Elizabeth W. Bruss "Eye for I: Making and Unmaking Autobiography in Film"

On page 308 Bruss claims “[t]he perceiver can never hope to catch a glimpse of himself; the figure that he sees before him on the screen cannot be his own, for he is somewhere else watching it.” I disagree with this statement in that I feel that one of the reasons people are drawn to film is that it offers them a form of identification. How else can one explain why a person would take two hours of their time to watch a film? We seek to identify with the person or subject on the screen. Bruss also says that “…autobiography is predicated on sole authorship” (304) and that even a cinema auteur can not achieve “sole authorship” because of the many other people that are involved in the film making process. While an author may write her own autobiography, there are usually editors, proofreaders, etc. who will read the work and then return it with notes for the author to take into consideration. And just as a film is subjected to a manipulated view within a viewer’s mind, so is an autobiographical book, because the reader is left to make up images in their own head in relation to the text. Thus, both film and literary works are subjected to manipulation through the perceiver.