Suspension of Disbelief

It's funny sometimes how things come full circle, or at least continue to decline. In the early days of television, some conservative commentators worried that the fact that police dramas always ended with the bad guys being caught and punished might one day convince the general public that all crimes (and indeed all problems) really could be resolved in just 46 minutes (allowing for commercials). Of course, this was garbage; most people knew the difference between television and fact, and no one really expected to have Joe Friday show up and solve real crimes. In recent times, however, the highly popular "CSI" television series really have begun to impact the prosecution of real crimes, since juries are starting to believe that crime scene investigators really have all of the cool-looking computers and bleeding-edge equipment shown on the programs. If the crime lab people on TV can use DNA evidence to know, within minutes, who the bad guy is, then the people in real life should be able to do that, too! And if they don't have such conclusive evidence, then obviously the defendant must be innocent...

It's just as bad for medical dramas and legal dramas, too, where everything is always clean, neat, and ready to go; no gray areas, no ethical dilemmas (unless that's the plot of today's show), no issues with red tape, court delays, insurance issues, stacks of paperwork or other things that don't make for good television. Why exactly people can't remember that these same media offerings also include such improbabilities as characters who never have to visit the toilet (unless that's part of the plot), parking spaces that are always open right in front of wherever the character needs to go, cell phones that always get perfect reception, restaurants that always have a table available and so on is beyond me. Granted that all acting (television, movies, stage plays, whatever) requires the audience to suspend their disbelief (you're not actually looking through a magic arch into somebody's living room, for example), no one has ever been able to explain why people fail to reinstate their disbelief once the program is over...

An article on the MSN Money site points out that this now applies to money issues, too. The fact is, people earning $86,000 per year (taking home about $5,600 a month) DO NOT live in quarters that rent for $5,000 a month, and young people on minimum wage jobs (or working as street performers, artists or whatever) do not live in quarters that cost $2,200 a month. They also don't spend 150% of their take-home pay on clothing, drive cars that cost more than my house, or eat out at $200-a-plate restaurants every night. Yet one could easily get that impression from a variety of popular television programs and movies – none of which have even a nodding acquaintance with reality.

Nor do matters improve any when we consider the portrayal of professionals. Not all doctors and lawyers earn what the senior partner of a top Wall Street firm makes, and nearly all of them have to deal with insurance and/or collections issues unknown on the small screen. Social dynamics are another area where a poor grip on reality seems to prevail: it's hard being the only poor member of a well-heeled social group, and such an individual will generally have the unappealing options of being excluded from group activities they can't afford or mooching off the better-off members of the group.

So why am I ranting on about all of this? What harm can these skewed perceptions do to our society in the real world? Well, just as CSI viewers can throw off jury trials with their unrealistic expectations, so can people with preposterous ideas about money throw off the economy. Just as sales of Dalmatian puppies shot up after “101 Dalmatians” hit theaters (despite the fact that they really don’t make good pets), and enrollments in cooking schools skyrocket every time there’s a “Next Celebrity Chef” or “Next Food Network Star” series running (despite the fact that most people can’t make it as a professional chef, and would be ill-advised to try), so to do people who actually believe in these preposterous fictional lifestyles attempt to buy houses they can’t afford, cars they will never make the payments on, and consumer goods they do not need…

Unless we can get them to re-engage their common sense, bring their disbelief back online once they leave the theater, and stop thinking that life is anything like TV…