Charles and the Green Slime: an Essay on Reacting to Fictions
Please note: Copying this essay and passing it off as your own work is ‘‘plagiarism’‘ and will be detected, and punished, by your college or university. Robert Cruickshank originally wrote this in 1999-2000 and is the ‘‘real’‘ creator of this work.
Introduction
I was waiting outside the cinema for Charlie to come out from a movie the other day, some stupid horror flick called The Green Slime. When he finally emerged, he was looking pretty shaky, white-faced and stuff.
“Woah! That was one scary movie!” he said.
“Really?” I said.
“Heck, yes! At one point, the slime sort of turned and looked at me, then it, like, headed ‘‘straight for me!’‘ I wasn’t the only one screaming, I can tell you!”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah – if you’d been there you’d have been as scared as I was, let me tell you!”
“Were you really?” I said.
Originally, the essay was to be written as a Socratic sort of dialogue, but there’s only so many ways one can flavour “A-said-B-said” without getting repetitive. Besides, there’s the small matter of “my” last question: Was Charles really scared? He had a strong emotional experience, obviously, and it appeared to be one of fear, but was his fear real?
If one looks at his actions, it seems contradictory that Charles shows all the involuntary reactions betokening fear – sweaty palms, pale face, rapid breathing etc – but doesn’t act as if he is afraid. He doesn’t flee the cinema, alert the authorities, or take any other actions one normally would take in a frightening situation. As well, all Charles has to do is observe the boundaries of the cinema screen, hear the sound of drinks being downed, confectionery consumed, and maybe some know-it-all behind him critiquing the special effects, to know that the slime is most certainly unreal. So what on earth was Charles doing to have such a strong emotional reaction?
According to Kendall Walton, Charles was playing a game. What Charles experienced was make-believe fear in response to a make-believe threat that put Charles in make-believe danger, all in the context of a game of make-believe based on the theme of the movie in which he was a make-believe participant – to wit, a passive observer.
People, in Walton’s view, play such make-believe games all the time, whether they are watching movies, listening to the radio, looking at paintings in an art exhibition, reading a bit of dialogue used to open an essay or whatever. The reason he makes this claim is because in these situations one is seeing something and imagining it to be something else.
For instance, directly in front of me is a cathode-ray tube, which is emitting light in various patterns and colours. Below this, two paper cones powered by electromagnets are vibrating the air. A framed photograph on the desk bears patches of coloured inks on its surface. This is what is truly here.
Imaginary Truths and Make-Believe
Right now, according to Walton, I am playing a game where the CRT displays text and images; where I hear music from the speakers; where the photograph bears a picture of The Portage in Marlborough Sounds. All of which is make-believe. I am here, now, as I write this, but I am somewhere else too. I am inside a fictional, make-believe world (and will use the terms “fictional world” and “game” interchangeably.)
The fictional world I am currently “in” is simply based on the real world, but includes a number of make-believe (MB) truths. For instance, it is MB-true that the photograph in its frame depicts a pleasant little resort, at a point in time, in the Marlborough Sounds.
Actually, originally I wrote represents rather than depicts in that last sentence. In our experience of the real world, we generally understand that pictures and photographs are expected to represent things, either from the real world, or another fictional world. The reason I say “expected” is due to observing people’s confusion about a Jackson Pollock painting called Waterbull several years ago. It simply didn’t lend itself to the typical “picture game” of mapping regions of colour to physical objects at all.
I crank up the Web browser and check in on my favourite comic, which chronicles the adventures of a group of elves. But elves do not exist in real life, yet flourish in plenty of fictional worlds. But I can imagine a world in which pointy-eared humanoids exist, and are called elves. This is an imaginary truth, which is solely true (in a fictional world) because I believe it to be. In my dreams – both day and night – I generate fictional worlds where imaginary truths hold sway.
While imaginary truths can be spontaneously generated, make-believe truths appear to be more of a form of “mapping” from the real world to a fictional one. So far, the make-believe truths I have looked at have been implied; I do not deliberately say to myself “I am going to pretend that this is an image of a dragon, that the sound of guitar and human voice is coming from the speakers,” and so on. At some point, I automatically started to play.
One explanation is that my brain, which is wired for pattern matching, finds that various colour patches or sound patterns “match” those stored in memory, to greater or lesser extents. Coupled with a willingness to allow the resemblance between image and object to inform my experience. I create a fictional world where I imagine seeing and hearing these things; thus the game begins.
Another explanation observes that I expect to see a dragon on the book cover, hear music from the speakers, view text on the screen, because of the context: Dragons are mentioned in the book’s back cover blurb, I inserted a CD into the computer and selected play, and the screen itself is expected to display images and text. Knowing this, I was prompted towards building a fictional world in which such things occur.
Children playing “kitchen” on the other hand are deliberately generating explicit make-believe truths, where lumps of play-dough represent food, boxes represent kitchen utensils and so forth. They build a fictional world and step inside it.
Actually, that last sentence isn’t entirely accurate; it is not as if one vanishes from reality when playing make-believe! It is more correct to say that one extends oneself into a fictional world, via make-believe truths that define one’s existence and role there.
From this, one can define make-believe truths as fictional truths that are recognised by the participants in a fictional world, whether implicitly (from systematic prompting) or explicitly.
Getting back to the comic: I see a panel where someone is walking along; this implies that in the fictional world the same laws of physics (gravity etc.) apply. He has pointed ears, and the name of the comic itself explicitly states the make-believe truth that elves exist in this world. (A number of unstated make-believe truths also get roped in by implication: that elves stand so high, they do this and that, there won’t be any language barrier etc.)
