To Tell the Blurry Truth

More than ever, our powers of observation are in need of fine-tuning. We must all equip ourselves with uncanny abilities to discern and differentiate between what is real and what is fiction.

Last week I went to see “The Fourth Kind,” a movie, which purports to be based on true accounts of alien abductions in Nome, Alaska. In the movie, the audience is shown dramatized reenactments of what is supposed to be true footage of abductees undergoing hypnotherapy. Although it is by no means a great film, the hypnosis sessions were sometimes compelling as the patients were videotaped completely recalling their utter horror having suffered through close encounters of the fourth kind. The movie uses an interesting device where the original “true footage” is at times intercut into the film and is sometimes even juxtaposed beside the dramatizations (which was mostly distracting).

So, here’s the thing, as is it so happened, I was slightly tardy in making it to the theater. For this reason I entered just after the start of the movie. The woman who was on screen when I walked in wore slightly too much makeup and her hair was perhaps a little too unkempt. It was clear to me that the “hair and makeup” department had gotten this wrong when they were shooting the film. As the movie continued, I realized this woman was being sold as the actual doctor in the true story. In theory, this was supposedly raw “documentary” footage. For the rest of the movie, I kept studying this woman’s face trying to figure out if a real woman would ever style her hair or apply her makeup in such a fashion. And the answer I kept coming up with is no.

And this brings me to today’s question. Are we better or worse off if the lines between fact and fiction are continually blurred? From a creative standpoint, it is actually quite interesting to think of new ways to impress, shock and fool your audience. But the audience (and that’s us, folks) must then be tasked with the ability to discern the difference between truth or fiction.

A few years ago, I read a book whose title I won’t mention, but the author claimed the story was fictionalized. I am still fuzzy on exactly what this means. Is fictionalized a way of saying based on fact, but beefed up with fiction? In any event, the entertainment world is eagerly selling improvised and/or scripted as reality with the end result that the two genres are now imitating each other and neither seems entirely authentic.

In case you didn’t know, in scripted entertainment, whether it’s television or film, the production process first requires a written script before any footage is shot. In reality entertainment, it is the opposite where footage is filmed at the beginning and then later the writers sift through it to figure out where the story is. But even these techniques have been modified. In Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a story outline is delivered instead of a script. The players know what the story is, but they improvise their lines. At the same time, movies like “Paranormal Activity” and “The Fourth Kind” are written to have a “reality” feel to them, but the truth is they are scripted. Personally, I like to think of it as practice. The more these lines are blurred, the easier it will become for us to tell the difference, not only in entertainment, but also in our everyday lives.