Pareidolia

[porphyry]

Pareidolia is a technical term of neuron-psychiatry. It means the propensity of the of the human brain to assign meaning to otherwise meaningless images. It comes from the Greek eidolon (image) + para (along side of, or without). The commonly cited example is looking at clouds and saying, ‘That cloud looks like a giraffe; that one a face.’ An outrageous example is the so-called ‘face on Mars’ seen by some who examined low resolution photos from the first Martian planetary survey (looking at the same region in the high resolution photos available now no one would ever think that the geological feature in question resembled a face—but to a certain mentality that just means there’s been a ‘cover-up’).




The way pareidolia works depends on the interface between the brain proper and the sensory system (for the sake of brevity I will limit my comments to sight, but the same pattern holds true for the other senses also). When light falling on the eye creates a visual stimulus, a particular digital signal (yes the brain works on binary code—positive and negative or potassium and sodium—just like a mechanical computer) is sent to the brain. It analyzes by comparing it to similar code bundles received in the past (memory) and assigns it to the nearest value. From the point of view of our conscious awareness, the brain identifies any image that we see as the thing whose image is most nearly like it that we have seen before. So if we see a cloud that resembles W. C. Fields, it remind us of W. C. Fields. This is why it’s easy to recognize things that we’ often seen before—because there is a large data bank against which to make the comparison, and harder to recognize what we have seen only once. You can pick out your mother from a crowd some distance away, or from a photo that is distorted or which she is wearing an unfamiliar wig, but, as the police are now learning, eye-witness identification of someone you met only once in a dark alley is not particularly reliable.

For all the obscurity of pareidolia, it is the fundamental basis of the modern capitalist economy. It is widely used in all sophisticated mass market advertising (and this includes so-called ‘artistic expression’ that actually exists merely for marketing appeal, such as music videos and popular films).

Sex and death are the most powerful instincts in the human psyche. Advertisers have known for some time (and I have seen embeds that go back to the first photograve printing in the 19th century) that if you think of either of these instincts at the same time you think of their product, you are more likely to buy it. This can operate on many levels. Recently I have frequently seen a television commercial in which a seemingly animate car runs overs a large mechanical spider. Once it is squashed, it releases a puddle of gasoline. The car then returns, extends a hose from its gas tank that moves as if it were a living snake or tentacle of a squid, and sucks up the puddle of spilt gas. This obviously makes no logical sense whatsoever. But it powerfully evokes fantasies of death and annihilation, of sex as a threatening, deadly act, and of anal hoarding (which provides a strong sense of self-control to the earliest stages of the child hood psyche beyond which many people never mature). The commercial is doing nothing else than associating the car in question with these fantasies. Yet nothing is shown explicitly (people would turn away from acts of lust-murder, cannibalism, and rape because of the mechanism of repression, a mechanism which is being systematically eroded by advertising with consequences no one can foresee): the brain is allowed to make its own associations to the irrational images presented.

At another level, especially in print advertising, one sees embeds. These are little shapes (or sometimes words) added to a photo or painting by digital manipulation of the images (air-brushing in the old days). They are not strictly pictures of anything, and if carefully scrutinized can be accounted for as stray marks (letters are usually distorted—playing on the same factors that allow for alphanumeric codes on the web to screen out programs designed for mass operations on the principle that humans can recognize even the most heavily distorted rendering of the intimately familiar alphabet). But their shapes and character are such that they suggest key images stored in the memory. Naturally these are images related to sex and death (alcohol adds favor death—the alcoholic drinks because he wants to kill himself, even if he does not admit this to himself).

But what of the work of creative artists?

The is a well known story, of an artist—the name escapes me now but that does not mean it is apocryphal—who purposely painted a lack luster painting but embedded in distorted letters the vulgar French word of intercourse, and found that everyone one he showed it to could not take his (or even her) eyes off of from fascination.

Then we have a work like this of Dali who is clearly relying on pareidolia to make the viewer see two distinct images (of sex and death, not accidentally):



But this is a rather obvious and contrived example (but significantly one well known from a century of postcard art):



A somewhat more subtle piece is this anti-clerical painting of Vibert:



Here the line of sight of the Cardinal, the triton blowing the horn, the shape of the monk’s gesture, all make subtle homosexual insinuations that can affect the viewer without his being able to clearly articulate them except through a rather more careful analysis than most viewers are likely to give most images.

What about film?

Here the examples that spring to my mind are aural rather than visual. In tow quite distinct films, two characters encounter busses which produce incredibly loud, animalist roars at key moments suggestive of savagery of emotion. These are not normal traffic noises but are primal sounds suggestive of the affect the director whished to create at that moment. I am think in go the scene in Cat People in which the heroine flags down a bus in order to escape Irena who is stalking her in the form of a were-panther, and the scene in The Godfather when Michael exits the restaurant in which he has assassinated his father’s murderer and his police captain body guard. I only wish I knew how to insert video-clips of them here.

This brings me finally to the point of this long meander.

My wife recently made some screen captures of James Whale’s the Bride fo Frankenstein (which you may see here:

http://public.fotki.com/Bilitis/bride_of_frankenstein/

This highly artistic film is filled with symbolism, much of which is elucidated in her comments there.

But in one of the images I saw something that did not look quite right:




(if you go to the link above you can see this and all the Frankenstein images full size)

Do you see it? Look again.

Look at the stones in the wall just to the right of the doorway, about level to the butler’s head.

Since this is a film set, what we are seeing is plaster work meant to look like granite or whatever stone would have been used in a Mediaeval Transylvanian castle. The workman must have labored quite hard to make the plaster look like the rough hewn rock. But there seem to be shapes and forms that my imagination at least can relate to images. An they are consistent in wach frame in which they appear—although that does not tell s much as we only ever see thm in one stationary shot without changes in lighting.

Here is a close up:



And closer still:



I admit that I see somewhat different images at different ratios of expansion.

But in general I think I see two levels of image. One larger figure, and several smaller figures. They cannot be seen at the same time since they use some of the same features differently. Moreover, they all can relate in some way to the film as a whole.

Here they are, somewhat crudely sketched out:






The large figure consists of the face and upward grasping hand of the monster, who wishes in the film only for some upward leading experience of redemption.

The smaller figures relate either to Christ, and it is pretty obvious that one of Whale’s symbolic equivalences for the Monster is as Christ (again see my wife’s comments), or to a general sense of dread (liquor adds also show monsters and grave yards lurking among the ice cubes). The nude woman alludes obviously to the expectation of the bride—both the monster’s and Henry’s.

Is it possible that Whale ordered his plasterers to embed these images in their work?

Certainly, but on the whole I don’t think it very likely. To be convinced of that I would have to see a lot of comparative material, and I know of none—of course it is only in the last few months that this kind of frame by frame analysis of films ahs been readily available to me on the computer, and it is not as though I have gone looking for it.

But I must conclude that this a case of accidental pareidolia: I see a cloud that reminds me of W. C. fields; God is not trying to remind me of W. C. Fields.

Comments

[nathanson1947.livejournal.com]

An interesting essay. The only problem I have is with the Bride of Frankenstein images. The photo is a bit too blurry to see clearly, but wouldn't the pareidolic images have to be at least clear enough for the brain to see them? I have seen pictures of subliminal advertising, and in many cases, the embedded images are so subtle that I don't see how anyone could see them even on a subconscious level.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Actually I doubt the blurriness interfers with perceiving something one only thinks one's glimpsed.