The Language of Mirrors

Abstract

At one point in Frame Analysis Erving Goffman refers to Susan Sontag’s comments on the devices of self-reflection (such as intermittent shots of the cameraman) which Jean-Luc Godard employs in a film like ‘La Chinoise’. Sontag remarks that these devices can never fully satisfy the criterion of reflexivity since the spectator would also have to see the cameraman filming the cameraman filming the film and so on ad infinitum. Goffman generalises from this observation, adding:

Sontag only fails to note that this evidence of bad faith holds not only for Godard and not merely for tricky filmmakers but for anyone in any frame who tries to convey something about the character of the frame he is employing; the posture he thereby assumes inevitably denies awareness of the frame in which that posture is struck.²

je veux lui faire voir là-dedans un abîme nouveau

Pascal, Pensées¹