Mimesis as Make-Believe

On the Foundations of the Representational Arts

Kendall L. Walton

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9780674268227
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Representations—in visual arts and in fiction—play an important part in our lives and culture. Kendall Walton presents here a theory of the nature of representation, which illuminates its many varieties and goes a long way toward explaining its importance. Drawing analogies to children's make believe activities, Walton constructs a theory that addresses a broad range of issues: the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, how depiction differs from description, the notion of points of view in the arts, and what it means for one work to be more "realistic" than another. He explores the relation between appreciation and criticism, the character of emotional reactions to literary and visual representations, and what it means to be caught up emotionally in imaginary events.Walton's theory also provides solutions to the thorny philosophical problems of the existence—or ontological standing—of fictitious beings, and the meaning of statements referring to them. And it leads to striking insights concerning imagination, dreams, nonliteral uses of language, and the status of legends and myths.Throughout Walton applies his theoretical perspective to particular cases; his analysis is illustrated by a rich array of examples drawn from literature, painting, sculpture, theater, and film. Mimesis as Make-Believe is important reading for everyone interested in the workings of representational art.

PART ONE

Representations

1

Representation and Make-Believe

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation, and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy.

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

—Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In order to understand paintings, plays, films, and novels, we must look first at dolls, hobbyhorses, toy trucks, and teddy bears. The activities in which representational works of art are embedded and which give them their point are best seen as continuous with children’s games of make-believe. Indeed, I advocate regarding these activities as games of make-believe themselves, and I shall argue that representational works function as props in such games, as dolls and teddy bears serve as props in children’s games.

Children devote enormous quantities of time and effort to make-believe activities. And this preoccupation seems to be nearly universal, not peculiar to any particular cultures or social groups.¹ The urge to engage in make-believe and the needs such activities address would seem to be very fundamental ones. If they are, one would not expect children simply to outgrow them when they grow up; it would be surprising if make-believe disappeared without a trace at the onset of adulthood.

It doesn’t. It continues, I claim, in our interaction with representational works of art (which of course itself begins in childhood). The forms make-believe activities take do change significantly as we mature. They become more subtle, more sophisticated, less overt. The games children play with dolls and toy trucks are in some ways more transparent and easier to understand than their more sophisticated successors. This is one reason why children’s games will help illuminate the games adults play with representational works of art.

It goes without saying that in speaking of “games” of make-believe we must disavow any implication that they are mere frivolity. Children’s games serve purposes far more significant than that of keeping them happy and out of mischief. It is generally recognized, I believe, that such games—and imaginative activities generally—do indeed, as their prevalance suggests, have a profound role in our efforts to cope with our environment.² Children in the Auschwitz concentration camp played a game called “going to the gas chamber.”³ Some may be horrified at the thought of treating such a tragic matter so lightly. But this “game” is probably best regarded as an earnest attempt by the participants to comprehend and come to grips with their terrible situation. In “playing” it they were, I suspect, facing the reality of genocide with the utmost seriousness.

Much needs to be learned about the benefits of make-believe, about just what needs it serves and how it serves them. But suggestions come easily to mind: that engaging in make-believe provides practice in roles one might someday assume in real life, that it helps one to understand and sympathize with others, that it enables one to come to grips with one’s own feelings, that it broadens one’s perspectives. An advantage of regarding paintings, plays, and the like as props in games of make-believe is that whatever we may learn about the functions of children’s games of make-believe, and whatever we may feel we know already, are likely to help explain how and why such representational works are valuable and important.

Games of make-believe are one species of imaginative activity; specifically, they are exercises of the imagination involving props. Before explaining what “props” are and how they operate, I must make several observations about imagining.

1.1. IMAGINING

When we think about the imagination, examples like the following naturally come to mind: Fred finds himself, in an idle moment, alone with his thoughts. Feeling unsuccessful and unappreciated, he embarks on a daydream in which he is rich and famous. He calls up images of applauding constituents, visiting dignitaries, a huge mansion, doting women, and fancy cars. But alas, reality eventually reasserts itself and Fred gets back to selling shoes.

