Great letter on Roger Ebert's site

[Jeff Haas]

Roger Ebert's website not only has his movie reviews, but attracts some great responses from readers (at times, including Richard Kaufman). Here's one letter discussing the "Suspension of Disbelief" as it applies to movies.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... /908179993

[Jonathan Townsend]

Thanks - includes a concise description of what we call "misdirection" as well. Bravo Roger!

[Dick Christian]

Jonathan,

Certainly concise, but also reflective of the typical layman's shallow and superficial understanding of "misdirection." The idea that "misdirection" means nothing more than "keeping the audience's gaze exactly where you want it, and nowhere else" hardly begins to even scratch the surface. Roger may know his movies, but he obviously has a lot to learn about magic.

[Bob Gerdes]

Guys,
As Jeff noted, that letter wasn't written by Roger Ebert. It's a letter submitted by one of his readers: Robin Thompson from San Diego.

[Eric Fry]

Frankly, I think Ebert's letter writer is confused. The original concept of suspension of disbelief is that it was willingly granted by the reader.

You knew you were reading a work of fantasy and therefore you didn't criticize it for a lack of reality. You could criticize it for other reasons but not for that. It may be a lousy poem but not because it has a dragon in it.

Suspension of disbelief has nothing to do with misdirecting our attention, distracting us so that we don't notice certain details. No one can fail to notice that Superman is based on the unreal premise of a creature from another planet who can fly and stop bullets on Earth.

I think the Ebert letter writer is right that the concept of suspension of disbelief shouldn't be used as an excuse for bad writing. But bad writing is a separate matter.