Why Watching Films Is Good For You - Andrew McCallum, December 2015

This article discusses many of the presumptions people have over novels and films and their perceived positive and negative impacts respectively. I chose this article to research as I feel that the content is interesting and challenges the mainstream views of society. For example, by including research from a Cambridge University study, which claimed that an 'extra hour a day of television, internet or computer game time in Year 10 resulted in poorer grades at GCSE' to begin his article, Andrew McCallum makes it clear that this article will be opposed to these claims and the stigma attached to mediums such as films or video games.

Primarily, the article's main argument is that films and video games are 'actively engaging in learning' and offer 'multiple opportunities to enhance critical, cultural and creative abilities' (Film: 21st Century Literacy). To substantiate his argument, Andrew McCallum quotes leading neuro-scientist Antonio Damasio when he states that we do not actually think solely in words but 'multiple sensations much as a film plays through multiple images'. This makes 'movies the closest external representation of the prevailing storytelling that goes on in our minds'.

*Please watch 3:50 - 4:05, 7:52 - 9:05 and 14:08 - 14:56 

As well as this, Andrew (co-director of the English and Media Centre) uses his own experiences of spending more and more time watching a variety of films that span a plethora of genres and searching out films that contrast to him geographically and chronologically. After doing this, he says that it had an 'amazing effect' and that he could feel 'long-ignored synapses sparking back to life'. Non-mainstream films can be especially 'challenging' as they require a 'reorientation of...receptive processes'.

I agree with the above quotations and the general message of the article because I find that, in my mind, I do not think in black and white words yet with a multitude of senses and I too experience a similar sensation after watching films as to what the author states.
The article, overall, was a very interesting read and challenged my preconceptions of the world of literature, films and video games resulting in a change in my beliefs that films and other forms of media can do for the mind all of the great things that books can.