In the words of Sandy Flitterman-Lewis—she describes that “psychoanalysis has provided a useful way of discussing our relationship with the cinema” due to it’s similarities to the human tendency in dream to “relate ‘stories told in images’” and our movie watching experiences. To this analysis, she notes that the framework has it’s foundation called the “cinematic apparatus”. Which includes the conditions of the film projection, the film itself as a text and the “mental machinery of spectatorship” (including the conscious perceptual as well as unconscious and preconscious processes) that constitutes the viewer as a desiring subject and the technical base of the film (the special effects produced by components of the film projector). She remarks
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Take the Evangelion’s entry plug (or removable cockpit) for example. It fits into a cylindrical womb-like opening and it encases the pilot in an amniotic breathable fluid called LCL. The character Shinji notes that the cockpit itself smells like blood when the LCL purification systems fail (Splitting of the Breast). The entry plug itself is not unlike the environment like that of a mother’s womb, as Shinji’s immersion in a closed environment with a blood-like fluid is comparable to that of how a woman’s womb holds and unborn fetus in a blood rich fluid. The intimacy of the environment can be compared to the psychoanalytic experience of watching a film itself, as Flitterman-Lewis remarks “Films are seen in large, silent darkened theaters” where “intense light beams are projected from behind luminous surfaces in front” and how all viewers are in a “cocoonlike, enveloping situation” (Flitterman-Lewis, 217). Compare the snugness of the womblike cockpit and it’s focused light illuminated feedback system (see Appendix G) to that of the cinema. The anime itself seems to point towards a meta-commentary towards the viewing experience of the viewer and the psychoanalytic film-viewing experience. To add the Freudian psycho-analytic element, we later learn that the Evangelion unit contains the soul of Shinji’s mother, effectively transforming the unit into a surrogate mother figure that Shinji would remark that he feels safe with in Evangelion
Take the Evangelion’s entry plug (or removable cockpit) for example. It fits into a cylindrical womb-like opening and it encases the pilot in an amniotic breathable fluid called LCL. The character Shinji notes that the cockpit itself smells like blood when the LCL purification systems fail (Splitting of the Breast). The entry plug itself is not unlike the environment like that of a mother’s womb, as Shinji’s immersion in a closed environment with a blood-like fluid is comparable to that of how a woman’s womb holds and unborn fetus in a blood rich fluid. The intimacy of the environment can be compared to the psychoanalytic experience of watching a film itself, as Flitterman-Lewis remarks “Films are seen in large, silent darkened theaters” where “intense light beams are projected from behind luminous surfaces in front” and how all viewers are in a “cocoonlike, enveloping situation” (Flitterman-Lewis, 217). Compare the snugness of the womblike cockpit and it’s focused light illuminated feedback system (see Appendix G) to that of the cinema. The anime itself seems to point towards a meta-commentary towards the viewing experience of the viewer and the psychoanalytic film-viewing experience. To add the Freudian psycho-analytic element, we later learn that the Evangelion unit contains the soul of Shinji’s mother, effectively transforming the unit into a surrogate mother figure that Shinji would remark that he feels safe with in Evangelion