On 1 Nov 2011 at 3:56, Allen Esterson wrote: > An interview with Prof W Joseph Campbell on the BBC Radio 4 Today > programme this morning led me to this: > > The Halloween myth of the War of the Worlds panic > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15470903 >
Well, I love mythbusting as much as the next person, but perhaps there's a little wiggle room here concerning the claimed absence of panic. It may not have been pee-in-your-pants panic, but the article itself cites one authority that many were rather unhappy that night. "Hadley Cantril, a Princeton University psychologist, estimated that six million people listened to The War of the Worlds dramatisation. Of that number, perhaps 1.2 million listeners were "frightened" or "disturbed" by what they heard, Mr Cantril figured." That's not too shabby for a radio broadcast. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_%28radio%29 ) has a nice piece on the issue, and notes that "the precise extent of listener response has been debated". The article discusses the debate under "extent". An interesting question is to ask how the claim of panic or not-panic could be evaluated today if contemporary newspaper accounts are discounted as unreliable. Back a number of years ago, there was a BBC TV production of John Christopher's science fiction novels "The Tripods". I loved the series. I've just discovered that the inspiration for the alien machines was H. G. Wells' _War of the Worlds_. Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=13818 or send a blank email to leave-13818-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
