Suturing in Film Theory and Other Narrative Practices
On a very literal level, to suture something is to sew something back together, usually imperfectly, usually with a substance that is alien to the body that is being altered -- such as the doctor's suturing thread that stitches together an open wound. On a semiotic level, according to Jacques-Alain Miller, Miller's definition of suture (in a nutshell) is that the suturing process in culture is the process through which a subject is joined into the signifying chain of culture, allowing a signifier to stand-in for the subject's absence in discourse. (Suture as a Laconian Concept)
This idea is derived from the Laconian concept of gesture, or pseudo-identification, where one thing is used to stand in for another in a system of signification. This standing-in sutures the system of signification, and makes it seem more seamless than it truly is. The stand-in may be false as the doctor's thread, or it may be alien to the substance of the object being sutured to, as nylon is to flesh. However, the act of suturing creates a sense of unity that is not actually present in the system of signification, or any signification system.
The concept of suturing has been taken up by film theorist to suggest the idea by which a gazer at a film is taken up into the narrative fabric of the film and is changed by what he or she sees. The experience of seeing the film alters the unique subjective consciousness of every individual viewing that film, in and at a particular moment and in a particular space where the film is being show. Usually this alteration takes the form of a confirmation, confirming certain cultural ideals.
This act is accomplished as the individual watching the film becoming the 'stand in' for the camera gazing at the objects of the film. Note the falseness that is inherent in the system of suturing in the gazing-at of a film. The camera itself is a false or non-integrated object supposedly true to life in the way it captures images. The capturing and editing of film invisibly changes the quality of the life passing before the camera, by observing it and setting it down in the form of a viewed film. To observe something is to change it.
In suturing, the individual watching the film stands in for the camera, and takes on that camera's gaze, adding another level to fictionally constructed nature of the narrative. The images passing before the camera are selected and (usually) fictionally rendered, or if documentary, are at least limited by the focus of editing and the camera's gaze. Every level of analysis of the filmed process itself yields another level of suturing; another level of what is fiction. The objects on the screen 'mis-recognize' the eye of the viewer and treat the viewer as if his or her eye were a camera. The viewer is placed in thus an imaginary place of transcendence, becoming an all-knowing eye (or 'I') replacing the supposedly all knowing camera. (Flickering in the Dark: Suturing in Film Theory)
In the sutured spectral gaze of cinema, the camera itself is limited, selecting only certain perspectives and bits of life to know, and the viewer is thus similarly limited in his or her own perspectives, although they are being granted an empowering voyeuristic experience. The experience of watching a film grants the viewer the sense that he or she is recognizing him or herself in the unfolding narrative, without having to truly participate in or experience that narrative language in a bodily fashion. The experience of watching a film is thus an intensified form of what Lacan talks about, in observing staged Asian combat in the theater or Marines grimacing at one another as they engaged in a fight. (Suture as a Lacanian Concept) In staged combat, the warrior's grimace and the not-touching blows stand in for the real blows of fighting. In watching a film, the standing-in of the not-connecting gesture is replaced simply by a gaze, an apparently non-participatory presence that in actuality invisibly shapes the texture of the narrative and is shaped by it.
This absence gives the gazer a certain power. Often by not being present, but not being acknowledged or understood, an individual is given a certain status of omniscient knowledge.
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