Initial Research into
Mirrors in Mayan Culture
Mirrors
were important in Mayan religion and culture. They open portals into the other
world, allowing ancestors and gods to pass through the two planes. When praying
to a saint, the soul leaves the body. To help the soul find its way back into
the body, mirrors are placed in front of saint statues to reflect back the
soul. There are still towns in Mexico where it is illegal to take photos in
church. Most people today allow their photographs to be taken, however infants
are protected as it is still believed that the souls of infants are fragile and
susceptible to leaving the body.
Eyes
are windows to the soul. Based on these interests, I have created a story based
on the idea of souls and death.
Story Idea: Draft 1:
Basic Concept
Title:
In Reflection
Theme:
Death
Act
1: Introduction
To
mark 100 years since the first space expedition, a giant mirror is built in
space. This is so that in the 21 April 2061, an image of the Earth is reflected
in the sky.
Act
2: Conflict
The
crisis of the film is that when the Earth is reflected, the mirror becomes a
portal and draws in the souls of all the babies on Earth into it because theirs
are weaker.
Act
3: Resolution
The
resolution is that they discover that in Mayan culture, mirrors are portal but
can also be used to guide souls. So they build a replica of the mirror on Earth
in an attempt to draw the souls back, but instead open another portal to the
spirit world and the dead come back from the grave. Earth becomes Limbo
effectively.
(Is
religion and belief overlooked by scientific advancements in modern society?
Are we losing our souls for the sake of progression?)
Draft 2: Full resolution
of Crisis version
·
A
newspaper shows an article on Ventablack (a black substance that is the
blackest of black and can absorb hear and light energy). Coming into
circulation as a power/ energy saving mechanism.
·
Show
the back of the paper with an announcement of ‘only one day to go until the
unveiling of the space mirror reflecting Earth in celebration of the 100th
year anniversary of the first man in space.
·
The
paper is dated 11 April 2061. The camera focuses on the photo of the author.
·
The
paper is lowered to reveal that the woman reading the paper is the author.
·
The
child minder comes to look after her baby.
·
She
sets off to work.
·
She
walks past a group of protestors outside a church.
·
One
protestor hands her a leaflet which she puts in her bag and carries on walking.
·
She
arrives at the newspaper headquarters.
·
She
is briefed on that she is reporting on the unveiling of the mirror the next
day.
·
The
next day, she stands on a busy street ready for the revealing with a reporters
note pad and a camera.
·
There
is a count down.
·
The
mirror is revealed and there is an image of the Earth reflected in the sky.
·
But
the world they are standing in becomes black and white. Only their shadows and
eyes are in colour (depicting their souls)
·
But
the babies on the street in front of her have their shadows remain black and
they become lifeless.
·
She
looks horrified and immediately runs home to check on her baby.
·
The
child minder hands her the lifeless body which she holds in her arms.
·
She
cries for her baby and looks confused at the child minder who hands her a
leaflet identical to the one she had already placed in her bag.
·
The
leaflet explains that in Mayan culture, mirrors are portals to other worlds and
that souls escape through these portals. Babies have weaker souls and are
therefore more susceptible to departing from their flesh. Mirrors are also used
to guide the souls.
·
Time
passes and newspapers show how they are building an identical mirror on Earth
to guide the souls back.
·
However
this plan is flawed when souls are guided to earth from the grave as it has
opened another portal.
·
When
that doesn’t work, the protagonist reads the initial article about the mirror
in space and begins to cry.
·
When
the tear drops fall on the paper, it becomes slightly see thorough and she sees
the word ‘ventablack’.
·
She
turns over to read the article: ‘as close to a black hole as we could imagine.
Absorbs heat and light’
·
She
writes down in her reporter pad: ‘we need to absorb the light rather than
reflect it away; we need to draw the souls back rather than just opening more
gateways.’
·
Newspapers
show the government painting over the mirror in ventablack.
·
The
souls start to return to their rightful places.
·
The
mirror is space is then dismantled.
·
The
world slowly fades back to its original colour.
·
One
small panel of the mirror shatters.
·
As
it floats in space, it shows a face of a trapped soul inside it.
(Slightly
hints at how journalists and reporter influence the news as well as deliver
it.)
NOTE:
Probably too complicated and unnecessary for a short film to involve
Ventablack.
Draft 3: Limbo Version
Ending
·
Show
the back of the paper with an announcement of ‘only one day to go until the
unveiling of the space mirror reflecting Earth in celebration of the 100th
year anniversary of the first man in space.
·
The
paper is dated 11 April 2061. The camera focuses on the photo of the author.
·
The
paper is lowered to reveal that the woman reading the paper is the author.
·
The
child minder comes to look after her baby.
·
She
sets off to work.
·
She
walks past a group of protestors outside a church.
·
One
protestor hands her a leaflet which she puts in her bag and carries on walking.
·
She
arrives at the newspaper headquarters.
·
She
is briefed on that she is reporting on the unveiling of the mirror the next
day.
