Willing Suspension Of Disbelief - Coleridge to Walt Disney

The temporary acceptance as believable of events or characters that would ordinarily be seen as incredible. Willing Suspension Of Disbelief is a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Suspension of disbelief often applies to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres.

According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is an essential ingredient for any kind of storytelling. With any film, the viewer has to ignore the reality that they are viewing a two-dimensional moving image on a screen and temporarily accept it as reality in order to be entertained. Black-and-white films provide an obvious early example that audiences are willing to suspend disbelief, no matter how unreal the images appear, for the sake of entertainment. With the exception of totally colour blind people no person viewing these films sees the real world without colour, but they are still willing to suspend disbelief and accept the images in order to be entertained.

Animations and comics

One contemporary example of suspension of disbelief is the audience's acceptance that Superman hides his identity from the world by simply donning a pair of glasses, conservative clothing, and acting in a "mild-mannered" fashion. Not only is the disguise so thin as to be ridiculous. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen constantly suspect Clark Kent of being Superman, yet when obvious evidence was right in their faces – such as times when Clark was missing his glasses – they never see the resemblance. Walt Disney comics are a classic example Mickey( mouse) has dog as his pet (pluto).

Psychological critic Norman Holland points to a neuroscientific explanation. When we hear or watch any narrative, our brains go wholly into perceiving mode. They turn off our systems for acting or planning to act. With them go our systems for assessing reality. That’s why humans have such trouble recognizing lies. We first believe, and then have to make a conscious effort to disbelieve.

In a nutshell, the willing suspension of disbelief means  the audience know that what they are seeing on stage or screen is a pretend reality, but they are pretending that they do not know that.  They accept the given premises of the story being told in order to empathize with the actors.  An example would be knowing that Superman cannot, in reality, fly – and then pretending that you don’t know that.  The storyteller tells the audience that, in this story, a man can fly. The audience suspends its disbelief and goes along with that premise.