I appreciate the testimony to the correctness of the view underlying the blog here - the idea that the moving image does move minds - but I'm not convinced by the examples. Course, maybe my problem is that I haven't seen Rent or Angels in America. Clearly Rent falls in the 'culture and commerce' box, so maybe I should find the DVD.To transform our relationship once again, this moment of environmental crisis must be undeniable to us. We need to feel it. As with the plight of Ethiopia during the 1984 famine and with AIDS in the early 90s, rational arguments must be supplemented with emotional ones. We saw images of African babies with distended bellies and listened to the musicians who formed Live Aid, and we were changed. We heard ardent testimony via Angels in America, Magic Johnson, and Rent, and we were changed. An accumulation of spectacle brought an emotional dimension to issues that, for many, were still very abstract. Our perspective changed because we finally took it personally.
The moving image has a remarkable capacity to imbue us with feeling, to embody an experience that allows us to live and breathe in another place and time. When it's done well, it is arguably the most powerful emotional tool in our cultural lexicon.
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It's perhaps ironic that our scientific and technological prowess, that which we have so often wielded to subdue nature, is what now allows us to see our planet in ways that celebrate—even enhance—its beauty and its worth. Seeing the natural world as a technicolor spectacle overwhelms us. There can be no indifference to life when life looks like this. Indeed, in our filmic age, a time of YouTube and 2.5 televisions per every American household, the potential for the moving image to change our perspective has never been so strong.
But rather than mere testimony confirming what I already believe, I want to find scientific studies on these issues. Hell, I'm sure I could dig up a hundred essays with a hundred amens.
What is the evidence?
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