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I took a film course a couple of years ago and my prof brought up the idea the most films fall into 2 categories they either try to recreate reality or they go the other direction and create fantastical universes that can't happen in real life. While this sounds like a fairly believable idea I've seen TV

shows and movies that don't really imo fit squarely in either category like "Louie" where it deals with real-life issues like his dating struggles, responsibilities as a dad, life a s a standup, etc but then there will be these surreal moments where Louie gets rejected by a woman and she flies away

in a helicopter. I mean on one hand you could say Louie CK's TV show is still capturing reality but more in sense of someone's subjective feelings rather than what is actually happening in real life, but on the other hand I feel it could go a bit into the fantasy territory as these absurdist moments

are symbolic of the character's thoughts and imagination rather than what actually exists. Would it be possible to say that some movies and TV shows aren't strictly meant to capture reality or fantasy but somewhere in between?

Definitely feasible for something to appear as both 'real' and fictional without being/not being either.

Look at any Bond movie; while he leads a 'real' life, drives a 'real' car, works for a 'real' organisation, a huge chunk of what he does is impossible or at the least infeasible. This doesn't shatter the 'reality' the viewer is in if done well, simply because even when dealing with something 'real', we are still able go suspend our disbelief to appreciate and enjoy the entertainment value of a car doing a barell roll in an alleyway or our hero surviving being shot with a sniper rifle then falling off a moving train into a river. It is still grounded in a familiarity and reality, and you wouldn't call it a 'fantasy' film despite the fact that impossible acts are commonplace. It doesn't seem 'unreal' at the time.

On the other hand, look at something like Avengers; that is fantasy, because although the places/cars/language is analogous to ours, we don't live in a world where people can fly in armoured suits or transform into giant green rage monsters, and while we suspend our disbelief for this as well, we do it in a different way; it's not to believe that these things can happen, it's to imagine that they might.

In other words, something with the premiese of the highly improbable is fantasy within a reality, while something with the premise of the blatantly impossible is reality seen through the lens of fantasy.

Or something: D

I think there is definitely a category for 'hyperbolic realism' where they show what reality feels like. (Louie, Man Seeking Woman, Herman's Head)

I think that most 'realistic' movies and tv shows are also not showing 'realism' but rather the public perception of what is 'realistic.' Most tv cop dramas fall into this category: they show you what most people think police procedure and criminal investigations look like.

I so nitpick current combat movies

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think there is definitely a category for 'hyperbolic realism' where they show what reality feels like. (Louie, Man Seeking Woman, Herman's Head)

I think that most 'realistic' movies and tv shows are also not showing 'realism' but rather the public perception of what is 'realistic.' Most tv cop dramas fall into this category: they show you what most people think police procedure and criminal investigations look like.

Yeah, if they where to show real computer hacking or tracking, we would be BORED.
Suspension of disbelief is needed for watching TV shows. I LOVE Law and order SVU, but I sometimes laugh at stuff in it. Like how quickly they get a conviction, how cut and dry everything is.

Their ability to gather/process DNA, fingerprints, and other forensics is beyond belief for people who work in that sort of career. As is the frequency with which witnesses talk to them...

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think there is definitely a category for 'hyperbolic realism' where they show what reality feels like. (Louie, Man Seeking Woman, Herman's Head)

I think that most 'realistic' movies and tv shows are also not showing 'realism' but rather the public perception of what is 'realistic.' Most tv cop dramas fall into this category: they show you what most people think police procedure and criminal investigations look like.

Yeah, if they where to show real computer hacking or tracking, we would be BORED.
Suspension of disbelief is needed for watching TV shows. I LOVE Law and order SVU, but I sometimes laugh at stuff in it. Like how quickly they get a conviction, how cut and dry everything is.

CSI New York used the actual equipment that real forensic crime labs use. Only the stuff in the show was older equipment that real labs had replaced and essentially 'donated' to the series. Their techniques were also mostly accurate, only they massively fudged the time scales everything happens in for obvious reasons. (I recall one of the behind the scenes features mentioning that real DNA analysis can take 2+ weeks in reality, rather than the one or two hours that would pass in 'CSI time')

And of course, real crime scene unit members aren't actually running around hunting down & arresting suspects!