The medium of the comic itself – like the book on the desk or the image on the cinema screen – represents an intersection between fictional worlds. As soon as one starts to read or watch it, one creates a fictional world containing the make-believe truths contained in the medium – which may be only a subset of the author’s fictional world – and adds the make-believe truth that the reader is a passive observer of the events as they occur.
The Emotion Problem
Having exhaustively examined the nature of these fictional games, there is still the question of the emotional reactions to consider.
From a physiological viewpoint, Charles shows all the symptoms of fear: sweating, white-faced, tense, rapid heartbeat. If he had been watching a “tear-jerker” romance, his eyes would probably have been red and weepy. However, these are involuntary symptoms of emotive response, and do not wholly prove that one’s apparent emotional state is real emotion. (Does an actor, in an on-stage paroxysm of rage, truly feel anger? Not unless the actor is playing a suitable game of make-believe.)
Thus far, I have explored the idea that Charles’ reaction is quasi-emotional: imagined fear in response to an imagined danger. But this runs counter to the folk psychology theory of “suspension of disbelief”; that Charles “forgets” or “puts aside” that the slime is fictional, believes it to be real and reacts accordingly.
Yet, if Charles was to “react accordingly” to such a threat, why didn’t he flee the theatre, alert the authorities, attempt to thwart its advance, or perform any other action suitable to being menaced by a large, corrosive, semi-sentient green ooze?
In the introduction, Charles clearly knew he was watching a movie all along. He is not, therefore, stupid: that is, he recognised the movie-watching context for what it was and what it implied. He also appears to be in touch with reality: he is not irrational. He could differentiate between the real world of the cinema and the fictional world of the slime.
This seems to suggest that under the interpretation of “suspension of disbelief” above, Charles or any other movie-goer (or TV viewer, or reader, or computer gamer) is either stupid or insane for the duration of the movie (or programme, book or game!)
The argument some philosophers put forth to defend this states that any emotional response to a fiction is irrational, since even if only some emotional reactions can be considered irrational in this sense, fear must be one of them, since one of the components of rational fear is the belief that one is in danger.
One possible reply is to observe that in a make-believe world one is reacting to make-believe influences, and reacting in a way that make-believedly is rational with respect to the game world; one make-believedly reacts in a rational way to those influences.
Another suggestion could be that Charles had “lapses in disbelief”: brief periods of time during which he believed in the slime as a very real danger. But what would cause such spells of irrationality or stupidity? Intense emotional response, perhaps, but if up to then Charles rationally and clearly knew he was watching a movie, what could cause such an emotional response except an already existing lapse?
Additionally, Charles was still exhibiting involuntary symptoms of fear after the movie had finished, and even later may have reflected on the movie with a shudder or two. Where would the cause be for a lapse then?
Another suggestion is that Charles was uncertain that the slime was fictional, and half-believed it constituted a threat. However, this again implies that Charles did not recognise the movie-watching context he was in, which again alleges stupidity or irrationality on his part.
Suspension of Disbelief
Since the folk psychological concept of “suspension of disbelief” seems to imply stupidity and/or irrationality in the observer, either in brief or extended periods, and fails to explain how the observer can experience the same sort of responses in later contemplation of his observations, why is it such a common theory? What is actually meant by “suspension of disbelief”?
“Suspension of disbelief” can be directly mapped onto Walton’s process of building a fictional world based on a set of “rules” (i.e. imaginary and make-believe truths which are either explicitly or implicitly stated), adding the make-believe truths of one’s own participation in this world, and extending oneself into it. In the real world, one’s disbelief is unchanged; in the fictional world, it does not hold. It is, effectively, “suspended” to make way for the make-believe or imaginary truth that you do believe.
But what happens when I can’t suspend disbelief?
Let us assume Charles, in his discourse on The Green Slime, grumbles at one point about some idiot’s cellphone going off at a pivotal moment. Evidently, this real world event caused Charles to “fall out” of his game world, because it did not fit into the “rules”, and thus caused the world to collapse, at least briefly.
Some fictions I find harder to play along with than others right from the start. In folk terms, I have trouble suspending disbelief. In Walton’s terms, the make-believe truths required to form a fictional world to play in are either inconsistent or incomplete, making it difficult to form one and extend myself into it, and even if I do, said inconsistencies and absences cause the world to collapse.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel that Charles was neither irrational in evincing fear of the green slime, nor was he stupid in doing so. For Charles was not truly afraid; his was make-believe fear in response to a make-believe threat in a make-believe world.
Walton’s conception of fictional worlds seems to me a more accurate model of the folk psychological term “suspension of disbelief”, which in its original form implies either brief or sustained periods of stupidity or irrationality where one somehow “forgets” or “sets aside” the knowledge that some stimulus is fictional and thus has a real emotive response. The Walton definition also explains phenomena that the original definition seems to struggle with.
Being interested – and, in a make-believe way, emotionally involved – in some fictional worlds, I have considered the relationship between the fictional world of the author and that of the reader (or viewer, or participant), and concluded it to be that of an intersection, where both worlds share a subset of make-believe and imaginary truths.
Bibliography
Primary reference: Kendall Walton, Fearing Fictions, Journal of Philosophy vol. LXXV, no. 1, January 1978, pp5-27.
You may also find this work to be of interest: Kendall Walton, Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism, Critical Enquiry vol. 11, pp.246-277.
Posted in Articles (Writings,Non-Fiction) by R Cruickshank 22/07/07 10:49 AM Tags: essay, nonfiction, philosophy
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