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Re: CHAT: models and miniatures

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 11, 2001, 9:19
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

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Irina Rempt <ira@...>