7.12. Procatoptric staging
Let us consider a more disquieting event. I am in a room, in front of me is a vertical mirror, located at a slant with respect to the rays emanating from by body. Actually, I do not see myself, but somebody in the adjoin-ing room, who acts without knowing someone is looking at him. The case is similar to the sheriff in Westerns who sees the bandit coming in behind him in the mirror over the counter in front of him. These cases are not perplexing; we said already that the mirror is a prosthesis and at times has the same intrusive action as a periscope.
But let us now imagine that in the adjoining room there is a subject Si who knows that S2 is spying on him in the mirror, but assuming (cor-rectly) that S2 thinks that S1 does not know S2 is seeing him do so. Now, S1 wishes to make S2 believe that S2 (thinking he is unseen) is doing something commendable and behaves in a way S2 is to consider as spontaneous although S1 behaves so only and exclusively for (or against) S2. S1 is therefore staging an almost theatrical performance, the differ-ence being that the audience should mistake theater for reality. Then, S1 is using the mirror image to lie. Is there anything semiosic in such a situation?
Everything is semiosic in it, and yet nothing concerning the mirror image as such. Even in verbal language I can utter a true statement in order to make my listener believe something else (about my ideas, my feelings, and so on). The same happens in this case. The mirror image still retains each and every characteristic of dull faithfullness it would have in the event S1 were behaving earnestly; it reflects exactly what S1 is doing. It is just that what S1 is doing is a mise-en-scene, and therefore a semiosic contrivance.
There is a profilmic staging (Bettetini 1975). Our beliefs about the faithfulness of the camera usually have nothing to do our beliefs about the ‘truth’ of the scene that the camera is going to shoot. When a movie shows a fairy with seven dwarfs in a flying coach, one knows that such a situation is fictional even though one trusts the faithfulness of the rec-ording apparatuses shooting it. Only children take the mise-en-scene for reality as well, but this lack of maturity concerns their competence about a semiotics of mise-en-scène, quite apart from their possible lack of compe-tence about a semiotics of filming.
Similarly, there is a procatoptric staging which can create deceptive situations. But, in this case, any semiotic consideration should shift from mirror images to staging, the mirror images being mere channels of pro-catoptric messages. These considerations also suggest that, besides pro-catoptric staging, there may also be a grammar of the shot and a specific syntax of catoptric editing. S1 may incline the mirror so that S2 can only see some aspects of the scene taking place in the adjoining room (inde-pendently of whether it is real or staged). Mirrors are always ‘framing’ devices, and inclining them in a certain way is a way to exploit this specific quality of them. Once again, however, this semiosic contrivance does not concern mirror images (which as usual depict things just as the mirror ‘sees’ them) but a manipulation of the channel.
Let us now imagine that S1 has a remote control to incline the mirror as he likes, so as to show S2 different corners of the adjoining room, at a few seconds’ interval. If, at one angle, the mirror shows a certain object and, at another, someone staring blankly in front of him, S1 might create catoptric images similar to what in film editing is called the Kuleshov effect. According to the ‘editing’ he works out, S1 may make S2 believe that the man sitting in the adjoining room is looking at various objects in anger, lust, or surprise. A swift play of inclination and the mirror might make S2 lose the sense of actual space relations between objects. In this case, moving mirrors might create a true semiosic situation, a tale, a fiction, a doxastic concoction.
If we use mirrors as channels, staging, shot, and editing are made possible. They are all semiosic contrivances which yield most when used in connection with non-mirror images. What would remain unchanged is the asemiosic nature of mirror images, which are always causally related to their referents. S2 might be inclined to universalizing processes, al-most forgetting he is observing mirror images, thus living a type-story rather than a token-story.
But the very nature of this story’s being connected to the mirror would make it forever related to its causative referent, would still keep it half way between semiosis and catoptrics, between the symbolic and the imaginary.
