Perspective is NOT Ideologically Neutral
In the ordinary use of the term, subject in fact means: (1) a free subjectivity, a center of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions; (2) a subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission - Louis Althusser
To think of a human being as a subject is to think of a human being as free, isolated individuals who are soley responsible and answerable for the outcomes of their actions, rather than indiciduals who are determined by larger social forces.
"all ideology has the function of constituting concrete individuals as subjects"
"Pascal says more or less: 'Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.'"
- Louis Althusser
The painting of the Renaissance will elaborate a centered space... The center of the space coincides with the eye which Jean Pellerin Viator will so appropriately call the "subject" (The principal point in perspective should be placed at eye level: this point is called fixed or subject).
Based upon the principle of a fixed point by reference to which the visualized objects are organized, it specifies in return the position of the "subject," the very spot it must necessarily occupy.
Renaiisance perspective "was discovered at only one time and place in man's entire history. The more elementary procedures for representing pictoorial space, the two-dimensional 'Egyptian' method as well as isometric projection... were and are discovered independently all over the world at early levels of visual conception.
- Arnheim, "Art and Visual Perception")
Can stylistic choices suppress the perspective inherent to the camera?
"Godard, like Eisenstein, repudiates "the individualistic conception of the bourgeois hero" and his tracking shots reflect this. His camera serves no individual and prefers none to another."
"Godard avoids depth: he arranges his characters in a single plane only-- none is ever closer to the camera than another."
- Brian Henderson, "Towards a non-bourgeois camera style"
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