This is indeed a paradigm instance of an exercise of the imagination. But it is not in all respects typical. We must be wary of mistaking peculiarities of Fred’s experience for features to be found in imaginings generally. An enormous variety of experiences come under the heading of exercises of the imagination.

One peculiarity of Fred’s imaginings is that they do not make use of props. Another is that they consist partly in having mental images; imagining can occur without imagery. But I will focus now on three other characteristics of Fred’s daydream that are not common to imaginings generally: It is deliberate; it consists of occurrent mental events (or actions); and it is solitary, something he does by himself. Imaginings can be spontaneous. They need not be occurrent. And they are sometimes social rather than solitary activities or experiences.

Before proceeding we should note the independence of imagining from truth and belief. Much of what Fred imagines is false and is known by him to be false. But he imagines, also, that his name is Fred, that he prefers warm climates, that France is in Europe, and much else that he knows to be true. To say that someone imagines such and such is sometimes to imply or suggest that it is not true or that the imaginer disbelieves it. Nevertheless, imagining something is entirely compatible with knowing it to be true.

I postpone consideration of the differences between imagining a proposition, imagining a thing, and imagining doing something—between, for instance, imagining that there is a bear, imagining a bear, and imagining seeing a bear—and the relations among them. But they will be important later.

Spontaneous and Deliberate Imaginings

We sometimes decide on what to imagine, as Fred did; we form intentions to imagine this or that and carry them out. Imagining is sometimes deliberate. But not always. Often we just find ourselves imagining certain things. Our fantasizing minds stray, seemingly at random, without conscious direction. Thoughts pop into our head unbidden. Imagining seems, in some cases, more something that happens to us than something that we do. Like breathing, imagining can be either deliberate or spontaneous.

The line between deliberate and spontaneous imaginings is not sharp. Varying degrees and kinds of control may be exerted over what (and whether) we imagine. And both deliberate and spontaneous imaginings are often combined in a single imaginative experience. A chain of imaginings begun deliberately almost always develops further on its own. One who decides to imagine a bear will find himself imagining a bear of a certain sort—a large, ferocious grizzly pacing back and forth, for instance. Elaborations of what we imagine deliberately occur spontaneously.

Nevertheless, imaginative experiences involving relatively many relatively spontaneous imaginings differ significantly from more deliberate ones. Insofar as our imaginings are deliberate, we are well aware of their dependence on us. It is obvious to the imaginer that the “world of his imagination” is an artificial contrivance, something dreamed up, something he constructed, bit by bit, by his choices of what to imagine. Spontaneous imaginings have a life of their own. The imaginer is more a “spectator” than the perpetrator of them. Rather than constructing her imaginary world, she “watches” as it unfolds. It seems less her own contrivance than something created and existing independently of her. She may be surprised at how it turns out. She may be amazed to find herself imagining a bear with candy cane stripes, and then “watch” with astonishment as (so to speak) this extraordinary beast jumps over the moon. Spontaneously created imaginary worlds are like the real world in their capacity to surprise us. Imagining spontaneously can be more fun, more exciting than doing so deliberately. It is likely to be a more “vivid” or “realistic” experience, one which, in its independence of the will, is more like actually perceiving or otherwise interacting with the real world.⁴

A deeper explanation of why spontaneous imaginings tend to be more vivid than deliberate ones might go like this: The relevant general principle is that evidence of the falsity of a proposition imposed forcefully on one’s consciousness makes it difficult to imagine vividly that the proposition is true. If I want to imagine myself in a trackless wilderness, I may enhance the vivacity of my experience by closing my eyes or blotting out the automobile traffic and skyscrapers from my field of vision with my hand so that I see only trees and sky. Staring intently at skyscrapers and automobiles does not make it difficult to imagine oneself in the wilds. What is not so easy is imagining this vividly while glaring evidences of civilization dominate one’s consciousness. Closing my eyes does not make me forget that I am surrounded by cars and skyscrapers, nor does it create an illusion. I know just as surely as I ever did that I am not in the wilds. The point is not that my beliefs affect the vividness of my imagining. What is important is, rather, how conspicuous certain facts which I believe are to me, how persistently they intrude into my thoughts, how difficult it is to avoid thinking (occurrently) about them.

