tamar stone wrote:
> Having spent some time myself wondering whether or not that first audience
> left the theatre in fear, I wanted to say that I've come to stop dwelling on
> that detail - much more significant is the TYPE of encounter the audience
> had. In this case, having never seen motion on a screen, they more likely
> than not felt more acutely than we would now that the train might jump from
> the screen. That they stirred in their seats, averted their gaze, or fled
> the room is incidental.
It just occurred to me that perhaps more to the point would be to speculate
whether they actually mistook the representation for reality ("The train might
jump from the screen") or whether they reacted as Tamas describes because they
found the perceptual event disturbing or unpleasant. The former I find highly
unlikely, the latter possible but not very likely. As far as I have been able to
perceive young children don't react like that on their first encounters with
television. But I admit that this may not be a fair comparison. I would expect
that someone has made research on this (the children I mean). I'd appreciate
refrerences.
Henry Bacon
Finnish Film Archive
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