One by Harry Nilsson
A film or television show’s audience often forgets that the writer and director have made a very clear decision on how to portray the world on screen. Will it be similar to the world perceived by us? Will it be fantastical, with a whole set of its own subjective rules, or will it be more like the real world but with a few conceits to keep the narrative moving? Unless a film is action-adventure or fantasy, or ultra-real to the point of mimicking the banalities of everyday life, most movies fall under that third category, a duplicate of our world with a few conceits that through the suspension of disbelief, the audience will ignore—if what they’re watching is good. This style is called realism.
Realism, I and many others often forget, is a chosen style like any other. It’s a subjective form of reality as it appears to the viewer of a movie, a reader of a book. The artist here is attempting to express not the experience of the contemporary world, but the narrator’s experience of the contemporary world, a therefore skewed and opinionated version. Some of the best art is often seen, in one way or another, as a mirror to our own lives, something that makes us feel uncomfortable, something that forces us to question ourselves, our own actions, beliefs. This mirror could be through parable, fantasy, but it’s often employed through the style of realism, of a world that the audience could easily imagine inhibiting themselves.
It’s worth asking, and I know I’m not the first to do so, why people wish to see their lives represented in fiction? Where does this desire come from? Does it give us a sense of community, purpose, to see lives similar to our own existing within a constructed plot? Or is it merely a form of escaping our own lives, our own repetitive routines; even the most realist of films rarely show the boring nature of the day-to-day, instead choosing specific scenes that will move the story along, the characters’ development along. It would be a shame to view all forms of narrative fiction as merely just something to pass the time. There’s surely a deeper psychological impetus that drives audiences to these stories, to see lives similar to theirs, dogs and cats similar to theirs, professions and hobbies similar to theirs, on screen, on the stage, on the page.
Some believe that art has no place for people who live life, whose existences are full of adventure, friends, familial ties. This could be. I’ve met a lot of people that are happy in their careers, social lives, family lives, that don’t really care to spend time watching lives represented in narrative. Why not just go and enjoy life as it is right in front of us? Why watch a Belgian film that follows a drug addict who sells his child into prostitution, European Art Cinema, a film of that ilk? It would surely be a waste of time. Even more, they’re also not particularly interested in commercial film, literature, television. They’ll watch shows here and there, when there’s nothing else going on, but that’s probably just because that’s what most other people in their communities do, it’s the norm. When these shows and movies are over, they aren’t given much thought. Life continues, it continues in all its adventurous glory that is closed off to so many. Reflection isn't necessary when one constantly lives in the present. Reflection is only there for those who seek it.
Is it then true that a specialized interest in narrative fiction is reserved for the lonely? For the curious? For the lost? For all three? Do tidy, edited stories allow people to feel that others exist, that people are out there who are having similar experiences to them, that there are worlds they can peek into as an observer but never dare to be a part of? The vicarious pleasure of narrative fiction can cause, albeit for a little while, a sense of the other, a sense of the world we’re missing out on, that exists but, due to undesirable personal qualities, can never be grasped.
There’s another question that’s more relevant to the present day. What happens when not much world is going on for anyone anyway (think covid lockdowns in big cities), when most people spend their free time engaging in composed narratives on their phones, e-readers, laptops, televisions? Moreover, what happens when, as is often the case with social media, the stories we spend our time engaging with are not forthright about their status as fiction, stories that pose as direct-documentary but are in fact constructed narratives? What effect does this have on people’s psyche, this never-ending lack of clarity of what’s real or fake? My immediate instinct is to answer: mass hysteria, mass confusion.
This supposed problem stems, without a doubt, from whatever drives humans to be interested in the directed, constructed, fictitious lives of others, people we see on screen but will never meet, who exist stronger in our consciousness than in reality; we enter a phase where there isn’t much difference.