"Photography is truth and cinema is truth, 24 frames a second."
Jean-Luc Godard
"The camera lies all the time. It lies 24 times a second."
Brian De Palma
They're both great film makers and I don't want to debate their individual merits, more to say that I think they're both right. When you watch a movie, a documentary, or a reality show, you are being lied to. The situation is contrived, the content is edited for maximum effect and you are looking at a world that doesn't really exist, but the camera did capture a moment in time and there's truth in that.
This is why I don't get people who say they don't like fantasy, they can't watch a show about demons or hobbits because 'it's not real', as if a show about cops or hospitals is somehow more real. They're still actors reading scripts, on a constructed set in front of a camera. The police procedural formula is so tired and yet it continues to be so popular, someone dies and you know that someone you meet in the next half an hour will be the killer and then at the end you find out who it was, it's the same show every week! Switch off CSINYPDSVU, suspend your disbelief and buy a ticket to Gotham City or the Hellmouth.
Live long and prosper and may the force be with you.
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