This book challenges common sense understandings of the unconscious effects of film and visual media. It seeks to show a figurative analogy between early modern beliefs in the gendered imagination, namely that witches and pregnant women could manipulate and distort body image, with the theory of the male gaze. While acknowledging and remaining sensitive to the foundational idea of objectification, that it is 'unconscious', this book's argument nonetheless serves as a provocation against the imagining of objectification. To undermine assumptions of a literal link between the spectator's psyche and cinema screen, it analyses a range of films including the experimental filmWater Sark(1964) by Joyce Wieland, the Hong Kong horror filmDumplings(2004) by Fruit Chan, the joint production by Anne Marie Miéville and Jean Luc GodardLe livre de MarieandJe vous salue, Marie(1985) and the once widely screened French documentary on abortionHistoires d'A(1973). | The Maternal Imagination Of Film And Film Theory by Lauren Bliss, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters