The power of well-disguised familiarity goes far beyond film. It’s a political essay that expresses, with new and thrilling clarity, an idea that readers thought but never verbalized. It’s a television show that introduces an alien world, yet with characters so recognizable that viewers feel as if they’re wearing their skin. It’s a piece of art that dazzles with a new form and yet offers a jolt of meaning. In the psychology of aesthetics, there is a name for the moment between the anxiety of confronting something new and the satisfying click of understanding it. It is called an “aesthetic
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