Lights, Camera, Illusion

Terry Eagleton states that "history is the ultimate signifier of literature, as it is the ultimate signified" (172). He presents the example of Dickens's Bleak House as the "imaginary London...that signifies not 'Victorian England' as such , but certain of Victorian England's ways of signifying itself" (172).

Forty years earlier, Walter Benjamin delved into a discussion of film as a signifier. Through a circuitous narrative, he arrives at the center of his argument that "The audience's identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera" (1240). Technology affords illusion. From the mechanical equipment, to the cutting room floor, reality has taken on new dimensions. What is being signified is not trustworthy.

While Benjamin deplores film for "What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a mechanical contrivance" (1240); interestingly, he has no problem with, "Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselves --- and primarily in their own work process" (1243). The camera and mechanical equipment in this case seem to play no role as a historical signifier.

Benjamin implies that there is a basic corruption in Western Europe's "capitalistic exploitation" to which the modern man is subjected through the film industry's scheme to "spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations" (1243).

Using Eagleton's premise that history is the ultimate signifier of literature, we might turn this observation to film. For there is a written script to film, which can be critiqued as a historical signifier-including Russian workers portraying themselves.