JUMP
CUT
A
REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
Notes
1
From 1959-1964, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone repeatedly employed
the mindfuck device. In at least a dozen episodes, concentrated largely
in its first season, The Twilight Zone offered plots in which
characters were deluded about the nature of their existences. In The
Hitchhiker, a woman believes she has survived an accident only to
discover she has in fact died. Similarly, in Perchance to Dream,
a man has an entire adventure in the space of his last moment alive. In
Judgement Night and The Passerby, (a weaker episode
very much like Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others), characters do
not know they are dead. In other episodes, characters were unaware of
their true physical nature, like in The Lateness of the Hour,
in which a woman discovers she is a robot. In probably the best of these
constructions, The After Hours, a woman does not learn until
the end that she is in fact a mannequin.
2
Thomson, David. A Biographical Dictionary of Film. New York;
Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. pg. 98.
3 Butler, Judith. Gender
Trouble (10th Anniversary Edition). New York: Routledge, 1999.
4 Baudrillard, Jean. Global
Debt and Parallel Universe. Trans by Francois Debrix.
Website: http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/
texts/globaldebt.html. April, 2003.
5 Ibid.
6 Baudrillard, Jean. Disneyworld
Company. Trans by Francois Debrix. Website:
http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab
/texts/disneyworld.html. April, 2003.