But it was still an enjoyable show, and easily the best of the various CSI's.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think there is definitely a category for 'hyperbolic realism' where they show what reality feels like. (Louie, Man Seeking Woman, Herman's Head)

I think what you're looking at here, and what the OP described with his example for Louie is something close to magical realism, which focuses on real world issues, but will use fantastical elements. An famous example is Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which is about a hell of a lot of things, but at one point relates the experience of an immigrant from India to England singled out and suspected by police for no reason but his physical appearance. Except instead of simply being Indian looking, at this point he's actually been turned in to demon like figure, with horns and hooves.

I think that's just one example why the split between reality and fantasy is way more complex than the professor's claim mentioned in the OP. There's a lot of stuff like the above which has all kinds of overt fantasy but is still very much grounded in reality and is about exploring real world issues. On the other hand there's stuff like Bond and Jack Bauer, in which nothing specifically fantastical or supernatural ever happens, but is about absolutely nothing to do with reality.

 Jihadin wrote:
I so nitpick current combat movies

Doesn't everybody??


To the OP, I think that even shows like Louie are grounded in that "realism" category, because the events in the show, by and large, actually happened to him as a single dad. The show would go off into the fantastical realm if the woman who turns him down turns around and rides into the sunset on a velociraptor or something. But while a woman turning him down, hopping into a chopper and flying off seems unlikely to us, it's definitely in the realm of reality, should the right set of circumstances present themselves.


Just like the film class that I took, the teacher held the opinion that when you break down every movie, they are all about one thing: love. In his estimation, the only movie that he could come up with that didn't fit this "rule" was the movie Fight Club. What I'm saying is, movies are art... As art, people try to categorize them, as our two film class teachers have tried to (real vs. fantasy, love vs. something else) and while many people may agree with those categories, things aren't really black and white. Again, just because it may not seem realistic to me to have a woman turn me down and jump into a chopper to fly off, doesn't mean that hasn't happened to someone else, or isn't in the realm of possibility.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Just like the film class that I took, the teacher held the opinion that when you break down every movie, they are all about one thing: love. In his estimation, the only movie that he could come up with that didn't fit this "rule" was the movie Fight Club.

Heh, the rule your lecturer proposed reminded me of a tutorial I had for Economic History when I was at uni. The tutor asked a fairly open question, and then said people should be free to offer any answer they wanted, as there are no wrong answers. The first person answered with some total crap, and the lecturer paused for a second and said ‘Okay, that is actually wrong. I guess there are some wrong answers.’

Point being, I agree with what you were saying about subjectivity and I think there are no objectively correct answers, but there are still plenty of answers that are just plain wrong. Your teacher stating every film is about love is just plain wrong*. Similarly, I think the fantasy/reality divide suggested by the OP is similar just wrong.

Again, just because it may not seem realistic to me to have a woman turn me down and jump into a chopper to fly off, doesn't mean that hasn't happened to someone else, or isn't in the realm of possibility.

And that’s probably another reason the fantasy/reality divide doesn’t really work. While helicopters certainly do exist, the scene itself is fantastical, its certainly at least surrealist. I mean Louis goes in for the kiss, and the girl runs off, hopping in to a helicopter that appeared out of nowhere.

So yeah, technically it is realistic in that helicopters do exist, but they don’t just fly around looking for awkward dates so they land next to them and rescue people.



*How is 2001: A Space Odyssey about love? I suspect any effort to use the rule to examine films would result in a lot of time spent contorting the definition of the word love, and very little time spent producing insight in to the films in question.

Oh, and the exemption for Fight is just odd. Fight Club is about growing up enough in order to love someone - it isn’t strictly about love but it’s a lot closer than most movies.

 sebster wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Just like the film class that I took, the teacher held the opinion that when you break down every movie, they are all about one thing: love. In his estimation, the only movie that he could come up with that didn't fit this "rule" was the movie Fight Club.

