Review of The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema

Abstract

Indicative of a change in psychoanalytic film theory, Kaja Silverman’s The Acoustic Mirrorhighlights the inadequacies of previous uses of Lacan in cinema studies. While these previous film theories (e.g., Metz’s, Dayan’s) focus on the visual track discounting or ignoring theacoustic aspect of cinema, Silverman adds the voice; the voice, in terms of both the sound track and the voice of the author. By including the acoustic aspect, Silverman can study how classical Hollywood Cinema "extracts speech from women" instead of "woman as spectacle."