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viewing process, he also concedes that “it cannot be claimed that the willing
suspension of disbelief is some agreed-upon phenomenon or law.”
Admitting to the difficulty in quantifying the experience of viewing a film,
Ferri discusses several specific contemporary films in terms of their ability to
engage viewers and transport them cognitively into the film’s environment. He
additionally theorizes that “some films engage the viewer more effectively than
others,” and in fact some films appear to require a conscious willing suspension
of disbelief as they “jolt and rattle our beliefs and emotional sensibilities.” In
other words, some films utilize while others “violate the willing suspension of
disbelief.” Ferri also poses a provocative question as to whether or not
advancing technologies, such as digital media and virtual reality, will “detract or
enhance the willing suspension of disbelief’ as some theorized the word
processor would impact literature.
In conclusion, Anthony Ferri notes that this famous phrase, taken out of the
context of a reader’s preparation to read and applied to audience experience in
general, is indeed “the heart of the motion picture audience process” as it was an
“early attempt at cognitive audience analysis.” Ferri’s scholarly examination of
this concept provides an in-depth analysis of both a phrase and an experience
which have intrigued those interested in film, literature, and poetry alike for
many years. After reading this book, one can indeed appreciate a nineteenthcentury poet’s uncanny ability to put into words the phenomena nearly every
modem moviegoer has experienced.
Warren D. Cobb, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Moose Crossing:
Portland to Portland on the Theodore
Roosevelt International Highway
Max J. Skidmore
Hamilton Books, 2007
Max Skidmore, professor of political science and former dean at the
University of Missouri, Kansas City, has written a fascinating account of the
4,000-plus mile journey from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon on the
Theodore Roosevelt International Highway (TRIH). But this is much more than
a “road book.” The title stems from a road sign in New Hampshire along the
TRIH warning motorists to be aware of moose crossings on the highway. And it
reminds us of Roosevelt’s unsuccessful bid to reclaim the presidency in his
“Bull Moose campaign” under the banner of the Progressive Party in 1912.