Shock and Awe

You know those commercials for Universal Studios, with the family in the 3D movie theater? Some massive creature reaches out at them and their ridiculous 3D glasses, causing an all too exaggerated reaction. Everyone recoils back into their seats, popcorn and drinks going flying into the air. What, were they not expecting this? Do they really think King Kong is going to pluck them from out of the screen? Of course they don’t. They paid to see a movie in three dimensions. They put on the glasses. They knew exactly what they were signing up for.

This commercial was the first thing that came to mind while reading Gunning’s article on early film spectators. He explains how the myth of the “incredulous audience” present at the earliest projections is incomplete and misguided. He does not question that there were people screaming or in shock at the sight of a train barreling down the tracks at them, but he dispels the notion that they were truly overwhelmed by the realism of the image, and really feared for their safety and well-being. Gunning proposes that the truth is quite the opposite. The appeal of such illusions was that even though they could appear quite real, they were always discernibly illusionary.

People were not tricked into thinking that the illusion was genuine, and that wasn’t the point anyways. People were mystified, enchanted, shocked by the ability for something so obviously not real to convince their eyes that it was. Gunning uses the phrase “I know, but yet I see” to convey this optical phenomenon. Spectators know that they are merely looking at an image, but cannot squash the perplexing, thrilling feeling that they are seeing something that is not what it seems. It is the knowledge that this thing is, in fact, not legitimate that makes the feeling more potent.

This is why we ride roller coasters at amusement parks. This is why we jump out of airplanes with nothing but a backpack full of nylon and strings. This is why the nice family in the commercial goes to the 3D movie. We have a deep-seeded desire to feel such thrills, but we fear the repercussions. So we remove danger from the equation. The problem is that it is difficult to get a powerful feeling of thrill without that imminent danger, we know in the back of our heads that this roller coaster/sky dive/3D movie is not what our body thinks it is. The most successful illusion is the one that blends these lines in a way we haven’t seen before. So for the audience at the first projection, certainly they were thrilled. But not because of all-encompassing fear, because at some point, maybe just for a split second in their mind, the line between real and fake became just a little blurry.