The art of sound pictures (1930)

FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS 167 proved greater than hers. When this happens, she feels an elementary passion of self-surrender, and the man experiences a moment of captivation mixed with triumphant dominance. Every woman knows that this moment is very brief. Man is not made to feel prolonged captivation, just as woman cannot experience passion for a man for any great length of time. Therefore, the only way these emotions may be prolonged is for the woman to keep from being caught. Thus, she remains the man’s superior in their mutual love game, and both are excited and happy. Modern wives are beginning to discover that this process of keeping just out of reach is persistently useful throughout married life. Other forms of captivation, between members of opposite sexes, may be shown on the screen in social situations, in which the woman refuses favors to her lover, despite his passionate pleas to become the accepted favorite of the woman he loves. In this situation, the woman again expresses her love superiority. There is a still simpler type of physical struggle between members of the same or opposite sexes. This is a form of physical captivation observable in every-day life. A man tries to pull a girl into the water as they romp about on the beach. This form of captivation struggle is disguised under the mask of playfulness or mischief, which is another form of dominance. The writer must constantly remember that while dominance expressed by one person to another is socially acceptable as a form of human behavior, the natural erotic captivation struggle between men and women is socially taboo by the decree of modern civilization. Any use of captivation contest in stories or on the screen, therefore.