Mirrorty

“When one begins to perceive one's own image in the mirror as a different person, one suddenly thinks that one is confronted with two different egos, two completely different worlds that can surface at any moment.” (Dialogue in Mirrors) Lacan describes how the child's ego is constituted by the child's identification and misrecognition of the allure of the image in the mirror, which presents an illusory picture of its autonomous self-existence (Stam, 2000). (…) Metz compares the viewer's situation with the mirror phase. Metz points out that the mirror analogy is only partially appropriate; in cinema, unlike in a mirror, the viewer does not reflect his or her own image (Stam, 2000).