The name is absent

like that of a ‘lent dream’. Such interwoven processes of absorption generate
a (partial) disconnection from the reality of the individual.

A common response to the power of a film’s images comes from their
peculiar characteristics, where the large scale and highly detailed images
engage the audience in an activity of intense but simultaneously relaxing
sustained attention. In cinema, the spectator’s actions are normally reduced
to merely watching and listening to the film. Under these conditions, the
normal ‘judging’ function of the ego is suspended, to some degree, and our
ability to be receptive to ideas, to the (un)reality of the film, increases in
comparison to our everyday life. This can be interestingly compared to the
activity of watching a film at home where, in spite of the development in
technological audiovisual devices, the capacity of concentration decreases in
inverse proportion to the increase of distractions. In this context, the
(un)reality of the film encounters more barriers in linking with our
imagination, permeating our psyche and being appropriated by the spectator.
The lights, noises, interruptions and other interferences make the spectators
less vulnerable to the film when watching in a domestic environment.

Metz observes that one of the most remarkable qualities of cinema is
that it effaces the absence of the real with a simulated or constructed
reality, and, as a result, it fills the spectator’s lack, restoring him to an
imaginary wholeness:

The unique position of the cinema lies in this dual character
of its signifier: unaccustomed perceptual wealth, but at the
same time stamped with unreality to an unusual degree. It
drums up all perception, but to switch it immediately over
into its own absence, which is nonetheless the only signifier
present (Metz, 1982: 45).

In this sense, Lacan, who locates himself at the point of confluence between
unconscious reality and conscious reality, refers to this phenomenon when
reality and unreality comprise one entity using the term ‘suture’. Lacan
(1979: 118) explains the identification of the audience with the film, relying
on this ‘conjunction of the imaginary and the symbolic’ within the cinematic

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