Human beings love stories. Human beings love fiction. I think a basic reason for that is because individual human experience is extremely provincial. You can only live in one place at a time. You can only live in one timeframe. So stories enable us to vicariously expand our range of individual experience.
There are roughly two kinds of stories: factual and fictional. We can also subdivide the fictional category. Many fictional stories could parallel factual stories. Many stories deal with the kinds of people, situations, and events that happen in real life.
That raises the question of why novelists, playwrights, and moviemakers so often prefer fictional stories even though there are real life stories that illustrate the same things. I think that's largely due to convenience and flexibility. In fiction you can arbitrarily select and combine the elements so that your characters say and do exactly what you wish, when and where you wish they to do so. That gives a creative artist great freedom. In real life, the variables can't be manipulated that way.
It also reflects the fact that our knowledge of true stories is quite limited, whereas imagination is much more expansive, so that fictional stories doesn't require the same amount of knowledge as, say, a historical film or novel.
Speaking for myself, I find dramas based on "a true story" more emotionally satisfying than imaginary stories. Knowing that it happened to real people.
On the other hand, there are fictional stories that couldn't happen in real life. Take stories about time travel, interstellar travel, a parallel universe, or a fantasy world, viz. Perelandra, The Tempest, vampires, aliens, talking animals.
In some cases, these might be naturally impossible, although there could be a Perelandra theme park. An artificial setting. In other cases, they might be naturally or physically possible, but we lack the technology to experience that.
In addition, unrealistic fiction is appealing because it's how we wish things would happen sometimes. Comedies often trade on that appeal.
Take Braveheart. Loosely based on the real William Wallace. But a lot of historical innacuries. Dramatic licence as they call it.
ReplyDeleteOr Vito Corleone aka the Godfather. Loosely based on Charles "lucky" Luciano.
Both the Godfather and Braveheart are much more entertaining than documentaries on the real life people they are based on.