Distinction Between Fantasy And Reality

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Media creates a virtual world in our lives. It sometimes becomes difficult to line out the distinction between reality and fantasy. According to Piaget (1962), young children (upto 3 years) tend to believe whatever they see. They feel that the cartoon characters and people they see on television actually reside inside the TV sets and the stories they read or hear are real. They have a hard time in understanding the false claims shown in advertisements and fall easy prey to the marketing gimmicks. Young children confuse fantasy with reality and perceive them to be of interchangeable nature (Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 2001). Most of their notions about the world outside develop from the TV programs, movies and other forms of media. Because children do not have much experience of the real world, they end up accepting what TV portrays as the truth and overlook the need to test it against the reality. As they grow (4-7 years), they discover and learn to understand the cues that depict fact and fiction. By 7-8 years of age, they realize that certain things projected on media are real and the others are make-believe and impossible. As they attain the age of 10-11 years, they develop the ability to identify if …show more content…

However, even if the distinction is comprehensible, adults do not always behave accordingly. It is a common phenomenon that happens many a times that adults do not see the person behind the character. They sometimes impose the personality of a character to the actor enacting it. It is a common complaint from actors and actresses that people expect them to carry the same characteristics as that of the role they play. Villains are treated like real life villains and heroes like superheroes. For example, Ranjeet, a famous bollywood villain once said that "parents refused to marry their daughters to me" just because of his character portrayal in

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