What happened to 'Suspension of Disbelief'?

[Medivh]

Firstly, for those not familiar with the term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

---------------------------------

So for many long years there's been this trend. The trend of what I can only describe of people with their suspension of disbelief is so small, they're so unable to wrap their heads around something that's not 'real', that they miss out on things that they might like otherwise.

I've had this come up the most in two things: Literature, and Toku. Comics and anime/manga is a close second but that I think falls into the mentality that it's for kids. Anyway....

Every so often people will ask what I'm reading and it'll be something like sci-fi or sword-and-sorcery, or whatever. Most people accept it but mention that they 'can only read things that are a true story or based on one'. Saying that they 'just can't get into it' otherwise.

Frankly, this strikes me as kind of silly. I understand if you don't want to read books, but if you do like reading, you're missing out on alot. Even in the realms of mysteries, thrillers, horrors, and traditional fiction.

For Toku, this happens alot more. Typically with the medium. People who I've tried to sell on it, even if they can watch anime or show other signs that they'd likely be accepting, suddenly turn into realism nuts and start picking apart things and insist, again, that they 'just can't get into it'.

Now, I understand that these things aren't for everyone. That's fine, really it is. But I just don't understand it. What happened to people's suspensions of disbelief that suddenly they can't set aside that in real life, your local ADD/ADHD kid in the classroom ISN'T the son or daughter of an Olympian God. Heck, they can't even set aside the old 'weapon outta thin air' bit. Admittedly we laugh about that, but we accept it. It doesn't completely ruin things for us when we don't have an answer for all the little nit-picky things.

What happened here? When did we get so stuck on the real that anything that ISN'T 110% real or that the creator didn't spend time and effort making SEEM real is almost flat out rejected? You can switch your brain off to go and enjoy a movie like The Expendables, but....you can't get over that Eiji just pulled Medaljalibur out from behind him when it wasn't there a second ago....when it's an ACTION sequence. You're accepting cosmoguns, but you're not accepting insta-weapon....excuse the non-existent word, but...awhaaa?

*gets off the soapbox and puts it aside* Seriously though, what happened to suspension of disbelief? and am I the only one who experiences this? I know I have some strange people around me, but I'm guessing that everyone's had this kinda thing happen to them at SOME point. Honestly I feel like it's dragging out media down to have such short suspension-spans, but when did this whole thing get started? and how are we supposed to fix it?

 

[lazycoconut]

I'm going to bring up again a point that I keep hearing in relation to Goseiger, Go-onger, and now Power Rangers Samurai: that having characters who are cheerful, happy and generally nice to each other is "unrealistic." So, you can accept that these people have superpowers and fight monsters with giant robots, but not that they don't bicker all the time and act like assholes ("but that's what REAL people do! whiiiine!") What the hell's up there?

I notice this in literature as well - fantasy stories are ostensibly selling well, but it's stuff like Twilight or Vampire Diaries, which are basically soap operas with the added element that the characters are vampires/werewolves. If you wrote an ordinary adventure story about fantasy creatures, and there wasn't any romance or angsty melodrama, people wouldn't read it

 

[KouAidou]

Well, it's clear that the people in question are capable of suspending disbelief, because as you say, they'll watch The Expendables or whatnot. It's just a matter of individuals, the type of the tropes they're used to and what pushes the angry buttons in their brain.

F'rex, I know some people who are the biggest action fans in the world and will happily watch anything with a flying superhero or giant robot. But show them a musical and their brains break the moment the characters break out in song.

Plenty of people have no problem with Superman being an alien who leaps tall buildings in a single bound, but their very minds rebel at the idea that Lois could work alongside Clark for years and years and not realize they're the same guy.

I'm sure we all have things we're unable to accept in our entertainment that others would laugh off as suspension of disbelief. Just accept it and give people time. Maybe they'll come around and maybe they won't; there's no need to take it personally.

 

[Black Fang]

I'm going to bring up again a point that I keep hearing in relation to Goseiger, Go-onger, and now Power Rangers Samurai: that having characters who are cheerful, happy and generally nice to each other is "unrealistic." So, you can accept that these people have superpowers and fight monsters with giant robots, but not that they don't bicker all the time and act like assholes ("but that's what REAL people do! whiiiine!") What the hell's up there?

