Uncovering the Address of the Eye: The Unconscious as Consciously Experienced in Tarkovsky’s <em>Mirror</em>

<p>Applying the phenomenological-semiotic framework to Mirror’s vision, this paper extends Sobchack’s film-subject model to the film’s unconscious domain, arguing for the ineluctable presence of the Narrator’s unconscious as latent in Its viewing trend. Moreover, given the material congruity of the film and the viewer in their film experience, the film enacts what Jacques Lacan calls “full speech,” disclosing its relation to the signifying chain through an introceptive image that the viewer simultaneously appropriates as their own, another “introceptive image.” This correspondence confers upon the viewer a supervisory function: through the overlapping processes of signification and the affective encounter of intentionalities, the viewer is able to register and delimit the film’s semantic opacity, distilling from it the méconnaissance that marks the Narrator’s unconscious. This paper has then restored Mirror’s semiotic-phenomenological complex to the two forms of the signifying chains as mattered in the Narrator's vision, respectively referencing the Narrator's desire for consecrating Its family bonds and the other desire, as unconscious, for this never-satisfied desire that has signified the domestic repression and intensity. The intertwinement of these two forms and their unqualified inter-substitution alike give rise to a certain emotional pendency – once considered as the myth of Tarkovsky's image – when the Narrator seeks to state Its domestic experience and to express the intimacy with the other beings whom It incorporates within this familial landscape.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Film Studies

Year dc:date.available

2026

Author dc:creator

• Wei, Boyang

Contributors dc:contributor

• Leah Aldridge
• Jacob Bohrod
• Michael Valdez Moses

• Mirror
• unconciousness
• semiotic phenomenology
• Jacques Lacan
• Vivian Sobchack
• Andrei Tarkovsky
• Film and Media Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/film_studies_theses/44

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.chapman.edu:film_studies_theses-1043