Suspension of Disbelief
Don’t be a buzzkill.
Suspension of Disbelief. We’ve all heard the phrase, or at the very least, know someone who seems utterly incapable of recognizing its value. Yeah, I’m talking to you, the buzzkill who insists The Flash is a terrible, ‘unrealistic’ TV show the instant the main character becomes capable of time travel (because his ability to run at 800 mph was definitely realistic and scientifically possible to begin with) and then refuses to continue watching.
Most movies and TV shows follow the same formula. The guy falls in love with the girl he can’t have, and through perseverance and some charm must win her over. The hero with incredible powers fights the villain, but can only triumph upon realizing that she must first defeat the demons within herself before facing the ugly cyborg man with an ego large enough to dwarf that of Narcissus. Honestly, you’d think at this point the ‘bad guy’ would have learned that you shouldn’t tell your mortal enemy how you plan on taking over the world using high-tech banana peels you didn’t even create, but I digress.
Every once in a while, movies like Memento or The Prestige come along (both phenomenal movies, if you can suspend your disbelief — see what I did there?), where the plot is mind-blowingly original and the ending is brilliant and unexpected. Despite these movies’ ability to amaze, however, they always seem to contain more plot holes than your average movie (not least because in order to astound they must be somewhat absurd), and you find yourself looking at the screen in disbelief.
Basically, all movies are either cliché or unbelievable (or both, honestly). You know it, I know it, and yet we don’t care. Why? The obvious reason, of course, is their relatability. We like to watch the girl get the guy, because it makes us feel like we will eventually capture the heart of our love interest (not that I have one, mind you). We watch the villain fight his demons and overcome them in the hope that one day we too will overcome the battles that rage within us. Finally, we ignore the inconsistencies in the most fantastical worlds because they provide us with an escape, in that many times we wish we could be the characters in those worlds. Those of us that can’t suspend our disbelief or do any of the above are just more cynical than most, unfortunately (or fortunately — I suppose it depends on how you look at it).
Awesome. But you already knew all of this (if you didn’t, you might need to introspect more frequently — and that’s coming from me). So then what exactly is the point of this post?
The real reason (potentially, anyways) that we absolutely love to watch those fictional characters? We don’t just empathize with them — rather, we become them, in a sense. Am I crazy? Probably (actually, almost definitely), but this concept may not be. There is a considerable amount of evidence for the existence of mirror neurons (see this paper, for example), which are neurons in the brain that fire when we take action (i.e. something as simple as picking up a cup) that also fire when someone else carries out that same action. And it is then possible that this is exactly what happens when someone in a movie does something.
So when the killer leaps out of the closet in that terrifying horror movie, and your stomach plunges to the floor, there’s a good chance that you react that way because some of the neurons in your brain fire in the same way that they would if you were actually in that scenario. As a result, you freak out, you cling to the person next to you, and/or you feel this urge to sprint as far away as you can (well, I don’t — but that’s exclusively because I refuse to watch horror movies).
Thus, the next time you take a trip to the movies and you wonder why you empathize so strongly with that random character that ‘OMG is doing exactly the same thing I do and OMG I wanna be their best friend!!!’, just remember that whatever they do, you think you’re doing too (sort of).
