Masks and Metaphor: Doubles and Animals

Abstract

Analysis of the interrelationships of the face, the mask and the Thing cannot ignore the Double. This is because doubling – be it explicit and horrific, or implicit and simply uncanny – questions the self’s self- presentation. If the same face can occupy two positions, logically speaking – except in a string theory multiverse – one suggests a mask. The self may fear lest its other, othered form be viewed as disclosing what lies within, and respond by ascribing this supernumerary face to an imposter. Thus Marilyn Johns Blackwell can use the words ‘double’ and ‘mask’ interchangeably, remarking, apropos Persona, that ‘[t]he double or the mask is, of course, a reflection or imitation, and often a covertly parodistic imitation that exposes hidden aspects of the original’. But doubling does not just ‘impart dynamism to the stasis of the world represented’ (Blackwell, 1986, p. 3).