"
In order then that the distant situation shall not be a gray flicker
on the edge of attention, it should be capable of translation into
pictures in which the opportunity for identification is recognizable.
Unless that happens it will interest only a few for a little while. It
will belong to the sights seen but not felt, to the sensations that
beat on our sense organs, and are not acknowledged. We have to take
sides. We have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our being
we must step out of the audience on to the stage, and wrestle as the
hero for the victory of good over evil. We must breathe into the
allegory the breath of our life.
3
And so, in spite of the critics, a verdict is rendered in the old
controversy about realism and romanticism. Our popular taste is to
have the drama originate in a setting realistic enough to make
identification plausible and to have it terminate in a setting
romantic enough to be desirable, but not so romantic as to be
inconceivable. In between the beginning and the end the canons are
liberal, but the true beginning and the happy ending are landmarks.
The moving picture audience rejects fantasy logically developed,
because in pure fantasy there is no familiar foothold in the age of
machines. It rejects realism relentlessly pursued because it does not
enjoy defeat in a struggle that has become its own.
What will be accepted as true, as realistic, as good, as evil, as
desirable, is not eternally fixed.
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