GUEST ESSAY: THE REAL AND FAKE EYE DEBATE
WARNING: This article contains ENDING SPOILERS!!
[Leigh: Whenever Cowboy Bebop rounds back to the central theme of Spike's past, his eyes are never far from the discussion.
In fact, in the final session of the series, Spike leaves the Bebop with these parting words, "Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. So, I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture. I felt like I was watching a dream I could never wake up from. Before I knew it, the dream was over."
But like all important matters in the series it was never clearly stated which eye was which, leaving yet more for the Cowboy Bebop fan to debate. Here, Emily Ravenwood has an insightful take on the real/fake eye debate.]
Spike’s flashbacks in the Ballad of Fallen Angels accompany a repeating shot of his left eye; when he comes back up to consciousness and out of his dream/flashbacks in Jupiter Jazz ("JJ"), we see his right eye opening; in Sympathy for the Devil ("SD") his green flashbacks end with a zoom from the left eye to his right eye, and then he wakes up. In Pierrot le Fou it’s Spike’s right eye that looks down the barrel of le Fou’s gun and reflects like that of the cat who observes le Fou being experimented on, and it's le Fou’s left eye that we see close-ups of.
All this rather postmodern image/symbol montage-ing adds up to a great deal of ambiguity; not once do we ever get a definite answer as to which of Spike's eye is mechanical. My guess is that it’s the left eye, since his right eye is twice associated with awakening from the past (in JJ and SD) and his left that’s mirrored by the medically maddened le Fou.
In any case, the shot in which Spike sees Julia die focuses on his left eye, the one that he tells her sees the past. This is what leads me to think Julia’s part is to shatter the distinction Spike has drawn between dream and reality. The scene of Julia’s death crosses the past/present boundary. In the last episode, Spike tells Faye that one eye is a replacement - that one sees the past and other the present (which implies that the mechanical eye may also contain some kind of recorder if my guess is correct). Note that the shot here pans from left to right as he speaks.
“I had thought that what I saw was not all of reality,” he goes on. “I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was over.” And then he tells her he’s not going to die but to see if he’s alive. On the one hand, he’s saying that he thought the past, presumably what the left eye sees, was not real but rather a dream…albeit an inescapable one. On the other hand, his phrasing indicates that he no longer thinks this. The dream is over, he says. He has seen the present - Julia’s death - with his left eye and as he remembers her death and her words, “this is a dream,” the camera focuses on his right eye: past and present have crossed and become one.
So as Cowboy Bebop drew to a conclusion, Spike is no longer dissociated from reality, no longer dreaming. He has awoken, and now must act instead of merely watch.
[ Extract from Emily's essay "The End". Emily has more Cowboy Bebop essays at her site Last Train Home. ]
In fact, in the final session of the series, Spike leaves the Bebop with these parting words, "Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. So, I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture. I felt like I was watching a dream I could never wake up from. Before I knew it, the dream was over."
But like all important matters in the series it was never clearly stated which eye was which, leaving yet more for the Cowboy Bebop fan to debate. Here, Emily Ravenwood has an insightful take on the real/fake eye debate.]
Spike’s flashbacks in the Ballad of Fallen Angels accompany a repeating shot of his left eye; when he comes back up to consciousness and out of his dream/flashbacks in Jupiter Jazz ("JJ"), we see his right eye opening; in Sympathy for the Devil ("SD") his green flashbacks end with a zoom from the left eye to his right eye, and then he wakes up. In Pierrot le Fou it’s Spike’s right eye that looks down the barrel of le Fou’s gun and reflects like that of the cat who observes le Fou being experimented on, and it's le Fou’s left eye that we see close-ups of.
All this rather postmodern image/symbol montage-ing adds up to a great deal of ambiguity; not once do we ever get a definite answer as to which of Spike's eye is mechanical. My guess is that it’s the left eye, since his right eye is twice associated with awakening from the past (in JJ and SD) and his left that’s mirrored by the medically maddened le Fou.
In any case, the shot in which Spike sees Julia die focuses on his left eye, the one that he tells her sees the past. This is what leads me to think Julia’s part is to shatter the distinction Spike has drawn between dream and reality. The scene of Julia’s death crosses the past/present boundary. In the last episode, Spike tells Faye that one eye is a replacement - that one sees the past and other the present (which implies that the mechanical eye may also contain some kind of recorder if my guess is correct). Note that the shot here pans from left to right as he speaks.
“I had thought that what I saw was not all of reality,” he goes on. “I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was over.” And then he tells her he’s not going to die but to see if he’s alive. On the one hand, he’s saying that he thought the past, presumably what the left eye sees, was not real but rather a dream…albeit an inescapable one. On the other hand, his phrasing indicates that he no longer thinks this. The dream is over, he says. He has seen the present - Julia’s death - with his left eye and as he remembers her death and her words, “this is a dream,” the camera focuses on his right eye: past and present have crossed and become one.
So as Cowboy Bebop drew to a conclusion, Spike is no longer dissociated from reality, no longer dreaming. He has awoken, and now must act instead of merely watch.
[ Extract from Emily's essay "The End". Emily has more Cowboy Bebop essays at her site Last Train Home. ]
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