Suspension of disbelief
Suspension of disbelief is the phenomenon whereby readers or viewers believe in the reality depicted by a book, a movie, or a TV series. They can truly enter into the story, experience it as if it were real, and feel the same emotions as the characters do.
I think you remember the first season of Game of Thrones, don’t you? A bloodbath. From its release in 2011 to its controversial ending in 2019, the entire series garnered attention due to a specific characteristic: it presented a fictional world governed, in some ways, by the same dynamics as the real one — a world where the protagonists die. It was a riot of intrigues, swords, and deceitful traps that always ended the same way. With the departure of someone we thought was meant to have a crucial role in the story. They did have a role, but unfortunately, it involved passing away.
Initially, people couldn’t see the logical thread connecting each fallen character to the giant narrative puzzle: somehow, in reality, the deaths were “predictable,” but the audience lacked all the valuable information to understand how it would have happened and how it would have affected the plot of GoT. Some research cited in an article by the Italian newspaper “Repubblica” refer to this element as one of the cornerstones of success of GoT.
In the series, death is everywhere. Sometimes it was difficult to create a barrier — or better a wall, echoing GoT — between the screen and the real feelings. I almost had a panic attack on at least a couple of occasions, and I don’t think I was the only one. As much as I have always been a fan of horror movies, Tarantino-style bloodshed, and grew up with Rambo, what I was watching seemed like… too much. Suddenly, the tacit agreement between the author and the content consumer seemed to be pushing too far. However, catharsis feeds on these things too. After a while, I got used to it: the macabre side, as well as death, composed a melody that resembled the one of the real world. Violence ceased to be a problem. It was part of GoT. Then the series ended — it was a nightmare, to be honest — and we forgot about it. Occasionally, someone dusts off a line or mentions a character, but I think the trauma of the ending is still too fresh in most people’s minds. Certainly, it is in mine.
But let’s talk about something else. At the end of March 2021, after a few days of hesitation, I read Don DeLillo’s novel “The Silence”, driven mainly by the reflections contained in Valerio Bassan’s newsletter, Ellissi. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I had just discovered that I could now do several operations with my ATM card at the tobacco shop downstairs. I was in love with technology and proud of what seemed to be a real breakthrough. I’m talking as a person who lives in Italy, and I know how many of you can relate. Technology has turned obsolete by the time we decide to use it.
So, I started to read the book, because DeLillo is always worth it, even when he makes you have waking nightmares.” In less than a hundred pages, “The Silence” portrays a post-pandemic world in which screens suddenly go dark. From cell phone ones to those that control airport traffic, everything goes blind, leaving us without the technology on which we have relied for every aspect of our lives. Shivers down the spine: who could we be if everything that defines us in our society falls into oblivion? How could we pay, care for ourselves, how could we eat? What will become of our lives, our work, and all the certainties to which we were firmly clinging? What would we do without them? They allowed us to move forward: when the pandemic took away most of them, we faltered, and we still are.
The pandemic forced us into a suspension of disbelief: we learned what could happen. It materialized our fears, the fear of death, of course, but many others have followed. It opened the gates of Arkham Asylum and set free collective phobias, which no longer live only between printed pages: they hover among us, material and powerful specters that could end up dominating us. It is quite easy to believe that sooner or later a gigantic shutdown will come. It makes little or no sense to ask why: it would make more sense to ask ourselves what could we do “if” or “when”.
*I wrote this in March 2021. It was a very long post, and I now edited and shortened it. There’s something I want to add, as well. I recently read in a book that the human race has always been good at history, but poor in foreseeing and anticipating what will come. We love to wonder about our future unless the future it’s dark, blind, windy, too cold, or too hot. Unless the future is ominous, scary, and well, guess what? It’s exactly what our future looks like: wars, global crisis, climate change.
We still are in the “suspension of disbelief” mood. We know many things can and will happen. We know they won’t happen on a screen. They will affect our routine, our dreams, our expectations, and our life in every single aspect. Just as like as the pandemic did, the war between Ukraine and Russia, and whatever. This “suspension of disbelief” mood could help us to eventually reach a new awareness. It seems legitimate to hope this time we won’t waste our chance.
