Yes, I think so. There's an unobtainable book by Friedrich Wilhelmsen which argues that the reason film is so influential is that it mimics the process of perception.

Yeah, printing press is probably an excellent comparison.

Interesting that you mention Wilhelmsen, Grumpy, since we've just been talking about Christoper Derrick. I read something by him around the same time as I was reading Derrick. I don't think it was an entire book, maybe just some pieces in periodicals. But I recall being impressed. I'd be interested in reading that book. I've read one or two books about the influence of the media, but I think they focused more on the effect of television and such as an environment, not so much on the inherent qualities of the technology.

True, they did do something quite similar, using only words. I think movies have proven more universally potent, though. And with tv (counting it as moving pictures, of course) much more pervasive. Though that's not really intrinsic to the technology.

No, it's quite clear. Those are the kind of thoughts that have been floating around sort of half-formed in my mind. I don't really have any doubt that it's more potent. More potent now than it was 50 or 75 years ago, too. I'm wondering more about how significant the effects have been.

Unfortunately, I saw most of the characters in a trailer before I knew what I was looking at.

AMDG

Post-1517 cultural developments. Let's see. Northern Renaissance portraiture. Congregational hymn-singing. Secular drama. The essay. The atlas. Baroque painting (Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio). Tourism. Opera. Journalism. Encyclopedias. Novels (as Marianne so astutely pointed out). Neo-Classical architecture. Musical theatre. Romantic poetry. Neo-Gothic architecture. Photography. Building with steel and glass. Mass peaceful protest (with marches, banners, songs). Universal schooling. I'm probably missing something. I don't know if I'd put all of them above film, but surely some of them. And if anything, I think I'd rate moving pictures higher than talking pictures.

And perhaps congregational hymn-singing counts as a consequence of the Reformation. The rest stand.

Well, I wasn't seeing the LOTR movie at that time. I was at the theatre to see something else, and it was a preview.

But yes, I agree you were very wise.

AMDG

I don't think I'd put more than a few of those developments up there with motion pictures, Paul. And by the way I'm including talking pictures in that term. Those are all important but few of them strike me as having the simultaneously deep and wide impact of movies and tv.

But it's not just the cultural influence as such that I'm wondering about, it's whether m/tv have--I hate to use this kind of terminology, but it seems appropriate--changed our consciousness in some more fundamental way, our perception of the world and ourselves. The printing press and widespread literacy--not Luther's revolution itself--and, following from that, things like the novel and journalism are the only things that strike me as being in the same class.

I think it can all be subsumed under the general turn toward the consciousness of the individual (both looking in and looking out) over the past 500 years.

And, of course, the pinnacle of the process is...the selfie!

What comes to mind for me as an exploration of this phenomenon is the movie Being There and the movie The Truman Show. And Forrest Gump, I guess.

I do remember someone saying that good pro-life films combined with the newest technology in ultrasounds would be the main mechanism in turning the culture against abortion. That seems quite plausible and seems to support the view of Cukor.

Thanks for that list, Paul.

But then there's the flash mob phenomenon. Doesn't that signal something communal happening?

I haven't read much McLuhan, and that long ago, so I'm not sure.

The modern consciousness of the individual I'm trying to describe is not the same thing as self-absorption or self-interest. They're often related, but what I mean is a general cultural interest in and emphasis on the individual, his experiences and well-being. It has its roots in Christianity, or at least Christianity helped to bring it out. The individual *matters* to us, collectively, in a way that I don't think it did to ancient civilizations.

At any rate neither of those ideas or tendencies is exactly what what I'm trying to connect with moving pictures. I'm having trouble articulating it, obviously.

Big as those are, I don't think any of them is as huge and fundamental as the invention of the printing press and the advancement of literacy, which I'm more and more inclined to think is what movies and tv may be comparable to.

Never mind Luther and his theses (which I think were never actually nailed to a door anyway) etc.--the Protestant Reformation was really only one item, albeit a big one, in a cultural movement that took place over centuries. Although its cultural and political significance was enormous, it was more an effect than a cause of a shift in consciousness.

But to put the minimally-revolutionary case, moving pictures for the most part perpetuate the aesthetic and moral sensibility of Victorian melodrama by a different technical means (while documentaries are basically public lectures with moving lantern-slides). They too can be fitted into a narrative of longer-term cultural change and continuity.

Yes, what Mac said. The content of films and TV is as you say a re-run of Victorian melodrama. But the medium is somehow more 'interior' to the mind than Victorian novels. Wilhelmsen says this is because the technique of film making reproducing the human process of thought. That makes watching a film peculiarly absorbing. It makes the illusion of reality much stronger. If as Augustine said God is more interior to me than I am to myself, than a movie can appear to me *as* interior to me as I am to myself.

One upshot is that skills which were perhaps over valued in the past, such as the capacity to read 900 page Victorian novels, are now undervalued. Because all most people under 40 are up for is 'watching' a graphic novel.

Well, I could be mistaken, but I do think that the sheer 'interactivity' of the internet makes it less purely solipsistic than some people think. Here is an example. With the old media, if you wrote an opinion in a book or journal or newspaper, it takes time and effort for someone with a contrasting view to express it. Whereas now of course that contrasting opinion can be expressed immediately and with ease. We all know the problems that generates - trolls! But I also think that these new fora where an author's book is reviewed and the author responds and then the reviewer comes back are bringing a certain parity and accountability into book reviewing which was impossible with the earlier technologies. In the Middle Ages (I have read) there were flighting competitions. I think the way in which the internet re-invents that possibility is a good thing (bearing in mind that even good things can harbour evils or privations).

Think about a city in the late 1970s 1980s. If you looked into an apartment block, most people were sitting in their apartments watching TV. Perhaps alone, perhaps with a spouse. Now today that person might be chatting on facebook or yakking away on a blog like this one or joining in other interactive social media thingies. (Yes of course that person could be looking at internet porn - I'm not saying it's all good). And then you can say that 90% of that 'chatting' is just posting things about themselves (status updates) to which no one replies. Sure, but at least they announced their condition ("I am eating dinner") in some public way rather than staring at a TV.

There are fewer and fewer public spaces. It's a huge problem in both the Universities I've been at. At Aberdeen and now in the Mid West, people have campaigned for years without success to get a common room. The administration will not give us the space. It seems to me that at its best social media function as a surrogate common room.

Yes it could be better if we had a real one, but we don't, and the current situation seems better than not having a real common room and sitting in one's office watching TV.

Picking up on what Grumpy said about the "interactivity" of the Internet, there's this:

"Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has declared 2015 the Year of Books, committing to read a book every fortnight while discussing it on Facebook. The ultimate digital champion is now championing the world's most traditional form of expression and creativity, telling us that reading books and our social media culture can go hand in hand."

And then there are the "BookTubers" -- "most often teenagers, [who] document their reading experiences via webcam, recommending reads and setting themselves impressively large reading goals for their viewers to follow."

"the world's most traditional form of expression and creativity" – surely that would be song and/or dance?

Could be worse. The Pinker book has gotten a lot of attention and seems worth reading. The gang leader book looks interesting. The others, not so much, to me. The first one actually looks sorta dumb.

That is pretty funny, Paul. Or drawing pictures?