Architecture on Film

During our reading of Keenan’s Windows article, Geoff mentioned architecture as another mythological construction. I think this fascinating idea of a “physical mythology” has bearing on Mulvey’s analysis of the male command of the filmed environment. Architecture provides both a willing backdrop and an active enhancement of the aura, mythology, and activity of the on-screen male (in Mulvey) or, in Keenan’s case, the window-watcher. The literal window in Keenan traps the window-watcher in an architectural mythology of form that has some similarity to the relationship of the structure of cinematic scenes to the actor. This may seem like an obvious comparison—of course cinema is comparable to a window; this connection is drawn within Keenan’s article itself. But I’m trying to make a slightly different connection. This connection lies in the difference between the formation of the camera’s look and the environment created by its looks. To the extent that film has the possibility of capturing the real physical world, we must consider the architectural mythology that is either captured or reconfigured by its portrayal on film. Actors (like un-filmed people) are subject to the architectural forms they inhabit, so we cannot stop at considering the actor as s/he is subjected to the form of the camera’s look, and must consider how s/he is subjected to the mythologies of the architecture filmed.
If the architecture of the filmed scene should be considered independent of the camera for a moment as its own formation of myth, then we must acknowledge that what is portrayed takes on a wider existence and meaning than can be prescribed by the camera. The landscape of a film and its manner of portrayal is an architectural construction that is created by the lens, but takes on its own mythology. The “stage of spatial illusion” is a unique mythological construction that, in our analysis, hangs suspended within the infinitely more celebrated formation of the lens’ frame (Mulvey, 204). Male ownership of the onscreen world’s architectural landscape is created by the camera’s look, and its creation is subject to the limitations of the camera, but the meaning of world created is not synonymous with the meaning of camera that created it. I think the “stage of spatial illusion” could be considered in its own light, in some ways separate from the camera-creator, taking on its own life.