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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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07096_Field_TCUM T661.txt
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1996-04-10
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however, like the print and the photo, movies assume a high
level of literacy in their users and prove baffling to the
nonliterate. Our literate acceptance of the mere movement of
the camera eye as it follows or drops a figure from view is not
acceptable to an African film audience. If somebody disappears
off the side of the film, the African wants to know what
happened to him. A literate audience, however, accustomed to
following printed imagery line by line without questioning the
logic of lineality, will accept film sequence without protest.
It was René Clair who pointed out that if two or three
people were together on a stage, the dramatist must
ceaselessly motivate or explain their being there at all. But the
film audience, like the book reader, accepts mere sequence as
rational. Whatever the camera turns to, the audience accepts.
We are transported to another world. As René Clair observed,