Abstract

The paper analyses the politics of ideology in the cinematic technique of montage. If cinema reproduces the relations of production of a society, montage makes the unconscious of the image conscious. When the spectator tries to understand the consecutive images in a montage and formulates their meaning, the spectator acknowledges himself, the image and his society. Through cinematic technique of montage by Dziga Vertov in Enthusiasm, the spectator is placed directly in the relations of production. The society dominated by the ruling class ideas, seeps in through the images onscreen to maintain the illusions about the real conditions of existence. Additionally, new subjectivity is created by producing the labour of ‘looking’. Montage then becomes a highly sophisticated technique of control and exercising power where the spectator willingly subjects himself to the ideas of the films that he chooses to watch.

Forthcoming in Rupkatha Journal.