Review of The Power of Movies: How the Screen and the Mind Interact by Colin McGinn

One of the miracles and mysteries of the mind is how it uses figurative imagery to describe itself. Plato, for instance, imagined the mind/soul as great chariot with a driver (reason) and a pair of winged steeds (the instincts). Two millennium later John Locke likened the mind to a "blank slate". And in the modern era followers of Rene Descartes conceptualized the mind as a "Cartesian theatre." The American philosopher Colin McGinn, his latest book The Power of Movies: How the Screen and Mind Interact, continues in this venerable tradition by drawing analogies between the mind and movies.

Metaphors, as one observer put it, are "lies that tell the truth." The mind is not a chariot with winged steeds, a blank, slate, or a Cartesian theatre. Nevertheless, each one of metaphors has organized our thinking on the subject, even if ultimately proving inadequate. McGinn believes, however, that certain characteristics of the cinematic experience make movies a uniquely interesting vehicle for exploring and understanding the human mind.

McGinn uses the phenomena of dreams to bridge the gap between mind and movies. This is an intriguing approach. After all, the first film projectors were known as "dream machines". Further, several ontological features of movies (characters who embody an essence without being embodied themselves, spatial and temporal discontinuity between scenes, and heightened emotional affect) bear a close relationship to the phenomena of dreams. For McGinn, movies come as close as one can get to experiencing a dream while awake.