Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1817 term a 'willing suspension of disbelief' has survived and been used by film critics and others to describe what happens when a movie viewer watches a movie. While film scholars and professionals have alluded to the term in a parenthetical or tertiary manner this manuscript makes a definitive account for the concept and provides a contemporary analysis of the film viewing process from a variety of critical and empirical perspectives.