What does Christian Metz mean when he writes, in The Imaginary Signifier, that "the spectator identifies with himself, with himself as a pure act of perception (as wakefulness, alertness): as the condition of possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind of transcendental subject, which comes before every there is" (1982, 49)? What does Metz mean, first of all, by declaring that the spectator identities with himself? What is a "pure act of perception"? What, furthermore, is a "condition of possibility" that opens up or grounds ("comes before") this perception? What is a "transcendental subject," and why or how does such a subject come before every "there is"? There is a great deal contained in this sentence that comes as a culmination of a number of observations Metz makes in his famous essay.