Article on the relationship between magic and movies

Hugo and the magic of film trickery
J Hoberman
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/24/hugo-martin-scorsese-oscars-georges-melies

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With Georges Méliès as its subject, Martin Scorsese's Hugo – up for 11 Oscars – is a film that gives meaning to the cliché 'the magic of the movies'

Should you stay up for the Oscars, here's a surefire way to be hammered by the end: pour yourself a drink each time you hear the word "magic", and you'll be watching the winner's tearful acceptance speech in an alcoholic haze.
Is there a phrase more hackneyed than "the magic of the movies"? From the moment of their invention at the end of the 19th century, motion pictures have been perceived as simultaneously hyper natural and supernatural.
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Jane Austen Facebook game to launch in March

Kes: While not an Austenphile myself, I foresee many of my Fb and LJ friends suddenly becoming very very obsessed. Also, this would make a fantastic media studies paper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/24/jane-austen-facebook-game

Fear Heightens Appreciation of Abstract Art

By Tom Jacobs
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture/fear-heightens-appreciation-of-abstract-art-39728/

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A newly published study
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2012-03016-001/
finds people are more likely to be moved and intrigued by abstract paintings if they have just experienced a good scare. This suggests the allure of art may be “a byproduct of one’s tendency to be alarmed by such environmental features as novelty, ambiguity, and the fantastic,” argues lead author Kendall Eskine, a research psychologist at Loyola University New Orleans.

....Their study was inspired by 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke,
who argued there is a strong link between fear and our experience of the sublime. To test this thesis, the researchers conducted an experiment featuring 85 Brooklyn College students.

....“Fear was the only factor found to significantly increase sublime feelings,” the researchers report. Having just been jolted by that frightening film clip
“resulted in significantly higher sublime scores than all other conditions, which did not differ significantly from each other.”

This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, according to Eskine and his colleagues, Natalie Kacinik and Jesse Prinz.

“At its core, fear is an emotional mechanism that increases survival chances by motivating fight, flight, or freezing responses to threatening situations,” they write. “Fear seizes one’s attention, halts current plans, and increases vigilance.”

As they point out, this dynamic is echoed in Burke’s description of the
experience of the sublime,
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/burke/edmund/sublime/
which the philosopher called “that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended.”
“The capacity of a work of art to grab our interest and attention, to remove us from daily life, may stem from its ability to trigger our evolved mechanisms
for coping with danger,” the researchers conclude.
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