This is in direct contravention of Roland Barthes’s edict in his essay ‘Right in the Eyes’, that, while it is permissible for the subject to stare into the lens—at the spectator—in a still photograph, ‘it is forbidden for an actor to look at the camera’ in a movie. So convinced was Barthes of his own rule that he was ‘not far from considering this ban as the cinema’s distinctive feature.… If a single gaze from the screen came to rest on me, the whole film would be lost.’ In this case, the effect is to implicate us in the reciprocity of their gaze. We are going along for the ride too. We are
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