Films are seen in large, silent, darkened theaters, where intense light beams are projected from behind toward luminous surfaces i...n front. There is an enforced and anonymous collectivity of the audience because, for any screening, all viewers are physically present at the same time in the relatively enclosed space of the theater. In contrast to this cocoon-like, enveloping situation is the fragmentary, dispersed, and varied nature of television reception. The darkness is dissolved, the anonymity removed.... While the aura of cinema spectatorship produces hypnotic fascination, the atmosphere of television enables just the opposite--because the lights are more likely to be on, one can get up and return, do several things at once, watch casually, talk to other people, or even decide to turn the television off.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ours...elves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In fear, one flees. One can pretend to fear, accordingly, by pretending to flee, a vigorous activity in which there may be little ...visible difference between pretense and reality. In horror, on the other hand, there is passivity, the passivity of presence. One stands (or sits) aghast, frozen in place, "glued to one's seat." ... Horror involves a helplessness which fear evades. The evasive activities of fear may be pointless, even self-defeating, but they are activities nonetheless, activities that can be feigned. Horror is a spectator's emotion, and thus it is especially well-suited for the cinema and the visual arts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can remember the day when all that a professor was supposed to do was to mark "C minus" on students' examination papers, then go... home to tea. Nowadays they seem to feel that they must know just how much we (outside the university) eat, what we do with our spare time, and how we like our eggs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Robert: It's been quite an adventure, our life together. Jane: A great adventure, Robert. Anxious sometimes and sad. Sometime...s unbelievably happy. And thank God, never dull or sordid.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, Sliding by semi-tones till I sink to a minor,--yes,... And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, Surveying a while the heights I rolled from into the deep; Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found, The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his litle dame,... Over the mountainside or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »