FIGURE 80. The Fair Captive, by Rene Magritte (1947).Crab: So I am.
Achilles: Suppose I point the camera at the painting with the burning
tuba. Now it is on the screen, too!
Crab: The camera can zoom in and out, Achilles. You ought to try it.
Achilles: Fabulous! Let me just focus down onto the tip of those flames,
where they meet the picture frame ... It's such a funny feeling to be
able to instantaneously "copy" anything in the room-anything I
want-onto that screen. I merely need to point the camera at it, and it
pops like magic onto the screen.
Crab: ANYTHING in the room, Achilles?
Achilles: Anything in sight, yes. That's obvio;Js.
Crab: What happens, then, if you point the camera at the flames on the
TV screen?
(Achilles shifts the camera so that it points directly at that part of the
television screen on which the flames are-or were-displayed.)
Achilles: Hey, that's funny! That very act makes the flames DISAPPEAR
from the screen! Where did they go?
Crab: You can't keep an image still on the screen and move the camera at
the same time.
Achilles: So I see ... But I don't understand what's on the screen now-
not at all! It seems to be a strange long corridor. Yet I'm certainly notEdifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 489