Tom Gunning and the Cinema of Attractions

I wonder if Tom Gunning is actually writing about cinema, and its effects on the viewer, rather than how critics and history have treated audiences. He spends a good portion of the introduction discussing the audience, and how critics, and thus historians, have portrayed their reactions to film. We don't have interviews with audience members to record their reaction, only those who were paid to write about it.

I think this essay is more about how present people have a tendency to look back on past people, and  think that they were somehow less intelligent, less aware, and that's insulting to our ancestors. Sure, the essay is built up around that one specific moment with the film of the moving train, but that is merely one instance of a fairly common misconception.

Audiences today are just as credulous as those in the past, humanity has not changed much, just because we've seen more films does not mean we cannot be astonished by the same cinema of attractions as our predecessors.