This brings us to the basic contradiction in the very idea of moving image literacy: most of the more radical expansions of the language of popular filmmaking – and our comprehension of them – are the result of the medium’s ongoing evolution toward a state of pure kinesthetic stimulation. The more we learn to orient ourselves to or “read” moving images, the less “readable,” in the literary sense, those images are: we may now be capable of understanding images at a faster rate than any previous generation, we may be surrounded by more images than any previous generation, and our visual vocabulary may be more extensive, but what kind of knowledge does that represent? A question presents itself: Is it literacy if it’s felt but not interpreted?

The evolution of motion picture technology, an evolution that must be understood to include television and all forms of computer imaging as well as movies, is a commercial evolution: the mainstream of all these media exist to sell either themselves or other products, and their increasing technical sophistication – which is to say their expressive vocabulary – is the result of this commercial impulse.

The slicker – more real, sensational, viscerally stimulating and satisfying – they are, the more efficiently they perform as consumable goods. Consumption is fundamentally irrational – it must convince us to want what we do not need – and the activation of irrational impulses is achieved through the stimulation of emotional states like fear and desire. If a basic principle of print literacy is based in the isolation of words and language for purposes of understanding and interpretation – the breaking down of the systems for purposes of re-building them – the basic principle of contemporary image culture is unceasing and constant flow: the pictures must never stop, and the act of interpretation must always represent a struggle, an effort, against this tendency. By its nature, interpreting moving images goes against this flow. Reading images is work, while experiencing them is easy.

Here’s a test: smoke a joint. Read a book for half an hour. Then watch TV. Then try, just try, to turn it off after half an hour. Then ask yourself which was more fun – which felt more natural and effortless under the circumstances of herbal intoxication. Next morning, try to remember anything you watched.