39,327
edits
Based on a Great Big Lie: Difference between revisions
update links
mNo edit summary |
(update links) |
||
Line 6:
Everyone who visits [http://www.imdb.com/ IMDb], for a start.
The best case scenario is that you get a wry chuckle from your fans and a nod in a couple of papers. A worse case scenario is that some folks get together and sue you for selling the story to them under false pretenses. The ''worst'' case scenario is when your supposedly true story is actually very close to someone else's ''actual'' true story, and you end up losing every penny of your profits in a humiliating lawsuit because nobody believes your sudden recantation. Best solution? Just say that it's fiction all along.
You could argue that the very premise of this trope exists because [[Viewers are Morons]]. It's generally taken for granted that [[Kayfabe|just about everyone over the age of six realizes that fictional media is not real]], and that any attempt to replicate an actual event within a fictionalized framework - no matter how painstaking the effort - is inevitably going to fall short. But in a heavily suburbanized era where so many people in post-industrialized countries are sheltered from so much of reality, it's probably inevitable that they'll think of docudramas as being as real as it can get.
Line 24:
* [[The Haunting In Connecticut]] purports to be based on a true story. However, Ray Garton, the author of the book that the film (and a [[Discovery Channel]] documentary) was based on, has admitted that the "true story" was a fabrication. He has said that none of the family members could get their story straight, and that they were dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction at the time, which may have affected their judgment. When he pointed this out to Ed and Lorraine Warren, the case investigators (who, not coincidentally, also investigated the Amityville case), they reportedly told him, "Make it up and make it scary."
** Ed and Lorraine Warren themselves are (were in Ed's case) self professed demonologists. Opinions may differ in terms of their reliability when it comes to cases, [[Paranormal State|shows]], and other investigators such as [[Ghost Hunters|Jason Hawes]] that they have been involved with.
* As a result of [[Executive Meddling]], ''[[Alien Abduction Incident in Lake County]]'' was billed as being based on actual events, against the wishes of the director.
* ''King Arthur'' is billed as the true historical story of [[King Arthur]], but instead is little more than a "remix" of the popular Arthur mythos. Whether there was a historical Arthur at all remains a matter of fierce historical debate, and there are several potential candidates for the basis of the character, none of which bear more than a surface similarity to the movie's Arthur. It's not exactly a success as a "true historical story" either - the entire movie is [[Did Not Do the Research|one]] [[Hollywood History|long]] [[The Theme Park Version|historical]] [[Anachronism Stew|inaccuracy]]. Heck, the title character himself lived about 300 years ''before'' the movie is supposed to take place.
* In a very similar vein to ''King Arthur'', the makers of movies such as ''Troy'' and ''300'' make a big deal about the historical content, which, in reality, is minimal at best. The glaring violence toward epic mythology and written history would be sufferable if people like Zack Snyder didn't insist on their accuracy, and yet in the case of ''300'' there's the [[Unreliable Narrator]] thing. So which are we supposed to believe? In both cases, however, with even the most rudimentary knowledge of classical history and literature one can recognize that the movies are mostly [[In Name Only]] adaptations (at best) of whatever the original work is.
** The ''300'' example is pretty tricky to pin down, especially since Snyder himself has been both inconsistent and somewhat cavalier in claims of accuracy. Between him, Miller, and various other involved personnel, the idea ''seems'' to be that the events as depicted are knowingly exaggerated, subjective and the result of an [[Unreliable Narrator]], but the broad history and the thematic content are intended to be accurate- which is generous, but still- and that the film is intended to give an ''impression'' of the events, rather than an accurate depiction. It's about the myth of Thermopylae, in short, rather than the battle ''per se''.
** It's also worth noting that, for all it's inaccuracy and exaggeration, some scholars have commented that it is at least roughly consistent with the contemporary traditions of heroic fiction; for example, while the Greeks historically fought in an unbroken phalanx, they often depicted themselves fighting in a more heroic melee, as in the film. Even if it's nonsense, it's the sort of nonsense which the Spartans themselves would probably have appreciated, so that's something.
* Back in the 70s, the very first "snuff" film ([[Sarcasm Mode|imaginatively]] entitled ''[http://www.agonybooth.com/snuff/ Snuff]'') purported to depict the actual on-camera murder of an actress. Despite all the controversy that was stirred up—which actually was the entire point—the murder was later revealed to be a hoax, albeit a not-quite convincing one. In fact, the distributors of the movie had actually just bought some random South American B-Movie and grafted on their own, completely different short bit of footage (the "snuff"), replacing the [[No Ending|actual movie's ending]].
