Suturing in Film Theory and Narrative Practices

The Semiotic Foundation of Suture

On a very literal level, to suture something is to sew it back together — usually imperfectly, and usually with a substance that is alien to the body being altered, such as the thread a doctor uses to stitch together an open wound. On a semiotic level, according to Jacques-Alain Miller, 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.

This idea is derived from the Lacanian concept of gesture, or pseudo-identification, where one thing is used to stand in for another within 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 as false as the doctor's thread, or it may be alien to the substance of the object being sutured — as nylon is to flesh. Nevertheless, the act of suturing creates a sense of unity that is not actually present in the system of signification, or in any signification system.

Suturing and the Cinematic Gaze

The concept of suturing has been taken up by film theorists to describe the process by which a viewer is drawn into the narrative fabric of a film and changed by what he or she sees. The experience of watching a film alters the unique subjective consciousness of every individual viewer, at a particular moment and in a particular space where the film is being shown. Usually this alteration takes the form of a confirmation — reinforcing certain cultural ideals.

This act is accomplished through the individual watching the film becoming the "stand-in" for the camera gazing at the objects of the film. Note the falseness inherent in the system of suturing in the act of gazing at a film. The camera itself is a false or non-integrated object, supposedly true to life in the way it captures images. Yet the capturing and editing of film invisibly changes the quality of the life passing before the camera; 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 the 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 point of view. Every level of analysis of the filmed process yields another level of suturing, another layer 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 thus placed in an imaginary position of transcendence, becoming an all-knowing eye (or "I") replacing the supposedly all-knowing camera.

In the sutured spectral gaze of cinema, the camera itself is limited, selecting only certain perspectives and fragments of life, and the viewer is similarly limited in his or her own perspective — even while 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 in a bodily fashion. The experience of watching a film is thus an intensified form of what Lacan describes when observing staged Asian combat in the theater, or Marines grimacing at one another as they engage in a fight. In staged combat, the warrior's grimace and the non-connecting blows stand in for the real blows of fighting. In watching a film, this standing-in gesture is replaced simply by a gaze — an apparently non-participatory presence that in actuality invisibly shapes the texture of the narrative while being shaped by it.

This absence gives the gazer a certain power. Often, by not being present yet not being acknowledged or understood, an individual is granted a certain status of omniscient knowledge, as when people speaking a foreign tongue appear more logical and intelligent than those who can actually be understood — it seems inconceivable that extraordinary sounds should signify something trivial or mundane.

Gender, Identity, and the Limits of the Sutured Gaze

A spectator gazing at the naked, vulnerable body of a young woman in a film is granted power over the actress, rendering her exposed by his or her gaze. However, the act of suturing the spectator within the film immediately raises a complication: what happens when the body of the spectator is similar to the body being observed? A female viewer, for instance, becomes both sutured into the film — judging the woman on screen — while simultaneously recognizing that a reflection of her own body is being judged. This suturing reinforces the idea of a seamless dichotomy in which the male gazes at the female body written as an object of desire, yet it erases the reality that women also gaze.

Identity, unlike the ideal of suturing in film narrative, is thus relational not only to a particular subjective state but also to a particular state of body. As one autobiographical narrator writes: "The personal history I venture here is thus also an interrogation of its own key terms, including 'identity,' 'race,' 'gender,' and 'class.' Although I do not attribute to any of these concepts a substantial 'truth,' I insist upon the dynamic reality of their operations in all areas of personal and social life."

Conclusion: Suturing, Subversion, and Cultural Construction

Suturing is thus not an inevitable narrative process of film, although the visual nature of the filmed medium as it has evolved within our own cultural context makes it a difficult process to subvert. One might further ask whether its continual subversion does not itself become a cliché — whether the act of subverting suturing does not become a culturally constructed gesture in its own right, as the growing use of postmodern and oblique forms of representation even in modern advertising compels us to consider. Although subverting suturing in film remains a complicated endeavor, the destabilization of a master narrative through the particularity of autobiography still offers some hope — however problematic that hope may be.

Works Cited

Despair. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Fowler, Karen Joy. Sarah Canary. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.

Je, tu, il, elle. Directed by Chantal Akerman, 1974.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Directed by Chantal Akerman, 1975.

"Flickering in the Dark: Suturing in Film Theory." Another Scene.

"Suture as a Lacanian Concept." Another Scene.

"Oxydol Poisoning." Another Scene.