When observing fictional entities, many observers do tend to accept the principal of make-believe. Accepting this principle may be a deliberate act if, for example, a viewer goes into the movie theatre to view a movie clearly marked as fictional with that knowledge in mind. The viewer may then still be frightened by what is on the screen but may be repeating to him or her self “this is just make believe” just as one might explain to a child woken in a state of fright from a nightmare “it was just a dream”. Accepting this principle may not be so much of a deliberate act as an unconscious one though. Many people have the general understanding that the people seen on television or movie screens are just actors playing a character and that the character demonstrated on television does not truly exist. Through common knowledge this notion could be expanded upon to generalize the unrealistic nature of the actors playing a character to creatures present on screens not being real as well. The example of a person passing through a room with a movie playing and experiencing fear at the sight of the content would most likely be explained by Walton as still having been unconsciously understood that the content is make-believe because it was present on a screen, a clear indicator that it was separated from reality. Here, the observer who is effected by accident still accepts the principle even though he or she was not intending to watch the movie and therefore still engages in the fictional world. Do you think movies such as “The Ring” where the villain suggests the breaking of the safety of the screen by coming through the television makes any more of an impression than other horror movies even though the viewer is still clearly protected from the content of the movie by means of it still occurring on a screen and only a screen?
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