The Suspension of Disbelief

The suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe something surreal. The idea to sacrifice of the realism and the logic for the sake of enjoyment. Essential is something that it is important and it is something that is necessary to us. The theatre is an entertainment that involves the performance of plays, theatre can also refer to the acting or writing plays or theatre can be a building with a stage in it, on which plays, shows, and other performances that take place in the theatre.

The suspension of disbelief is something that we ignore things that we believe in, which are false. [1]It is the feeling of doubts and trusts, the suspension can be only temporary. Us people can decide the things that we want to believe and the things that we think they are not believable or false. It is something that we don’t intend to believe in such things but we decide to believe on things that we heard from it. [2] For example the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. Samuel Taylor Coleridge a poet and an author have called drama that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Any creative writer is willing to be successful to the extent that if the audience offers the willing suspension as they read, listen or watch what the author wrote. The writer provides the reader which refers to us with a good story, and in return, they accept the reality of the story that was in the story and accepting the characters that have happened to them or the personality of each character in the fictional universe. The author’s work does not have to be realistic but it can be believable and internally consistent. When an author pushes an audience to beyond on what they are willing to accept, the work fails in the eye of that particular audience. As for the science fiction part, the viewers are mostly willing to go along with the creative explanations and the imaginations. But in the fantastical genres, the suspension of disbelief can be broken when a work breaks its own established laws. Most books that are categorized as fantastical genres are more unbelievable too but however, people that read the book can still accept but some people won’t accept it. A lot of books that is in the fantastical genres are more for imagination and creativity in the writer and the readers while reading they will most likely to imagine the situation in the book. We people mostly are willing to believe in something that is surreal even we know that it is not real or it is unbelievable but what we chose to believe or not to believe in for the sake of our enjoyment in the things we think it is true or false.

The first Area of Knowledge is Human Sciences. Human Sciences is based on human behavior and human understanding of the world. For example people can accept that the Grand Mage can teleport across the world, or that the spaceship has the technology that makes it invisible in the space without rendering its own sensor blind, but people won’t accept the ferocious carnivore that just happened to have a heart attack and died right before it attacked the main character or that the hacker guesses his enemy’s password on the first try just by typing random letters. Different people will have different thresholds for what they are willing to accept in a work and what can my break one person’s willing suspension of disbelief that may not be necessary to have the same effect to others. People decide on the things that they want to believe and to the thing that they don’t want to believe in like on the book that we read where the main character died, it is something that involves with the behavior and in our minds that we ignore in the things that we don’t want to believe.

The second Area of Knowledge that considers with the suspension of disbelief is the Arts. In the Arts, it is not just paintings and drawings but this can also include theatre plays. [3]For example Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is an object and one must go beyond the disbelief in the rationality or the lack of rationality, of the play in order to experience the true art and the nature of the play. Like when we experience things such as objects, we don’t truly know them in their essence. Just like King Lear that was treated as an object, one will not be able to approach the truth of the play.

Compare with both Area of Knowledge it is very similar. In Human Sciences, human behavior would most intend to choose what they want to believe in or what to not believe in. Just like when reading a book or while watching a movie when one main character died, people mostly not accept the things that they see but they will mostly accept the things that they were told by somebody, something supernatural or something fantasy. It is with our minds we chose our own path and our own believe and we suspend the disbelief. For the Arts I have chosen the play from Shakespeare’s King Lear which is about a tragedy that depicts the gradual descents into madness of the title character, after he disposes of his kingdom by giving bequests to two of his three daughters which were based on their flattery of him, bringing the tragic consequences for all. King Lear was treated like an object where the person who plays this part is not willing to be able to approach the truth of the play or this can be called suspension of disbelief.

This can also link to the Ways of Knowing to the response of Emotion. We people have doubts and trusts that commanding us into giving reasons to judge as to what the thing is with our emotions. The commanding and doubting is not a process but it is an initial ground upon which and how we view things of the world. Also, this can also link to religion we people were told to what we should believe or what to not to believe, but however, we people we chose on what we want to believe in and what not to believe in. We were told by our parents and grandparents on what we should do and what we shouldn’t do which will lead us to become something bad. We surely believe them from what they told us to the things where we decide to think that maybe it is not true or it is just a myth. We give our emotions to believe, giving the reason either should we believe it or not. [4]In the psychology world we use action but not our feelings on what to believe or what not to believe. When feelings are viewed in a way we hold ourselves to an impossible standard. What we expect is to control what is essentially not ours to control. Compare with actions which are different, unlike emotions they are essentially under our control.

In conclusion, ‘the suspension of disbelief is an essential feature of the theatre’. We people chose what to believe and what not to believe. The suspension of disbelief is an idea of someone believing in something surreal. Just like in both Area of Knowledge that can be linked to the quote of suspension of disbelief. It is like a phrase, we know that it is not real but then we believe that it can also be real. We accept things that are not true thinking that it can be real, just like giving a chance to someone or forgiving someone. The huge insight about this is how people are mostly willing to accept the things that are not true or the things that never happen or to the things that we never see with our own eyes rather than our faith and what actually will happen to us. It is important to know that human having the behavior of wanting of want they want to believe and it also depends on each person’s mind. It is the thing that we people think that it is not important or it is just a hypothesis from psychologists or sciences but people will still wonder why we still believe in something surreal rather than something that actually happened.

[1] https://mytok.blog/2017/10/10/deconstructing-the-may-2018-titles/

[2] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear

[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sacramento-street-psychiatry/201605/choose-your-actions-not-your-feelings