Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Suspension of disbelief often applies to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres. Cognitive estrangement in fiction involves using a person's ignorance or lack of knowledge to promote suspension of disbelief.
The phrase "suspension of disbelief" came to be used more loosely in the later 20th century, often used to imply that the burden was on the reader, rather than the writer, to achieve it. This might be used to refer to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. These fictional premises may also lend to the engagement of the mind and perhaps proposition of thoughts, ideas, art and theories.
Suspension of disbelief is often an essential element for a magic act or a circus sideshow act. For example, an audience is not expected to actually believe that a woman is cut in half or transforms into a gorilla in order to enjoy the performance.
§Coleridge's original formulation
Coleridge coined the phrase in his Biographia Literaria, published in 1817, in the context of the creation and reading of poetry. Chapter XIV describes the preparations with Wordsworth for their revolutionary collaboration Lyrical Ballads (first edition 1798), for which Coleridge had contributed the more romantic, Gothic pieces including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Poetry and fiction involving the supernatural had gone out of fashion to a large extent in the 18th century, in part due to the declining belief in witches and other supernatural agents among the educated classes, who embraced the rational approach to the world offered by the new science. Alexander Pope, notably, felt the need to explain and justify his use of elemental spirits in The Rape of the Lock, one of the few English poems of the century that invoked the supernatural. Coleridge wished to revive the use of fantastic elements in poetry. The concept of "willing suspension of disbelief" explained how a modern, enlightened audience might continue to enjoy such types of story.
Coleridge recalled:
- â€... It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us ...â€
The notion of such an action by an audience was however recognized in antiquity, as seen particularly in the Roman theoretical concerns of Horace, who also lived in an age of increasing skepticism about the supernatural, in his Ars Poetica.
§Examples in literature
Suspension of disbelief is sometimes said to be an essential component of live theater, where it was recognized by Shakespeare, who refers to it in the Prologue to Henry V:
- "[...] make imaginary puissant [...] 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings [...] turning accomplishment of many years into an hourglass."
See also dramatic convention.
§In popular culture
According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is an essential ingredient for any kind of storytelling. With any film, the viewer has to ignore the reality that they are viewing a two-dimensional moving image on a screen and temporarily accept it as reality in order to be entertained. Black-and-white films provide an obvious early example that audiences are willing to suspend disbelief, no matter how unreal the images appear, for the sake of entertainment. With the exception of totally color blind people (See: Achromatopsia), no person viewing these films sees the real world without color, but they are still willing to suspend disbelief and accept the images in order to be entertained.
One of the most common examples of suspension of disbelief is in language. For practical purposes, dramas usually are played in the language of the intended audience, irrespective of its context. For example, virtually every film and television series made in Anglophone countries have the characters speaking in English, regardless of the linguistic environment of the narrative. To the extent that foreign or alien language appears, this tends to be for dramatic effect. This device has become so common that suspension of disbelief is an almost automatic audience response in all but the rarest cases.
Suspension of disbelief is also supposed to be essential for the enjoyment of many movies and TV shows involving complex stunts, special effects, and seemingly unrealistic plots, characterizations, etc. The theory professes to explain why a subset of action movie fans are willing to accept the idea that, for example: The good guy can get away with shooting guns in public places (without getting in trouble with the local law-enforcement himself), never running out of ammunition (Rambo movies), or that cars will explode with a well-placed shot to the gas tank (numerous action movies use this trope/plot element).
Suspension of disbelief is also needed when a character is not supposed to age over the course of a series (because of being a vampire or be eternal/immortal because of some quirk/trait/power of the character) but the actor eventually does â€" as seen in Angel and Highlander. Likewise, the various Terminators played by Arnold Schwarzenegger are supposed to be standardized units from the same assembly line, but the original cyborg in 1984's The Terminator looks noticeably younger than the cyborgs with the "same" organic covering that appear in the 1991 and 2003 sequel movies.
