Will the advanced special effects and scope kind of hurt "Discovery?"

[Eric Cheung]

But what about effects that aren't bad or cheap, but just old? What if they were the best, most realistic effects that were possible with the technology of the time, but just look artificial by today's standards because the ceiling has been raised so much farther now? Is it fair to lump those into the same category as effects that look bad due to lack of talent or effort?

If something is completely convincing, if the creators do 100% of the work for you, then you don't need to suspend disbelief. The full phrase is "willing suspension of disbelief" -- meaning, you know that what you're seeing is unreal, but you choose to pretend and play along. Some things about movies and TV are always going to be artificial -- like the fact that they're taking place on a screen in your living room or in a theater, or the fact that there's a whole orchestra playing music that the characters don't seem to notice, or the fact that they cut from one scene to another in a way that real life manifestly doesn't. If you can choose to suspend your awareness of those dead giveaways of fakery, then you're capable of suspending disbelief about effects that merely suggest a thing rather than perfectly simulating it. Willing suspension of disbelief means being a participant in the fiction -- letting your own imagination pick up the baton the filmmakers hand you and carry it the rest of the way. This is something we all do when reading prose fiction and imagining what it describes, or reading a comic book and imagining the characters moving and speaking. Exercising our own imaginations is a basic part of experiencing fiction. So it can't be that hard to look beyond the surface of an old-school visual effect and visualize the underlying idea it represents.

This!

I'm 35, but I've never had a prejudice against shows because they were before my time. Even cheap looking shows today are fine by me, if the performances are there, the dialogue is there, and the stories are there (in that order). I grew up on Nick at Nite, so the TV shows I remember most from my childhood were not the contemporary sitcoms as much as Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Get Smart, Bewitched, Green Acres, etc. As a teen, I got into the "New Hollywood" of the auteurs of the 60s and 70s.

Since then, I've gotten into silent movies, film noir, Corman, Hammer, and independent horror of the 70s and 80s.

I mean the irresistible joy of recorded media is that it's forever. Why not enjoy the movies, TV shows, books, and music of the past? Especially since the good stuff tends to survive, it's a lot harder to curate the content of the present day without the perspective of hindsight.

 

[Jayson1]

In some ways I even like it when shows feel kind of dated. It's a nice way to sort of look back at a particular show or movie and sort of see that history in away you can't by just reading a book or even hearing someone talk about those times. When I watch "TOS" I feel like I am sort of getting a idea of what it might have been like to be alive in the 60's. PLus with newer stuff from the 80's and 90's it's a nice way to revist a time of your own past.

Jason

 

[Christopher]

Granted, though, a lot of the time, it takes a fair amount of education about film/TV history to be able to put older effects in context and differentiate between "best they could do at the time" and simply "bad." For instance, although the original Gojira (Godzilla) is still probably the smartest, most powerful giant-monster movie ever made, it's impossible to deny that its special effects are primitive and objectively awful. I can forgive that because I'm aware that the Japanese had never made a special-effects film before and had to invent the techniques as they went, so they were doing the best they could. But I can understand how someone without that context would just see "bad." Though hopefully they could recognize how brilliant and powerful the rest of the movie is and excuse the visuals.

 

[Eric Cheung]

On the flip side, I think it takes a higher level of education than I see to place shows in a sociological context as well. A lot of times, I'll see a show get excused for being backward in a particular way because it's old, but social progress is not so linear. The Hays Production Code was a reaction against a relatively progressive streak in filmmaking in the silent era and early talkie era. Miscegenation had been barred by the Code, so it lead to a significant change in representation in film, both in the number of roles, as well as whether or not those roles could be romantic leads. Sessue Hayakawa was a massive heartthrob, would never be the heartthrobs they were in the Code era because they couldn't be paired with white stars anymore.

There was a No Small Parts episode (that's since been taken down) about James Hong's career. What was fascinating was what has changed, and what hasn't. His career had lots of great parts, and lots of stereotypical ones, but it's not a linear progression. It gave me perspective on the present. We tend to have an inflated sense of the state of progress we've achieved now. I wouldn't want to live in the past, but there are lots of ways the struggles of the past haven't changed.

So, I wish people had the patience for older effects, and slower pacing, judging them within the context of their era, and I also wish people would take the care to place shows in their historical context as well.

 

[Christopher]

We tend to have an inflated sense of the state of progress we've achieved now. I wouldn't want to live in the past, but there are lots of ways the struggles of the past haven't changed.

Yeah, I've noticed how progress tends to be a pendulum -- we gain ground and then lose it again. In the mid-'70s, we had a bunch of female superheroes on TV. At one point, we simultaneously had The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, The Secrets of Isis, and Electro Woman and Dyna Girl. Then they went away, and two decades later we got Buffy and Xena and people were talking about female-led action shows as if they were a novelty. And now we've had to wait another two decades to get Supergirl on TV and a Wonder Woman movie, and it's treated as some major step forward in progress even though we had more female superheroes on TV four decades ago. We keep backsliding and having to fight the battles all over again.