{"id":285,"date":"2017-02-01T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=285"},"modified":"2017-02-02T04:04:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T04:04:29","slug":"the-evolution-of-analog-to-digital-cameras-in-the-first-140-pages-of-a-head-full-of-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/02\/01\/the-evolution-of-analog-to-digital-cameras-in-the-first-140-pages-of-a-head-full-of-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"The evolution of analog to digital cameras in the first 140 pages of \u201cA Head Full of Ghosts\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
An image camera made out of cardboard boxes from Flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Throughout the first part of A Head Full of Ghosts, <\/em>Merry\u2019s imaginary play-camera shifts to a real, digital one. On page 29 of the novel, Merry, our debatably reliable narrator, mentions that, \u201c[she] didn\u2019t feel 100 percent safe so [she] built motion-detecting surveillance cameras and a laptop computer out of cereal boxes.\u201d Her feelings of unease are brought about by her sister Marjorie\u2019s revelation that she has been sneaking into her little sister\u2019s room every night and playing slightly sinister pranks on her. Her desire for safety-enforcing surveillance technology, imaginary or not, is understandable.<\/p>\n

By page 139, one of The Possessio<\/em>n\u2019s producers, Ken, has given Merry her own camera (a \u201cMerry-cam,\u201d as he dubs it), and she is so obsessed with it that \u201c[she] placed the camera where [she] could see it from [her] bed because [she] wanted to see when the light would turn to green\u201d while she tries to fall asleep.<\/p>\n

The idea of surveillance within the space of Merry\u2019s room has turned on its head; professionals are now attempting to document every movement of each person on the house, and Merry, instead of using fake cameras as a safeguard, is using real cameras for a form of self-surveillance. On page 140, Merry films herself covering her play house with a blanket\u2014the setup for the next terror scene in the novel in which Marjorie supposedly performs for Merry\u2019s camera. Certainly, Marjorie admits that the show she put on was for the benefit of her little sister\u2019s footage, but there remains the question of the extent to which all of the captured footage of Marjorie is performance.<\/p>\n

At this point in the novel, the difference between real and fake, analog and digital, is still being teased out, and I image that Tremblay will continue to play with this as he introduces more of Merry\u2019s disturbing blog entries (perhaps another sort of twisted self-surveillance).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the first part of A Head Full of Ghosts, Merry\u2019s imaginary play-camera shifts to a real, digital one. On page 29 of the novel, Merry, our debatably reliable narrator, mentions that, \u201c[she] didn\u2019t feel 100 percent safe so [she] built motion-detecting surveillance cameras and a laptop computer out of cereal boxes.\u201d Her feelings of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The evolution of analog to digital cameras in the first 140 pages of \u201cA Head Full of Ghosts\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}