Volume 57, Number 29    April 12, 2010          

Talking cinema
In an April 6 CNN story, Associate Professor of Cinema Joseph McBride discussed the success of director Tyler Perry. Perry has become a marketable brand outside the normal Hollywood industry, with successful movies television shows and other ventures. McBride said that studios begin to take notice when independent filmmakers do well. "What could happen -- because that's what happens with independent films -- that studios co-opt them," McBride said. "The low budget monster movies that an independent producer in the '70s was doing became 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters of The Third Kind.'"

Registering emotion
An April 5 New York Times article featured the work of Professor of Psychology David Matsumoto and alum Kathleen Bogart on Moebius syndrome, a rare congenital condition that causes facial paralysis. Bogart has Moebius, and realized that the condition kept her from making emotional connections with people when she worked as a social worker. Research by Matsumoto and Bogart found that people with Moebius are just as proficient at recognizing others emotional facial expressions, suggesting that other forces in the brain help recognize facial expressions. Their findings challenge the idea that mimicking others' facial expressions is essential to being able to recognize other people's emotions."Just like for blind people, whose senses of touch, smell, hearing become sharper," Matsumoto said. "Same thing here, I think, only it’s in the domain of nonverbal communication."

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Last modified April 8, 2010 by University Communications.