From The Paris Review:
No common object has inspired as much dread, confusion, and morbid anxiety as the mirror. Superstitions exist in practically every culture: sickroom mirrors are covered in many countries, lest they lure the soul from the ailing body, and are cloaked after a death in others to prevent the spirit from lingering.
. . . .
When I was a child, the popular folklore held that if you stood before a darkened mirror and chanted “Bloody Mary” three times, it would conjure a witch who would, if you failed to pass her tests, murder you.
. . . .
Narcissus was the first to die from looking at his reflection—though the gnostics perfected the myth by reattributing it to Adam, who lost his divine nature, they said, by gazing at himself in a pool of water. I have always preferred this version of the Fall.
. . . .
Anthropologists have long suspected that reflections inspired the first conception of the soul: early man saw his face in a pond and believed it was an alternate self who would persist after his death. But if having a double gave you immortality, it also presented a new anxiety: your likeness could detach itself and take on a life of its own, or fall into the hands of your enemy. Many primitive taboos about reflections, shadows, and effigies stem from the conviction that you could harm a person by damaging their likeness. Witchcraft and voodoo introduced into our collective memory a nagging fear that we might one day become the slave to our shadows. I think of the scene in the 1944 musical Cover Girl, where Gene Kelly’s reflection in a store window comes to life and entrances Kelly into aping his erratic dance, as if puppeteering his marionette.
. . . .
What we see in a mirror is always an illusion. Lacan demonstrated that our identification with our reflection relies on méconnaissance, or misrecognition. When we look in the mirror, we see a pleasing image of wholeness and project onto it a mental fantasy—the Ego Ideal. If you watch someone gaze at themselves in a mirror, you can glimpse this fantasy in action. Some people suck in their lips. Others elongate their neck, or tilt their head into a more flattering light.
. . . .
To scroll through the feeds of Instagram and Facebook is to see a gallery of Lacanian méconnaissance; the private longing once reserved for the bathroom mirror has become our most public face. And yet these photos are never as pleasing as we’d like them to be. The forward-facing camera mimics the reverse image we recognize from mirrors, but once the photo is taken, the technology flips the image as it would in a traditional photo.
Link to the rest at The Paris Review
My first though was the Mirror (Angel of Music) scene from Phantom of the Opera musical. Christine Daaé steps through the mirror with the Phantom and The Phantom of the Opera begins playing. I still get chills thinking about it.
I had forgotten about that scene, Emilia. You’re right about the strangeness of it.
Now you’re talkin’. I’ll add that to my list. Thanks…
The Mirror (Angel of Music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrp84qF9biw
The article goes into my story folders, along with this video. Deeply scary. HA!
Mirror Image – Gene Kelly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exCp_6T8J9Q
Knowing what we know about mirrors, is this really safe?
Evian baby dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEduV4t2-Wc
Then this makes me tear up.
Justin Timberlake – Mirrors (Official Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuZE_IRwLNI
But I digress.
Ah, yes, mirrors. People don’t understand what they are looking at, when they look at mirrors.
Look at a mirror. Not the frame, not the false image that appears to exist beyond the spotted, dusty, surface of the glass, but the mirror itself.(BTW, you really need to clean that glass.)
In this video the woman reaching into the mirror to somewhere else is false. The mirror is not a doorway.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUJ6-nzpPig
In the movie Legends, the Lord of Darkness steps from the mirror itself, not from some other place.
The Lord of Darkness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM7oP0FyDKU
In the movie Oculus, the entity is that mirror surface, not the frame, nor the glass.
Oculus Official Trailer #1 (2014) – Karen Gillan Horror Movie HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYJrxezWLUk
The same in this movie.
LOOK AWAY Official Trailer (2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8tlqcXOw68
And this classic with Louis Jourdan. (I’m still waiting for the movie to come out on DVD, along with Ritual of Evil.)
“FEAR NO EVIL” (1969) Television trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeOyahDUNAU
Mirrors can be dangerous, or they can be safety.
Notice how many restaurants and bars have mirrors in the entrance, or main room. That’s to keep the Clowns out. Have you noticed in the news the past couple of years, the scary Clowns that have been appearing everywhere. Mirrors keep them away. Mirrors keep you safe. If a scary Clown sees itself in the mirror, or in the reflection of the window it is looking through to watch you, it remembers who it once was and is freed to finally die.
I’m just getting started here. HA!
If a scary Clown sees itself in the mirror, or in the reflection of the window it is looking through to watch you, it remembers who it once was and is freed to finally die.
That’s good to know 🙂
I remember the “Bloody Mary” game from when I was a kid. One of my friends claimed she played the game, went to sleep, and while she slept, Bloody Mary came out of the mirror and scratched her arms. I assumed she was making that up. You can imagine how spooky it was to see Bloody Mary’s name in the dictionary after that, though.
I never did play that game, but that’s partly because I’ve never understood the selling point of inviting people or “creatures” to do something to you that you don’t really want them to do. It always seemed a tad underpants gnomish from where I sit:
1) Invite monster to kill you.
2) Monster accepts your invitation.
3) Profit?