The Power of Movies

by Colin Mcginn

  Now I am not about to claim that movies possess this degree of power over the attention; clearly, your mind can wander from a movie that is not absorbing you and yet you are still seeing the movie. Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that movies possess a remarkable power to engage the attention—more so, I suspect, than any other art form. When a movie is working, the viewer forgets everything else and becomes totally absorbed: there is now only the world of the movie, with all else erased from consciousness. Skillful direction manipulates the viewer's attention so that it is filled to the brim with the events on the screen: the close-up comes at just the right time; the music drives the point home; the viewer is up there with the character on the screen. Viewer and character almost meld into one another. The habitually fretting and divided consciousness is unified and fully focused (and woe betide the talker in the next row!). Cinematic absorption is a phenomenon to be reckoned with. But how can those two-dimensional splashes of light, those flat ventriloquist's dummies, exercise such a powerful hold over human attention? The dream theory has a reply: because movie watching simulates dreaming, and dreaming is attention dependent. By entering a mental state that mimics dreaming, we engage the mechanisms of the dreaming mind, and among these is the capacity for intense absorption. Once the screen dream gains a hold, the attention is effectively hijacked. The attention can be distracted—say, by a loud noise—but the result is akin to waking up. While the movie is operating in the dream mode it is fully attended to. To put it differently, once the attention has been hooked, the dream impression becomes palpable. Full absorption in the movie becomes a potent source for generating the dream experience in the viewer. It is as if the mind is saying to itself: “If I'm this absorbed, it must be a dream I'm having.” In any case, absorption and dreaming are inseparable, each reinforcing the other.

  This brings us to the knotty subject of suggestibility and belief. In dreams we believe what we dream: if you dream you are about to be attacked by a bear, then you believe that this is so. It isn't that you have the sensory impression of being attacked by a bear but scoff at such an illusion; no, you really think it's about to happen—which is why you feel fear. It is a difficult question why you believe what you dream, but you clearly do, and the emotions are there to prove it.17 One part of the answer appeals to suggestibility: you are abnormally suggestible during the dream, rather as you are under hypnosis. Your threshold for assent is drastically lowered. Anything your dream tells you, you believe, no questions asked. In the case of movies there seems to be a similar weakening of proper skepticism, at least for those who have not developed strongly critical minds (children mainly). The movie watcher seems abnormally suggestible, open to persuasion and propaganda—which is why movies have often been used to this end. It is comparatively easy to arouse the viewer's emotions and convictions. Again, if we ask why this is so, the dream theory has an answer: in simulating the dream state, the movie watcher enters a state of heightened suggestibility. This state is not as extreme as the dream state, but it approximates that state; thus beliefs are easily encouraged, opinions shaped. It is sometimes said that people these days get their basic beliefs from the movies; the dream theory tells us why: because the movie theatre is a place where people's suggestibility is abnormally high, owing to the dream mechanisms that are there evoked. Perhaps there should be a new category added to the ratings system: B, for “liable to lead to beliefs in unsuspecting viewers.” Once you have someone in a dream state, just as a hypnotic state, you have him where you want him, belief-wise.

  MEMORY

  The recollection of dreams is notoriously poor. You may wake with a dream vividly before your mind, and the dream may be highly memorable in itself, but by lunchtime it is generally gone. It has been shown experimentally that the brain centers concerned with memory are relatively inactive during dreaming sleep. And yet dreams can themselves be repositories of unusually retentive memories: you can remember things in dreams that escape you altogether in waking life. Freud remarks on this in The Interpretation of Dreams, calling dreams “hyper-mnemonic;” forgotten scenes from childhood can, he observes, show up with remarkable fidelity within a dream.18 So the dream has a good memory, even if we have a bad memory for the dream. What makes this especially curious is that poor retentiveness combines with strong impact: it is not as if the dreams we have make no impression on us—they often make a very powerful impression—but even so they generally leak quickly from memory (though, to be sure, there are dreams we remember our whole life). We are highly receptive to dreams, but not retentive of them. Dreams differ in this respect from ordinary waking experience, where impact and retention generally go together.

  My memory of films is quite weak. I will often see a film I saw a few years ago and remember almost nothing of it (so I am not bored), and films slip quickly from my memory in a matter of days, if not hours. And this is not because I lack interest in them or that they make no impact on me; it's just that the impact is fleeting, and the memory fades rapidly. Although I know of no scientific studies of the question, my impression is that I am not alone in this—most people have a very porous memory when it comes to movies. You may remember the feelings a film evoked in you, and maybe the odd scene, but you will find it hard to remember the sequence of scenes in any detail (unless, of course, you watch it a number of times). People watching a movie they have seen before will state, “Ah, this is where such-and-such happens,” and it turns out that they are quite wrong. Let us suppose that this is a fairly robust feature of human memory: why should it be so? If movies are psychologically akin to dreaming, then it is just what we might expect. Movies enter our minds as dreams do, but they also leave our minds that way too. There is a large impact, but a small residue. To confirm this anecdotal impression, one would have to do a serious study of both types of memory and compare them with other types of memory, of novels and of plays, say, as well as investigate whether people who are unusually good at remembering films are also good at remembering dreams. I am a mere philosopher, so I leave this task to more empirically inclined inquirers. But my prediction is that dream memory and film memory will turn out to be comparably feeble. Perhaps this is why people are often so keen to report on their dreams and the movies they have just seen: the impact was large, but without rehearsal the memory will quickly fade— so they bore you with their verbal rehashes.

  TIMING

  The point I am about to make, like some that follow, cannot be said to amount to much as a way of establishing the truth of the dream theory of film; but once that theory has acquired some traction (as, by now, I hope it has), it can serve to add to the circumstantial case in its favor. That is, once the theory has been accepted, at least as a good working hypothesis, certain facts slot nicely into place. So, astute reader, please don't accuse me of trying to prove the dream theory on the basis of flimsy evidence! With that caveat, then, consider the timing of movies. There are two aspects to this: when we watch them and how long they are. My optimal time for watching a movie is about eight or nine o'clock at night, and that seems a pretty popular time for many people. Now you might think this is just a matter of finding a convenient time between dinner and bedtime, but perhaps it has a more interesting explanation. Watching movies during the day is not my preference—nor do I like to nap during the day. After nightfall is really the best time for me. Now suppose the dream theory is true—isn't that what we would expect? We like to watch movies at the time when we would normally be dreaming—i.e., nighttime. But, you protest, that is false—most people don't go to bed that early! I don't; I go at around eleven or twelve: so am I not watching movies earlier than I am normally entering the sleep state? The timing, then, doesn't fit the theory. But, I reply, this is too hasty: it is true that in modern societies, with their electric lights and all-night diners, people stay up all hours, but not so long ago human beings were turning in pretty much when night fell, or soon after. People used to go to bed a lot earlier than we do now. Therefore, eight or nine at nigh
t would be the time at which they might already be enjoying a dreamy slumber. So the time at which I like to watch movies is actually the time at which, had I lived much earlier, I would have been dreaming. Interesting point, is it not? It is as if my ancient brain knows when it wants the dreaming to start, so it takes me to the movies just when I am forcing it to stay awake. As I say, let's not exaggerate the evidential power of this observation, but it is certainly consistent with the dream theory.

  How long do people dream on an average night? The answer appears to be about two hours, in fits and starts. How long is the typical movie? It's also about two hours. But, you object, the movie is continuous while the dreaming is broken up. True, I respond, but remember that the continuity of a movie is qualified by the fact that it consists of a sequence of scenes, with some major lulls and changes of direction; and it used to be the case that people watched several films, short and long, in a single sitting, with breaks between them. So there is a kind of rough match between the duration of a movie experience and the duration of a night of dreams. Again, this is suggestive, if not probative. Once a movie exceeds the average duration of a night of dreaming, it becomes harder to watch, because the brain isn't designed to be in the dream state for so long. So directors, beware—don't try to stretch your viewers’ allotment of dream time or they will wake up and want to leave.

  TRANSITIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

  The transition from wakefulness to the dreaming state is not abrupt; there are intermediate stages. You lie down and start to nod off: this is when you may well experience so-called hypnagogic images, the kind of very vivid waking imagery that often precedes sleep. This period will usually be fairly brief, because sleep soon supervenes. Once you are asleep, there are two kinds of dreaming to contend with: REM and NREM sleep. REM sleep is the kind that accompanies deep dreaming, the kind with plots, themes, and personal reverberations. NREM sleep is accompanied by dreamlike states, often rehearsing experiences of the day, but it isn't the same as the full-blown REM dream state. The details don't matter for our purposes; what matters is that the mind passes through a succession of stages of imagery before it reaches the deep dreaming of REM sleep. The metaphor that suggests itself is that of the mind going deeper into its own inner dream resources. The process of entering the dream state is therefore gradual and graded; it is not a sudden descent into the dream mode.

  But don't we find a parallel here with the typical movie experience? You enter the theatre, get comfortable, the lights go down, and what do you get? Not the main feature. You first have the trailers and maybe some ads; in the good old days there would be a newsreel or a cartoon or a short. Only when you have experienced some of this preliminary movie imagery are you expected to settle down for the main feature. You ease in. By the time the main feature starts, you are in full movie mode, ready to be swept away by what you are about to see. You are not expected to go abruptly from your local mall to the distant world of the movie, psychologically speaking; you need time to adjust, to put your consciousness in the mood. So hypnagogic imagery and NREM sleep are functionally analogous to trailers and newsreels, or whatever precedes the main film—they are devices of transition. Not only is watching the main film like having a dream; watching the preliminary stuff mimics the mental states that herald dreaming. In both cases, there is a period of transitional consciousness before deep immersion becomes possible. And there is something jarring about going into a movie theatre and having the main film come on immediately, as happens at press screenings of films; you need time to leave the waking world behind. Again, I intend this as a suggestive analogy, not as a cast-iron proof of the dream theory— it certainly fits with what I have already argued.

  SPECIAL EFFECTS

  In a way, all film consists of special effects. Artificial lighting is a special effect, if that means something not found in nature if left to its own devices. Any use of manmade scenery is a special effect. So is makeup. The very two-dimensionality of the screen, the creation of a world from projected light, the use of black-and-white—these are all special effects. Cinema is a special effect. What we normally think of these days as special effects—computer-generated images, tricks of motion, and distortions of the human form—are just developments of the very nature of film, which is a type of constructive artifice. Surely, much of our delight in viewing films involves an appreciation of these effects, even when the film is ostensibly “realistic.” Any close-up of the human face, however natural, is really a special effect, since it does not replicate exactly anything we normally experience—no one's eyes are that big.

  Where else do we find this kind of rampant artifice, this augmentation of the real? Dreams, of course. Everything in a dream is a kind of heightening or transforming of what we experience in normal life; the real world comes to us filtered and distorted—surrealism at least had this right. Special effects involving motion are perhaps the most conspicuous— especially free flight, but also walking through solid objects, sudden shifts of location (like teletransportation), and marvels of speed and agility. People very often appear in elaborate disguises, as distorted versions of themselves, or with the appearance of someone else. It can get pretty weird in a dream. Things happen that don't, and can't, happen in reality. I remember when, at age eight, I saw the Wicked Witch of the East's legs shrivel under Dorothy's transplanted house, and felt a shiver of disgust and fear—it was just far too like the nasty things that happened in my nightmares. Dreams are a vast special effect, something unreal invented to pass itself off as reality.

