EMMA - Field Research 14

As relative the term 'realism' might be, even the 'real-live-action' movies are not as real as they appear. Marlyn mentioned the assumption we viewers take on when seeing an actor. Knowing, that this man might be in his normal life a simple father who takes care of his wife and children, we still see the actor as the person he is playing.
With this in mind, I scrolled across an article which searches out the 'realism' in Science-Fiction. Even on a movieset, which is often no real-life location, we viewers are asked to place ourselves into that location for now. We are already requested to suspend disbelief.

The subject in the following is how we may identify and how we should weigh the criteria for what is implausible, improbable or impossible enough to impair our suspension of disbelief. Almost every fiction, as already mentioned, strives to overstate and to put emphasis on the extraordinary. There are also TV series of all genres, not only comedy, that are deliberately made without continuity and hence in a way not to be taken too seriously. An extreme example is "South Park" where Kenny, with exceptions in more recent episodes, is killed every time.

But what is the special quality a televised fiction must have in order to appear realistic? It seems as if a drama set in our present world and time has a clear advantage in that it apparently shows people, places, things and situations that we are familiar with from our every-day life. We should easily be able to unmask it if the depiction were flawed. In this sense some critics even go as far as rejecting any kind of science fiction because, in their opinion, it shows an utopian world and, in particular, science and technology that deviates from what they think is correct. Therefore, already the basic setting of science fiction as something that does not exist in our world or time should fall under the category "impossible". They don't manage to suspend disbelief (or don't even attempt to). Moreover, I am surprised that so many laymen out there seem to have the knowledge in physics and engineering that would allow them to recognize fictional technology as unattainable along the lines of "impossible speeds and starships defying gravity". Ironically, the share of science fiction fans among real-world scientists and engineers seems to be much higher than among the "ordinary" population.