Difference between revisions of "Reflections in a Silver Eye: Lens and Mirror in BLADE RUNNER"
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''Blade Runner'' is a film centrally concerned with vision. Prostheses of vision — the Voigt-Kampff test and the Esper machine — permit detective Rick Deckard to probe physical and even mental space, and extend his search for android "replicants" into distant rooms and into the minds of the characters [...]. In the Esper sequence,[http://mattwallin.com/mattwallincom/2011/9/24/esper-machine-blade-runner-1982.html] Deckard analyzes the photograph cherished by the replicant Leon, an analysis that turns on the presence of a convex mirror at the center of the image. This photograph echoes the mirror seen in Jan van Eyck’s [...] ''The Arnolfini Portrait''. Both mirrors are signs of artistic self-consciousness, [... indicating] an extended meditation on pictorial or cinematic vision. In ''Blade Runner'', the form of vision embodied by the Esper machine — which is characterized as probing, dominating, and ultimately lethal — is played off against a mode of vision tentatively but crucially present in the moment when Rachael’s photograph "comes alive" in Deckard’s hands, a mode of vision that turns on imaginative empathy. (p. 76)[https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a83.htm#shetley] | ''Blade Runner'' is a film centrally concerned with vision. Prostheses of vision — the Voigt-Kampff test and the Esper machine — permit detective Rick Deckard to probe physical and even mental space, and extend his search for android "replicants" into distant rooms and into the minds of the characters [...]. In the Esper sequence,[http://mattwallin.com/mattwallincom/2011/9/24/esper-machine-blade-runner-1982.html] Deckard analyzes the photograph cherished by the replicant Leon, an analysis that turns on the presence of a convex mirror at the center of the image. This photograph echoes the mirror seen in Jan van Eyck’s [...] ''The Arnolfini Portrait''. Both mirrors are signs of artistic self-consciousness, [... indicating] an extended meditation on pictorial or cinematic vision. In ''Blade Runner'', the form of vision embodied by the Esper machine — which is characterized as probing, dominating, and ultimately lethal — is played off against a mode of vision tentatively but crucially present in the moment when Rachael’s photograph "comes alive" in Deckard’s hands, a mode of vision that turns on imaginative empathy. (p. 76)[https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a83.htm#shetley] | ||
| − | See also Garrett Steward on "[[Videology (in SF film)|Videology]]" in SF film[http://tinyurl.com/y9ohe22b] and, for background, Meyer Abrams's ''The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953) | + | See also Garrett Steward on "[[Videology (in SF film)|Videology]]" in SF film[http://tinyurl.com/y9ohe22b] and, for background, Meyer Abrams's ''The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition'' (1953).[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._H._Abrams#The_Mirror_and_the_Lamp] |
Revision as of 00:40, 19 June 2019
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Shetley Vernon, and Alissa Ferguson. "Reflections in a Silver Eye: Lens and Mirror in Blade Runner." Science Fiction Studies #83 = 28.1 (March 2001): 66-76.[1]
From the Abstract. --
Blade Runner is a film centrally concerned with vision. Prostheses of vision — the Voigt-Kampff test and the Esper machine — permit detective Rick Deckard to probe physical and even mental space, and extend his search for android "replicants" into distant rooms and into the minds of the characters [...]. In the Esper sequence,[2] Deckard analyzes the photograph cherished by the replicant Leon, an analysis that turns on the presence of a convex mirror at the center of the image. This photograph echoes the mirror seen in Jan van Eyck’s [...] The Arnolfini Portrait. Both mirrors are signs of artistic self-consciousness, [... indicating] an extended meditation on pictorial or cinematic vision. In Blade Runner, the form of vision embodied by the Esper machine — which is characterized as probing, dominating, and ultimately lethal — is played off against a mode of vision tentatively but crucially present in the moment when Rachael’s photograph "comes alive" in Deckard’s hands, a mode of vision that turns on imaginative empathy. (p. 76)[3]
See also Garrett Steward on "Videology" in SF film[4] and, for background, Meyer Abrams's The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953).[5]
RDE, Completing, 18/19June19
