Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (Ghosts and Wraiths)
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 figurant doctrine, coined over 'Cheers!' reruns: the silent background patrons whose mouths move without sound expose the triage every eye — camera or family — performs on who deserves audibility. This is the scene's, and arguably the book's, master concept, the hinge between the wraith's film theory and his confession about his son; the whole figurant chain seeded at 015/044/054/078/101 discharges into this passage.