Life Just Isn’t What It Used to Be: An Exploration of the Maternal, the Mirror Stage, and Cinematic Suture

Have you ever wished to return to days past? Has the popular idiom describing a healthier and more vibrant grass on the opposite side of a dividing fence ever applied to your life? Does the idea of repeating the innocent days of youth sound appealing? It is very common for these questions to be answered with a reminiscent “yes”, and while most adults, if questioned, would likely not wish to return to their childhood bodies and forfeit the rights and freedoms granted by maturity, few will deny the desire to reclaim the innocence and whimsy held within the years of infancy. Indeed, no cognizant experience can compare to the unconscious delight experienced by an unborn child, safely nestled within the womb of their caretaker, with nothing but the muffled sounds and distant experiences of the mother to create a soundtrack to a blissful state that can only be described as being. However, this elation has a very early expiry date, terminating once the newborn has left the womb and experiences themselves in the form of Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage, where their own vision forever alters the onlooker’s perspective of reality. Nevertheless, there is a unity within these opposite occurrences. Although sound plays an integral part in the tranquility of maternal existence, and sight assists in the angst and uncanny sustained by the mirror stage’s outcome of self-realization, the two senses combine, in the form of cinema, and suture the viewer back to a near-tranquil experience, which is as close as we can come to achieving the carefree life we all once lived.