___ Piers ___
| I mean, it might also help with the probably rather silly
| idea that these people have that the enjoyment or pleasure
| of movies is bound up with all sorts of stifling extra-filmic
| matter... Just thought I'd point that out, hope I'm not being
| terribly fanciful.
 ___

No. I think you are 100% correct.  I don't doubt in the least that our
judgments of *anything* are wound up in terms of our context.  To take an
example from gender studies, the female form that Hollywood portrays as the
ideal is itself constructed.  Go back a few hundred years or move to a
different culture and you'll find a different standard of beauty.  So in a
film like _Cleopatra_, the archetype of a human beautiful woman we have
Elizabeth Taylor when undoubtedly the real Cleopatra came from a radically
different standard of beauty.

How the audience judges is partially in terms of this horizon they exist
within.  Yet, they are still free to judge as they wish.  Further they can,
if they want, change their standard of beauty.  And heaven knows there are
plenty of subcultures that do.  I certainly notice a different standard of
beauty when I'm hanging out down in Berkeley than when I'm hanging out in
Vegas.  (Speaking of the culture and not my views)

 ___ Piers ___
| Could you explain this 'happiness' you mention? Apparently
| these average people may have been brought to it by movies
| like 'The Mummy'. How would it have been brought to them?
 ___

Uh oh.  You don't really want me to go down a tangent of analyzing our
concept of happiness, do you?  I have quite a few views on it which I mainly
arrived at when investigating Utilitarianism and its flaws.  I tend to see
happiness as a judgment we make of our self and thus not a real entity or
attribute per se.  But we can speak of being happy because we make that
judgment and then make a kind of subjective decision of relative weight.

So we are "brought to" happiness in the sense that an environment and its
causes are a catalyst to making this positive judgment.  I don't think that
the way the judgment is made is stable in any sense, however.  But in
general we can talk about certain experiences making us happier than others.

 ___ Piers ___
| Might I ask what it is that these average people are escaping
| from?
 ___

Their regular life, for what ever reasons.  Even a good life can be spiced
up with change.  For me my excapism isn't film but outdoor adventure.  So
over the weekend I went on a long 16 mile hike, found some caves out in the
desert I was exploring, chased some wild stallions, went rock climbing, went
caving, and found a dry lake bed and impersonated those cheesy SUV
commercials they run.  (See, and you all thought I spent inordinate time
writing this stuff up - really this is all but a footnote in my life <grin>)

I consider my life good, but I admit that I crave variety and adventure.  So
I even admit that I enjoyed _Spiderman_ a great deal and have seen it three
times.  (Gasps arise from the crowd)  It brings me back to that kind of joy
and excitement I had as a kind watching Star Wars or dreaming about being a
superhero.

Give me French cinema, because I admit that I love it.  But don't take away
my superhero movies.  <Grin>

 ___ Piers ___
| Something to keep in mind, though, is that the average people
| I know (I don't suppose that you'd call them average, mind you)
| seem to escape from the cinema to the home or chippie, rather
| than the other around.
 ___

I'm not quite sure what you mean.  (BTW - what's a "chippie"?)  Why do they
need to escape from the cinema?  Do they work there?  I guess I'm not
following you at all.



-- Clark Goble --- [log in to unmask] -----------------------------