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'Once upon a time'
Some people may be familiar with the phrase “suspension of disbelief,” but I first encountered it in a screenwriting class many years ago. We learned that it means the writer must ensure that the early moments of a film, or any drama, lead the viewer to temporarily reject what he or she knows to be factual and true in order to accept the claims of the story.
To me this was simply an explanation of something we find ourselves doing all the time: putting aside truth for fiction, if only for a couple of hours. We enjoy it in the theater and we so often accept it as entertainment. In order to enjoy stories, the audience makes the semiconscious decision to put aside its disbelief and accept the presented premise as being real for the duration of the story. Hasn’t the opener “Once upon a time …” worked forever in this role?
One evening some time later, I saw a famous New York stage play that included many scenes of domestic conflict and colliding personal interests, all centered around an aging man losing his capabilities. As you can imagine, seeing the play was a depressing experience. The story was well directed, well acted, and very convincing, but there was so much anger, self-interest, and egotism in the story that I felt shaken. After the play, I remembered that screenwriting class and the role of “suspending disbelief.” I realized that I had accepted, to some degree, the shouted drama as indicating that conflict and decay are a natural part of life—but was I going to continue to accept as real that picture of conflict? Absolutely not!
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