Its lack of discrete identity and recognition within an architectural symbolic enables or perhaps demands that A la Ronde operate outside conventional notions of an architectural canon. The use of the shell to infiltrate the interior of A la Ronde, sites specifically these notions of the culinary abject. It possesses all the attributes of a social apparatus, though it varies in its strategic operation. More than an optical machine for mechanically reproducing movements that are external to it, by the operations of montage the cinema produces motion that is different in kind and mobilizes a cinematic perception which couples what we see with that which could be seen by another. Montage, or the act of selecting and assembling of shots, does not simply leave immobile sections and gaps requiring external narrative links or cognitive associations to authorize their movements.
Cinematic motion is both prior to and independent of the manoeuvres of the narrative or script.
Since the boundaries of shots are permeable there is already a virtual motion which traverses them. The strategy of montage is therefore affective rather than cognitive. This paper attempts to throw light on the relationship between monstrosity and the production of meaning in a positive economy of power. This question is the silent partner of inquiries into 'the what' and 'the where' of the image in broad ranging discussions of the status of the visual image which have explored meanings, reception and technological mediation. This spatially and temporally mobile feel to the image may appear to stand in stark contrast to the stillness and 'literal' quality of the print image and the apparent immediacy and static nature of its reception by viewers.