At First Sight

In Class

As we watched a 10 minute clip of At First Sight, we were learning about sense perception. In the movie, the main character was blind since birth and in the clip that we watched in class, Virgil had just did an operation and the doctor was opening his wound dressing. It was a very nervous moment for Virgil's sister and girlfriend, Jennie and Amy.

After Virgil opened his eyes, he was very frightened as he couldn't understand what he was seeing. Even if his closest sister was standing in front of him, Virgil did not know who she was because he had never perceived his sister's physical appearance. Hence, he had to associate his sense of touch to help him believe what he is seeing is what it is. In addition, one interesting moment that was shown in the clip was that Virgil did not recognize himself when he saw himself in the mirror. He thought that the figure in the mirror was another person until he saw the reflection followed his actions then he only realized that it was himself.

Firstly, I think that people who used to be blind and regain their sight would not have a sense of beauty. They wouldn't know if a person or thing is beautiful or ugly. This is because their minds are not affected by different factors - commercials, artists, culture, etc. For example, a very traditional Chinese may think that single eye lids women, with their eyes slightly diagonal (phoenix' eyes) are beautiful.

In addition, I also came up with a question: how do blind people dream? Usually when we dream, we have visions. The visions are created from our imagination, or settings that we have seen before. Given the fact that blind people cannot perceive the material world, I assume that they won't have visions in their dream. Then what do their dreams consist of? The touch of things, sounds, and voices of people?

Sources of images:
http://www.firsttvdrama.com/show2/history/atfirst.jpg
http://cimg2.163.com/catchpic/6/60/601B4A7F5509EA9C4DE3B5DC65BA3C5A.jpg