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In 1895, viewers of the Lumière brothers' 50-second film L’Arrivée d’un train are said to have stampeded out of the theater when a train raced toward them on the projection screen. Unaccustomed to the cinematic experience, they couldn't help but take the image of the train for the real thing. The Lumière Effect, named after this supposed occurrence, describes the phenomenon of mistaking representation for reality. In this essay, the poet and artist manuel arturo abreu compares this (Western) myth of image-reality overlap to the "over-mediated" nature of how the West interprets the face of the Other. This face is a site of projection for Western anxieties, guilt, and fear: a fear that implies having always-already called for State protection. Through a reading of Emmanuel Levinas and Édouard Glissant, abreu suggests strategies of opacity to resist the "violence of the metaphor" of the face.