·
The
next day, she stands on a busy street ready for the revealing with a reporters
note pad and a camera.
·
There
is a count down.
·
The
mirror is revealed and there is an image of the Earth reflected in the sky.
·
But
the world they are standing in becomes black and white. Only their shadows and
eyes are in colour (depicting their souls)
·
But
the babies on the street in front of her have their shadows remain black and
they become lifeless.
·
She
looks horrified and immediately runs home to check on her baby.
·
The
child minder hands her the lifeless body which she holds in her arms.
·
She
cries for her baby and looks confused at the child minder who hands her a
leaflet identical to the one she had already placed in her bag.
·
The
leaflet explains that in Mayan culture, mirrors are portals to other worlds and
that souls escape through these portals. Babies have weaker souls and are
therefore more susceptible to departing from their flesh. Mirrors are also used
to guide the souls.
·
Time
passes and newspapers show how they are building an identical mirror on Earth
to guide the souls back.
·
However
this plan is flawed when souls are guided to earth from the grave as it has
opened another portal. But the babies come back along with the dead and Earth
becomes Limbo.
After receiving feedback from lecturers, the story is too
elaborate and would be difficult to translate into a film which could be
understood by the viewer within 3- 5 minutes. Therefore, I have focused on the
subject matter of mirrors.
Mirror Research
Mayan Culture/
Religion
I want to focus on the use of mirrors in
culture; the Mayans are particularly interesting in their view on mirrors and
the way on which they use them in worship.
In Mesoamerican culture, mirrors ‘served as
portals to a realm that could be seen but not interacted with’. In
pre-Columbian Mexico, the function and symbolism of mirrors were used to ‘reveal
a person’s destiny through divination…means of communication with otherworld
entities’. We also understand that the world used to be conceived
metaphorically as a huge circular mirror by people in Central Mexico in the
Postclassic period. Eyes also had a close link with mirrors during this period.
The Mayan phrase, ‘nen sat’, is used to refer to the eye but literally
translates as ‘mirror of the face’. This association is thought to been derived
from the highly reflective eyes of the jaguar.
‘Mirrors symbolise reality, the sun, the
earth, and its four corners, its surface, its depth, and all of its peoples.
Buried in caches throughout the Americas, they also cling to the bodies of the
humblest celebrators in the Peruvian highlands or in the Mexican Indian
carnivals…are they not right? Is not the mirror both a reflection of reality
and a project of the imagination?’
Carlos Fuentes, (The Buried Mirror)
Mirrors were important in Mayan religion and
culture. They open portals into the other world, allowing ancestors and gods to
pass through the two planes. When praying to a saint, the soul leaves the body.
To help the soul find its way back into the body, mirrors are placed in front
of saint statues to reflect back the soul. There are still towns in Mexico
where it is illegal to take photos in church. Most peole today allow their
photographs to be taken, however infants are protected. It is still believed
the souls of infants are fragile and susceptible to leaving the body.
Shadow/ Souls
‘Some ancient cultures believe that mirrors
reflected the shadow soul, and could show the true nature of the person being
reflected’; this could be why vampires/ demons have no reflections as they have
no soul to reflect.
Why after death, you have to cover the
mirrors in the house:
(Victorian superstition)
·
Cover all the mirrors in your house
where there is a corpse as the mirrors reflect you soul
·
To see your reflection in a mirror is
to see your own soul
·
If a couple first catch sight of each
other in a mirror, they will have a happy marriage
·
Any mirrors in a room where someone
has recently died, must be covered so the dead person’s soul does not get
trapped behind the glass. The Devil invented mirrors for this purpose.
·
Bad luck to see your face in a mirror
by candlelight.
Mirrors in Folklore
In the story of Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves, the mirror plays a great role in driving the Queen’s obsession and
insecurity with her looks/
“Magic Mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?”
‘The cruel step-mother is a negative thought-
form you have built up in the subconscious. Snow White’s cruel step-mother is
jealous of her and always keeps her in rags and in the background. All cruel
thought forms do this’.
After the King’s death, the mirror replaced
him as the primary male voice in the Queen’s life. The mirror can’t lie, and
causes the Queen’s jealousy and insecurity.
If the Queen was real, she could be diagnosed
psychologically with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Her symptoms suggest this:
RAGE: Can’t tolerate changes in environment
that destabilise their sense of self.
WEAK SENSE OF SELF: Queen continuously looks
into the mirror repeatedly seeking reassurance on her appearance.
Based on Mayan culture, the mirror could be a
trapped spirit haunting and taunting the Queen. It could even be the dead King
trapped in the mirror.
The
Lady of Shallot
Themes of intense isolation from the world.
The mirror shows the ‘shadows of the world’ and is an imitation of life.
Final Story Idea
Themes of isolation and loneliness
The Lady of
Shalott believes she is cursed and can only view the outside world through the
mirror: she can’t even look out the window of her tower.
