Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Docudramas - reality news/fiction
Rod Carveth has written a thoughtful column on the nature of pack-hunts and media docu-dramas. This in particular is about Amy Fisher - "The Long Island Lolita". There are, according to Carveth, two different cases of docudramas:
Important to notice is that the validation of a story, the "truthfulness", is up for public scrutiny of the kind that has more with genereal trends in the public opinion than mere facts.
Carveths writings on the case, especially concerning Amy Fisher is of course even more interesting now, when we see that the story lives on - now where Mrs. Fisher is taken into the arms of TV-guru Oprah Winfrey and has published "her side of the story", aka the rebuttal of earlier docudramas that went with the story of her alleged lover Joey Buttafuoco. And of course there's a book deal - Fisher's book If I Knew Then.
"The first is the historical docudrama, a fictionalized retelling of a period ofThey usually follow two different plots:
history, such as Patton: The Final Days. These telefilms benefit from the
perspective of time passage: Much has been written and much is known about the
events that have happened.
The second category of docudrama I call the "headline"' docudrama. These telefilms are based on events that have occurred much closer to their airing, usually within five years. [...]"
"The first plot revolves around tales of adversity, where the principals display
courage and persistence and achieve some form of triumph. [...] The second basic
plot centers on tales of crime, often involving either greed or lust (or both).
Most often, the crimes are murders or sexually related assaults. In the end,
justice prevails, and the criminals are held responsible for their crimes.
Examples of this type of docudrama are Good Night, Sweet Wife: A Murder in
Boston (about the Charles Stuart murder case) and Murder in New Hampshire (about
the Pamela Smart murder case). One of the primary selling points of these
docudramas is that they are "based on fact" or "based on real-life events."
Important to notice is that the validation of a story, the "truthfulness", is up for public scrutiny of the kind that has more with genereal trends in the public opinion than mere facts.
Carveths writings on the case, especially concerning Amy Fisher is of course even more interesting now, when we see that the story lives on - now where Mrs. Fisher is taken into the arms of TV-guru Oprah Winfrey and has published "her side of the story", aka the rebuttal of earlier docudramas that went with the story of her alleged lover Joey Buttafuoco. And of course there's a book deal - Fisher's book If I Knew Then.