Line 51:
* ''[[The Men Who Stare at Goats]]'' begins with an assurance, perhaps just as a weak joke, that "more of the film is true than we would believe." Which part? Sure, there ''was'' a remote viewing project in the U.S. military around the late '70s/early '80s, but it didn't work.
** Actually, Project Stargate (yes that was its name) worked surprisingly well—the remote viewings were almost 1/9 more accurate than wild guessing. It was cancelled because conventional spying is a ''hell'' of a lot more accurate than that, and nobody was sure if they could ever get the remote-viewing more accurate than "11% better than a wild guess". The Soviets had a similar project at around the same time, with similar results, leading many to conclude that ESP may well exist, but even if it does, it's not particularly useful.
** The movie is a fictionalization of a fairly well documented journalistic book.
** That assurance was followed immediately by a scene of a very strait-laced military man calmly and deliberately stepping away from his desk and running head-on into a wall for no apparent reason. We find out why later on, but right at the moment it's just a jarring juxtaposition with the reassurance, since it's exactly the kind of thing that's so hard to imagine.
* ''[[Paranormal Activity]]'' uses, along with several other formulas from films like ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]'', the claim to be a real event.
Line 76:
* Little Tree
* In the 1970s, the book ''The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail'' (retitled ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' in the United States) claimed to reveal the truth about a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene that was hidden in various Renaissance paintings. It was later revealed to be completely fictional, but not before hundreds of thousands of people had been conned.
** That book heavily inspired ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'', which caused an identical resurgence in public interest. Amusingly, the authors of the first book sued Brown for plagiarism, but it was pointed out that [[Morton's Fork|either they claim that the book is true, thus destroying their own case, as you cannot copyright history and facts; or that it was false, thus destroying whatever credibility they had and losing anyway as you can't copyright ideas. Needless to say, they lost.]] ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' got a name drop in [[The Da Vinci Code]], as one of Teabing's resources on the Grail yet many people seem to squall about the book being "ripped off" [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch|without ever noticing]] its acknowledgment within the book that apparently ripped it off so entirely. The ideas posited in ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' were essentially used as a [[MacGuffin]] in the story, as various Holy Grails so often are. The mistake [[Dan Browned|Dan Brown]] made was the same mistake the authors of ''Holy Blood'' made, which was claiming it was all based on fact instead of what could amount to [[Epileptic Trees]].
* This is part of the plot in ''Mike Nelson's Death Rat!'' (by [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|Mike Nelson]]), where the main character, an author who "doesn't look the part" of an adventure novelist, hires a handsome lunkhead to pose as the author of his eponymous book. Trouble is, said lunkhead didn't ''read'' the book first and sold it as a true story: a true story featuring a 6-foot-long rat.
Line 95:
* ''The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar'' by [[Roald Dahl]] claims to be a true story, only with a few names changed. Given that the title character exercises clairvoyant powers, it's reasonable to assume that he did not exist by ''any'' name.
* Similar to the James Frey controversy, JT Leroy was actually the pen name of a middle-aged woman, Laura Albert, whose fictional persona was of a young transgendered prostitute. Albert even hired her sister-in-law to make public appearances dressed up in drag in order to portray a post sex change Leroy. (Try not to think about that one too hard.) Her first novels about underage gender dysphoric sex workers from the Deep South were presented as being at least vaguely autobiographical. Of course, it should be noted that even though it's Based On A Great Big Lie, this doesn't stop ''The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things'' from being really, really good.
* [[wikipedia:Anthony Godby Johnson|Anthony Godby Johnson's]] ''[http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2006/08/boy-wonder-tony-johnson-was.html A Rock and a Hard Place]'' is the memoir of a young boy whose [[Abusive Parents]] molested him and sold him to their friends for sexual purposes, until he contracted AIDS. Eventually, he ran away and was adopted by a social worker named Vicki Johnson. However, none of it actually happened; authorities and reporters (including Keith Olbermann, who was one of the "kid"'s biggest supporters at first) became suspicious when they realized that Vicki Johnson was the only person who had ever seen the boy, and that Johnson had pretended to be him while talking to them on the phone. A New Jersey traffic engineer realized that the supposed author photo was one of him as a boy, and the person who took said photo was his former school teacher... Vicki Johnson.
