Film as a Subversive Art

Reading the sections from Film as a Subversive Art, I was struck most by a paragraph in the book's introduction in which the author states, "[it is a] strange tribute to the faculties of a brain more affected by two-dimensional reflections on a flat canvas than by live actors performing in three-dimensional space."

In my own life I have certainly experienced the seductive power of screens.  Sitting with friends, it is far too easy to zone out of a conversation and focus instead on the muted television show playing in the back corner.  Show, or sports game, or even a commercial.  In truth, I actually watch very little television;  I don't remember a time when I have been more interested in a tv than in the person sitting across from me.  And yet, again and again my eyes are drawn the the glowing screen with moving colors.  I don't know what it is about screens that sucks me in, but it saddens me that an inanimate object can hold a viewer's attention so fixedly, when a fellow human being cannot.

I believe it is this magnetism of the screen that enables viewers to become so transfixed by films in a way that is not possible (or at least not common) in a situation with live actors.  The lure of that brilliant rectangle has an ability to attract my eye like no other.  However, saying all this I still love plays.  I have thoroughly enjoyed school productions, broadway musicals, and off-broadway Shakespeare.  In restaurants I purposefully sit with my back to the television, so that I will not be distracted from the conversations at hand.  It's not that I find activities on screen to be more interesting than the actions of real people, it's simple that I cannot resist at least a glance at that luminous machine.