HIST 2450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: The Digital Age, Teleology, Swinging London
15 Sep 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Live woman"s head coming out of a flower vase) were very popular and grew as lighting and mirror technologies progressed because these illusions required both. Decapitation illusions starting to become popular following the french revolution. Started with birds (required two birds, one would die and the other would be made to look as if it was the same bird as the killed one making the illusion that the decapitated bird came back to life) The "living decapitated" became popular characters in novels. People began to debate whether decapitation was humane and efficient or not. People debated whether or not it was a painless and instantaneous death (because people began noticing small facial movements on cleaved heads and people didn"t know whether or not this was reflexive or if the person was still alive) Some historians have argued that illusions performed on women highlight society"s anxieties about women in the public sphere.
