Is fiction more powerful than fact?
Blurred Lines
I watched two films in quick succession, a Hollywood blockbuster followed a few days later by a low budget, low key and hand held camera documentary. After the viewings I experienced a wormy unease and it took a few days before the cause of my ambivalence surfaced, surprisingly as a question.
What is fiction and what is fact?
The Fiction: One Battle After Another (Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson). Mesmerising, furious, intentionally paced to flood cortisol and adrenaline into the system, taut, searing, intelligent. The atmosphere in the venue after the film was electric, stunned, a collective pause and intake of breath prior to the usual bubbling of conversations – what had we been hit with?
The Fact: 20 Days In Mariupol (Directed, filmed and narrated by Mstyslav Chernov, an Associated Press journalist), shot (literally and metaphorically) in the besieged city at the beginning of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Mesmerising, taut, intelligent, adrenalin and cortisol flooding, tense. The atmosphere in the venue after the film was electric, stunned, a collective pause and intake of breath prior to an unusual wracked collective reverence – what had we been hit with?
What is fiction and what is fact?
The fiction? One Battle after another.
I sat in my second favourite seat and was transported into chaos: the eye of the camera oscillated between the intimate and claustrophobic, then hauled you out to a panoramic landscapes or the spectacular explosions. City scapes hosted chases, abandoned buildings, human suffering and solidarity, malevolent males, tortured powerful women, belligerent teenagers, bravery, courage, nihilism and hope. Flawed and brutal, yet the graphic violence was not synthetic or trivial and the characters were psychologically coherent. The demand on the audience was to bear witness to the viscerally believable worlds of the terminally corrupt, abuse of power and the degradation of humanity. Set in sterile corridors, sinister bunkers, unexpected safe houses, juxtaposed by by shameful Government overcrowded human warehouses. Oscars collected? Yes. Best Picture? Yes.
The fact? 20 days in Mariupol.
I sat in my best seat and watched a tank swivel it’s eye towards the hospital, pause, before lazily returning it’s belligerent gaze to the adjacent residential housing and released destruction. The eye of the camera peered into the intimate claustrophobic images of people cowered in blasted door ways, the distorted faces and then steered you through the city scape that hosted mangled iron once a playground, buildings that abandoned modesty and revealed their interiority to the street, unforgiving dust, the acrid stench. We then invited to dance a sidestep through brick and bones. Haggard souls with hearts in tact wore municipal uniforms as they scoured the city to dignify the corpses. No extras on this film set able to get up and claim their free meal. The “unhaven” hospital decorated corridors with the wounded, dying and the dead, nooks and crannies stretched to capacity. Hospital staff demanded that the world bore witness, ran gruesome tours of the hospital’s swollen morgues. Medics with clinical passion “factualised” the Russian “fictionation” of the graphic gory sordid reality of war. Extraordinary courage, intense emotions, nihilism, believers in the cause and converts to Russian line, dignity, despair, and hope. Names of the people interviewed were requested, multiple truths recorded, stretched and broken, accounts of solidarity and fragmentation. Oscars collected? No. Best Documentary? No.
I remember when the fiction/fact dichotomy was not so fraught, and, even if naive, a belief that there were some facts or perspectives that the majority agreed upon as true or legitimate. Yet the Russian spokespeople claimed that the news coverage in Ukraine was pure fiction. A staged elaborate hoax, populated with actors and special effects; basically a propaganda film with malevolent intent towards the target Russia.
Has the evolution of cinematography, special effects unwittingly raised the bar so high that what shocks and what looks real is more powerful than images of real suffering? Consequently reality appears faded, lacking in energy and definition, not as noteworthy or shocking. News coverage of real events and atrocities has natural constraints, legal requirements to verify and fact check, not to cause harm with graphic images. So view the reporting and recording of obliterated cities, regions, with actors on the ground. Arguably more important, we bear witness to another heave of traumas that issue out of these once whole lands. The caveat being reality does not end after a compulsive three hour screening, the consequences are infinite, there is no comfort break and we are free to leave.
What is fiction and what is fact?
It seems that previous demarcations between what constitutes Right-wing, Left-wing or Centrist beliefs has ruptured. The continuous repetition of stock phrases as “insurmountable deep divisions” is now the cant that feeds “fearhype”. The blurred lines that create a sense that every happening from celebrity gossip to war is “unprecedented”, “appalling” “never seen before” “unforgivable”, relentlessly repeated by and for a voracious 24/7 news cycle and endless virtual noisy mouths. With the demise of nuance and the grading of events with due attention to the actual severity of the occurrence, meaning becomes meaningless.
