Neil Van Leeuwen is professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity, published by Harvard University Press, and co-editor, with Tania Lombrozo, of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science of Belief. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.
A post by Neil Van Leeuwen
In the background as I write this blog, the Superbowl is on. The Seahawks currently lead 6-0 in the second quarter, which makes me vaguely happy, since I dislike the Patriots (sorry, not sorry). But I’m not Seahawks fan, so my investment in the game is minimal enough that I can write.
Things are different, of course, for New England and Seattle fans. For them, this game will appear as one of the most riveting things they’ve seen in years. And all told, about 100 million people in the United States, along with about 25 million more around the world, are watching this game.
Of course, the Superbowl and sports in general aren’t the only long viewing people do. Estimates suggest that that average person watches about a movie a week, and then TV shows are in addition to that. Most movies and TV shows are fictional dramas, and plays and musicals fall in that category as well. So the amount of fictional drama that people watch is impressive as well.
Given all that, if you were to ask, “What do people like watching more, sports or fictional drama?” I would have a genuinely hard time answering. We could come at the question from multiple different angles, some of which might put sports on top and others of which might put fictional drama on top.
But there is a related question, concerning which I think the answer is abundantly clear: What do people like rewatching more, sports or fictions?
My impression is that few people—even New England and Seattle fans—will rewatch the whole Superbowl, though rewatching highlights is fairly common. But people certainly rewatch movies that they like in their entirety, with one source saying that the average American believes they’ve watched their favorite movie 38 (!) times. I frankly suspect that number is high, but to have watched one’s favorite movie a dozen times is easily a common thing. And people don’t just rewatch their top favorite; I have about 10 movies I periodically rewatch, and I doubt that’s uncommon.
So here’s the puzzle: given that initially viewing sports and initially viewing fiction are comparably likable [update: Seattle is now up 9-0!], why is it that the likability of rewatching is so different, with fiction dramatically (pun intended) outperforming sports?
We can heighten this puzzle in various ways. Note that many of the same things are supposed to constitute the enjoyability of watching either sports or fiction. There is conflict. There is suspense. There are characters and emotions. There are reversals, and thus both give us some kind of story. Both are, much of the time, visually impressive. So why does the enjoyability of all that get exhausted on first viewing in the sports case but not in the fiction case.
You might say that in the sports case, not knowing what happens in the end is what makes it interesting. But that just shifts the question without really answering the initial version of it. Why does knowing what happens in the end sap the enjoyability from a sports game in a way that it doesn’t for fictions? Of course, people often prefer not to know what happens in a fiction—“no spoilers!”—but the existence of such a preference is consistent with the claim that there’s a massive difference between (i) what knowing the end of a sports game does and (ii) knowing what the end of a movie, for example, does. Why is knowing a killjoy in one case but not the other?
I unfortunately don’t have a solution to this puzzle. But I am fairly confident that the central difference has something to do with how suspense works in fictional dramas versus sports. In a sports game, the suspense consists in the fact that, from the perspective of the viewer, each next play could be one that changes the course of the game: a homerun, a goal, a touchdown, a breakaway. It is not knowing whether the play will be game changing that keeps the game continually suspenseful—or continually suspenseful the first time. One is constantly hoping something will happen, and this makes it engaging. When I rewatch sports, that hope just isn’t there; it doesn’t feel like hoping for anything makes sense when the game has already happened.
But no matter how many times I watch a movie I love—even though I know how things will go—I still feel myself hoping certain things will happen or not happen. I hope that Miles won’t sabotage his budding relationship with Maya as if I didn’t know whether he will or won’t (even though I actually do know he does in the very next scene). I find myself hoping—every time I watch Star Wars—that Obi Wan will best Vader (even though we all know what happens…). So it seems that the tendency to hope for outcomes as if one doesn’t know is what keeps fictions engaging over and over again; it’s what keeps them suspenseful.
Thus, something about entering the frame of not-knowing-despite-knowing is what keeps movies engaging on rewatching [Seahawks are now up 19-7 in the fourth quarter] in ways that sports isn’t. But that just shifts the problem as well! For why is it that one can’t adopt the frame of not-knowing-despite-knowing in the sports case and thereby have an equally fun experience, or at least still a really engaging experience? It is as if one can’t adopt that frame in the sports case, but one just does without even trying in the fiction case. But why can’t one in the sports case? And why does one almost invariably do so on rewatching in the fiction case? I have to confess I have no answer—I just know it’s a good problem.
For completeness, I should mention one proposal from my friend Claudia, who happened to be walking through the lounge of our building where I’m watching and writing. Claudia is a psychotherapist, so I figured she would find the puzzle interesting and might have something to say. Her view is that the type of emotions that fictions elicit is deeper than the type of emotions that sports elicit. Sports emotions, on her view, are comprised more of moment to moment “euphoria” than of deeper feelings. I confess that something sounds right about that, and it may go some way to explaining why people rewatch in one case but not the other. Nevertheless, I think there’s a lot about this difference I’m talking about that still remains to be explained, even if she’s right. In particular, the differential suspense is still puzzling. Why does knowing the outcome kill it in one case but not the other? Even if sports only does give moment-to-moment euphoria, why can’t it do so a second time?
I’m looking forward to seeing proposed solutions in the comments! At this point, there are 39 seconds left in the game, and this is a blog I was supposed to submit three days ago. So: Congratulations to the Seahawks, who are sure to win. As for me, it’s time for me to go upstairs, pour a glass of bourbon, and start on my 38th iteration of 10 Things I Hate About You.