Christian Metz's The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema 

glad it was helpful, thanks!

thanks, nic!

thank you!

I think you're mixing Metz up with Mulvey here. Metz does not say anything - to my knowledge - about acquiring behaviour. He solely talks about identification in general, which can be with both protagonist & antagonist. This is crucial for Metz since it allows us to be 'voyeuristic'; we are looking at actors in a movie who don't know that we are looking at them (which he calls the 'textual aspect' of cinema, contradicted to cinema as 'apparatus' that DOES know I'm watching it.) Anyways; it is Mulvey who 'adds' the aspect of 'aqcuiring' the identity of the actors (Eventhough it's not really acquiring, but more or less justifying the identity). What Mulvey would say here is that these films as textual products are products of the symbolical & patriarchal order. Thus the main character WILL be an active man, while the antagonist will PROBABLY be a passive woman. It's also important to keep in mind that Mulvey wrote her article from the perspective of the male viewer (something she was heavily criticized for), so that's why you'll only read about identification with the (male) protagonist. I hope that kind of answers your question

like from Rudolf Arnheim?