one of these days I am gonna write an essay about how the characters played by human actors never have shadows, but the recognizers and gridbugs do
undoubtedly this is just something about the techniques used in making the movie– the computer animation technology allowed the creation of shadows that followed the model, but the process for putting humans into that world didn’t allow it as easily
but my brain loves to find symbolism even if no one meant to put it there
and i keep coming back to the idea that shadows and reflections are sometimes believed to be manifestations of the soul
and some of the themes of religious role-reversal that I’ve previously observed when (over)analyzing this film
that, plus the “losing his shadow” storyline in Peter Pan, which I don’t think I considered before when I was looking at the other parallels
but i need to sleep and my brain can’t articulate all of this now so it’ll have to wait
ALT
–
yesss
this is where I think my thoughts were going.
the programs ARE the souls.
and Flynn was also just a soul, while he was in there, he didn’t have a body in the User-world sense…
the Recognizers and Gridbugs though? i guess they’re something else. Something that doesn’t have a User outside the system, so both the “body” and “soul” are inside together
Or
I guess the other possibility (what I think I was alluding to with the “religious role-reversal” thing)
is that the whole Computer World itself is a place of reversal, sorta. Like in Through the Looking Glass. in some ways it works a little backwards from the world outside.
which would explain why in that world, the things that HAVE souls DON’T have shadows and reflections. and vice versa.
i dunno. lots of ways you can take it!
also: speaking of reflections?
this is ALSO the only computer hacking movie that ever had a valid reason to show a screen projecting its readout in clear focus onto the face of the hacker looking at it.
because the scene took place inside the Magical World Where Things Work Differently.
