fry interpretive essay

I'm pretty sure that this was what I was supposed to write...
(and please forgive my spelling and grammar, I'm too tired to proof read right now)

Does art distort reality, or portray it more exactly?

Galen Schmidt

In our actual lives, we can never experience our emotions purely. Because almost all actions demand a reaction, we cannot stop and think about what it is that we have just witnessed, or what it was we just felt. With art, whether it be a picture, a book or a movie, we are free from that requirement placed upon us in our ordinary lives that we respond to what we have just seen. Because of this, we can stop and contemplate the actions that we have just seen, the words we have just read, or the picture that we have just looked at. It is in this way that art can portray reality more exactly by distorting it.

Take film for example. Most movies portray events that are never likely to happen, or are flat out fictitious. But when watching a movie, we may realize that they are portraying our own lives, our own problems, and helping us to see them clearer (more clearly?). When viewing but not actually engaged in an activity, there is, as fry points out an “emotional purity” within oneself. You do not have to react to what is happening, and therefor having no lasting emotional stake in the outcome of the event, you are free to feel what is truly happening, instead of simply reacting to it.

If you were in a car accident, you would naturally have to “stuff you emotions away”, as it were. You would be spending time helping people, filing a police report, and just trying to clean up. So later, when you had time to think about the emotional impact of what had happened, the memories would be fuzzier, the emotions more blurred. However, if you were watching a car accident in a movie, you would, in a sense, be “free” of your obligation to help, and so you could simply feel the emotional impact of what has just happened.

It is said that “time heals all wounds”, and it is especially true with emotional wounds. Our brains tend to try and block out the bad ones, and highlight the good ones. But with art, we can preserve an instant in time, and all of it's emotional power over us. A piece of art can completely distort reality, but if it truly captures an emotion, then it has succeeded in portraying it more exactly than any true rendition ever could.