The influence of the movie on the society - Essay Example

In a thoughtful, proofread essay, discuss your own response to the movie, and whether and why Sontag and Norma are right or wrong about the movies' capacity to "kidnap" people and the importance of seeing movies "in the dark". Remember that Sontag believes movies lost their "art" in her time, and Norma believed movies lost their "art" once sound came in - in the late 1920s. Are they right? By means of looking into one’s own experience of being transported by the motion picture and allowing it to gain momentary control of human reflexes within the span of film’s length, the moviegoer manages to prove the truth behind Susan Sontag’s conviction through a varying insight to the encounter with the story and the audio-visual effects projected across the big screen.

Typically, since movies are created to depict a dynamic narrative of life under a rare perspective with striking parallels to the circumstances of reality, the watcher becomes gradually kidnapped by such an essence that occurs to fulfill the movie’s objective of getting the viewer seek profound relevance. As the movie serves a vehicle that takes one to reflect with vivid imagination and pertinent emotion at depth, the act of kidnapping, as Sontag puts it to be the principal role assumed by the film, is sustained.

On the other hand, Norma’s observation that movies lost art during the arrival of the talkies in the late 1920s tends to signify reference to the aesthetic value of a motion picture. At a time, people sought inspiration from the fast-paced scenes with basic tale-like themes and muted dialogues that captivated illusions so that movie, as an art piece, seemed at that period governed by an ideal rather than real or factual principle of transporting the audience in a journey of pure heroic sentiments.

Losing art though does not appear to wholly pertain to depriving the film of the essence of beauty found in its fictitious elements of presentation during transition to a decade in which the incorporation of sound would add prominence to the acts in virtual display. Both Desmond and Sontag necessitated making such judgment to indicate a change toward revolution and the loss of traditional craft is just a single aspect that needed occurrence to permit innovation or a new concept and approach that would demand deeper levels of appreciation.

Once the viewers learn to assess beyond the aesthetic worth of the movie as in relation to the real encounters in people’s lives, only then can they be kidnapped by the realms of the cinema. As Gloria Swanson in ‘Sunset Boulevard’, Norma plays the character of a retired silent-film actress who discovers that making films is truly her lifeblood so she earnestly finds a way back to limelight. Even though Gloria is not a part of the viewing population, as an actress, she is able to identify the significance of the theatre or a proper setting with a wide screen ‘in the dark’ where she herself is moved to exemplify Sontag’s belief on how the movie conveys its kidnapping potential.

Sunset Boulevard suggests that the artist herself surrenders into the experience of fiction so that the possible shift in dimension to mindscape as an actor instead of as a watcher provides sufficient truthful basis for the advocacies presented by Susan and Norma.