When I was little, my dad loved to watch videos on how movies were made. He’d watch all the behind the scenes and learn how they pulled off the incredible animations or action scenes and sequences with fist fights and car chases (back when we rented the movies from Blockbuster and it had all those features). Objectively, the animations and special effects are quite cool and it’s impressive that they pull it all off with such precision that we all want to believe it’s real. I understand that. Nowadays, with tv subscriptions and the like, maybe you haven’t even thought about behind the scenes in a long time. We watch a movie, go back to our phones, look up reviews and criticism, see what other movies the actors were in, and go on with our day. Sometimes we catch an interview on some social media site, but it seems that there is less and less intention with what we watch, consume. With that, we’ve become so used to this incredible level of cinematography that maybe we look past it quickly. Still, I don’t want to see it.

Dad always thought it was funny that I hated watching it. We’d all sit together, mom, dad, my three sisters and me, watch the whole thing—probably some action movie like Blade or Resident Evil—and as soon as the movie ended, dad would start moving through to the bonus features where they always housed the behind the scenes. I would usually be distracted in some conversation with one of my sisters, not realizing what he was doing, until he turned it on and I saw the big green screen and the actors dangling in the air listening to the director’s directions. I would jump up off the couch, cover my ears and start yelling so I couldn’t hear anything while I raced out of the room. Everyone would be laughing and I never took it seriously, I just didn’t want to watch; I would go to another room and read a book until they were finished and they’d call me back in. It took a few years for me to learn my lesson and either keep the remote with me or get up right away.

This was never a matter of contention between me and the rest of the family. Sometimes mom or dad would try to explain what they saw to me, just to see what I’d do, but I’d pull the same move of covering my ears, yelling, and running away. It took them awhile to understand why I didn’t want to see it because it took me awhile to figure out how to articulate it. See, they genuinely thought it was an interesting thing to learn: see how far film creation has come and what it takes to pull off what they just witnessed. I can see the appeal of this now that I’ve witnessed how quickly technology can progress and what people can do with it when they know what they’re doing.

When I was little, I didn’t want to learn how a film was made because I didn’t want to ruin the magic of the film itself. If I know how they made the world I watched the character’s live in for the last two hours, then I lose the ability to dream of that world. If I don’t know how the movie is made then the magic still exists, even if just in my mind. This is a much easier thing to do with books. There is no behind the scenes of a book other than knowing the author of the work and understanding what went into their writing process. The magic of a book is that anything is possible as long as you can imagine it, translate it into writing, and present it well enough that others can imagine it too. There is no reliance on the evolution of technology and what it is or isn’t able to do.

It’s a romantic idea to be so dedicated to engaging with the world building and the character development, I know. And of course I don’t really believe that somewhere on earth students are learning how to cast spells at Hogwarts school or that somewhere else hobbits are having a merry old time while one among them considers taking an adventure which will change their whole life in the Shire. 

But some days I do. Some days it is nice to believe that there is something different than the world we live in, people who have never known the struggles that plague our global culture, people who know the problems in front of them as well as exactly what they have to do to fix it. Some days it feels better to believe in a world where the good guys always win, where all of their struggles are worth it when they make their world a better place; a world where it’s much easier to remain hopeful all of the time. 

I don’t think I will ever give up this habit of allowing myself to be fully enveloped in a story. I think it’s important that we all have a space where we believe in just a little bit more than what we see around us day-to-day.