Blinding the Screen: Visualizing Disability in Le scaphandre et le papillon

Abstract

This essay examines how the first-person perspective employed in Julian Schnabel’s Le scaphandre et le papillon draws on previous cinematic traditions to configure blindness for a sighted audience. Engaging with common metaphors of disability, the essay explores whether this film’s cinematic representation of blindness opens new possibilities for conceptualizing visual impairment.