It's unrealistic, your point?

[Antiyonder]

Just curious.

Viewers will tend to have reasons not to like certain shows. Like unlikable characters, lousy scripts/dialouge, etc.

What really gets me curious is why shows/cartoons are criticized for not being realistic? After all the point of television is to take a break from reality?


Just thought I'd see your opinions.

[HellCat]

I think fantasy based entertainment needs at least some realistic elements to help to try and get the viewer to believe that was is shown 'is possible'. If you throw a load of stuff at a viewer which they know isn't real and expect them to just accept it, the general reaction will likely be "Gee, that's cool...but it wasn't real". I think that's why stories like Harry Potter and the Matrix are so popular. They have out-there-elements, but they're grounded in reality. We've all had deja vu moments. The Matrix takes that idea and uses it in the plot by saying it's a hiccup on the part of the system. Harry Potter flies around in the kind of car you'd find in any British neighbourhood.

[guinaevere]

Personally, I can deal with suspension of disbelief for entertainment. To a point.

My biggest issue is in video games, when a boss keeps coming back, as a larger, regenerated boss. First, if you beat the crud out of a guy, if he comes right back at you, he'd be worn and weaker, not stronger.

But the biggest problem is in games like, Resident Evil 2, when Billy Birkin keeps getting bigger and bigger... it's completely, absolutely, impossible. Fine. I can deal with his body changing, if he's 'mutating genetically'.

However, matter can not be created. You can't just sprout new limbs, without losing something somewhere else. There has to be compensation.
Say he was 200 lbs as Birkin, he simply can NOT become some 1 ton blob without ingesting 1800 pounds of something. It's not possible!

whew. I said it, and I'm proud.

[Wounded_Dragon]

My generalized theory (I'm sure there are notable exceptions, but I can't think of them at the moment)

Realistic/Unrealistic in a story depends on setting and character. If you have highly unrealisic setting, you need realistic characters. If you have highly unrealistic characters, you need a realistic setting. In between, there's a balanced mix, specific to individual's tastes.

[Russkafin]

I will never forget a class I had, in college, called Theater Arts, that I took to fulfill a liberal arts credit... the teacher was hilarious... On the first day of class, he had us take out a piece of paper and write down movies, TV shows, or plays that we thought were "realistic."

Lots of people wrote down stuff like Friends, and Seinfeld... and he was like, "Really? So, in your lives, music plays in the background? You have theme songs? There are commercial breaks every few minutes? All your problems are wrapped up in half an hour? There's a laugh track when someone makes a witty comment?"

One thing that no one quite understood was that someone put down the musical "Cats." It's a play about talking/singing cats, folks!!!

But, the point he made from all this was, that people tend to determine that something is "realistic" not by necessarily how similar it is to actual life, but by how much they can relate to, identify with, and feel for the characters.

[SilverKnight]

Suspension of disbelief doesn't cover outright stupidity.

One of my English teachers once told me, "An audience has no problem believing the impossible, but they can't believe the improbable." Even if a TV show or movie is based entirely around an idea that is essentially impossible in real life, the comings and goings of the story have to make some kind of logical sense. For instance, I have no problem believing in stories that someone is capable of flying, but I'm not going to swallow someone happening to sprout wings overnight without reason or explanation. It makes no sense, and therefore the whole thing rings false and is, well, unbelievable. That goes for anything, fantasy stories or otherwise. (And that is also why so many horror movies are ridiculed because of asinine things the characters do. "Oh, look, there's a huge blood trail leading to the bathroom. Let me follow it!" Please.)

In the end, though, I guess it's just a matter of preference. >shrug<