The Invisible Man, a Spooky X-Ray, and the Need to be Seen

When people are asked to identify their preferred superpower, there are two popular answers. The first is the ability to fly. The second most common response is the wish to be invisible. They both involve a physical and mental sense of escape.

In his Republic (380 B.C.), Plato tells the story of the Ring of Gyges. Gyges was a shepherd who happened upon a cave, newly created by an earthquake in the kingdom of Lydia. Inside the cave was a tomb containing the body of a man who wore a golden ring.

Gyges discovers that the ring has the magical power to render him invisible. He uses this power to infiltrate the Court of Candaules, the Lydian king, where he seduces the queen and kills Candaules, so grabbing the throne for himself.

In 1897, H.G. Wells published his novel The Invisible Man. Again, the hero uses his power for mischief, including theft and then murder. It’s a Faustian tale of scientific ambition and an example of how power can be abused. 

Two years before Wells’s novel was published, the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the X-ray. As often seems to be the case in science, it was an accidental result of a laboratory experiment.

Röntgen experimented with an exposure of his wife’s hand. The resulting X-ray – the first in human history – showed the ghostly bones of his wife’s fingers, with the wedding ring eerily floating free. 

The New York Times reported his ‘alleged discovery of how to photograph the invisible’.

The image almost certainly inspired the famous passage in Thomas Mann’s great novel, The Magic Mountain, when the hero Hans Castorp sees his own X-ray:

He saw…the delicately turned skeleton of his right hand and around the last joint of the ring finger, dangling black and loose, the signet ring his grandfather had bequeathed him … [he] beheld a familiar part of his body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he would die. The director said, ‘Spooky, isn’t it?’

Later, Hans begs his beloved Claudia for her own X-ray as a memento. He keeps it in his wallet instead of her photograph. Her heart is made visible ‘like a jelly-fish’ as are her lungs with their tubercular ‘moist spot’, but disappointingly there is no sign of any soul.

Just as spooky is the image of the man vapourised on the steps of the Sumitomo bank at 08.15 on 6 August 1945 in Hiroshima. The only thing left is the shadowy imprint of his body. Separately the glare from the atom bomb was so fierce it penetrated sealed laboratories in the city and instantly developed the films of (what by then were) ghosts. 

The concept of invisibility holds another melancholy aspect. In his 1952 novel, entitled Invisible Man, the black American novelist Ralph Ellison uses the concept as a metaphor for racial discrimination. As a black man, he is not seen or noticed by others in society. He is ignored because he does not seem to matter as an individual.

As John Ferguson, a professional photographer working in the U.K. has said recently, ‘Young black people need role models to see’.

People entering late middle and old age often have the same concern, while women have long expressed concern that their contributions have gone unnoticed or ignored. As a tiny corrective, Marvel Comics created a character, The Invisible Woman, as one of the original Fantastic Four.

This feeling might help to explain the asymmetry of the fashion industry, and how women may feel a compensatory need to be seen in a world that too often overlooks them.

In H.G. Wells’s novel, the practical issues of being invisible haunt the hero. He can’t wear clothes, so he freezes in the cold. He can’t eat because the food shows through until it is digested by his intestines. And dogs can still smell him. So, as a superpower, it is not necessarily without its problems.

There may be many advantages to invisibility. But in the end, there is something rather sad and empty about it, because effectively as an invisible person you cease to exist.

Another word for invisibility might be alienation or estrangement. Anyone distanced from power, in terms either of race, gender, nationality, or finance, might experience these feelings.

As we exist in a privileged stratum of society, we have a moral responsibility to make ourselves aware of those who do not enjoy the same status or the same ‘regard’.

Working in an independent, international school, we have the chance to influence the values of future leaders in society.

But even within our own relatively refined community, there may be those who feel disempowered. Some students, for example, might not want to show themselves on-screen during online learning, and there is a danger that they, too, can become literally invisible.   

Invisibility can be a cloak for shyness, for lack of confidence, or even laziness. The situation of lockdown might exacerbate these problems. It takes courage sometimes to show yourself, and perform, either in class, on stage, on the sports field, or - yes - online.

It might be a tempting superpower to have, but we hope that BSM students have the confidence to shed the cloak of invisibility, and the inner strength to emerge as individuals, undaunted and unafraid to be seen as themselves.

It is an obvious concern that the prolonged crisis surrounding the virus will be followed by a severe recession. And the pressure of a recession might bring with it civil unrest and political instability, with the prospect of leaders from extreme parties being elected.

It is at times like this, perhaps, that we need people to be most visible, to defend civilised values, and to promote an enlightened culture of tolerance and kindness. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.

Our chosen superpower should instead, then, be to stand up collectively as visible men and women, so that our students might inherit an earth worth stewarding, a set of values worth cherishing, and a world where to be seen is to be healthy and safe.   

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO