Re: CHAT: models and miniatures

En réponse à bjm10@CORNELL.EDU:

>
> Entertainment is the point!!!  The fictionality of a fiction in no way
> detracts from its ability to entertain.  I don't have to believe that
> a
> fiction is real for it to entertain me.  Indeed, that strikes me as a
> very strange way to be ultimately quite hostile to the idea of
> fiction--an inability to distinguish between fiction and "lies".
>
(sorry to pop up in a discussion between two other people, but this point is
interesting)

Strangely enough, my boyfriend uses this reason to explain why science-fiction
and fantasy cannot entertain him: he cannot enjoy something he cannot believe
to be real, or at least to be possible and realistic, *here and now*. And he
does compare science-fiction and fantasy with lies.

I always found it a quite narrow-minded view of things, quite strange compared
to his usual character.

If we use the term of "lie", I think on the contrary that science-fiction and
fantasy are less lying than realistic fiction. At least, they don't try to make
us believe that something like that could happen in our world, but they just
describe something which is self-contained, something that stands up its own
constraints. Realistic fiction, on the contrary, pretends that something is
happening *here and now*, while we know very well that it's only fiction,
that's to say unreal. If there's a lie, it's there that it takes place. Worse
are historic movies, since they cannot possibly reflect exactly what really
happened (knowledge of the past is inherently imperfect, even direct witnesses
don't have a perfect memory and witness only part of a situation). Still, don't
take the term "lie" as a judgement, I'm not saying that realistic fiction is
less worth than unrealistic fiction, just that if the term of "lie" has to be
used as an argument (like my partner does sometimes), it can be turned around
with more value against what it was supposed to defend. And I do enjoy both
science-fiction and realistic fiction. I'm not interested in genres but in
specific movies.

Well, let's end with this statement which is not only out of the subject of the
original discussion, but also out of the subject of the list itself. In short,
just my two cents...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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