Sonesson (1989: 63, referring to Maldonado 1974: 288 ff.) has suggested that the mirror image may be a «hard icon,» as are the impressions on an X-ray plate or the mark left by a hand on the walls of a prehistoric cavern. But these are indeed imprints (see A Theory of Semiotics 3.6.2), in which the substance of the expression (stone, sand, film) has nothing to do with the material of which the imprinting object is constituted, and in which we can work up from a few features (generally profiles) to an inferential reconstruction of that possible object. Moreover, these imprints naturally subsist even after the object that made them, and therefore they can also be falsified, which does not happen with the mirror image.
Finally, the imprint is a sign, insofar as it is fundamentally an expression that refers to a content, and content is always general. When Robinson sees the footprint on the sand, he does not say, Man Friday passed here, but, A human being passed here. A hunter on the trail of a given deer, or a «tail» following the tracks left on the ground by Mr. X, initially sees the prints left by a deer and a person (or of a shoe), and it is only by inference that the hunter or «tail» is convinced he is dealing with that deer or that Mr. X.25
Naturally one might object that objects are used as ostensive signs (I show a mastiff or a telephone to say that mastiffs or telephones are made like this or like that; see A Theory of Semiotics 3.6.3). In processes of ostension, an object is chosen as an example that refers to all the objects in its category, but we use an object as an ostensive sign precisely because it is first and foremost an object. I can look at myself in the mirror to tell myself that human beings are like me in general, but in the same way I could look at my telephone on the table to tell myself that all telephones are like this in general. And therefore the mirror image is yet again a prosthesis that allows me or others to see an object that can be chosen as an ostensive sign.26
Therefore the image we see in the mirror is not a sign, any more than the enlarged image provided by a telescope or the one we can see through a periscope.27
If anything, the dream of a sign that has the same properties as the mirror image springs from the fascination that mirrors have held for humanity since Narcissus’s day. The specular experience can explain the birth of a notion such as the (semiotic) one of the iconic sign (as hypoicon), but is not explained by it.
But then, if we take this path, it is from the timeless appeal of mirrors that springs the idea of an understanding that is a complete correspondence («specular,» in fact) between thing and intellect. The idea of indexes springs from such a specular experience: it says «this» and «here» and points to me looking at myself in the moment in which I look at myself. From it springs the idea of a sign that, devoid of meaning, refers directly to its referent: the mirror image is really the example of an «absolute proper noun»; it is really the most rigid of rigid designators; it resists all counterfactuals. I cannot suspect that, even were the mirror to lose all its properties, what I see in it would no longer be what I see in it. But these are metaphors—which, when said by the poets, can become sublime. The character proper to the mirror image is that it is only a mirror image, it is a primum, and in our universe, at least, there is nothing that may be compared to it.28
6.12 Chains of Mirrors and Television
Let us suppose now that along a distance of some miles—from a point A, where there is an object or where an event is taking place, to a point B, where there is an observer—a continuous series of mirrors has been put in place and angled in such a way that thanks to a play of chain reflections the observer at B sees, in real time (as they say), what is or what is happening at A.
The only problem is whether we want the observer to receive a mirror image or the image he would see were he physically present at point A to observe the object or the event there. In the first case, the number of mirrors must be odd; in the second, it must be even. Since we presume that the observer wants to see what is at A as if he were a direct witness to it, an even number of mirrors is needed. In that case, the final result will not be what a simple mirror produces but will correspond to the image produced by angulated mirrors.
If the observer knew that what he sees is transmitted to him by a chain of an even number of angulated mirrors, he would be convinced he was seeing what was effectively happening at A—and he would be right.
Now let us imagine that the observer knows that the light signals reflected by the mirror can in some way be «dematerialized» (or translated or transcribed into impulses of another nature) and then recomposed at their destination. Confronted with the final image, the spectator would behave as if it were a mirror image—even accepting that in the process of codification and decodification something was lost in terms of the definition of the image (his behavior with regard to the received image would be similar to our behavior when faced with a mirror that is a little misted over, or when we see something in a dimly lit room; in other words, when we integrate the stimuli with what we know already or with some inference).
This is what happens with the television image. The television can be seen as an electronic mirror that shows us what is happening at distances that our sight could not otherwise reach. Like the telescope or microscope, it is an excellent example of a magnifying prosthesis (and an abundantly intrusive one at times).
Naturally we have to think of television in its purest state, which would be a closed-circuit apparatus with a fixed television camera filming everything that happens in a given place. Otherwise television, like the cinema and the theater, is something that shows us a mise-en-scène (Bettetini 1975) set up beforehand with the aid of lighting effects, a play of field and counterfield, montage, Kuleshov effects, et cetera, and with this we enter the universe of signification or communication.
But if we consider «pure» television, we are dealing with a prosthesis, albeit a «foggy» one, not a phenomenon of signification. Certain perceptual stimuli, however weakened, suitably translated into electronic signals, reach (decoded by a machine) the receiver’s organs of perception. Everything that the receiver can do with those stimuli (reject them, interpret them, or whatever) is the same as would happen if the receiver were watching what was happening directly.
In order to provide a more sharply defined picture of this equivalence between the television and the mirror, let us imagine that the closed-circuit television camera is in our home environment, and that it transmits what it films to a monitor in the same environment. We would have mirror-type experiences, in the sense that we would see ourselves from in front or from behind (as happens with opposed mirrors), and we would see what we were doing in that moment on the screen. What would be the difference? That we would not have the experience provided us by a simple mirror; instead, but we would see a third image produced by two angulated mirrors, and therefore we would have to be careful when we used the image on the screen to comb our hair, shave, or put on makeup. This is the same embarrassing situation that occurs when you are interviewed in a television studio where you can see yourself at the same time on a monitor in front of you. But if the closed-circuit apparatus were to provide me with a reversed (it does this time) image, then I could use the monitor as a normal dressing-table mirror.
I leave it to the experts on vision to establish to what extent the television image is optically different from the mirror image, and the same holds for the various cerebral processes that the television image may bring into play. Here I am interested in the pragmatic role of the television image, the way in which it is received, and the truth value accorded to it. Certainly, also from the point of view of conscious reception, there are differences between the mirror and the television image: television images (i) are reversed, (ii) have poorer definition, (iii) are usually smaller in size than the object or scene,
