Blind Lust

‘A WARNING to you there with the hairy palms and the squint: “LOOKINGATPAGE3GIRLSMAKESYOUGOBLIND – OFFICIAL.”

That’s a clear enough message. If the words ran into each other, chances are the Sun’s advice has come too late for you. But others can still be saved.

And to you we speak of Professor David Zald, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University, who has identified a condition he calls “emotion-induced blindness”.

Professor Zane’s study involved showing students at America’s Yale University three types of images – violent, ordinary and sexy.

After each, the students were shown another picture and then asked what they’d seen.

After seeing an ordinary picture they could easily say what the second picture was. But after being presented with a violent or sexy image the students had no recollection of the second image.

Professor Zane believes this is a kind of blindness caused by information being caught in a “bottleneck”.

In short, that image of a topless Kate Moss on the Sun’s Page 3 is all you can cope with. That picture of Kate on a Caribbean beach puffing on a ciggie makes it almost impossible for you to recall the shot that immediately follows it. (If memory serves, it’s a picture of Prince Philip and Coleen McLoughlin sharing a takeaway pizza on a beach in Oldham.)

It might also mean that most of the Star, with its phalanx of bared breasts and thrusting strumpets, passes you by in blur.

And that the Mail’s Page 3 shot of Dame Helen Mirren displaying ample cleavage as she arrives at the International Emmy Awards in New York (“The bodice belle”) makes Mail readers blind to the paper’s ensuing story about how bird flu will do for us all, and the accompanying shot of Peter Stringfellow on a date with Cherie Blair…’

Posted: 23rd, November 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink