Mendeh

Willing suspension of disbelief happens with any sort of fiction; plays, books, operas, storytelling of any kind.

I think that there's a fundamental difference between what goes on in a theatre and what goes on in a church, which is that in a theatre the actors and audience don't lose themself completely to the fiction they're creating. The actor playing Othello never ends up strangling the actor that plays Desdemona; they exert control over what they're experiencing. Similarly, the audience don't get up and lynch Iago.
Actors control their selves whilst they're telling the story, and know it's not really happening, even if they're crying their eyes out or screaming blue murder. On the other hand, priests don't believe in a fiction; they 'know' what they believe is 'true', as do the congregation.
The difference comes from the perception of the story's genre; for actors and the audience, it is a story; for priests and the congregation, it is the gospel truth, not a fiction.

Stanislavskii, who talks a lot about this, is also very clear that actors should never become their characters completely. They should 'live the part' but they should never become one with the part; an actor who does that, he says, is too dangerous to be allowed on the stage; they could hurt somebody becuase they've lost control.

Perchance

Ah, all right. Since in your original post you said that WSOD "is not similar at *all* to religious faith," and then "faith" with no qualifier like "I think" I assumed you thought there was only one kind of faith and were being dogmatic about it. My bad.

That said, I have met a few people who wavered back and forth between 'thinking' it and 'not thinking' it- one woman, for example, who believed in Heaven most of the time and the Devil most of the time, but doubted the Devil more than she doubted Heaven, and kept changing her mind. I think reality (as I see it, of course ) can occasionally break through to people like this, and that then their desperate attempts to keep their faith become more like WSOD.

I think that, if I were closer to the believer than the non-believer side of the equation, I might be one of these people myself. I feel ridiculous when I pray, because I'm also saying to myself at the same time "You're talking to the air." I can imagine that these people might think the same thing occasionally, and just decide not to give in.

-Perchance.

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

seebs

No problem; the main point I was getting at was that the underlying model of WSOD is that we're talking about something where you come into the scenario being explicitly aware that you are about to experience fiction.

Perchance

Thanks. I'm glad I didn't offend you.

I don't know how often it happens with "religions," but I think there are some scenarios (such as with cults and conspiracy theories) where some people start off laughing and thinking it's fiction, but get more and more into it, and end up believing in it. The line between faith and WSOD isn't as clearly-drawn (in my opinion).

Just an idea, though.

-Perchance.

seebs

Hmm. I think that still depends on *SOMEONE* believing it's real. But it may not; I guess I could imagine someone getting sucked in.

Still seems pretty weird to me; at least for me, WSOD is pretty much an impenetrable barrier around a temporary suspension of rules, and I don't trust anything that comes out of it.

Perchance

I had a professor (English) I believe it may have happened to. Her speciality was conspiracy theory, and when I took a class on it with her, at first she simply discussed, for example, the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's assassination, always cautioning us to take them with a grain of salt.

But as we got further on in the class, I guess she decided she could 'trust us,' and her pet theories came out of the closet. By the end of the class, she had told us that the MJ theory was real, that Reagan used his voice to give people seizures and that Bush (Sr.) used his voice to control people's minds, and that the government killed anyone who asked questions about Roswell.

Fun stuff.

Believe me, I wish she would have decided that WSOD was a barrier that could not be crossed .

[Edited because my spelling has decided to go to non-existent hell lately].

-Perchance.

[ June 22, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>