In the three CSI series, it is frequently implied that forensic test results are received immediately after said tests are performed; in reality, it can take several months to get results back, it is inconvenient to the plots to show the necessary waiting period. To advance the plot, a suspension of disbelief is necessary, and viewers must accept that the waiting period has passed or that there is no waiting period to begin with. As well, in real life, crime scene investigators are not responsible for the wide array of police duties that the show's characters typically carry out (investigation, arrest, interrogation, etc.); they limit themselves to forensic and lab work; these series would have audiences believe that crime scene units are solely responsible for entire investigations, including the arrest.
All sorts of story-telling involving puppets or cartoon characters demand suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience, since it is obvious that the "people" seen are not real living persons. On the Muppet Show, the rods controlling Kermit's arms are clearly visible, but the audience is expected to ignore them.
§Animations and comics
One contemporary example of suspension of disbelief is the audience's acceptance that Superman hides his identity from the world by simply donning a pair of glasses, conservative clothing, and acting in a "mild-mannered" fashion. Not only is the disguise so thin as to be ridiculous (though certain adaptations attempt to lend some believability to it with Clark Kent acting sufficiently different from Superman, such as the 1978 film), but also in the TV series, Adventures of Superman, this absurdity was carried to an extreme. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen constantly suspected Clark Kent of being Superman, yet when obvious evidence was right in their faces â€" such as times when Clark was missing his glasses â€" they never saw the resemblance. (Noel Neill and Jack Larson, in DVD commentary, said their standard answer when questioned about this was, "We wanted to keep our jobs!")
Some find it strange that while some audience members took issue with the flimsiness of Superman's disguise, they didn't take issue with the idea of the existence of a superbeing whose only weakness was kryptonite. One arguing from the theory of suspension of disbelief would contend that while Superman's abilities and vulnerabilities are the foundational premises the audience accepted as their part of the initial deal; they did not accept a persistent inability for otherwise normal characters to recognize a close colleague solely because of minor changes in clothing.
Gary Larson discussed the question with regard to his comic strip, The Far Side; he noted that readers wrote him to complain that a male mosquito referred to his job sucking blood when it is in fact the females that drain blood, but that the same readers accepted that the mosquitoes live in houses, wear clothes, and speak English.
§Video games
Video games are also said to require suspension of disbelief. Often, realism is compromised even in games that set out to be realistic, either intentionally to not overly complicate game mechanics or due to technical limitations.
Some games based on Spider-Man have the comic hero swinging around a city with his webs sticking to nothing but the sky. Many sandbox games enable the player to control a character continuously who is not required to, for instance, eat, drink, use toilets, or sleep. A character may be able to drive a vehicle continuously without ever needing to refuel, or be able to sustain inexplicably high levels of injury and recover without even medical attention.
Fighting games often feature magical elements, such as characters who can throw fireballs, which has become a staple of traditional fighting games.
Other video games feature instant death upon falling into water instead of giving the player a chance to swim out before drowning (such as a few episodes of Grand Theft Auto and many others). In contrast, some games show falling into water as completely safe when in reality the impact would be lethal (most notably in Banjo-Kazooie). Also, in many video games (particularly RPGs), a character will say the same phrase over and over indefinitely when repeatedly talked to. Some video games begin with a tutorial in which the player is taught how to play. These are often woven into the story, for example a character in the game might say to the player, "Press the triangle button to jump! Walk up to a crystal to save your game! Don't forget to use the 'select' button to change your weapons!" and so forth. In the fictional context of the game world, such sequences make no sense. A humorous poke at this character-given tutorial is present in Super Paper Mario, where the character Bestovius refers to a 'greater being' (the player) who will understand the tutorial being given.
The Metal Gear series is famous for its suspension of disbelief, partially due to its postmodern style that emerged with the release of Metal Gear Solid in 1998, sealing itself with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in 2001. The games use an assortment of humour; breaking the fourth wall; speculative fiction; and extraordinary and unusual events, many of which go unexplained and unquestioned by the characters. These are done for both the purpose of innovative gameplay as well imaginative characters and story, unrestricted by science and logic.
