The mind sees more than the movie frame

The mind sees more than the movie frameThe paper by McArthur and colleagues is interesting, provocative, and fun to read.The authors analyzed and coded the actions in the top 100 movies of 1994, ranked by money earned as a proxy for the number of people who saw the film.It is unclear, however, whether this study is science or literary criticism, but perhaps it doesn't matter.The authors use their statistical analysis to make several points, including that movies show a huge amount of violence.They suggest that film violence is unrealistic in that it does not show the physical consequences of the violent acts: the blood and gore of tissue destruction.I don't know why this point needs a statistical analysis, unless their aim is to use the statistics to advocate against violence in the movies.I also question their argument.Does the absence of blood and gore really make the violence less convincing?What if we applied this standard to Shakespeare, or to the old Bergman movie The Virgin Spring (Svensk Filmindustri).If my memory serves me well, there was only one violent act-the rape and murder-with little physical evidence.But that movie had a more powerful and lasting impression on me than all the silliness of the westerns or the Star Wars (Lucasfilm) movies.Brilliant writers and directors can elicit powerful emotional responses without resorting to anatomic realism.There is more to addressing this issue of the effects of film violence than simply advocating that movie directors show the consequences of violent acts.There is more to understanding human nature than counting the events.This paper misses something about the nature of human perception; the mind sees more than the movie frame....