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September 1995, Week 4

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From:
Barbara Bernstein <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Wed, 20 Sep 1995 21:38:14 PDT
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Can I take a stab at the question of why, when narration and visual flashback
do not match, we always believe that what we are seeing is the "true" version
and what we are hearing is the lie?
 
It's because we are still learning how to watch movies.  Centuries of reading
books in which chararcters and even the narrator lie, not to mention millenia
of hearing actual people lie to our faces, have taught us that there is no
necessary connection between what people say and what really happened.
 
But movies--especially the classical cinema, which devoted itself to
perfecting the illusion of life--still look to us pretty much like seeing
things happen in actuality.  And we know from experience, and by a kind of
race-memory, that we can trust the evidence of our eyes.
 
 
At least we could up until the present era of merchanical/electronic
reproduction.  We cannot trust the evidence of our eyes when recorded media
are involved, but I honestly thing that the species won't internalize that
for several generations.
 
I would add that movies are about moving images, and of course this is the
aspect of a movie that speak to us the most clearly.  A movie that let its
sound track invalidate its visuals would be better off as a radio drama, it
seems to me.
 
Barbara Bernstein                       email: [log in to unmask]
Kinexis, San Francisco,  CA
 
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