Article contains spoilers for the Longlegs horror movie
For the season that’s in it, I decided to watch a horror movie last night with friends – the acclaimed ‘scariest movie of the year’, Longlegs. The plot centers on an FBI agent obsessively hunting down a serial killer, played by Nicolas Cage, who ‘infects’ people with evil through life-sized porcelain dolls he introduces into their homes. I’m no horror buff, and it was terrifying. But what struck me most was how it – like so many horror movies – capitalises on our fear of an ‘evil’ human-like figure. In this case, the dolls mesmerise their onlookers, drawing them into a trance only to force them into doing the devil’s bidding. The movie echoes the Narcissus myth: we are entranced by an idealised image of ourselves, only to find ourselves trapped by its aggression.
Freud spoke of a mesmerising and threatening ‘double’ in The Uncanny (1919), where he described the ‘double’ or Doppelgänger as a split, mesmeric and ultimately threatening part of the self. This double embodies aspects of us that we repress owing to their ‘incapability’ with who we think we are, which then return in an alienated, foreign form. Lacan expanded on Freud’s ideas, suggesting that it is through an identification with an image of ourselves – this alienateddouble – that our ego forms. In infancy, when we first recognise ourselves in the mirror, this image becomes a formative experience: That is me, that is not me, but that is how you see me. By identifying with this whole, unified image, the infant comes to recognise themselves as a creature that is split between their fragmented, bodily self and this idealised reflection through the eyes of an other.
The Mirror Stage
This transformation, known as the Mirror Stage, is not just recognition but identification. It is not that the infant merely recognises himself but rather that the image enables the individual to recognise himself. However, initially, we see the image as a real person, and its wholeness stands in stark contrast with the infant’s fragmented bodily experience, creating a sense of rivalry. This tension is only resolved when the infant assumes the image as their own, introducing a sense of mastery over it. The ego that forms in relation to this image becomes a striving force, constantly pursuing ideals that it can approach but never fully embody. The image remains forever unattainable, an aggressive rival more than a goal achieved. For example, think of those times when you’ve consoled a friend and told them to ‘speak to themselves as they would to a loved one’. We are almost implicitly speaking to the rivalry innate in ourselves with statements like that; knowing that the individual will be kinder to another, when the ego’s pursuit of a misrecognised and misconstrued ideal isn’t as present, than to themselves.
What does this have to do with AI? Or horror movies?
In a way, I’m curious about how AI and social media platforms can serve as our new mode of engagement with the double. Through these platforms, we curate idealised versions of ourselves that interact with the world, complete with all the rivalry and aggression we can only find in an image of sameness-hidden difference. Social media mirrors are eerily reminiscent of the horror movie’s dolls: images and ideals that consume attention and exert influence. These platforms become spaces where our identities are fractured across multiple projections, echoing our need to identify with and master an image of ourselves, yet feeling the aggression of competition, comparison and the distance from our real selves. This constant oscillation between connection and alienation, closeness and distance could well be a poignant encounter with that double, as Freud and Lacan forewarned.
Written by Molly Fitz