arriving on the train

The movie "Hugo" stages a showing of "The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station," the Lumière Brothers film that caused a visceral reaction in 1896.    I think "Hugo" gets the audience reaction right.

It's always said that people cowered and screamed and ran away — but it's not quite that "innocent."

These were sophisticated Parisians in one of the great world capitals at one of the pinnacle moments of civilization.

"Hugo" shows them indeed cowering and screaming and running, but laughing as they do so.    Perfect!!    A distillation of what Edmund Burke was talking about in his "Enquiry" of 1757.    They know they're safe, so they're free to experience the thrill of seeing a train seemingly headed through the wall.

It's a reminder that, though all sorts of oddities had been imagined and told or written, the visual cortex is a very different thing.

Part of what was morally problematic about movies in the early years hinged precisely on this.    Most people in, say, Fredericksburg had never — *never* — seen the visual living impression of a gorgeous person, far more beautiful than anyone they'd ever seen, looking straight at *you*, with the kind of direct eye contact that you'd only had with a few people in your life, and smiling invitingly.

The early movies are full of closeups that, to the modern eye, go on forrrrreeeevvvvveerrrrr, with a handsome man or beautiful woman looking right into the camera and mugging for what seem like minutes on end.    (Really seconds.) The reason, of course, is that people at that time just couldn't get enough of that strange sensation.    It was like eating a mouthful of pure refined sugar in 1501.

It's always a challenge to remember what's new about our world.