The Humanizing Vision: Reflections on John Luc Marion's "The Blind Man of Siloe"
Five hundred years ago, the ownership and display of images was a luxury reserved for the rich, the powerful and the established. The images seen in the halls of power or in the structures of the church were originals; artwork created in order to serve a specific purpose. With the technology that followed the arrival of the printing press, the image made astonishing advances in its accessibility and its superfluity. Today we are not only able to possess images, we can also crop, superimposed, and exploit them as they have been digitally dismounted from their original contexts. The irony of this ‘culture of the image’ is that though images are more accessible than ever, we are more ready than ever to ignore them. The effects of these technological and social changes cannot be reversed, but there may be a way to recuperate the sight for which the post-modern treatment of images has left dimmed and darkened.
In the our current state of technological advancement, images can exist on their own unhindered by a reliance on prototypes because the prototypes no longer limit reproduction or manipulation. “Briefly stated, the liberation of the image consisted precisely in freeing it from any original. The image is now valued by itself and for itself; it has no original but itself; and it intends only one thing: to be accepted as the unique original”(Marion). The uses of historical works of art in publicity images exemplify this separation. The Mona Lisa has been reproduced, reinterpreted, and manipulated not only by post-modern artists seeking to revisit the past, but more often by companies seeking effective ad campaigns. “Images, like industrial objects, are products; they belong to our ‘society of production’”(John Berger). The Mona Lisa is no longer a portrait painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 16th century, but an image of woman used to sell everything from toothpaste to insurance.
The screen represents the pinnacle of this groundlessness. The screen is a world without matter or time (what Marion refers to as an “Anti–world). The images that appear on the screen are effectively apparitions. It is easy to see how actual events – like an earthquake in Pakistan shown on the evening news– can become non-events to the viewer. The footage of suffering children and displaced families does not exist in actuality (that is, in the material world of time and space). The unfortunate victims of the earthquake exist entirely on the screen and will cease to exist when the channel is changed. We interact only with their image, we cannot fathom their existence in actuality.
Marion argues that in a world where the image has no prototype, the image fits itself to spectator. It exists for the consumer, who in turn both “submits to” and “regulates” the image. This relationship is not one of “seer” who is invested in the image, but one of voyeur who “sees for the pleasure of seeing”. The voyeur has no stake and therefore no right to see what he or she sees. The voyeur sees without the responsibility of “being seen”.
This voyeuristic impulse has encourages us to replace the relational event of “being seen” with the non-event of “appearing”. There are a variety of current examples that could be called upon: blogs, facebook, myspace, YouTube. All fulfill Andy Warhol’s promise that one day everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame. In each example, real relationship (the real event of ‘being seen’) is replaced by the appearance of an individual’s crafted and edited image. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cult of celebrity worship where human beings are reduced to their appearance in order that they might become products of consumption for the voyeur. Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych demonstrates this powerfully: the more Marilyn Monroe’s picture is reproduced, the more it disintegrates. She is no longer a human being made in the image of God; she is purely an image.
Marion suggests that it is the icon that stands over and against this ultimately dehumanizing vision. The icon, as an image grounded in the perfect and complete humanity of Christ incarnate, demonstrates a way of seeing in the context of relationship to the creator God. In this relationship, Christ has bridged the gap to the One seen, and therefore we are able to look upon him without shame or judgment. Conversely, the irresponsible gaze of the voyeur is an “idolatrous gaze”. The voyeur seeks only to see himself reflected in the image of the other. The basis the Old Testament ban on images was to keep the Israelites from idolatry, for images made to represent God only served to symbolize a deity made in the image of things created – an image of God contained. God is not made in the image of humanity but humanity is made in the image of God. It is God’s revelation through the incarnation that allowed humanity to gaze upon him without fear; through Christ the disciples encountered the Father.
The meeting between icon and worshipper cannot be understood as simply a dichotomy of viewer and object. There is an interaction with the prototype who is effectively “seeing” the viewer as well. Marion refers to this as a “second glace”; where the gaze of the viewer and the gaze of the prototype meet.
In front of an icon, I do indeed remain an onlooker, but I experience myself also as seen. Thus, the image is no longer a screen, since, through it and in its features, another glance – invisible as all glances – explores my face. The prototype interacts, through the objectifying image, as pure gaze crossing another gaze.
When we encounter an icon, we do not merely encounter an idolatrous mirror as in the gaze of the voyeur, but we encounter the gaze of the Other. “It [the icon] beautifully expresses the genuinely Christian understanding of how the finite and the infinite are related”(D.B. Hart). The icon is therefore a humanizing force, because it sets our sight within the context of our relationship to the Creator. It is the image of the world transformed, not the “anti-world” of the screen. In a culture dominated by dehumanizing voyeurism, the face of Christ as seen in the icon affirms every face by recalling the incarnation of Christ.