That's a complaint being made against Samurai, the characters are too nice?? Who the heck has been saying that? That show has far bigger problems. From what I've seen Samurai's heroes are blind copies of their Shinken counterparts, and I've never seen you say the Shinken heroes were overly nice.

And not liking that the Gosei or Go-On heroes were too bubbly and "smile smile!" isn't the same as wanting your heroes to be brooding misanthropes.

 

[lazycoconut]

That's a complaint being made against Samurai, the characters are too nice?? Who the heck has been saying that? That show has far bigger problems. From what I've seen Samurai's heroes are blind copies of their Shinken counterparts, and I've never seen you say the Shinken heroes were overly nice.

People were saying so over at the thread for the latest episode. Heropower made a post where he said the same thing: http://heropower.livejournal.com/262688.html

And not liking that the Gosei or Go-On heroes were too bubbly and "smile smile!" isn't the same as wanting your heroes to be brooding misanthropes.

It is. If you say "they're too happy and positive! REAL people argue and aren't so nice to each other!" (which is the gist of a lot of people's complaints about the Goseigers and Go-ongers) what you're basically saying is "I am an asshole, I expect other people to be assholes, and that's what I want to see in TV characters too". It's a general trend in all media at the moment, I think - no one wants escapism or happy characters. They want gritty, depressing themes and trashy soap-opera theatrics

 

[Black Fang]

It is.

No it isn't? I like heroes such as Shinji, those in Kuuga and Agito, and the Hibiki characters. Yet none of them possessed that "happy sing-a-long" personality that you see in Go-On and Gosei. You keep implying that Go-On and Gosei are closer to reality than the "brooding jerk" types, when really neither of them to the extreme are. Either can work as long as you don't go too far with it to the point of losing the realism.

If you say "they're too happy and positive! REAL people argue and aren't so nice to each other!" (which is the gist of a lot of people's complaints about the Goseigers and Go-ongers) what you're basically saying is "I am an asshole, I expect other people to be assholes, and that's what I want to see in TV characters too".

Name me the people who have said this. There may be a few people who for some reason constantly want misanthropic heroes, but no one knows what you're talking about here.

 

[MrMonk]

Firstly, for those not familiar with the term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

---------------------------------

So for many long years there's been this trend. The trend of what I can only describe of people with their suspension of disbelief is so small, they're so unable to wrap their heads around something that's not 'real', that they miss out on things that they might like otherwise.

I've had this come up the most in two things: Literature, and Toku. Comics and anime/manga is a close second but that I think falls into the mentality that it's for kids. Anyway....

Every so often people will ask what I'm reading and it'll be something like sci-fi or sword-and-sorcery, or whatever. Most people accept it but mention that they 'can only read things that are a true story or based on one'. Saying that they 'just can't get into it' otherwise.

Frankly, this strikes me as kind of silly. I understand if you don't want to read books, but if you do like reading, you're missing out on alot. Even in the realms of mysteries, thrillers, horrors, and traditional fiction.

For Toku, this happens alot more. Typically with the medium. People who I've tried to sell on it, even if they can watch anime or show other signs that they'd likely be accepting, suddenly turn into realism nuts and start picking apart things and insist, again, that they 'just can't get into it'.

Now, I understand that these things aren't for everyone. That's fine, really it is. But I just don't understand it. What happened to people's suspensions of disbelief that suddenly they can't set aside that in real life, your local ADD/ADHD kid in the classroom ISN'T the son or daughter of an Olympian God. Heck, they can't even set aside the old 'weapon outta thin air' bit. Admittedly we laugh about that, but we accept it. It doesn't completely ruin things for us when we don't have an answer for all the little nit-picky things.

What happened here? When did we get so stuck on the real that anything that ISN'T 110% real or that the creator didn't spend time and effort making SEEM real is almost flat out rejected? You can switch your brain off to go and enjoy a movie like The Expendables, but....you can't get over that Eiji just pulled Medaljalibur out from behind him when it wasn't there a second ago....when it's an ACTION sequence. You're accepting cosmoguns, but you're not accepting insta-weapon....excuse the non-existent word, but...awhaaa?

*gets off the soapbox and puts it aside* Seriously though, what happened to suspension of disbelief? and am I the only one who experiences this? I know I have some strange people around me, but I'm guessing that everyone's had this kinda thing happen to them at SOME point. Honestly I feel like it's dragging out media down to have such short suspension-spans, but when did this whole thing get started? and how are we supposed to fix it?

