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Allison Stinson Dr. Guenzel ENC 1102-0014 April 11, 2014 Fantasy vs. Reality: Building Off Belief

The industry of entertainment evolves from the basis of the Suspension of Disbelief and how that translates to the way we perceive story lines within literature. This term coined by philosopher Samuel T. Coleridge is what he defines as "poetic faith" or the idea that the reader would not judge the work based on any of its fantastical elements or realistic implausibility. Moreover they suspend their disbelief that a plot element is unrealistic for the sake of the narrative. While the term was used to describe literature at the point of its conception, this ideal can also be translated to film and television. The dismissal of reality for the sake of fantasy in literature is the basis for analyzing narratives in such a way that facts and physics do not constrain the development of the story. We can see the development of these constraints and freedoms within storytelling through the centuries as artistic movements have both refrained from or touched into the realm of fantasy. Starting at the beginning of western thought and philosophy, we see emergencies of epic poems and plays portraying the cultures religious stories and mythologies. Take Greece for example, with many of its most famous written works being from its history and stories that many have been well know but these are the first written records much like the Odyssey written by Homer. This Epic poem recounts the tale of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and his journey at the end of the Trojan War back to his wife and homeland which takes up to ten years. While away it is believed he has died, so men try to court his wife Penelope in order to become King creating

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conflict between her and the suitors. This story while at its roots a tale of a man's homecoming from war, it has many elements of fantasy, or at the time their core religion. The question can then be raised, was the audience at that time suspending their disbelief that the story was a work of fantasy? While I do not know it does bring to light the idea that heir is a difference in beliefs and how we perceive the world at large. What may be myth to use may be seen as history to another, and that influences how we react. When the story is reimagined based on a new age there are changes based on the culture of the time and how the plot must fit in a different realm. Reworking older stories for the modern day gives you products like O Brother Where Art Thou? but more on that later. Taking a leap through time we should next look into the emergence of romance novels, which defined by Pamela Regis in A Natural History of the Romance Novel are "a work of prose fiction that tells the story of a courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines". Many of these novels are set in a time and society that are better known than that of the Grecian tales. Books such as Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights all lie in parameters of Regis' definition of a romantic novel. In these stories we see a prevalence of the characters conforming to the demands of a restricting society but having love narratives that could be feasible. These stories can sometimes going so far as to criticize the society they are conforming to. Take Jane Austen's famous opening lines of Pride and Prejudice "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Of the society of the time this was a "truth" that was universally acknowledged because the man would want an heir to inherit his estate. Romance, for which the novel is known for, wasn't even relevant to how marriage was arranged. In these types of narrative we do not need to suspend our disbelief on the premise of outlandish monsters or gods, but on the idea that it goes against that which is the

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norm for the time and embodies an ideal version of that reality. We suspend our disbelief not because something can't be real, but because it could be real. Yet this idea can be flipped in a way that we suspend our disbelief because something shouldn't be real. On the opposite end of the spectrum we see detective novels beginning to gain favor such as Agatha Christie in the 1920's. Christie uses a method of distancing the reader form the view that a person was just murdered and focuses on the puzzle of finding out who was the murderer. The notion of concentrating on the puzzle solving aspect is "for people to sit back and discern patterns, both in real life and in fiction, they need to forget or at least diminish the role of the victims. They need to forget the ethical implications of the crimes and consider their aesthetic possibilities."(Baelo) This means we must sometimes take something real and ethically wrong, such as killing someone, and look at it from a amoral perspective in order to find the enjoyment in the chase. Baelo describes this as "the idea of considering brutal crimes as works of art from an aesthetic or disinterested amoral perspective." Instead of the fantasy elements of the Greeks or the wish fulfillment of the Romances, this is a genre in which the suspension of disbelief is used to distance ourselves from the crime at hand. By both knowing that it is a work of fiction and focusing on the problem solving aspects we can contrive enjoyment out of murder. These views on the ideals of how and why we view stories in such a way based on a cultural context brings us back to Homer and The Odyssey. As I mentioned earlier there are many rewordings of these epics into modern adaptations such as the Coen brother film O Brother Where Art Thou?. This adaptation based in the southern United States in the 1920's, takes major plot points from the epic poem but in such a way as to keep characteristics of the original work. Tracy Seeley says," While many borrowings seem mere fodder for jokes, more serious implications emerge in the film's comic distance from its original." While they do share many

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qualities O Brother Where Art Thou? is able to stay separate from the original due to its use of comedy in the expression of the plot. So looking at both of these stories that share plot points and characters we are able to compare the cultural implications of how these stories are told. Both have mythologies to them, such as the cyclops in The Odyssey or the guitarist Tommy Johnson selling his soul to the devil in order to play the guitar. These concepts are both based in religious belief and can be written off as fictional in the stories, but to the religious practicers is it real? Tommy Johnson was a real guitarist who lived in the 1920's and was rumored to have sold his soul which is where the movie gets it's material, but where do we end fantasy and resume reality.(Koda) So even with all this time we still draw the same questions from stories. This proves that throughout the ages while our story lines are getting more complex and the social issues change, our belief or disbelief in the realities of fiction still remain. This suspension of disbelief is you knowing that this narrative is made up but enjoying it anyway. The easiest to spot, the fantasy elements are ones that can be ignored as something not real but still advances the plot and has the audience enjoy the work. They know it's fiction, it's obviously so. Romances and books that touch on real world relationships and are based within the spectrum of reality give to us the idea of wish fulfillment. These characters are idealized versions of reality that give to the reader a sense of wanting to be like them, have relationships like them, or simply be able to articulate like them. They are able to have characteristics we do not. But we can't get away with everything within the parameters of a realist perspective and that is when we have to distance ourselves from the work by knowing that it is not real. What is real and what is not real isn't as cut and dry. Suspending your Disbelief is not the same for everyone and what is real for you is fake for someone else, but the argument isn't whether what they believe is correct, it's about how they perceive a work and how that can impact the ways we look at literature.

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Work Citied Baelo Allu, Sonia. "The Aesthetics Of Serial Killing: Working Against Ethics In The Silence Of The Lambs (1988) And American Psycho."Atlantis: Revista De La Asociacin Espaola De Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos 24.2 (2002): 7-24. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. Campbell, Teri. "'Not Handsome Enough': Faces, Pictures, And Language In Pride And Prejudice." Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 34.(2012): 207-221. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. Coleridge, Samuel T. "BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA CHAPTER XIV." BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. N.p.: n.p., 1817. N. pag. Biographia Literaria. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. <http:// www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/biographia.html>. Koda, Cub. "AllMusic." AllMusic. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. <http://www.allmusic.com/artist/tommy-johnson-mn0000617492/biography>. LaGamba, JoNette Lauren. "Shaping Identity: Male And Female Interactions In Cinema." Dissertation Abstracts International 73.8 (2013): MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. Lee, Linda J. "Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels As Reworked Fairy Tales." Marvels & Tales: Journal Of Fairy-Tale Studies 22.1 (2008): 52-66. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. "Rooting for Affairs: The Blurry Lines of Pop Culture Romance." Mockingbird. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.<http://www.mbird.com/2013/05/pop-culture-affairs-and-the-search-forlove/>. Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2003. Seeley, Tracy. "O Brother, What Art Thou?: Postmodern Pranksterism, Or Parody With A Purpose?." Post Script: Essays In Film And The Humanities 27.2 (2008): 97-106. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.