In the newest Batman Twoface has half his face burned off, leaving his eye exposed, no eyelid.
I know that I shouldn’t look too hard a movies, they aren’t real, but what would happen to such an eye? Wouldn’t it dry up and go blind?
Not if you keep it covered and/or use a LOT of eyedrops. I don’t have time to dig out the particulars, but you can Google “Jacqui Saburido” for an example. She was severely burned in a car crash and lost (among other things) her left eyelid. I believe it has been reconstructed.
Warning: Her “after” pictures are not pretty.
I once knew a girl, who because of an injury, could not completely close one eye. She had special medication she applied, some kind of cream, which acted to keep the eye moist.
Thanks for the spoiler. 
OK, it’s only 50% likely I’ll see the movie, but I like to go in not knowing much.
I actually left complaining about the exact same thing. (It was one of the few things I found especially wrong.) I’d have been much more scared out of my pants anyway if they’d left just an empty socket, although that wouldn’t have stayed true to the comic book representation.
Besides the eye, the fact that he could pronounce p’s and f’s just fine bothered me.
I think you lose significant amounts of Badass Villain Points if your horrific injury makes you sound in any way like a Looney Tunes character.
The father of my children was burned in a fire when he was younger (we were dating at the time, no kids yet.)
About 35% of his body, mostly his face and hands. His eyelids were burned off, but his vision was not affected one bit. In fact, he has better vision than I do. What was left of his earlobes and ear tissue were used to create new eyelids for him. They work like a charm.
In the book Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants (now retitled The Gift of Pain), Dr. Paul Brand recounts how he figured out that leprosy patients were going blind because they had lost the nerves in their eyes, and therefore had no blink reflex to keep their eyes lubricated and clean. They tried a number of solutions to this; simply giving the patients eyedrops wouldn’t help because they’d just forget to put the drops in instead of forgetting to blink. They had some success by (ick) sewing the patients’ eyelids together and leaving only a small opening for seeing, which was sufficiently lubricated by ordinary tear production to keep them from having to blink at all. Pretty disturbing.
Presumably an ordinary person whose eyelids were just removed would rapidly become uncomfortable as their eyes started to dry out and hurt, and would have no problem keeping their eyes moist with drops or creams every so often. They’d have to have a pretty big supply, though.
I know someone who has (I think) no tear ducts. She wears thick lensed glasses that seal round the eye and contain fluid to keep the eye lubricated.
Si
Well, it’s TwoFace; if you anything at all about Batman canon, it’s not much of a spoiler. :dubious:
How do you sleep with no eyelids?
If you do manage to fall asleep with your eyes open, how do you keep flies from landing on your eyeballs?
Eyes without a face, on the other hand, can be had for only $4.50.
Once, after working a triple shift, I fell asleep with my eyes open, while walking, in midtown Manhattan. I don’t think flies were my biggest problem.
Some people sleep with their eyes open. I had a friend who did so.
Fair enough; I was going to go because of Heath Ledger and what I’ve heard about it being a great movie whether you know anything about it or not.
What happens if the eye does dry out?
Well, again according to Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, it quickly accumulates tiny scratches from dust and dirt, and the cornea wrinkles up as it dries out, and it becomes opaque. For normal people (i.e., those who haven’t had their nerves damaged by the leprosy bacteria) this would presumably be excruciating.
The German fighter ace Johannes Steinhoff had his eyelids burned off in an aircrash and subsequent fire. He led a very successful life after.
I, of course, could not resist Googling “Jacqui Saburido.”
The first bunch of hits is pretty superficial, giving not much more than the before and after photos. I did find a very moving in-depth story that ran in the Austin American-Statesman.
Holy shit. Having your child be so grievously injured is every parent’s nightmare.