If Jennifer imagines herself coming across a bear in the forest, she has bearish thoughts; she entertains, considers, turns over in her mind the proposition that there is a bear in front of her, and probably more specific propositions as well, such as that there is a ferocious grizzly pacing back and forth in front of her. She may also visualize a bear. If her imagining is deliberate, the fact that she rather than a (real) bear is the source of these bearish thoughts and images, the fact that she dreamed up the bear, is sure to be prominent in her awareness and difficult to ignore. It is not so difficult to ignore this if her imagining is spontaneous. She knows perfectly well that no real bear is responsible for her thoughts and images; she may have no doubt that they flow from somewhere in the dark recesses of her own unconscious. But when her imagining is spontaneous, nothing forces her to dwell on this fact; it does not intrude into her occurrent thoughts, even though if asked she would not hesitate to acknowledge it. This is why the imagining is likely to be more vivid, more gripping, more “frightening” if it is spontaneous than if it is deliberate.

Spontaneous imaginings may be subject to the imaginer’s control. The imaginer may have the option of intervening deliberately in her imaginative experience even if she chooses not to exercise this option. If I find myself musing, spontaneously, about a candy-striped polar bear jumping over the moon, I may nevertheless realize that I could, if I wanted to, imagine instead a polka-dotted grizzly jumping over a star, or that I could stop imagining altogether. This realization limits my sense of the independence of my imaginative experiences from me. The imaginary world does unfold under its own power, but only with my (implicit) permission, only because I allow it to do so.⁵

Sometimes, however, we seem not to have even potential, unexercised control over what we imagine. This is so when we are asleep or in a trance. Dreams are spontaneous, undeliberate imaginings which the imaginer not only does not but cannot direct (consciously).⁶ This helps to explain why dreaming is often such a powerful experience, why dreams tend to be more compelling, more “realistic” than daydreams in which the imaginer either directs the course of his imaginings or deliberately refrains from interfering.

Occurrent and Nonocurrent Imaginings

Each of us holds a great many beliefs and has an enormous number of intentions and desires, only a tiny fraction of which occupy our attention at any given moment. Thus arises the traditional distinction between occurrent and nonoccurrent (dispositional?) beliefs, intentions, and desires. Marilyn occurrently believes that the Democrats will win the next election when the thought that they will occurs to her, when she thinks or says to herself, with conviction, that the Democrats will win. She holds many other beliefs at the same time. She believes that Thomas Edison invented the telephone, that the Vikings were the first Europeans to visit America, that she is not a professional wrestler, and much more. But few of these other beliefs occur to her at this time. Some never do.

So it is with imaginings. Suppose that Fred launches his daydream by (occurrently) imagining himself winning a huge lottery prize and using it to finance a successful political campaign, and that he then goes on to imagine winning the affection and admiration of millions while in office, eventually retiring to a villa in southern France. All of these thoughts course through Fred’s consciousness as he fantasizes. But it may well be true also that he imagines winning the election without resorting to stuffing ballot boxes or bribing powerful opponents, that he imagines his place of retirement to be in a warm climate on the Mediterranean, that he imagines being in good health when he retires—even if these thoughts do not explicitly occur to him. The question of whether his election is fair and square may never arise in his mind; he just takes for granted that it is. Once he occurrently imagines retiring to southern France, he has in the back of his mind the thought that his retirement is in a warm climate on the Mediterranean, even if he never gets around to saying this to himself. He thinks of himself, implicitly, as being in good health when he retires; he imagines that he is, but not occurrently. These thoughts are, we might say, part of his “mental furniture” during the daydream.

After Fred has occurrently imagined himself becoming a millionaire by winning a lottery and has gone on to think about his political career and retirement, he doesn’t cease imagining that he won a lottery. His imagining this is a persisting state that begins when the thought occurs to him and continues, probably, for the durat...