This chapter considers the previous ways in which literary scholars have used film theory in their interpretations of Ulysses. Joyce scholars have tended to favour the psychoanalytic film theories of Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey, employing them in their analyses of the relationship between Gerty and Bloom in the ‘Nausicaa’ episode of Ulysses. Phenomenology is offered as an alternative approach, as a way of seeing beyond the seemingly rigid binaries of seer/seen, subject/object, absorptive/theatrical, and personal/impersonal. Starting from Merleau-Ponty’s ‘The Film and the New Psychology’ (1945), then moving on to consider the ideas of contemporary film phenomenologists (such as Vivian Sobchack, Spencer Shaw, and Jennifer Barker), the second half of the chapter outlines the insights provided by phenomenology, focusing on the reciprocity of cinematic perception and the embodied nature of film spectatorship.
Shame: Ingmar Bergman’s Vietnam War
