Hable Con Ella: In regard to Embodied Spectatorship

̏ The material elements that present themselves in films directly stimulate the material layers of the human being: his nerves, his senses, his entire physiological substance ̋.
(Kracauer, cited by Sobchack, 55)

̏…although, I do have the capacity to fully-and literally- feel the specific texture and weight of the silk blouse I am wearing, my tactile desire is located elsewhere, in the onscreen taffeta and wool, and so, intending elsewhere, I feel the specificity of the silk on my skin only partially and diffusely ̋.
(Sobchack,78).

‘During the earlier periods in the history of film theory there were various attempts to understand the meaningful relation between cinema and our sensate bodies’ (Sobchack, 54). But Sobchack also adds that until recent years this topic was ignored by the film theorists. This paper will focus on embodied film spectatorship. This issue will be discussed through an analysis of the film; Hable Con Ella, (Talk to Her) (2002), made by Pedro Almadóvar. The film is selected because as a spectator, I was impressed to see how strongly I experienced the film bodily.

The film focuses on the relationship of both among two men protagonists Benigno and Marco and also their relationships with two women Alicia and Lydia. Benigno is a nurse looking after Alicia, who is in coma and Marco is sort of a boyfriend to Lydia, who is a bullfighter and who is also in coma after the accident occurred in the bullfight. Benigno and Marco become friends as a result of this shared experience and the time spent in the same hospital.

The first scene it will be focussed on is the dressing up scene of Lydia because in terms of embodied spectatorship experience it is quite strong. In the scene, she enters the room while the other characters were having a conversation. While they are still talking, one of the men takes the garment so that he could help her dressing up. This is how the spectator is introduced to the matador garment. Then the pieces of the costume are shown in detail. The camera focuses on her legs and the pink, very tight socks. Special care has been given to the sound in the scene. The conversation at the back ground is either ended or just ignored on purpose by the director. So other than the sound of the clothes the viewer is left in silence. But the sound of the clothes can be heard so clearly and it dominates the scene. All the sounds are produced by the touch of the garment to the body of the women and also the man. The viewer feels the heavy and very elaborate decorations of the garments due to the sound and the close up view. In addition to that, the device he uses to do the buttons contributes to convey this feeling. The dress is too tight that he cannot use his fingers to button it. Other than sound, also the vision makes the spectator realize this feeling. Although her body is very tight, fit and slim, she can still hardly fit into the dress. Camera shows the whole dressing up process closely. There is no tiniest bit of space between her skin and the garment. As a spectator I felt the heaviness and tightness of the dress and felt suffocated. I felt myself inside of the costume and my body has become her body. The scene ends with him standing in front of her, grabbing the jacket of the garment on both neckbands and pulling harshly as a final touch. Once again based on the strong sound resulted by the harsh move and the vision of the move of his body and her body joggled by his move make the spectator feel that the dress is too heavy, elaborately decorated and too tight, which doesn’t allow you to even move.

As it is mentioned previously the scene illustrates a good example to haptic vision. The term ‘haptic visuality’ is used by Laura Marks and basically refers to our experiencing the vision on the screen sensually, in other words, to perceive the scene bodily (Sobchack, 56). If more explanation is needed, haptic visuality gives you the sense of touch, sense of smell and so on. For example, in the scene that is discussed above, even tough the viewer can not touch to the matador garment literally, still she/he can feel the texture, the decorations and the tightness of the costume. Although as Sobchack mentions this aspect of visioning is ignored by the theorists, still some works and studies have been done focussing on this. Deleuze writes that Eisenstein ̏continually reminds us that ‘intellectual cinema’ has as correlate ‘sensory thought’ or ‘emotional intelligence,’ and is worthless without it ̋ (Sobchack, 55). She mentions about a study which took place in Unites States in 1930s and focussed on the ‘galvanic responses’ and blood pressure of the spectators. Also she reminds Walter Benjamin’s ideas about cinema (Sobchack, 56). Benjamin, in his article ̏ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ̋ (1935), also talks about tactile appropriation and experiencing the movie in distraction, meaning; the spectator also experiences the film through senses and bodily without really thinking about it (Benjamin, 14, Sobchack, 65).

According to Kraucauer, cinema has the power to ̏ stimulate us physiologically and sensually ̋ (Sobchack, 55). He also sees spectator as a ‘corporal material being’ and he thinks cinema touches on this corporal material being. This being touched by the cinema would be called embodied spectatorship (Sobchack, 55, 56). To explain embodied spectatorship more in detail it would be useful to discuss two related terms which are synaesthesia and coenaesthesia (Sobchack, 67).

Synaesthesia can be defined as ‘involuntary experience’ (Sobchack, 67). Synaesthesia experience is immediate, direct, and concrete and the meaning is clear. It is more like being and living it (Sobchack , 68). Also synaesthesiatic perception makes the viewer to receive the sound as colour, shape and taste (Sobchack, 67). So this explains why the sound is so important and why just ordinary diagetic sounds are so exaggerated in the films. Also in the scene that is discussed in this paper the diagetic sounds are so dominant. The other term coenaesthesia refers to the whole sensorial being (Sobchack, 67). So when the spectator sees a film these two work together and make him/her experience the film bodily.

It would be useful at this point to look at another scene which can illustrate all these explanations of the terms and the concepts. So the next scene it will be focussed is the cleaning of Alicia’s body by Benigno and another nurse. In the scene, basically, two nurses are cleaning Alicia’s body with sponge, cloth, some cleaneser product, and talking. Again the sound is very dominant. It makes the viewer experience the scene. You feel how the sponge and foam touches on the skin. This is not just because of the sound in the scene but also because of the knowledge and lived experience of yours. You know how it feels because you experienced it bodily for many times (Sobchack, 60, 71, 73). As a spectator you relate your body to the characters’ body on the scene. You feel the scene on your body through seeing the body or bodies on the screen. Sobchack calls this bodily reflexivity (Sobchack, 79). Also by looking at Alicia’s body you can feel that she is lifeless. You reach to this judgement by looking at her movements and reactions when the nurses are touching her. So all the images and the whole mise-en-scène in the scene communicate both with your knowledge and also with your senses and make you experience the scene bodily and make sense of the scene. Sobchack says ̏… cinema uses ‘lived modes’ of perceptual and sensory experience (seeing, movement, and hearing the most dominant) as ‘sign-vehicles’ of representation ̋ (Sobchack, 74). She continues; ̏…the cinema simultaneously represents experience through dynamic presentation and it also presents experience as representation ̋ (Sobchack, 74).

To sum up, Hable con Ella is a good example for embodied spectatorship. It uses sound and body very dominantly which allows the spectator to experience the film bodily even more. As a viewer I was so impressed with my bodily reactions. I felt the film on my whole body so strongly which is why I decided to focus on this film. In the scenes which have been focussed in this paper, the sound was very dominant and as it is mentioned before this was one of the key elements which trigger synaesthetic perception. Cinema by using both lived bodily knowledge and the relation of sound and vision to touch and other senses such as taste, communicates with the spectator not just mentally and not just on the screen but also bodily and more three dimensionally and literally.

Bibliography

Walter Benjamin, ̏ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ̋, 1935.
Vivian Sobchack, Carnal of Thougths: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, University of California Press, 2004.