** Armistead Maupin, one of the many authors taken in by the hoax, wrote ''The Night Listener'' about the experience. However, it's a roman a clef, and the first-person narrator, a Maupin [[Author Avatar|stand-in]], says several times that he's been known to embellish the truth. Very good book about this trope. (''A Rock and a Hard Place," on the other hand, isn't very well-written, particularly once you realize that its author is NOT an 11 year old.)
** The case was so polemic that [[wikipedia:Faith (Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode)|it inspired a rather popular episode]] of ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]''. In it, {{spoiler|a literary agent is ''killed'' for discovering that the ill and secluded female teenage author he sponsored didn't exist, but was the invention of two con artists that made themselves pass as her "foster parents". The "girl", just like Tony Godby Johnson, had written a best seller based on her horribly abusive bio parents.}}
* The book ''The Third Eye'' by 'Lobsang Rampa' allegedly tells the experiences of a Tibetan lama. It was eventually revealed to be written by a Devon plumber called Cyril Hoskin who had never been to Tibet in his life.
** Hoskin subsequently insisted that "Rampa" was a walk-in spirit that had taken over his body. As shown by the "Talk" page on his Wikipedia article, some people still believe this.
** Subverted in that it appears Hoskin himself genuinely and sincerely believed what he was saying.
* The ''[[Flashman]]'' books are all supposedly based on rediscovered memoirs written by the title character. This device (coupled with the impressive amount of research [[George Macdonald Fraser]] put into every volume) led more than one critic to believe they were the real deal.
* The book ''Michelle Remembers'', perhaps the most (in)famous alleged written account of Satanic Ritual Abuse, though helping to stir up the SRA witch hunt of the 80s/90s, has now been widely discredited. Mostly by many healthy doses of [[Fridge Logic]] - for example, a supposedly nonreligious 5-year-old having the presence of mind to rebuke Satanists with a cross, an 81-day ritual that summons the Devil himself during which none of the Satanists apparently need to eat, use the bathroom, or show up at work, and a fatal car wreck that strangely didn't turn up in a newspaper that reported on wrecks of even less serious nature at the time. One of the worst parts is that the titular Michelle (who later divorced her husband to marry the psychologist she was relating all of this to) blames her involvement in the abuse on her mother, who died of cancer when Michelle was 14. [http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=cabc&c=whs&id=4349 This] article gives a detailed analysis of the book.
** ''Michelle Remembers'' was hardly the only book that factored into the "Satanic Panic" of [[The Eighties]]. Two other books that led the scare were Laurel Rose Willson's ''Satan's Underground'' (under the name Lauren Stratford) and Mike Warnke's ''The Satan Seller''. The former spoke of being brought up as a "baby breeder" by a Satanic cult, giving birth to babies to be used in sacrifices or [[Snuff Film|snuff films]], while the latter was about serving as a "Satanic high priest" before coming to Christianity. Both books [http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/side.htm were] [http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/warnke.htm exposed] as frauds by the evangelical magazine ''Cornerstone'', which pointed out that the dates and events given by the authors didn't line up with school and hospital records, among other inconsistencies. Willson later reappeared as "Laura Grabowski", claiming to be a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and a victim of [[Mad Doctor|Dr. Josef Mengele]]; this, too, was exposed as a fraud when a Jewish group investigated her claims.
* The prologue to the original novel of ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' has the author going into great detail about the "research" he did about the Opera Ghost, including digging through archives and interviewing some of the characters, claiming the story to be true. Two bits are verifiable: there was indeed an underground lake under the Paris Opera House and there was allegedly an accident in 1896 involving a falling chandelier that killed one person. Oh, and of course the real opera house provides the setting. But the rest is fabrication.
** What fell in real life was the counterweight of the chandelier, not the chandelier itself. Still, many of the book's characters are [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]] versions of real people who lived in Paris at the time. Some scholarly fans have claimed that everything in the book save for the Phantom himself was based in real experiences, though that most likely is still a gross exaggeration.
* ''[[Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets]]'' has an in universe example with Professor Lockhart's books. He was a complete fraud who simply stole the accomplishments of less "charismatic" people after making them forget about ever doing them via memory charms (that is, the ''accomplishments'' were more or less true, the great big lie, so to speak, was that Gilderoy Lockhart was the protagonist).
