In Response: Blaine's McLuhan Post

        As a huge film nerd myself I can see where Blaine is coming from. However, the idea that there are different types of participation in medias is a huge deal. Blaine talks about how McLuhan does not address how film does not engage the audience often times. I think this is a falsity. The idea of the cinema is to engage an audience member directly whether or not they think they are processing things like themes or cinematography, they are. Ever notice how a movie theater is set up? A dark room with a giant lit screen in the front. The whole idea is to isolate you and fully engage you in the media. The idea about Hollywood having formulaic genres is interesting. What movies grab you? The ones that stick to the formulas? Or the ones that take those formulas and twist them around and complicate them? Here we are back at social values tied to media again. If you think about how movies are produced and released then it's easy to see how genre in the film industry and media industry in general have come in to play. They are all underpinned by economic, political, and social values. There are some filmmakers who defy these and make low budget films to their own liking regardless of what an overarching "studio" would have them do. On top of all of this we have the MPAA regulate what movies are. I think that just because a genre is formulaic to some extent that moviegoers don't necessarily turn off their brains. Instead, the genre is just so familiar that they don't know that they are processing it in a critical lens.