-Chinese Proverb
The crux of postmodern thought is that what an individual decides for themselves as "true" is thus for all rhetorical purposes true. What this means for media is that what ever a a source of media shows an individual is what that individual will think of what reality actually is. As secondary observers, their opinion of any event or story is only based upon what is told to them. And what is told to the audience is the crux of what good storytelling is in fiction, and unbiased storytelling in non-fiction.
Reflexivity is anything that reduced the audience's belief in a film. For movies this is what makes it believable. For a specific fiction to be believable it must have rules that it follows, though not necessarily those that govern the real world.
For example, in Star Wars it is taken for granted that certain people have the abilities of a Jedi. They can jump to extreme heights, deflect a laser beam with a flick of a lightsaber, and levitate objects. The only explanation for this that the audience is given is that these are the results of "The Force." Really this is all that is sufficient for the audience to believe this.
Yet if someone were to lift something with the wave of a hand in a serious drama the spell would be broken, and the audience would suddenly be aware that they were watching a movie. For an audience to suspend their beliefs a story must follow a set of rules. These may not be the rules of reality, but they are rules (with exceptions).
I like how you note the existence of rules even though most movies tend to defy all natural rules. It just shows that even when a movie is completely chaotic, there's a specific reason for it.
ReplyDeleteAt the base level, people are reasonably. I feel it destroys a film when something completely ridiculous goes unexplained. A film can get away with this by having the characters acknowledge what happened but the worst thing is when everyone in a film just takes some act of magic for granted with no explanation or even a hint.
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