Another captivating way stories convey information, without our minds turning on and questioning it, is by the setting or the genre.

Say you want to make a point about race issues in America. So you base your movie in America with all the surrounding sides of the issue – Black America, the KKK, the White Americas who don’t speak up, the White Americas who do, all the other cultures and movements, and so on. This clearly will be a movie about that issue. That is fine and great, if that’s your purpose, if you want the audience throughout the film to consciously think about the issue and ask questions around it. If, on the other hand, you want the issue still floating around but hidden in the background, you – as a god – can shift the setting into a new world; let’s call it Pandora. Here, even though the audience experiences the same conflicts, the same issues, they’re not consciously thinking about them, they’re immersed in the story.

The issue is hiding in plain sight, unseen by the conscious mind.