Ted Lee

when you can't "suspend disbelief" any longer...

that's what it's commonly called, "suspension of disbelief" ... correct? as in when you go to the movies, you must (sometimes) kick common sense out the window to enjoy the movie???

well, i just saw a particular movie and let me tell you ... that movie pushed the envelope big time. without giving too much away, it involves a guy and a girl trying to find eachother, and some things that get in the way.

the whole time i'm watching this, i'm thinking why don't they just call eachother on the cellphones that they both (apparantly) have? if they would have called eachother...the problem would have been solved (and, of course, there would be no movie).

and, get this. when the girl finally finds the dude's friend, the friend is like, "hey, he's been looking for you. give me your info.". to which she says, "no...have him meet me. he'll know where."

----

ps, i'm just giving a rant because i'm bored. but i would love to hear your favorite "suspension of disbelief" movie.

this is my dvd collection. there are many like it, but this is my own ...

mark alan

wicker park. Stupid movie

Patrick Sun

Serendipity?

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar!"
Patcave | 2006 Films | 2007 Films | Dragon Con 2008

Haggai

Sugartastic T., Ebert's movie glossary has just the term you're looking for.

Films watched in 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Ted Lee

haggai ... that's perfect!

this is my dvd collection. there are many like it, but this is my own ...

Michael Reuben

That's not what the term means, although, like many phrases, its meaning has been corrupted. "Suspension of disbelief" refers to the audience member's participation in storytelling. No matter how the storytelling occurs -- on the printed page, on a stage, in an auditorium where still pictures are flashed in rapid succession on a screen -- the audience chooses to believe in the story and imbue the characters and events with reality.

Now, when the characters behave oddly or inexplicably, or the story is badly written, or the acting isn't convincing or (fill-in-the-blank), it can become impossible for viewers/readers/etc. to keep up their end and enter into the storytelling process. But that has nothing to do with "common sense". After all, common sense tells you that even the most realistic dialogue doesn't actually sound like the people you hear in your everyday life.

Movies, like all storytelling, are based on artifice. Suspending disbelief means agreeing to participate in the artifice.

M.

"Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything." -- Chinatown

"What kind of movies would there be if everyone in them had to do what we thought they should do?" -- Roger Ebert

HTF Beginner's Primer and FAQ

Joseph DeMartino

The full phrase is "the willing suspension of disbelief", and it originated with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and originally referred specifically to what we would now call "fantasy". Here is the phrase as it first appeared in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817)


The phrase has been applied more to "fantastic" literature, fantasy, gothic romance and even science fiction, than to more "mainstream" works, presumably because there is less disbelief to suspend when you're watching two businessmen argue over a deal than when watching a vampire sucking the lifeblood out of his latest victim.

But it still has nothing to do with common sense or story logic. Stephen King somewhat restated Coleridge's image by picturing the fantastic as something heavy, and the imagination as a kind of muscle used to "lift" it. Children, oddly enough, tend to have the best developed "fantasy" muscles, and can lift the oddest ideas about gents in red suits, chimneys, rabbits with chocolate eggs, giants and trolls quite effortlessly, whereas most adults in the workaday world have to work much harder to do so - and some can't lift the weight at all. (Which is why my sister can't stand most science fiction and can't sit through an "unrealistic" bit of fantasy like The Lord of the Rings. She can't get past the elves and orcs to see the human drama. On the other hand she is a devotee of soap operas where the characters behave less like the people we meet everyday than Frodo and Gimli, and where story logic is pretty much non-existent. But to her it is "realistic" because there are no spaceships, rayguns or magic rings. Oddly she quite enjoys horror films, although she prefers moderns slashers to classic supernatural stories.)

Regards,

Joe

My Home Theater

My DVD Collection

Ted Lee

hmmm...not where i meant the thread to go, but interesting topic. i think i get what you're saying.

so, suspension of disbelief simply means you're accepting what you're seeing (i guess at face value) and "buying into it"?

this is my dvd collection. there are many like it, but this is my own ...

Holadem

Haggai, that was awesome.

--
H

David Rogers

Tricky, what one person has no problem going along with, others are *incapable* of moving past. A good example of this audience-variable is often stuff involving guns or gunplay in movies.

Matrix, as one, at the end where Smith shoots Neo, has a top-down shot looking at Smith as he fires the first shot into Neo's chest, and shows the gun recoiling. I was enraptured with how cool the shot was, while the jerk in the seat next to me immediately piped up about how the round they were showing in the chamber of the gun was a blank.

Another good example of Suspension of Disbelief is horror flicks. Notice how there are a *lot* of 'retro' horror movies the last five years or so? I think part of this is horror films set in the 70s or prior are easier to write, because you don't have to write around modern inconveniences that wreck otherwise good plots. Scream cleverly used these modern plot wreckers in its plots, which is probably part of its successful writing.

Ultimately, SoD is up to you. Do you want to have fun at the movies, or did you go with the intention of sitting there and bitching? If more critical viewers would relax and enjoy their movies, it'd be more fun for them.

-----

Dave's World
-No matter where you go, there you are-

Jason Seaver

I won't say there's no truth to this, but I think it's incumbent on the filmmakers to create an environment where the incredible or unli