Now, in the collective “unconsensus” even thinking, seeing some thing with our own eye, or your experience of self and the world is viewed suspiciously unreliable increasingly publicly undermined. The benign elephant in the room replaced by a biodiverse compost heap breeding conspiracy theories. On an industrial scale we are harangued from all sides, overwhelmed by the clutter of utter certainty of their opponents ignorance and lies and their (self) righteousness. Do we forget that a strong opinion is a belief and might not bear a one to one correspondence to reality?
What is fiction and what is fact?
We are encouraged to view insult, strife, and conflict as a form of entertainment, fictions made real by repetition. I am sure that the majority of journalists, commentators and public figures are not all devilish demigods, intentionally and strategically creating unreality. Or is this preferable? For example an adherence to the principles of Machiavelli’s 1520 treatise The Art of War, a 1520 the ultimate self-help book for despots. Or Orwell’s 1984 novel a blueprint for the “strong man” leader. Perhaps it is better if there are deliberate strategies knowingly propagated; there is space in this scenario to “catch them out” with robust investigative journalism or brave campaigners taking on big institutions companies, and Governments. Think the Hillsborough families historic marathon to justice in the UK or the mighty Erin Brockovich here on substack. Inspirational people.
Another alternative dystopia is of the cannosiation of those who hold bizarre beliefs with a total disregard of facts, science and a contempt for all that is deemed “other”, and awarded the role of the standard bearers for morality. The modern Inquisition. False equivalence safe guarded by the media’s click chase compulsion and the needs of commercial business plans. When human rights are abused by secular ideology or literal religiosity, the normisaliation of unfair laws and persecution. Discrimination as a dream come true and not a nightmare.
Sadly, no side has the monopoly over madness. “Fake news” is a lazy rebuttal, like “woke”, merely denotes a curated construction that if a person or group are different, they are the problem. The population of straw men overtaking humanity. The “left” can be self righteous with those who can afford to have “principles” choosing disenfranchisement and disengagement. For me it is a luxury of privilege to refuses to tackle discrimination, a leave me alone mentality, or hides behind the banner freedom of speech? Is that an overstretch on my part? Yet it whiffs of the concept of Negative Liberty articulated by the British Philosopher Isaiah Berlin. In contrast the alternative Positive Liberty, which emphasises equality of opportunity and access to employment, goods and services, protection, housing and healthcare.
Purism manifested as the opinion that any lack of adherence to one world view founded on the usual fallible consortium of beliefs is unacceptable. With over 8 billion people in the world difference is the de facto norm. Offence is not sufficient to curtail robust discussion or demand that life, your life, is a perpetual “all you can eat buffet”. It is more of a challenge to cultivate the maturity to listen to opinions that are radically different, and deeply challenging. We can all be paralysed by an agoraphobic fear of vacating our comfort zone.
Can you? By Lucy Morley Williams
What is fiction and what is fact?
Let’s fan the flames of our natural curiosity, champion self-respect and dig into our own psyches. Stop making sense. Live with uncertainty. I, you, us are very good at rights and entitlements, but less enamoured with responsibility. Blame and demanding surrender easier than the onerous task of struggling with what we must give, change or compromise for the greater good.
When you have defeated the enemy, cancelled all opposition, silenced dissenters, shamed and blamed and reign supreme, then what? Entropy, stagnation, corruption, inevitable catalyst, chaos and change. This is the natural cycle, it is nature, it is inevitable, and more powerful than the “Instagramification” of our fragile vanities.
What is fiction and what is fact?
Thinking for yourself is the greatest gift to give and receive so why not stop making sense?
Until next time
(With more made up words)
Lucy
Thank you! I was on a roll of semi outrage and attempts to have a more compassionate thoughtful overview.
Have a lovely weekend
Lucy
Movies which try to promote killings, try making us to cheer ours, good guys which are killing dehumanized bad guys. But it is not true in real life. I do not look for “powerful” feelings in the scenes of violence. It is not healthy to enjoy in it. You could not compare reality of killings with violence in movies. You just could not compare these two things. You could not award a prize to a man who “powerfully died in front of camera” in real event or to a man who shoot that scene. It is not entertainment. I remember one festival of documentary film in Europe which was during the summer in the coastal town, and many tourists abroad went to see movies. After the projection of a documentary movie from World War II—with scenes from torturing people in the bus by fascists with guns, which did terrible things to civilians like knocking nails in their head—a reporter interviewed spectators. The older tourist from America in shirt with flower pattern and camera around his neck came out from the cinema with wide relaxed smile on his face. Reporter asked him what he thought about movie and he said smiling: “It was sexy”. He obviously identified himself with torturer, those who identified themselves with victims would have different feelings.