Conclusion

Abstract

The past decade has seen a sharper analysis of concepts such as representation, meaning, identification than was the case under the auspices of French theory. However, the relish expressed by some thinkers at the overthrow of the latter has been unseemly. It has also involved throwing the Freudian baby out with the bath water. This study attempts to use Kleinian concepts articulated through analytical philosophy. A central aspect of my argument is the importance of the psychological framework in which certain aesthetic questions are located. Since Plato most theories of art have been embedded in models of the mind, and none more so than in the relatively brief history of film theory itself, from the work of Munsterburg less than two decades after the inception of film, to the contemporary writings of Gregory Currie. The Stokesian model is not presented as the last word in the psychoanalytical tradition within film theory, but rather is intended to bring to bear certain aesthetic ideas often informed by philosophical debate to some of the more stubborn questions encountered in thinking about the medium.