Samuel Coleridge got it wrong. He’s the guy who said that an audience “willingly suspends their disbelief” when going along with the improbable plot of the play. But audiences don’t actually do that—at least not at first. Tolkien thought that we create a “secondary belief” in the imaginary world that is sustained as long as the world has its own internal coherence and logic. But I think it’s simpler that that—the willingness to believe is inscribed into our DNA.
In Art and Intimacy, Ellen Dissanyake talks about how art may have arisen partly as a result of the mother-child bond. This bond is important and rich, but one aspect of it for this discussion is the absolute trust the child confers upon the caregiver. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. We rely entirely on the caregiver as infants and, even if there are occasions where our needs are not timely met, it nearly always goes better for us if we keep trusting that the care is on its way. And once we entrust the caregiver with our very survival we are not easily swayed to give up our loyalty to that person.
I believe this willingness to believe, to trust, is what we have been witnessing in the absolute fealty of many people for authoritarian figures. When someone believes their survival is at stake, and a grifter emerges who promises to ensure their survival, that someone will believe anything the grifter says, even in the face of evidence before their own eyes. But there’s one other feature of this relationship that often goes unremarked upon. While it appears that the grifter compels the audience to believe the role as savior, it is rather the audience that confers the role upon the grifter. In reality, the actor doesn’t create the character alone, the audience is complicit in its creation.
Once we accept this, the undying fealty becomes understandable. Thus, we see people take every vice that is used to expose the grifter and transform it into a virtue. Bandages on an ear, diapers over the pants, all the cos-playing, and even transforming rhetoric that is by any standard racist and fascist to words of triumph and valor. In the theatre, once the curtain comes down, the pretend ends and we release ourselves from the spell—the trust and willingness to believe. Certainly, there is emotional residue, which is why we talk about the play afterwards, think about it, read reviews, etc. all part of processing the imaginary event and its power. But IRL it can never end—the illusion has to be maintained at all cost. We see this in the people who died of COVID but who refused to believe it was COVID right through to the end.
This also explains the phenomenon of the actor’s dilemma of being trapped in a role. In Long Days Journey into Night, James Tyrone, Sr., bemoans how he sold out his talent and was trapped in a role he made famous.
“That God-damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in—a great money suceess—it ruined me with its promise of easy fortune. I didn’t want to do anything else, and by the time I woke up to the fact I’d become a slave to the damned thing and did try other plays, it was too late. They had identified with that one part, and didn’t want me in anything else. “
Grifters are playing a role to the mark. They, too, can get trapped in a part. But unlike the theatre, the curtain never comes down—it can only end in flight or imprisonment. Whether actor or grifter or true believer, we make a Faustian bargain for riches and rewards of whatever ilk we crave—money, power, survival.
In the final scene of “Mephisto” with the incomparable Klaus Marie Brandauer, the actor is brought into the famous arena in Berlin (site of the 1936 Olympics) and is compelled by the Goring-like Nazi general to enter the arena to experience the magnificence of the setting where he will play his greatest role. Brandauer runs wildly about, pursued by spotlights, almost cowering from the intense glare. He realizes that he cannot escape the part, nor his complicity with the regime, saying lamely, “What do they want from me? I’m just an actor.”