Constructing the camera gaze and the problem of simulated emotions in Kazuo Ishiguro's "Klara and the Sun"

Abstract

This article is dedicated to analyzing Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Klara and the Sun" (2021), a work highly relevant within the context of posthumanist discussions on artificial intelligence, through the lens of theories of the gaze and simulacra. The purpose of this research is to identify how a "camera gaze" – a stylization of the narrative that mimics cinematic optics – allows the author to simulate visual perception of the world while simultaneously raising the issue of simulated emotions within the text. The novelty of this study lies in its presentation, for the first time, of the distinctive cinematic style of Ishiguro's writing through an analysis of the narrative strategy of camera vision, which reproduces the optics of a film camera through the means of literary text. Throughout the research, the implementation of the writer's directive to "show, don't tell" was identified on several levels of the text. The analysis reveals a paradoxical combination of literature and cinema: the stimulation of genuine feelings in the reader through the reading of a text that reflects the technical, i.e., unemotional, camera gaze of the android Klara. This observation not only contributes to the study of Kazuo Ishiguro's work but also broadens the understanding of the development of literature in the age of visual media.

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: April 28, 2025.
• Published: June 25, 2025.

Keywords

• кинематографический взгляд
• симуляция чувств
• симулякры
• Кадзуо Исигуро
• роман «Клара и Солнце»
• cinematic gaze
• simulation of feelings
• simulacra
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• "Klara and the Sun"

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)