Recently I've been thinking about why the labels "based on a true story" and "inspired by true events" seem to add so much weight to a story. True stories are compelling and can be quite inspiring, of course, but the question I'd like to think about is why they often feel more important to us than fictional ones.
For example. A couple of weeks ago, my dad and I watched a movie called The Way Back. Directed by Peter Weir, The Way Back tells the story of a small group of Polish prisoners that escape a Soviet labor camp in Siberia and walk all the way from the camp, across the Gobi desert, through Tibet, and over the Himalayas to India. The film is good, but what makes it more remarkable is the fact that it claims to reflect true events. The main character is Sławomir Rawicz (though he is given a different name in the movie), subject of the ghostwritten book The Long Walk. Published in 1956, The Long Walk tells of how Rawicz and six other prisoners escaped from Siberia and walked to India.
Almost immediately after the movie ended, my dad (who has read the book) announced that some people question whether the events Rawicz described actually happened. After a little digging on the internet, I learned that there has indeed been a large controversy surrounding The Long Walk since its publication half a century ago. Though it is a very celebrated book, a lot of people have attacked the story as a lie since parts have been found to be untrue. Many even believe that Rawicz stole the story from a man named Witold Glinski, who told an almost identical tale of escape.
So maybe parts of The Long Walk never really happened. Maybe none of it did. Regardless, the anger it inspired in people makes me wonder: why do we as a society always feel so compelled to poke holes in things, and why do we place true stories on such a pedestal? Instead of being passionate about the story of the Long Walk, people were passionate about disproving it. As a student of history, I understand the importance of telling a true story when you're claiming to. However, people seem to actually enjoy the process of naming someone a liar. Why did my dad feel compelled to so quickly discredit some of the things we'd seen? Why can't we take just as much from a story that is part-truth and part-fiction as a story that is fully true?
To me, the overall fixation on true stories seems to suggest that they are somehow better than fictional stories. That fictional stories don't matter as much. And this is something I have a problem with.
John Green articulates my feelings excellently in the author's note with which he opens his book The Fault in Our Stars:
"This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up. Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”
Granted, Green is talking about novels, and there is obviously a difference between novels and works of nonfiction. Nevertheless, I think he touches on an important point. Fiction can matter. Fiction does matter. The characters in works of fiction might be made up, and the events they experience might not have happened, but that doesn't mean we can't take something from these characters and their stories. That we can't learn from them, or be inspired by them, or do nothing more than simply enjoy them. The imagination is an important part of the human brain. Indeed it is one of the capacities that most distinguishes us from other animals. So while it is of course important for a work that calls itself nonfiction to actually be nonfiction, I do think we shouldn't always feel a story has to be 100% true for us to find meaning in it or value it. I think we should open ourselves to treating fictional stories as important. For truth often empowers a story, but imagination always empowers us.
For a nice overview of the Long Walk controversy, I recommend this page: http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2011/01/03/the-long-walk-did-it-ever-happen-2/
Interesting! Reminds me of the difference between "true" and "real."
ReplyDeleteSomething is "true" when it agrees with our beliefs, observations, experience. Something is "real" when it actually exists, or once existed.
For this reason, truth may be found in reality, but not always. For example, most people think that the Bible tells true stories, though they aren't real (sorry Jonah). The imagined characters and plots of novels are likewise true, if we choose to believe them.
On the other hand, are real stories always true? If something exists, does that automatically make it true? It's tempting to say yes, but experience gets in the way. Life is filled with paradox. We see what we see, or hear what we hear, but we don't believe it. This happens all the time in trials, when judges and juries review all the evidence and come to wildly difference conclusions. Just because we know something happened doesn't mean we know the truth of what happened.
In general, I would argue that artists have a greater claim on truth, and that a novel based on a true story may be more truthful than facts that are in the historical record. Sławomir Rawicz may have mingled facts and fantasy when he recollected his long walk. Does that make his book less truthful? Not for me, because the truth he told has more to do with struggle, freedom, courage, dignity, survival than with roads, weather and food choices. I may choose to believe his story is true, because it agrees (for the most part) with my beliefs, observations, experience. Others may reject it for the opposite reason, but in their claiming that the story isn't real, they are not convincing me that it isn't true.