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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SynapsisSynopsis" data-source="post: 1286350" data-attributes="member: 15553">Sure.  I've read Coleridge's Biographia.  I think you'd be hardpressed to connect that concept with the one being discussed here though.  Suspending doubt and predicting the outcome based on being "in the moment" have a pretty tenuous relation.I'm on your side as far as not believing it is better to see an ending coming, that those who do aren't special, but it isn't better not to see it coming either.  Being absorbed by the experience is one aesthetic view, but there are other equally valid ones.  Sometimes I watch something for no other reason than to discern the subtleties of how the writer gets from point A to point B, for lessons in pure artistry.  Like Arthur Miller says, if I show you a man doing something, that is melodrama, but if I show you why he almost didn't do it, that is drama.  Other times I can be just as absorbed in the aesthetic experience as you, for the same exact movie, and there are certainly other approaches to viewing, too.  One approach isn't really priveleged over the others.  I guarantee you that whatever your own interests happen to be, writing music, films, books, stories, painting or whatever, you will get as much out of approaching those works as complex discursive formations as experiences.I can only speak for me.  I didn't walk out on The Sixth Sense because I guessed the ending; I walked out because I didn't like the ending that was coming.  I still don't, and so I won't ever be in the position of seeing it again either.  So, I didn't in any way walk out because I knew the ending.  Like you say and like I've said, that would be silly.  If I hadn't guessed it, I would still have walked out, I just would have walked out a lot closer to the end.  As I mentioned, I happened to notice Unbreakable coming as well, but I think that was a great ending.  Knowing what it was had and has no effect on my enjoyment of it.  I think it was done well.  So, there is no connection between being able to see where a story is going and its being done badly.  Sometimes you can see where it's going precisely because it is being done well.</blockquote>

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