7.13. Rainbows and Fata Morganas
Rainbows are phenomena of partial reflection, although combined with refraction and dispersion of sunlight passing through tiny drops of water in the lower layers of the atmosphere. However, their image is never perceived as mirror image. A rainbow can be employed semiosically in two cases only. It can be seen as a wonder, a sign given by the gods, but to the same extent as storms, tidal waves, eclipses, and the flight of birds. From time immemorial, mankind has rendered a number of phys-ical phenomena semiosic, although not in view of their specific catoptric nature.
However, a rainbow can be read and used as a symptom (of the end of a storm). Under this respect, it may even work without its conjectured referent, since rainbows occur in waterfall gorges, too. In any case, even when correctly used as a symptom of the presence of water drops sus-pended in the atmosphere, it indicates an anomalous condition of the channel, rather than an actual object.
As to Fata Morganas and the like, they are never perceived by a naive observer as mirror phenomena: they are, in fact, instances of perceptive deceptions. In contrast, to a critical eye they may look like the symptom of either a given condition of the atmospheric channel or the presence of a distant object. On these grounds, they may even be used as mirror images of that object and, thus, as prostheses.
7.14. Catoptric theaters
Precisely through phenomena like Fata Morganas, we are led to deal with other plays of mirrors known across the centuries as Theatrum catop-tricum, Theatron polydicticum, Theatrum protei, Speculum Aeterodictum, Mul~ tividium, Speculum multiplex, Tabula scalata, and so on (see Baltrusaitis 1978). All such contrivances can be grouped into three main classes:
(a) Mirrors multiply and alter the virtual images of objects, which, some-how staged, are recognized by the observer as being reflected in a mir-ror.
(b) Starting from a staged object, a combined play of different curved mirrors creates real images the observer is supposed to ascribe to a won-der.
(c) Suitably arranged plane mirrors produce, on a mirror surface, the image of several superimposed, juxtaposed, and amalgamated objects, so that the observer, unaware of the catoptric play, gets the impression of prodigious apparitions.
Now, in the first case, the observer is aware of the catoptric nature of the play, so he is in no different position from one who personally con-trols a set of mirrors facing one another at different angles. He may enjoy the manipulation of the channels from an aesthetic point of view. When he watches the staging of a play with a pair of binoculars, the latter are meant to improve his perception of such a staging. In contrast, in this case, the staging itself is Ineant to improve the aesthetic perception of the possibilities offered by the prosthesis-channel. Any event enjoyed aesthetically involves self-reflectiveness: one’s attention focuses not only on the form of the messages but also on the way the various channels are used. Likewise, the performance of an orchestra is appreciated not only in view of the melody (which, as such, is independent of the channel) but also because of the way the resources of an instrument are exploited.
In cases (b) and (c), we are back to situations similar to Fata Мог-ganas, and optical illusions in general. Mirrors are once again used as channels, but the observer cannot focus his attention on them, being unaware of their presence. At the most, he aesthetically enjoys a staging whose nature he ignores. And in case he thinks he is facing a wonder, his position is the same as that of an observer who, seeing himself in a mirror, believes he is in front of an actual intruder. Sheer perceptive deception, rather than a mirror image experienced as such. In light of the typology of the modes of sign production (see Eco 1976, 3.6.6), such perceptive deceptions can be described as the result of programmed stimuli. As a matter of fact, they are based on a staging which is a semiosic phenomenon (so much so that it could be channeled otherwise; besides, mirror theaters are no longer used since different methods of projecting images have become available), but the mirror images em-ployed are true and asemiosic in themselves.
7.15. Mirrors that freeze’ images
Let us continue with our phenomenological experiment, imagining magic mirrors (that is, really magic and not simply used to give an impression of magic).
Assume we have a ‘freezing’ mirror: the reflected image ‘freezes’ on its surface, even when the object disappears. Eventually, we have es-tablished a relationship of absence between antecedent and consequent. However, we have not eliminated the causal connection between origi-nal referent and image. We have moved further, but just a little. A
