4

Using Movies to Release

Negative Beliefs

Have you ever found yourself watching a movie that seemed as
if it were a scene from your own life? Or have you become so
deeply involved with a film that after the end credits rolled and
the lights came up you had to struggle to make the mental tran-
sition back to everyday reality? We have become so accus-
tomed to watching movies that it is easy to take for granted the
amazing power films can exert over us. It is also easy to forget
that it is wewho actively endow them with that power.
Movies are illusions, light projected on a white screen. We
all know that, and yet sometimes we react to them almost as if
they were real. When the hero dies, we cry; when the bully is
made to look the fool, we laugh; when the villain approaches
with his knife, we cringe. Our heartbeat races, we sweat, we
squirm. These are very real reactions to an obviously unreal
experience. How is it that we can simultaneously know we are
sitting in a dark theater experiencing a manufactured illusion