The big screen "documentary"

W.
JFK
Titanic
Charlie Wilson’s War
Frost/Nixon

Here’s a way to make documentaries sell:

Fictionalize them and pawn them off as a historical drama.

The audience won’t know what actually happened. Be sure to throw in some famous quotations, actual settings, and factual news headlines and the line between your fiction and reality will soon blur. Your audience will feel the heady rush of drama and they will naturally link their experience with what really happened. (or vice versa)

Historical fiction is a well respected and very entertaining genre in books, but when it gets promoted on the big screen, it becomes somehow more real.

Aside: I suppose it is ironic that a current movie star playing a historical role makes the characters become MORE real to the audience.

Nonetheless, movies allow our perception of historical figures to be no longer based upon a passage that we embellish with our imagination. Characters on film are flesh and blood…and invariably more handsome or beautiful than reality.

Most of us would accept that James Bond didn’t exist, as these films are pure fiction. Sure, some might argue that Mr. Bond was based upon Ian Flemming’s knowledge of the British Secret Service but the character has been fictionalized by superhuman feats of daring, courage, and amour –and recently a grittiness—that couldn’t possibly be real.

The danger, then, is not the film that uses exaggeration obviously to build drama. The danger is the film that exaggerates quietly between facts. The use of creative license allows for a retelling and possible reshaping of history, as long as there is enough truth to make the story plausible.

So how does this rant feature on a social marketing blog, you ask?

I’ve written already about the power of documentaries to affect social change, and it lead me to critically consider the more popular movies that recount (pun intended) history. People’s actions are actually informed by fiction. This is a worrying trend, and one that even I, too, found myself falling victim.

I watched W., directed by the respected and talented Oliver Stone (read: presumed credible), and I was entertained and outraged (read: smugly satisfied). I found myself feeling mad at the jealousy, arrogance and ignorance of the namesake character.

The problem is, I was tilting at windmills.

The character I watched may, or may not, have actually represented George Dubya. Sure, Josh Grobin looked and sounded like the former president, and I don’t doubt that some of the scenes may have been reasonable facsimiles of history, as drinking at college—even alcoholism—although unfortunate, isn’t uncommon in our society. Did he fall in love with Laura? Presumably. Was it at a garden party? Quite possibly. Did she go all doe-eyed when they met? Maybe. Was she always so supportive? We’ll never know.

When social marketers use media of any sort to share ideas, retell history, or package facts in such a way to engage an audience, we need to be mindful of the “silver screen” effect; that is to say, that we need to be sure to separate fact from fiction in the name of entertainment.

Packaging information to make it effective must not blur its truth.