Invisibility, Medusa and the Mask

Abstract

A dissolution of face into mask, suggestive of ‘the Divine’ in the case of Garbo, may also veer towards the demonic. Here the mask can render the eye potentially evil by demonstrating its ownership by someone unwilling to be recognized. Its ability to create invisibility (as in New Caledonian reports of this effect (Napier, 1986, p. 16)) allies it to spiritual, not necessarily beneficent, forces. Indeed, ambivalence, due to unreadability, may characterize spirituality in general. The most destructive evil eyes in the Classical tradition, those of the Gorgon, turn against her in amulets of which the shield of Perseus may be the primal example, simply ‘writ large’. Not surprisingly, the instruments of her slaying include Hades’ cap of invisibility. Since ‘the Gorgon’s Head’ has been a frequent metaphor for the experience of the Holocaust, whose rendition, reproduction or representation have been variously considered immoral, impossible or both, this chapter will also address that event, inevitably inadequately.