films that have been discussed here stress the immersive power of tactility either in combination with visual cues, or as an issue in its own right. In addition, they represent, reflect and perform the aesthetic potential of tactile experience; a potential that has not yet been fully explored. As a tentative answer to the question posed above I propose that the potential for spectacular agency might arise from the gaps that emerge between visual and tactile perceptions, and which thus enable creative viewing practices by embracing dissonances between various sensory modalities and forms of experience. References benthien, c.: Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World. (Transl. t. dunlap) New York [Columbia University Press] 2000 133 BETTINA PAPENBURG classen, c.: Worlds of Sense. Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures. London [Routledge] 1993 classen, c.: Foundations for an anthropology of the senses. 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