Reality Entertainment

For the 2004 Academy Awards, I was intrigued by the fact that four of the five Best Actor nominees had played real people: Johnny Deep for playing JM Barrie, Jamie Foxx for Ray Charles, Leonardo DiCaprio for Howard Hughes, and Don Cheadle for playing Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of the Hotel Rwanda. Only Clint Eastwood played a fictional character, and even his role seemed like the iconic “great teacher takes on promising but challenging student” role. Three of those four “based on reality” movies were also Best Picture nominees.

Then it happened again this year. Three of the five Best Actor nominees, two of the Five Best Actress nominees, and three of the four Best Picture nominees are about real people and real events in our recent history. A quick look over the nominations for the past 15 years shows that while historical settings are common, real people are fewer and far between, with 1995’s Braveheart and Apollo 13 being the last time two such films were nominated.

And now I’m starting to wonder if reality television isn’t changing the way we tell stories.

Some have argued that the reason for this surge in retelling past history has to do with our inability to yet focus on how the world has changed since September 11, 2001. Certainly the movies nominated this year echo this issues we face today—the erosion of our rights due to outside forces with ideological differences; the ugly reality of what people will do when they are outsiders; the desire to avenge wrongs and preserve one’s country in the face of terrorists.

I’ve watched 4 of the 5 Best Picture nominees (I’ve not seen Munich) and they were all thought-provoking, and sometimes uncomfortable films.

I’m not sure that there is a time when it is not true, but with the world the way it is today, it seems like thinking is particularly important. If the reality-wrapper makes that more palatable to today’s viewers, that’s okay; although I prefer to know how “inspired by” vs. real it really is.