What is the more logical approach to analyze a movie?
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 6:21 pm
- What is the more logical approach to analyze a movie and its secondary literature?
- Suspension of disbelief is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people's relationships to art. It refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible and to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment [1]. That means that the films and TV shows are considered documentary footage and books are treated as if they were real stories, historical records, official spec sheets, etc [2]
- The literary approach treats the films and TV shows as a mere "depiction", or "dramatic re-enactment" of a world which exists only in the author's mind. [3]
- Suspension of disbelief, beside its dogmatic problems [4] is not able to deal with inconsistence and visual errors, especially in special effects, that can’t be explained, like the apparently different sizes of a ship or base, caused by the use of different big models in the course of one and the same movie or series or the reuse of the same models and images of ships, bases, cities or even whole planets or the replacement of roles. Suspension of disbelief would demand that one accept that a ship or base is able to shrink or deepen or that different species have built independently of each other ships, bases or cities or have planets, which are looking all the same. Devotees of that approach are trying to find explanations for such errors, which are not seldom not only not plausible but also hilarious and inane.
Those, who are against that approach, think that such result is not satisfying. Suspension of disbelief is a lazy man method, with which one simply ignores all inconsistency to get a non-ambiguous material for a furthergoing analyses.
The literary approach on the other side has its difficulties to deal with the question, what the author has wanted to say, especially if that, what he says makes no or only little sense, especially if he talks about technical affairs but has no clue what he is saying. That results in dialogues, in which plans are made, which are – from a scientifically point of view – impossible but are working nevertheless. Also at that approach, devotees are trying to find explanations for such errors and can produce only seldom plausible explanations. Often they find, as the devotees of the Suspension of disbelief approach, that everyone in the galaxy – although they are able to build huge and complex starships and operate and maintain them - is stupid because nobody is able to see, that what was planned couldn’t have worked, but because it has worked nevertheless, the other side has to be more stupid.
- The historical approach treats the movie as the film adaptation of events, that have really happened. Those film adaption have their flaws because the producer of the films don’t even know what exactly has happened. They are depending on historical documents and traditions, which they evaluate. But, as it is with historical documents, they are fragmentary and the producers are trying, like an historian which has also only fragmentary evidence of the past, to get a whole picture. But because of the gaps in his results and his own knowledge, sometimes he simply guess, what could have happened and fills the gap with what he thinks, could have happened.
One also has to consider, that the data, a producer has available, are only seldom in his own language. They have to be translated. But that is difficult sometimes. When a producer reads the protocol of a briefing and don’t understand the used terms – because they are not translatable, because our own science is not so far, that we would even have terms for those things, from which they have spoken, the producer replace the recorded dialogue with his own dialogue. Sometimes, that results in absurd dialogues.
Sometimes a producer has also to consider his budget and therefore cut certain elements of a story or combines different elements of a story. While for example Star Trek plays in its different series always only onboard of one and the same ship, one could assume, that the missions are executed by different Starfleet crews. But because it would be too costly to cast for each new mission a new crew and build new models, all the Starfleet missions are projected on one ship with one crew. That could explain, why a ship is at one episode at the one border of its affiliation and already at the next episode at the other border and why one crew can have so many adventures.
That approach would also explain the visual mistakes. That are simply mistakes. The FX department are only human beings and as such, are making also mistakes. All what is shown, is only the interpretation of that department of the data they have. But because they have never seen things, to which they should produce their special effects, they also can only guess. And sometimes, the producer comes and says, that he thinks, that a special effect, although it is realistic – is not spectacular enough. That’s why cars always explode in Hollywood after a crash and why these explosions don’t look like an exploding car would look.
The devotees of the historical approach knows, that with their approach, they don’t always get non-ambiguous results. But they think, that this is acceptable because that reflects only the uncertainty of life. Most scientists, which don’t have the luck, that their field is calculable and provable in laboratories have to deal with such uncertainties. They think, one has to reduce what was seen in a movie to its basics. In a versus debate, one should only compare the basics of one franchise with the basics of the other franchise and not the details because they are uncertain.
Insofar, they treat a movie similar to the film adaption of historical traditions from times, when no video cameras existed. But not as a documentary but as an entertainment.