The Fictions of Reality

I've been watching a lot of movie-length pieces about real people lately. By that I don't mean fictional movies based on real events, I mean documentaries and stand-up comedy specials, mostly. I use the term movie-length because I wouldn't necessarily call stand-up specials "movies," but for the sake of brevity, let's just assume that from here on out when I refer to these pieces of work as "movies," I'm talking about both documentaries and stand-up specials.

I couldn't tell you entirely why I've been feeling this particular kind of movie lately, but I think it has something to do with the tangibleness of it, the almost accidental complexity of real people. So often, our own motivations are so garbled and unintelligible that when we see movie characters whose goals are effortlessly defined it rings less true, no matter how properly unfurled those motivations are.

Basically what I'm saying is that the most well-written fiction doesn't hold a candle to real life.

More after the jump.


That sounds obvious, but it's kind of a big deal coming from someone who consumes as much art and fiction as I do. Like most nerds, I spent a lot of my time alone diving into worlds of fiction, using them as escapism from a world I didn't have much in common with.

I still don't have that much in common with it; that much hasn't changed. But what has changed is how I view the world around me. Now, when I'm choosing something to watch, I find that I'm more intrigued by the idea real people, real situations, real problems. I'm sure that, for those who regularly read my blog, it's readily apparent how interested I am in social politics. It's in that vein that I have been devouring these pieces and truly enjoying them. They're social politics either stated outright (documentaries) or as humorous stories (stand-up), and seeing the way these diverse people have come to accept the world that we live in is fascinating to me.

But I started thinking more about both of these genres, and I realized that as much as the social politics of both forms interest me, the reason why I truly enjoy them is how fiction infiltrates them. In documentaries and stand-up, the parts of them that are the most intriguing are not necessarily their blatant realities, but rather how they craft reality into a narrative, into a fiction.

Stand-up comedy is the most obvious culprit of this. Jokes are often exaggerations of real-life stories. And, while a Patton Oswalt bit has its basis in a real world situation, the comedy aspect comes in usually when fiction is interjected. As hilarious as a story can be, it requires a storyteller's tilt to craft it into something beyond mere anecdote.

Documentaries do this, too, which is a weird thing because documentaries are supposed to expose truths about our society that we are ignoring or are being pushed into the background. But, just like stand-up, the stories of life that need telling aren't ready-made. They require an author's pen to shape into something universal. They require an editor's shape to be molded into something that speaks to our soul.

So, really, I've been delving into an in-between, a purgatory, between true fiction and true reality. Because it's along that line that the truths of culture that so often elude us walk. It's along that line that I discover the most about myself.