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The Camera and the Speculum: David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers

1991; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 106; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/462779

1938-1530

Marcie Frank,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

N THE DOMAIN of film, the problem of looking alike is often presented as the problem of being alike, for film techniques can create resemblances where none exists. For example, crosscutting can establish parallels between different scenes or locales, and camera angles can make different compositions look similar. Likewise, the camera can depict one actor in two roles. In this sense it functions like a mirror. The classification of a subgenre of films that cast one actor in two roles-the twin movie-might prove useful for discussing the intersection of film technology with concepts, such as the mirror stage, that are central to a Lacanian account of the subject. Instead of delineating the boundaries of such a subgenre, however, this paper focuses on a single twin film whose subject matter and technique provide the basis for reflecting on the acquisition of male identity and on the consequent danger to women as they are represented (or elided) by the camera. In Dead Ringers, David Cronenberg, the filmmaker whom Martin Scorcese describes as look[ing] like a gynecologist from Beverly Hills (46), raises questions about the relation between the camera as a gynecological instrument and the camera as a speculum in the sense of a mirror. His film, the story of twin brothers who are gynecologists, is structured to display the relation between these two specula. Their workings have implications for spectatorship, its gendering, and its relation to violence.