The Image of Sleep

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Notes

1 A concept from political philosophy in which one hypothetically adopts a veil of ignorance, forgetting (or more precisely, not knowing) one's age, sex, race or class, before one begins the work of making laws and defining policies. See Rawls 2005.

2 It was common practice during the silent cinema period to use a stock set of tints to indicate different times of day, locations or emotions.

3 Tales abound of riots at the first screenings of the film, and of Jonas Mekas tying audience members to chairs to make them sit through it.

4 Although an interesting comparison should be made with the popularity of extended YouTube videos such as ‘Nyan Cat 10 Hours’ (TehN1ppe 2011), which, as of writing, had over forty-five million views. This form would seem to have quite a different function to, and should be distinguished from, the plethora of sleep-aid videos, which normally last around 8 hours.