It's a matter of setting tone. Suspension of disbelief is broken when the showrunners deviate from the tone they've set forth.

In most current Kamen Riders, the hammerspace weapon is a given. Items and gadgets appear seemingly from nowhere. Where does Double pull the extra Gaia Memories from when he switches forms for instance? Where does the Rider Pass go when Den-O throws it? (Yes, they joked about it in the movie)

Occasionally, they will make concessions to explain stuff like that. The first time Ryotaro henshined, they make it clear the belt appears if you have the Rider Pass.

But you can't set a certain expectation (this guy carries a sniper rifle in a case everywhere he goes for 20 episodes) and then go against that (one time he's not holding the case and he pulls the rifle out of nowhere!)

The TVTrope version explains it best:

An author's work, in other words, does not have to be realistic, only believable and internally consistent (see Magic A Is Magic A). When the author pushes the audience too far, the work fails.

A common way of putting this is "You can ask an audience to believe the impossible, but not the improbable." For example, people will accept that the Grand Mage can teleport across the world, or that the spaceship has technology that makes it completely invisible without rendering its own sensors blind, but they won't accept that the ferocious carnivore just happened to have a heart attack and die right before it attacked the main character, or that the hacker guessed his enemy's password on the first try just by typing random letters.

I notice this in literature as well - fantasy stories are ostensibly selling well, but it's stuff like Twilight or Vampire Diaries, which are basically soap operas with the added element that the characters are vampires/werewolves. If you wrote an ordinary adventure story about fantasy creatures, and there wasn't any romance or angsty melodrama, people wouldn't read it

Conflict is what drives writing. Bickering is conflict between characters and angst is internal conflict. That's not to say that character always have to be assholes, but generally a show with very happy characters is found bland by many as they get older. The best bet is to provide a contrast in viewpoints amongst all characters.

 

[lazycoconut]

No it isn't? I like heroes such as Shinji, those in Kuuga and Agito, and the Hibiki characters. Yet none of them possessed that "happy sing-a-long" personality that you see in Go-On and Gosei. You keep implying that Go-On and Gosei are closer to reality than the "brooding jerk" types, when really neither of them to the extreme are. Either can work as long as you don't go too far with it to the point of losing the realism.

I don't think they're closer to reality, but for a children's show, they are a much better character type to have. I'm not even sure the fandom's preference for moody characters and depressing themes is recent. The most popular older Sentai (like Dairanger, Liveman, and Jetman) tend to be those where there was a lot of angst and character drama

Name me the people who have said this. There may be a few people who for some reason constantly want misanthropic heroes, but no one knows what you're talking about here.

Random example (I can't quote it because the thread is locked): http://forums.henshinjustice.net/showthread.php?p=1203675#post1203675 Where someone basically said the Goseigers were awful characters because they didn't bicker with each other like the Shinkengers did and weren't like "real people." Along similar lines, the comments on the Heropower post. I could probably dig up loads more, it tends to come up in any discussion about Goseiger or Go-onger (and a few others, when OOO started there were people who didn't like Eiji for this reason)

The OP complained that viewers will accept the fantastic elements of OOO but can't accept something as simple as Eiji readily having a weapon to hand. I'm saying, by extension, viewers can accept a character having all sorts of superpowers but then complain if s/he isn't acting like their idea of "a real person"?

 

[Goty]

Where someone basically said the Goseigers were awful characters because they didn't bicker with each other like the Shinkengers did and weren't like "real people." Along similar lines, the comments on the Heropower post. I could probably dig up loads more, it tends to come up in any discussion about Goseiger or Go-onger (and a few others, when OOO started there were people who didn't like Eiji for this reason)

Eh, that has absolutely nothing to do with suspension of disbelief. That's about "i don't like these characters because i think they are bland, lame and/or uninteresting".

This thread is about people who complain, for instance, about how the Gokaigers are able to control all their vehicles using helms, like i've been seeing in other forum. I mean, seriously?

 

[lazycoconut]

Eh, that has absolutely nothing to do with suspension of disbelief. That's about "i don't like these characters because i think they are bland, lame and/or uninteresting".

This thread is about people who complain, for instance, about how the Gokaigers are able to control all their vehicles using helms, like i've been seeing in other forum. I mean, seriously?

It does have something to do with disbelief. You said that you couldn't accept the characters as "real people" because of something as trifling as that. It is a break in your suspension of disbelief