Once upon a time, someone mentioned how irritating it is when movies or television shows add sound effects to on-screen computer simulations. As actors type, or as something new appears on their monitors, these sounds begin to chime, bong, whoosh, ding, beep, and well, all sorts of creative audio signals that apparently are needed to communicate to the audience that the computer was DOING something.
My friend does not find himself alone when mentioning this apparently widespread annoyance. A quote from Mashable prophetically states,
“There is a reason why our computers don’t make those sounds. Because no one would buy a computer that acts like that.”
As I expect that my article will not bend the ears of Hollywood, we’re stuck with these auditory assaults, I suppose. It does bring to mind other ‘offenses’ that I have noticed every so often, however.
I read once, that when watching film creations and television shows, we should always view them with suspended reality firmly in place. Without this temporary mental adjustment, we will never allow ourselves to enjoy most films. I’ll put forward one example that comes to mind; The John Wick movie franchise.
I do need to state that the movies are quite violent which may have influenced me somewhat. But these rules seem always to be in play.
- Hand-to-hand entanglements and numerous gunfights will exhibit bad-guy/good-guy ratios of 50 to 1.
- The number and the timing of these battles do not matter as John is always unharmed – or at least only mildly wounded.
- John never needs to rest or slow down. He can always perform at 110% without a moment's shortness of breath.
- Enemies are always very poor marksmen.
- Enemies are always disorganized and incompetent.
- Critical injuries will never occur to the protagonist but will always happen to the antagonist. Falling off buildings might cause pain, but the regenerative abilities of the good guy are limitless. John will not be permanently harmed when hit by a bus, but the villains will easily be silenced forever when toppling down 3 stairs.
I did not enjoy the movie.
I can, now that I know, blame this on my lack of incorporating the reality-is-suspended mindset before streaming.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that adjusting our state of mind to accept the impossible for the duration of a good movie is a bad thing at all. I can’t imagine watching Jurassic Park without it!
And even with a few violent scenes, who could resist the pull of Tom Cruise in all those creative but completely implausible antics on display in Mission Impossible(s). I've been told there will be at least 2 more!
But I now wonder if our sense of suspended reality has become more commonplace than might be good for us. I think that it is possible that we allow this pausing of reality into our lives every day without a streaming device in sight.
I think we sometimes use this to trick ourselves into believing that something that's wrong, isn't.
I believe that this happens without conscious thought. It could possibly be that it happens to protect us from being overwhelmed by what we see in the world. It might even be used to convince us that all is well.
This is completely understandable. We are exposed to things all around us that would get us committed for life if we were to call them good. To be affected deeply in our core by every single evil thing we see would only serve to paralyze us. We would be helpless to make much of a difference, anyway.
So then. Some will say that the only thing we need to change is the word "temporarily". Let's just adopt suspended reality and stop there.
A 24-hour news cycle of doom and gloom would second that motion.
The 'what difference would it make' crowd would vote, "Aye".
I can only pray that the Jesus following crowd would say, "Wait! We CAN make a difference and someone will see a little less pain in their life because of us."
I can imagine a day when we might look so different that others would ask about it. I can imagine a day when the world might have an option to the doom/gloom broadcasts by featuring the incredible displays of love by simple, ordinary people like you and me.
I will suspend reality when enjoying my next movie. But then, I want to be aware and to notice when someone has clearly been beaten by reality. To me, offering to do something about their pain, even if that means hand-holding silence, is following Jesus.
The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40
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