Heh, the rule your lecturer proposed reminded me of a tutorial I had for Economic History when I was at uni. The tutor asked a fairly open question, and then said people should be free to offer any answer they wanted, as there are no wrong answers. The first person answered with some total crap, and the lecturer paused for a second and said ‘Okay, that is actually wrong. I guess there are some wrong answers.’

Point being, I agree with what you were saying about subjectivity and I think there are no objectively correct answers, but there are still plenty of answers that are just plain wrong. Your teacher stating every film is about love is just plain wrong*. Similarly, I think the fantasy/reality divide suggested by the OP is similar just wrong.

Your teachers talking bollocks. But his opinions can be in part repaired,

One could fashion an argument that most films are rooted in the primal raw emotional states: love/lust, fear, and hunger.
Cinema is a relatively crude mechanism and taps into very simple primal emotions. Greed is shown as a hungering greed (even if not for food). Most love is either parental or fairly crudely sexual to actually get its point across.

I doubt this occurred in every film, so its not a hard rule.

 Orlanth wrote:


Your teachers talking bollocks. But his opinions can be in part repaired,

One could fashion an argument that most films are rooted in the primal raw emotional states: love/lust, fear, and hunger.
Cinema is a relatively crude mechanism and taps into very simple primal emotions. Greed is shown as a hungering greed (even if not for food). Most love is either parental or fairly crudely sexual to actually get its point across.

I doubt this occurred in every film, so its not a hard rule.

See, here's where this instructor went with it...

Greed = Love of money (most usually... the greedy guy in the movies really only cares about money, and feth anyone in the way of getting it)

In most horror movies, the idiotic cast does stupid things that ultimately gets most of them killed because there is a form of love within the group (usually, there's at least one couple)

Tony Montana turns into what he does because of his love of coke and cash.
Don Corleone does what he does because he loves his family
That paralyzed dude in Avatar, which is a Pocahontas rip off, does what he does because he falls in love with the blue chick. (by the same token, John Smith does what he does in the movie because he falls for Pocahontas)
Ray Kinsella, ultimately acts the way he does because he still loves his father (One could also argue that he loves the game of baseball)
Coach White in "McFarland USA" conducts himself through much of the movie because he "loves" the kids.


Ultimately, I agree with you that cinema itself is a relatively crude medium for exploring the finer points of humanity.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
See, here's where this instructor went with it...

Greed = Love of money (most usually... the greedy guy in the movies really only cares about money, and feth anyone in the way of getting it)

In most horror movies, the idiotic cast does stupid things that ultimately gets most of them killed because there is a form of love within the group (usually, there's at least one couple)

Tony Montana turns into what he does because of his love of coke and cash.
Don Corleone does what he does because he loves his family
That paralyzed dude in Avatar, which is a Pocahontas rip off, does what he does because he falls in love with the blue chick. (by the same token, John Smith does what he does in the movie because he falls for Pocahontas)
Ray Kinsella, ultimately acts the way he does because he still loves his father (One could also argue that he loves the game of baseball)
Coach White in "McFarland USA" conducts himself through much of the movie because he "loves" the kids.

Yeah, that's what I mean by saying it only works by contorting the definition of the word love. By opening up love to mean love of anything, we’ve actually ended up just with a fairly obtuse way of describing motivation. Which leaves us with a statement that in all films characters have motivations… which is not useful



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orlanth wrote:
One could fashion an argument that most films are rooted in the primal raw emotional states: love/lust, fear, and hunger.
Cinema is a relatively crude mechanism and taps into very simple primal emotions. Greed is shown as a hungering greed (even if not for food). Most love is either parental or fairly crudely sexual to actually get its point across.

I doubt this occurred in every film, so its not a hard rule.

I think that’s a pretty interesting insight, and one that makes a lot of sense. Film strips away nuance and complexity from motive and puts it in a more basic state. You say this is because film is crude, but I think that’s probably unfairly critical – I prefer another word you use in there – primal.

And as you say it's not a hard rule, and I think that's fine - I think it's in the act of chasing some kind of universality that lots of insights start getting contorted to the point where they're not useful.