  But then, watching a movie will stir echoes of the dream world, by virtue of the distortions and trickery employed. The oddity of what we are seeing on the screen will resemble the oddity of the dream. Witnessing those cinematic special effects, the viewer's brain will recall its own special effects of the night. The fruitful fusion of film image and dream image will then ensue. The two sorts of image belong together, in contradistinction to the effects of nature, which by definition aren't special at all. If movies work by the twin principles of compression and amplification—packing a lot into a single image or sequence of images, and drawing attention to a significant detail by enlargement or other type of emphasis—then dreams too may be said to work this way, since they characteristically compress large, complex feelings into startlingly charged single images, and they often highlight a significant detail. I once had a dream of a woman whose entire physiognomy had been reduced to a pair of luscious red lips—a special effect that compressed a wealth of meaning into a single amplified detail. This dream image strikes me as intensely cinematic—as witness the many pairs of enormously enlarged painted lips we have all seen on the screen. That is what I mean by the special effects of compression and amplification, both forms of emotional emphasis.

  SMELL

  One view of cinema is that, ideally, it should approach as closely as possible the experience you would have if you were really confronted by the events depicted. Color improved on black-and-white, according to this view, because the real world is actually colored, so that color images approximate more closely the way things really are. The logical conclusion of this line of thought is that cinema should try to duplicate the experiences provided by the other senses, not just vision and hearing. Thus if I am seeing a man walk into a fetid swamp, I should be assailed by the olfactory experiences such a scene would afford—the screen should emit smells as well as sights and sounds. It might even attempt to produce tastes in the mouth, as the hero eats his heroic dinner. Yet movies have not in fact incorporated this feature; the movie theatre is an odor-free zone. Isn't this a failing in the “realism” movies purport to provide? Why hasn't smell entered the lexicon of movie techniques? Is it purely a technical matter—the difficulty of manufacturing smells for movie audiences to wrinkle their noses at?

  Another view of cinema, the view I am adopting here, is that it approximates rather to the dream state. And it is an empirically well-established fact that dreams are not generally smelly: replete with
visual and auditory images they certainly are, but olfactory imagery seems minimal to nonexistent. The olfactory parts of the brain seem not to be activated during dreaming; similarly for the gustatory parts. I may find myself in a fetid swamp in a dream, with animal noises all around, but I don't seem to have any smell images in my dream. I may know that something smells bad in my dream, but I don't have the image of this smell itself— though I certainly have visual images of the thing that smells. Dreams are a mix of visual and auditory images, but the other senses seem neglected. If so, movies are like dreams, and trying to endow them with dramatic odors will take them farther away from their true model. If smells reached our nostrils from the screen, we would lose the illusion of dreamlikeness, and the spell would be broken. So let's keep the movies odor-free.

  OBJECT MEANING

  When is an object more than an object? When it appears in a film. Film has the power to endow inanimate objects with a brooding inwardness, a life of their own. The early film theorist Siegfried Kracauer, in “The Establishment of Physical Existence,” an essay about the world-revealing powers of the camera, writes as follows: “Actually, the urge to raise hats and chairs to the status of full-fledged actors has never completely atrophied [since the early days of cinema]. From the malicious escalators, the unruly Murphy beds, the mad automobiles in silent comedy to the cruiser Potemkin, the oil derrick in Louisiana Story and the dilapidated kitchen in Umberto D., a long procession of unforgettable objects has passed across the screen—objects which stand out as protagonists and all but overshadow the rest of the cast.”19 And among these memorable objects I would add assorted shoes, swords, rings, keys, music boxes, lockets, guns, sleds, broomsticks, and houses. By means of the close-up and other modes of object salience, these items of hardware have been raised to the condition of sentience and will; at any rate, so our anthropomorphic minds have interpreted their screen presence. The object acquires a meaning, a symbolic weight—it becomes an active participant in the unfolding drama. If the screen elevates the actor to the status of spiritual body, then it also raises inanimate objects a notch in the ontological hierarchy, to the level of the animate. The light projected onto the screen operates somewhat like Frankenstein's bolts of lightning—it infuses life into the inanimate. The malevolent object is actually a stock character in movies—tidal waves, lava, fire, cars. Such objects appear to us as determined, volatile, cunning, ingenious, and relentless.