Charles Reid Acland (born October 4, 1963) is a Canadian professor in the Communications Studies Department at Concordia University, Montreal.
He is the Editor of the Canadian Journal of Film Studies[2] and co-editor of Useful Cinema (Duke University Press, 2011), Residual Media (2007), and Harold Innis in the New Century (1999).
He was interviewed on this topic on the Colin McEnroe radio show in 2012,[3] and his publication Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence asserts that there is no such thing as subliminal perception, at least not in the sense of spectators in a movie theatre being hypnotized to buy popcorn and drinks by having messages flashed at them at speeds beneath the threshold of human perception.
[4][5] Acland and co-editor Haidee Wasson have pursued extensive research into "useful cinema", that is, the use of film in institutions such as libraries, museums, and classrooms, as well as the workplace.
At the centre of Acland's analysis is the sensationalization and exploitation of the murder of eighteen-year-old Jennifer Levin at the hands of nineteen-year-old Robert Chambers on August 6, 1986 in New York's Central Park.