The Suspension of Disbelief

The Suspension of Disbelief

Have you ever thought about the suspension of disbelief? This is when you willingly let go of what you know to be true so you can take part in an experience you might otherwise miss. It’s most often thought about in terms of movies or theater. It’s why you can enjoy a superhero movie without the reality of physics acting as a chasm between what you see and what your mind is willing to allow is true and possible. If you are well-capable of the suspension of disbelief it doesn’t matter when someone can jump too high or too far in a plot line, you just enjoy the show. If you are less-capable of the suspension of disbelief you might be too busy thinking, well that just isn’t right, to enjoy the experience.

The suspension of disbelief as a mechanism inside a person’s consciousness is like a valve, is it not? When the valve is open, fantasy and possibility flow free. When the valve is closed consciousness remains more fixed, a closed system. Versus the open system when we are free to believe what is presented before us without regard to what we know can actually happen, as in the superhero movie. Our hero can fly, can fly and travel at a speed logically impossible, but necessarily fast for the plot of the movie, and the desired effect upon the audience.

I don’t particularly care for superhero movies. I’ve also never been very good at suspending my disbelief. I am far too busy commenting inside about the plausibility of an element requiring me to pretend not to know something.

Why am I writing about the suspension of disbelief? Well, our nation’s suspension of disbelief valve is broken. It’s stuck in the open position now. There’s a regime of fascists leading our country into an abyss of hellfire, lead by a rapist, and we, like an audience in a black-box theater, might look past the production elements, look past the stage hands and light stands and the hard folding chairs on which we shift, and we might get lost in the story about a protagonist fighting a good fight. The valve is stuck open and the news media has all the elements of a great story with a colorful protagonist coming at us on full blast.

Do not suspend! Hold tight to your disbelief! Close the valve! He is not a protagonist in a story about a good fight, he is a rapist and fraud and a felon and his hand is on the button. He protects and rewards men who abuse women and his hand is on the button. He is incapable of complex thought and his hand is on the button. While this all is theater, this is no superhero movie, this is your life, and in your country a rapist is now in charge until we hold him and those who support him accountable. Toto tugs upon the wizard’s curtain as this performance art plays out in front of us as news stories and influencer reels on our own little black box theaters. 

Close your valve, if only momentarily to reset your system. To let everything settle, to let the sediment sink to the bottom where it can be scooped out like sludge from a septic tank. The suspension of disbelief is working for us all the time. As a mechanism it’s supposed to help us regulate danger within varying contexts. When is it ok to feel scared or not, to feel angry, outraged, vindictive, aggressive! The movies and theater allow us access to feelings like this which in real life it’s not feasible to experience. Like the type of self-righteous and justified rage that could even provoke someone to violence, that’s safe in a movie theater, rooting against a bad-guy; but once the audience walks out to the parking lot to discuss it on the ride home, the valve closes, and we no longer think of the world, the actual world, as one in which people fly and stop time and solve problems with physics-defying violence. 

Or do we? A rapist is playing the role of President. A fraud. A convicted felon.  A known and proven liar. A vain man with unnatural skin and hair which could be described as architectural. Why do the most vain look the most ugly? Why do the great fascists of history all look so ridiculous in the costumes they choose? Because of the theater they know they are participating in. And the disbelief they know you may suspend.