Sully leads us to a little literary discussion. Brandon Watson gives us the "paradox of fiction":
Although I enjoy movies, the power of the visual is such that I cannot really identify with the characters, because they are so not me, which can be plainly seen as well as heard in their voices. When the ideas are expressed in written words, I think it is easier to lose oneself directly in those ideas. If I see Brad Pitt on the screen, I may enjoy the action and the movie and even feel for the character, but I know completely and profoundly that that is not me. When reading the thoughts and actions of a protagonist on the printed page, on the other hand, there is not that immediate and cold remove between me and the art, and I am deeper into the illusion of fiction.
We human beings read, watch, and listen to a lot of fiction. We know that it is fiction. But we have emotional responses and attachments to the characters. So, according to Colin Radford, who first put it forward, this shows that there's something incoherent in our emotional responses: we feel for things we know don't exist.But what I really like is the answer to this paradox that J. L. Wall gives us:
Fiction doesn’t present the unreal; it presents the possibly real, something balancing precariously between the real and the non. (This holds, it should be said, for fantasy, science fiction, and other “genres” as well as in realistic or literary fiction; they just go about it, as is the case in variation between individual works, in different ways.) We empathize with fictional beings not despite their unreality, but because of their possible reality.I know these possible realities, especially cast in beautiful literary art, make my life's reality bearable and a lot more interesting.
Although I enjoy movies, the power of the visual is such that I cannot really identify with the characters, because they are so not me, which can be plainly seen as well as heard in their voices. When the ideas are expressed in written words, I think it is easier to lose oneself directly in those ideas. If I see Brad Pitt on the screen, I may enjoy the action and the movie and even feel for the character, but I know completely and profoundly that that is not me. When reading the thoughts and actions of a protagonist on the printed page, on the other hand, there is not that immediate and cold remove between me and the art, and I am deeper into the illusion of fiction.