Early Psychological Film Theory and Chaplin’s Gold Rush, Coursework Example

Introduction        

The early psychological approach to film theory can be understood as an emphasis on the subjective and objective relation that constitutes the central nexus of the cinematic experience. In other words, the psychological approach does not consider the film as an object that merely exists in-itself and which is to be interpreted as some ideal object, but rather postulates how the film exists in relation to its subjective perception. The film is thus immediately understood as created for a viewer: the structure of the film itself therefore is made from the perspective of the viewer. The understanding of aesthetic techniques employed in film must be grasped according to how such techniques intend to create a psychological effect in the viewer, or to put it more sharply, how the film already corresponds to the psychology of the viewer. According to this theory, this is accomplished through the symmetry between the structure of film and the psychic structure of human beings. In the following essay, I shall develop this thesis by providing a reading of early psychological film theory and emphasizing some of the key strengths and weakness of this approach to the analysis of cinema. Secondly, this reading will be put to work, through an analysis of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 film “The Gold Rush.” Chaplin’s work represents an archetypical projection of the strengths and weakness of early psychological film theory to analyze cinema, as it demonstrates how the psychology affects the structure of film, while at the same time showing how this psychology can be thought of as a product of real material conditions. Accordingly, Chaplin shows the limitations of the psychological theory in his work.

The Early Psychogical Theory of Film 

Some of the primary questions of early cinematic theory can be split into two main categories: first, questions pertaining to film itself as an object, and second, questions pertaining to the relationship between film and the viewer of film. As Robert Stam writes, the first category included “perennial questions about the cinema”, (27) whereas the second category addressed “questions [that] had to do with film’s relation to the three-dimensional world.” (27) Under the first type of inquiry, Stam notes that questions such as “is cinema an art of merely a mechanical recorder of visual phenomena?” (27) are crucial. Such questions interrogate the problem of the phenomenon of the film itself, in terms of an aesthetic approach that attempts to classify exactly what kind of art cinema is. Therefore, questions such as how cinema “differs from other arts such as painting, music, and theater”  (27) become important for the purpose of defining the parameters of film as its own unique form of art: we can say these questions relate to the typology of art in general. The second questions, as concerned with the role of the viewer suggest “what distinguishes reality in the world, as it were, from reality as presented in the cinema.” (27) In this second line of questioning, the film is no longer an isolated object, but the relationship of the film to the world itself is postulated: this world is the world of the viewer of the film. Thus, questions such as “film’s psychological determinants” (27) and “what mental processes are involved in spectatorship” (27) are pertinent. Following this account, it can be said that the psychological theory thrives on a non-naïve view of reality. That is, film is not merely an isolated object created out of nothing. It rather exists within a social context, and its very narrative and form functions insofar as it can be understood in terms of the mental processes of the spectator. In other words, it is the very existence of the spectator or the viewer that determines what kind of possibilities the object of film may present.

Such an early psychological film theory is defended in the work of Hugo Munsterberg. Munsterberg’s key thesis is that the particular aesthetic experience of the film can only be understood from a psychological perspective because the film functions as an expression of elements that are already constitutive of human mental experience. Thus, Munsterberg writes: “the photoplay…gave us a view of dramatic events which was completely shaped by the inner-movements of the mind.” (Means, 411) What is important in Munsterberg’s assessment is not only the psychological approach to film, but moreover, that film is the psychological medium of art par excellence. This is because the structure of film follows how one’s mind works. As Munsterberg writes, when watching film “the spectator feels that they are not presented in the three dimensions of the outer world, that they are flat pictures which only the mind molds into plastic things…the pictures break up the movement into a rapid succession of instantaneous impressions. We do not see the objective reality, but a product of our own mind.” (Means, 411) The structure of film therefore is identical to how the mind itself presents situations. Instead of, for example, a form of art that depicts some object in an objective manner that is the opposite to our psychic experiences, film presents itself through aesthetics that resemble our very own mental states. For example, film links series of events that resemble our own mental processes, since present in film are “processes of attention, of memory, of imagination, of suggestion, of division of interest and emotion.” (Means, 412) Films use all these motifs in order to present their art; yet all these techniques are precisely processes that are inherent to every human being’s psyche. In other words, film for Munsterberg, is a replication of how humans mentally process their reality and in this approach is found the uniqueness of cinema. Thus, one of the key theoretical questions Munsterberg poses towards film as art form is as follows: “the means by which the photoplay influences the mind of the spectator.” (Psychology, 19) From the perspective of early psychological film theory this influence can be traced to the fact that the film mimics the mind of the spectator, essentially functioning at its own mind.

