Ok, I’m super tired so I hope this explanation does not wander too much. I’ll do my best. I’m going to start with two critical ideas related to the Princess Bride.
First, in many mediums or styles of art the form has rough edges. Seams where the illusion is apparent. And for many people the seams themselves become an important part of the art. There are many examples.
Many people who first get into Doctor Who wonder why the Daleks have an egg beater and a toilet plunger, or the cybermen are so clunky but still treated as a threat, while for long time fans these things are part of the artistic style of Doctor Who. A Doctor Who that doesn’t lean into these things isn’t really Doctor Who. Star Trek is another example. People throwing themselves around a bridge or the weird bare bones sets in TOS are part of the identity of the show.
For examples that are more of a medium, people who are really into vinyl often enjoy the unique crackling corruption in the audio recording. People who like SNES style sprite art like the low fidelity nature of the art. These are important features of the medium.
Artistic identify is often heavily tied to what some might consider flaws in the creation.
Second, the US artistic tradition is young. Our critical artistic traditions all came within the last couple of centuries as the people of the United States as a country has built an identity for itself. This means a disproportionate amount of our background artistic tradition is tied up in some very young styles and mediums. The broadway musical (and movie adaptations of such), the classic hollywood film, and the american folk tale (especially as expressed in the western) are important examples of this.
It can be very hard to describe this because it is almost a feeling. An example is the duel between Wesley and Inigo. That takes place on a set deliberately created to look artificial in the way classic hollywood film sets looked artificial. The discussion before about Inigo’s revenge plot and the deliberately choreography to be play acting instead of a realistic, tension filled sword fight with a sense of danger, that sort of thing. It isn’t a scene that tries to be a sword fight, it is a scene that invites the audience to imagine a sword fight, or maybe the ideal of a sword fight as a contest between two champions.
There is the strategy of eliminating the seams to allow for suspension of disbelief, but there is also taking it in the opposite direction, leaning into disbelief to create an ideal for the audience to engage with. This idea is disproportionately important in US artistic tradition. The man with no name (Clint Eastwood’s most popular character) isn’t meant to be understood as a person, but as the ideal of the western outlaw.
One of the major reasons this became so important in US tradition is in part because of the low budget of classic hollywood films, cheap spaghetti westerns, and the nature of broadway plays. The seams of our art and the techniques used to compensate for them informs a lot of how we engage with art. Once you know to look for it you can see its influence all over the place in our art.
The Princess Bride deliberately taps heavily into this style, which resonates in a unique way with a US audience.
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