A propos de embarras de richesse
Via http://slashdot.org , from WSJ Online
1. How very peculiar that both "My Cousin Vinny" and "Groundhog Day", of all choices of "low-brow" movies were mentioned: I wouldn't call "low-brow" at least one of them (and Marisa Tomei did not get her Oscar just for kicks - flash mobs were not invented yet then:) ).
2. The fact that "Schindler's List" is so long that it is shipped on two DVDs accounts for nothing? Sorry, George Loewenstein, you're a victim of Peter's principle.
"Researchers found", my foot.
Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched.
"It's a paradox of abundance," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. "When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice," he added.
...
High-brow vs. Low-brow
High-brow, dense or dark movies, like "The Passion of the Christ," prove particularly tough for some Netflix members to watch.
Researchers have documented this behavior among movie-watchers. In a 1999 experiment, a group of volunteers were asked to choose movies to rent from a list of 24 videos. Their options were a mix of what researchers termed "low-brow" movies -- including "My Cousin Vinny" and "Groundhog Day" -- and "high-brow" offerings, such as "Schindler's List" or the subtitled "Like Water for Chocolate." The researchers found that when people chose movies to watch the same day, they often picked comedies or action films. But when they were asked to pick movies to watch at a later date, they were more likely to make "high-brow" selections.
For example, the subjects were much more likely to select Steven Spielberg's Holocaust survival drama "Schindler's List" to watch in the future, rather than on the same night. "It's a movie that's really miserable to watch but you feel like you should watch it," said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the study's authors.
1. How very peculiar that both "My Cousin Vinny" and "Groundhog Day", of all choices of "low-brow" movies were mentioned: I wouldn't call "low-brow" at least one of them (and Marisa Tomei did not get her Oscar just for kicks - flash mobs were not invented yet then:) ).
2. The fact that "Schindler's List" is so long that it is shipped on two DVDs accounts for nothing? Sorry, George Loewenstein, you're a victim of Peter's principle.
"Researchers found", my foot.