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Since these early interdisciplinary efforts, a [[whole]] field of [[psychoanalytic]] film criticism has evolved. Systematic studies of movies first appeared in the 1950s in the [[French]] periodical, Cahiers du Cinèma. The Cahiers theorists subsequently appropriated Italian [[semiotics]] as well as the [[ideas]] of the deconstructionist Jacques [[Derrida]] and the French [[psychoanalyst]] Jacques [[Lacan]]. Film scholars influenced by Lacan and Derrida focus on the "deep [[structures]]" at [[work]] in movies and how meaning is generated in film. Lacan's most important student in the field of film [[theory]] has been [[Christian]] [[Metz]], whose work has become standard [[reading]] in academic cinema studies programs.
The [[Lacanian]] approach to film criticism centers on how audiences [[experience]] movies. The camera creates a "[[gaze]]" or perspective on the events of the film's [[narrative]]. A key aspect of the Lacanian [[discourse]] is the [[concept]] of "[[lack]]," both as the phallocentric key to [[sexual]] [[difference]] and in the [[symbolic]] [[sense]] of viewing external [[reality]] in [[terms]] of [[absence]] and [[presence]]. These ideas have been appropriated by [[feminist]] semioticians like Laura Mulvey, who suggested that the [[woman]]'s [[body]] is fetishized because it creates anixiety in men, to whom it represents "lack," i.e., [[castration]]. Moreover, the cinema is viewed as historically serving the interests of [[patriarchy]], privileging [[The Gaze|the gaze ]] of the [[male]] hero, while subordinating the [[female]] characters as the [[object]] of the gaze.
[[Interpretations]] of film based on Lacanian ideas have generated a [[good]] deal of criticism. Many have objected to the semioticians' methodology as top-heavy with [[theoretical]] formulations and too dismissive of the actual [[content]] of a film. In addition, a [[number]] of critics have pointed out that [[masculinity]] is regularly undermined in [[films]] and that male viewers often will [[identify]] with a female [[character]]. Moreover, male bodies are often fetishized in the cinema to the same extent as the female body.