A commonly seen example throughout the series is the example of the radio support team, who will give control and interface instructions through conversation with the player character. For this reason, the radio support team, who are all legitimate characters, work also as gameplay advisors seemingly aware that they're inside a video game. This helps with the suspension of disbelief as the game is no longer restricted by the attempt of the author to simulate reality.
§Examples in politics
It was used by Hillary Clinton during the United States' 2008 presidential election preliminaries. Clinton apparently considered General Petraeus' reports on Iraq to be unbelievable or not factual, and used the phrase "suspension of disbelief" loosely, in this case, implying such to be a requirement to accept his statements.
§Psychology
Psychological critic Norman Holland points to a neuroscientific explanation. When we hear or watch any narrative, our brains go wholly into perceiving mode. They turn off our systems for acting or planning to act. With them go our systems for assessing reality. We believe. We have, in Coleridge's second, more accurate phrase, “poetic faith.†That’s why humans have such trouble recognizing lies. We first believe, then have to make a conscious effort to disbelieve.
Only when we stop perceiving to think about what we have seen or heard, only then do we assess its truth-value. Watching a movie or reading a story, if we are really “into†the fiction, “transported,†in the psychologists' term, we are, as Immanuel Kant pointed out long ago, “disinterested.†We respond aesthetically, without purpose. We just enjoy. We don’t judge the truth of what we’re perceiving, even though, if we stop being transported and think about it, we know quite well it’s a fiction.
Suspension of disbelief has also been used within a mental health context by Frank DeFulgentis in his book Flux. It is an attempt to describe the phenomenon of forgetting irrational thoughts associated with cases of OCD. In the book, the author suggests 'suspending disbelief' as opposed to forcing ourselves to forget; similar to how one would put a virus in quarantine. We can thereby allow ourselves to be absorbed in the activities around us until these irrationalities vanish on their own accord.
§Criticisms
As in the examples of Superman's powers and Gary Larson's cartoon, it is unclear that suspension of disbelief correctly describes an audience's perception of art. If the theory were to be true, the individual events of suspension would appear to be highly selective. (It would appear that one chooses to suspend disbelief for the ability to fly, but not to suspend it for myopic co-workers.)
Aesthetic philosophers generally reject claims that suspension of disbelief accurately characterizes the relationship between people and "fictions." Kendall Walton notes that, if viewers were to truly suspend disbelief at a horror movie and accept its images as true, they would have a true-to-life set of reactions. For instance, audience members would cry out, "Look behind you!" to an endangered on-screen character or call the police when they witnessed an on-screen murder.
However, many of these criticisms simply fail to notice that Coleridge's original statement came in a restrictive clause. The formulation "...that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith," of necessity implies that there are different sorts of suspension of disbelief and specifies that poetic faith is one instance of a larger class. One need not choose to believe that a character in a horror film is a real person in order, for example, to choose to believe that the character is looking at the building seen in the following reverse-shot. More often than not, both beliefs would be equally false.
Not all authors believe that suspension of the disbelief adequately characterizes the audience's relationship to imaginative works of art. J. R. R. Tolkien challenges this concept in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", choosing instead the paradigm of secondary belief based on inner consistency of reality. Tolkien says that, in order for the narrative to work, the reader must believe that what he reads is true within the secondary reality of the fictional world. By focusing on creating an internally consistent fictional world, the author makes secondary belief possible. Tolkien argues that suspension of disbelief is only necessary when the work has failed to create secondary belief. From that point the spell is broken, and the reader ceases to be immersed in the story and must make a conscious effort to suspend disbelief or else give up on it entirely.
§See also
- 555 (telephone number)
- Aestheticization of violence
- Compartmentalization (psychology)
- Deus ex machina
- Dramatic convention
- Fourth wall
- Paradox of fiction
- Suspension of judgment
- The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis
- Verisimilitude (literature)
§References
§External links
- Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV, containing the term