While this theory offers a powerful conception of film, explaining its differences to other forms of art, perhaps one of the weaknesses of this theory is that it reduces film to a merely psychological phenomenon. In so doing, it begs the question as to whether all aesthetics can be reduced to psychology. If this is the case, then film once again becomes indistinguishable from other forms of aesthetics. On the other hand, if film is not reducible to other forms of aesthetics, perhaps film can include processes in its composition that are not merely reducible to their identity to how the human mind functions.

Chaplin’s the Gold Rush From the Perspective of Early Psychological Film Theory

Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 silent piece “The Gold Rush”, demonstrates some of the key tenets of early psychological film theory, while at the same time suggesting some of the limits to this theory. In the film Chaplin once again takes up his role of the Little Tramp, in order to tell the narrative of a poverty-stricken man who goes to Alaska at the time of the Alaskan gold rush to resolve his financial problems. The details of Chaplin’s adventures can be thought in terms of early psychological film theory through the figure of the Little Tramp. One of the classic scenes of the film, Chaplin’s daydream in an Alaskan cabin about a girl that would visit him, is a representation fo the psychological capacity for fantasy. The fantasy is thus the presentation of the inner mental state of imagination through the portrayal of this imagination on film. In other words, this is an example of filming of a pure mental process. Such examples of the functions of the mind include Chaplin’s eating of a boot, while he imagines that the shoelaces are spaghetti. Here the imagination of the mental process functions according to metonymy, in which the shoelaces substitute the spaghetti. This demonstrates a common psychic process, for example, as found in dreams, where certain figures within the dream stand in for others. Accordingly, Chaplin relies heavily on ways in which the mind works to generate his humor in the film.

At the same time, there is a deeply socio-critical aspect to Chaplin’s film that perhaps cannot be accounted for from the perspective of a psychological theory. The central thematic of Chaplin’s film can be understood as a criticism of capitalist society, through the portrayal of economic hardship and how this produces phenomenon such as the Gold Rush. In this regard, Chaplin provides an account of the real material conditions of human existence as the underlying primal cause of the entire narrative. In other words, the more psychological moments of Chaplin’s film are products of the material conditions of poverty. Hence, Chaplin eats shoes laces and imagines that this is spaghetti: this fantasy is not merely a product of his own mental states, his own psychology, but is rather created because of the material conditions of his poverty. In essence, Chaplin does not evoke a mere reduction to psychology, but instead looks at possible causes for psychological and mental processes that are not tied to the subject, but to the real world itself. Following Chaplin’s own political engagements, this can be understood as a Marxist materialist approach to film, since psychological fantasy is the result of real social, material and economic conditions.

Hence, while the early psychological film theory provides a compelling diagnosis of how film functions, a work such as Chaplin’s Gold Rush perhaps symbolizes a limit to such an interpretation. Chaplin essentially argues against the reduction of human existence to psychology, as mental processes are viewed as products of material conditions. Accordingly, Chaplin’s film does not only present mental processes, but attempts to show the material conditions that underlie such mental processes by showing the extreme poverty and hardship of the Little Tramp. In other words, Chaplin uses elements of psychological film theory and then subverts them through an emphasis on a materialistic theory.

Works Cited

Munsterberg, Hugo. “The Psychology of the Photoplay.” The Film: A Psychology Study. New York: Dover, 1970.

Munsterberg, Hugo. “From the Film: A Psychological Study: The Means of the Photoplay.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Sixth Ed. ed.

Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 2004.

Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.