A metaphysical question

[shadowscast]

These days I'm working crazy hours, but my husband's unemployed (and keeping house for me, which is pretty sweet). Result: he's watching the Buffy DVDs without me! Which is kind of weird, since I think of Buffy as my thing; he even broke the shrink wrap on S7! Anyway, it's fun. He's been watching S7, and I've been catching the odd episode in the evenings.

Today he came up with a wonderful question: If you were to videotape a vampire, and then play the tape on a TV, and place the TV opposite a mirror...would the vampire's image show up in the mirror?

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I really want to know how vampires can be photographed by cameras that use mirrors...

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

SLR cameras only use the mirror for the viewfinder - the mirror actually flips out of the way as the shutter is pressed. You could take a vampire's picture, no problem - you just couldn't see it in the viewfinder to aim properly.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/camera7.htm

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Yes. The vampire's image, once electronically captured and transmitted through a cathode ray tube, is no longer a supernatural phenomenon but a natural one and subject to natural laws.

Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Captain.

[shapinglight]

In the Jossverse, anything is possible. Vampires shouldn't be photographable (is that a word?) anyway, should they?

[vureoelt.livejournal.com]

He broke your shrinkwrap? Scarilege! :)

Anyhow, unless the TV were a vampire, I can't honestly see why the image woulnd't show up.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

But see, this just brings up the question: why don't they show up in mirrors in the first place?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

It was because mirrors were backed with silver, which was supposed to be a holy metal. Really it was a superstition that evolved before the laws of optics were understood and there is no rational explanation.

It's just one of those things that you have to accept for the premise of the show to work. Voluntary suspension of disbelief.

[vureoelt.livejournal.com]

Magic.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

Thus my original question. Vampires don't show up in mirrors because of magic. If you have a video recording of a vampire and you show that to a mirror, which laws will apply - the laws of magic or the laws of physics?

[vureoelt.livejournal.com]

If you ask me, physics. Because the video recording isn't magic. There is no reason to believe that it would inherit the properties of a vampire. It's not a vampiric video recording.

... errr, in the sense that the video is not a vampire.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

OK, so if you had a mirror facing a TV, and a video camera set on top of the mirror, and a vampire standing in between the mirror and the TV, and the camera recording the vampire and the image playing on the TV, the vampire should be able to see itself in the mirror!

:)

[vureoelt.livejournal.com]

That's assuming that the image from the TV somehow gets through to the mirror, but I suppose yeah. And, of course, assuming that the camera doesn't use mirrors.

... How else do you think they manage to shave? :D

[violethamster.livejournal.com]

I was reading a book on photography awhile back and there was an old picture of a city scene, with the streets empty of people. The book said that the streets were probably full of people at the time the picture was taken, but that the exposure was so long and the people were there such a relatively short time that none of them showed. Being the dork that I am, I immediately thought of the whole Jossverse mirror/photography vampire thing, but I have too short an attention span to try to extrapolate that into a logical-sounding explanation. Although I have thought perhaps vampires could be physically transformed in such a way that they reflect light differently than we do? Which might explain the bursting into flames in sunlight as well.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's all perfectly clear! In real life, vampires don't show up on film any more than they do in mirrors.

And that street was just crawling with vampires. :)