There was an experiment some time ago I saw on television where an hired person walks around in New York City and presents strangers with a two-sided poster. On one side would be the winner of some democratically elected leader in a foreign country, and on the other side would be his less victorious political opponent. The hired man would then ask the stranger candidly who he/she would vote for, based solely on the candidate's appearance and without any knowledge of actual political outcome. As I remember it an approximate 60% of the strangers chose the triumphant politician. In other words, the majority of successful campaigns lie with the candidate with superior visual appeal... each one simply "looked like a leader".


When an individual sees two images simultaneously, whether it's in photograph experiments such as Eisenstein's and the aforementioned candid survey or on the screen such as in Ballet Mécanique, a mysterious and powerful intellectual connection is made in his/her mind between the two impressions. Sometimes the effect is jarring, sometimes the transition is barely noticeable, but the human photographic mind almost always registers a juxtaposition of both images and meanings.


I enjoyed Nichols' essay on The Battleship Potemkin, which helped me understand the basic plot of the movie, but my favorite part was when Nichols a quote from Victor Shklovsky where the writer states "the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known". As grandiose as this statement seems I interpreted it's contextual meaning as a pretty straightforward concept: art is not designed to be realistic. Specifically, the Ballet Mécanique doesn't actually describe any real machine but it does describe the impression one has of machinery and allows the viewer to draw connections and assume metaphorical meanings. I guess what I'm trying to say (in a lot of words) is that iconic memories can be triggered both in powerful symbols and recognizable movements: in Metropolis, the unrealistic generic buildings remind us forcefully of our own cubically-designed cities; the cogs in Ballet Mécanique bring us back to our vague nightmarish visions of machinery run amok; in looking at two political candidates, we judge the more trustworthy based on general impressions of "decent personality".