The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact

Colin Mcginn puts the great majority of film theorists to shame with this book. For at least three decades serious film studies have been largely (not entirely) under the hegemonic thumb of poststructuralist, and especially psychoanalytic, theory. Here, we have an extremely thoughtful consideration of film in relation, not to an already-institutionalized theory, but to human beings as creatures with certain kinds of cognitive faculties. Film appeals, Mcginn argues, because of the ways our eyes attend to the world and to the eyes of other people, and because we dream when we sleep. And Mcginn's explanations always show a very clear concern for the non-academic reader. Unlike, in my opinion, most scholars of film, Mcginn understands his own key ideas so well that he can explain them in ways that any reasonably educated person can comprehend. This does not mean his ideas are simple, only that he has mastered their complexity. We may not agree with him, but we can be clear about what he is saying. This has not typically been the case with film studies. Really a good read.

If you enjoyed the musical, Sunset Boulevard by Andrew Lloyd Webber', and liked the song "New Ways to Dream", you will love this book. McGinn takes us on a journey of analytic philosophy as he tries to understand why movies have become cultural icons in our western world. He does this with the skill of a journalist without making this a tutorial on Descartes, Strawson, Barthes, Freud, Wittgenstein or the many other philosophers and psychologists whom he has extensive knowledge as a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, Florida. His favorite metaphor is that movies are like dreams. He describes movies as synthetic reality, wish fulfillment and propaganda sharing the attribute of being able to seduce our minds. Although he includes recorded music, theater, art and literature as tools to understand the ambiguous relation between mind and the external world, he ranks movies as the most important. This book of 210 pages is the result of a great modern thinker sharing his thoughts about modern media and the movies. This book will be a favorite for film students and film buffs alike.

I'll get straight to the point: this book changed the way I look at movies. And what's more important, it changed the way I look at the mind. I've read a number of books on philosophy of mind, and they are pretty much dry, abstract, and repetitious; but this book is great because it examines how the mind works, but in an oblique way--by looking at an externalized analogy of mental processes. This book is highly recommended because it deals with important and complex topics in a way that is simple and very enoyable. A very rare combination. What more could you ask for?

What a marvelous guy is Colin McGinn. He recently appeared with Bill Moyers on the 'Faith & Reason' series and is ever more apparently the closest thing we have in our culture to a modern-day rennaisance man. In 'The Power of Movies' we come to understand how it is that movies are capable of affecting us and what is unique about the movie-viewing experience - as opposed to perceiving other forms of art such as painting, live theater, etc. Personally, I am a huge fan of the way Colin McGinn thinks, what he thinks about, and the lucid, cogent way his thoughts are regurgitated which makes for easy ingestion and assimilation.

Fans of movies and movie history will appreciate this college-level discussion by a philosophy professor who takes a different look at the entertainment industry and its appeal. His analysis considers how movies affect the mind, fire the imagination, and cause viewers to relate to events on screen. Considerations of how screen images pair with emotional reactions and how dreams and narrative work together to create atmosphere create an intriguing blend of philosophical and psychological reflection.