consider the following two observations:
(1) Hitchcock was a classical technician in controlling his visuals,
and his use of screen space underlined the tension in ways the
audience is not always aware of. He always used the convention that
the left side of the screen is for evil and/or weaker characters,
while the right is for characters who are either good, or temporarily
dominant.
(2) JB: Who raised you?
RUSHKOFF: I suppose it was June Lockhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and
Lucille Ball who raised me. I took class in Room 222 and Dr. Smith was
my pediatrician! Honestly, I don't believe I was being raised or
informed by these programs quite as they were intended. I wasn't
watching television shows as much as watching The Television. From 4
or 5 years old I remember looking at the sets of sitcoms and wondering
why almost all of them had the door into the house on the right side
of the set ? All in the Family, I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, everyone
came in from the right, even the Mary Tyler Moore show. What did this
mean, especially when in the 1970s, it seemed that sitcoms about
broken homes had the door on the left. Maude, One Day at a Time
shows about divorce, really, had their doors on the left. Even in the
last season of Mary Tyler Moore, as she grew into a more desperate
single woman, she moved to an apartment where the door was on the left
instead of the right.
given the previous observations, is there any experimental data to
suggest that the neural pathways of humans, birds or other animals are
wired to fear things entering their field of vision from the left? |