She hears a
whisper while she is weaving saying that if she looks out of her window at the
world, she will die. So she is forced to spend a lot of time at the mirror to
see the world. She sees a man on a horse who she fall for.
So she leaves the
tower risking death so that she can escape isolation and her loneliness. The
mirror turns out to be a trapped soul that has convinced her that she is cursed
so that she doesn’t leave because then the soul would be lonely.
 |
| Initial Thumbnail of Establishing shot showing the isolation of the castle from the village |
 |
| Drawing illustration the castle's separation from the village |
 |
| Drawing of detail on castle |
Research
My story is based on the ‘Lady of
Shalott’, a poem by Alfred Tennyson. The Lady of Shalott lives alone in a
castle near Camelot during the reign of King Arthur. She is cursed and can only
see the view outside her window in a mirror, and she weaves what she sees into
a tapestry. She sees ordinary people, couples, and knights in pairs reflected
in the mirror; one day she sees Sir Lancelot riding alone. She looks out the window
at him. The mirror shatters, the tapestry flies off into the wind, and the Lady
feels the power of the curse. She leaves her castle, finds a boat and sets it
adrift. She sings her death song as she floats down the mirror. The locals find
her body in the boat and are saddened.
The idea of the
mirror being a trapped soul is based on Mayan culture in which mirrors are
believed to be portals and that souls can be trapped in mirrors when separated
from their bodies during worship. I was also inspired by the look of the magic
mirror from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’.
Based on the Mayan
idea that mirrors are portals to other worlds, the mirror could represent a
shadow version of the world- a distorted reality. Visually, silhouettes could
be used to represent the Lady of Shalott’s view of the world through the
mirror. For this, inspiration could be drawn from Lotte Reiniger’s work.
The theme the
story is based around is isolation and explores the side effects of loneliness.
According to the dictionary, isolation is the complete separation from others.
The character of the Lady of Shalott is isolated, unable to leave her castle or
even gaze upon the world without the
aid of a mirror. Examples of extreme isolation warping a person’s mind include:
hearing footsteps; flashing lights; visions. One woman wrote in the New York
Times ‘I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that
nothing was there’. In Michael Bond’s article, ‘How extreme isolation warps the
mind’, he suggest that ‘loneliness also interferes with a whole range of
everyday functioning, such as sleep patterns, attention and logical and verbal
reasoning’. At McGill University Medical Center in Montreal, volunteers were
paid to undergo a research study in which they were isolated and monitored to
see the effects this had on them. The study, led by psychologist Donald Hebb,
shows that many became anxious or highly emotional; they struggled with
arithmetic and word association tests, and they suffered from hallucinations.
Michael Bond describes in his article how ‘they would start with points of
light, lines or shapes, eventually evolving into bizarre scenes, such as
squirrels marching with sacks over their shoulders or processions of eyeglasses
filing down a street. They had no control over what they saw: one man saw only
dogs; another, babies. Some of them experienced sound hallucinations as well: a
music box or a choir, for instance. Others imagined sensations of touch: one
man had the sense he had been hit in the arm by pellets fired from guns. Another,
reaching out to touch a doorknob, felt an electric shock’.
‘With no one to
mediate our feelings of fear, anger, anxiety and sadness and help us determine
their appropriateness, before long they deliver us a distorted sense of self, a
perceptual fracturing or a profound irrationality.’ Michael Bond
Bibliography
Mirror
Research:
·
Wikipedia.org (Mirrors in Mesoamerican
culture)
·
www.buriedmirror.com
(Buried Mirror)
·
A Time for Reflection: Mirrors in
Folklore and Superstition; www.whofortedblog.com/2012/08/27/time-reflection-mirrors-folklore-superstition/
·
Primate Religion & Human
Consciousness Mirrors: For More than Selfies: www.anthropology.ua.edu/blogs/primatereligion/2014/02/24/mirrors/
·
Why after a death do you have to cover
mirrors in the house? www.advicenators.com/qview.php?q=490980
·
Reflections on looking into mirrors by
James W. Fernandez: home.uchicago.edu/~jwfl/mirrors.pdf
·
Reflections on Mirrors in Biblical
Literature: www.examiner.com/article/reflections-on-mirrors-biblical-literature
Isolation Research:
Mirrors in Fairy tale and Folklore Research:
·
Magic Mirror: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Mirror_(Snow_White)
·
The Magic Mirror in Snow White: www.cgjung-vereniging.nl/Jung/Artikelen/Mythologie-sprookjes/nancy-artikel-1.shtml
·
The Inner Meaning of Snow White and
the Seven Dwarves: www.sacred-texts.com/nth/Shinn/sds/sds14/htm
·
Religion and Snow White: www.religionandsnowwhite.webs.com/religioussymbols.htm
·
Initiation and Meaning in the tale of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by N.J. Girardot: www.iscte.pt/~fgvs/Girardot
·
Analysing Snow White: www.thefineartdiner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/walt-disney-brothers-grimm-comparative.html
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