Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (pp. 834–835)
and what a miserable fucking bottom-rung job that must be for an actor, to be sort of human furniture, figurants the wraith says they’re called, these surreally mute background presences whose presence really revealed that the camera, like any eye, has a perceptual corner, a triage of who’s important enough to be seen and heard v. just seen. A term from ballet, originally, figurant, the wraith explains.
Context
The concept the plan's one-liner names, defined at source: starting from the mute background patrons of Gately's beloved 'Cheers!' ("these fractional actors, human scenery, could be seen (but not heard) in most pieces of filmed entertainment"), the wraith delivers his central piece of film theory — the camera, "like any eye," triages who gets to be "seen and heard v. just seen." The figurant is the human evidence of that triage, and the "like any eye" clause is the move that makes the rest of the scene possible: it converts a casting term into a theory of attention, family, and personhood. (The concept's earlier textual appearance is n.297's mute-Greek-chorus gloss — the concept only: whether the print endnote carries the word 'figurant' itself is an open question.)