* The book ''[[The Men Who Stare at Goats]]'' is claimed to be true by the author, but the Army denies it and nobody's been able to confirm any of the incidents described.
Line 113:
* A children's book called ''The Pushcart War'' claimed it was based on a true story. While certain events are implausible (like attacking trucks with pea-shooters), it's theoretically ''possible''...until you realize that the copyright date is before the time that the events in the book supposedly take place.
* Averted by Bernard Cornwell's ''The Warlord Chronicles''; notable in that, although they are written as a relatively realistic take on the Arthurian mythos, Cornwell cheerfully acknowledges that they are entirely fictitious. He suggests that the broad sweeps of the story provide a viable mock-up of what ''could'' have happened, but based purely on his own speculation, and are heavily tempered by narrative demands and [[Rule of Cool|whatever he thought would make a good story]]. Ironically, despite all of this, it is ''still'' altogether more realistic and historically accurate than the above film which actively touted itself as such.
* Lorenzo Carcaterra's ''Sleepers'' purported to be a nonfiction account of how he and three of his friends were sent to reform school for a year, where they were viciously abused by the guards. A decade later, two of the friends killed one of the guards but were acquitted of murder because they were prosecuted by the third friend, who intentionally lost the case with the help of a false alibi provided by a priest. However, none of the details provided by Carcaterra corresponded to any real-life murder case that has been identified, and Carcaterra's records from the Catholic school he attended in his youth have no indication of him ever having been sent to reform school, or even being absent for as many as four consecutive weeks.
** No real murder case on ''Manhattan'' has been found to correspond with the one featured in the book but Carcaterra states in the opening that it didn't take place on Manhattan in real life. The book also claims the school records for Shakes and his friends were altered before the trial to make it seem like they hadn't been gone for any long period of time. This doesn't mean the story is true though.
* ''[[Go Ask Alice]]'', a rather infamous anti-drug book, offers the compelling tale of a young suburban girl who is sucked into the world of drugs and eventually ends up dead. Ostensibly the real diary of a teenage girl, it was, in fact, entirely fabricated by "editor" and youth counselor Beatrice Sparks. Sparks has also released a series of other "true diaries" in the same vein as ''Go Ask Alice'', but dealing with different subjects, such as AIDS (''It Happened to Nancy''), and teen pregnancy (''Annie's Baby'', among others). [http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp It was also debunked on Snopes.]
Line 130:
* Liza Marklund co-authored a whole series of books together with a woman calling herself Mia, detailing the abuse and persecution Mia and those close to her suffered from her Muslim ex-boyfriend. The events in the books were claimed to be completely true with only names and places changed to protect those involved, and Marklund spent years using the books as proof in political debates. In 2008, Monica Antonsson wrote a book proving that the books about Mia are almost completely fictional. After trying to claim that Antonsson was lying, Marklund changed her tune and claimed the books were never meant to be taken as fact and were clearly fiction all along.
* Jordanian author Norma Khouri wrote ''Forbidden Love'', a memoir detailing her life in Jordan and her friendship with a Muslim woman who was murdered by her family in an honour killing for meeting a Christian man in secret. When an Australian literary critic did some digging and discovered that Khouri had not been in Jordan at all during the book's timeframe (and even got [[You Fail Geography Forever|certain locations in Jordan wrong]] and [[Did Not Do the Research|misrepresented their legal system]]), the publisher hastily recalled the book. Khouri admitted to taking some liberties with original story, but maintains that the book is still [[Based on a True Story]], despite all signs pointing to the contrary.
* Both a real example AND an in-universe example: ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' begins with the narrator (Huck) informing the reader that you won't know who he is unless you've read "a book by the name of ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]''. Huck tells us the book was written by Mark Twain, "and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth." He then goes on to make the same claim about the story the reader is about to be told.
* Done for satirical effect by ''[[wikipedia:The Report from Iron Mountain|The Report from Iron Mountain]]'', a [[The Sixties|'60s]] counterculture book written by Leonard Lewin as a [[Stealth Parody]] of [[The Vietnam War|Vietnam-era]] military think tanks. Posing as a leaked document written by a "secret government panel", it claimed that war was a necessary part of the economy and served to divert collective aggression, and that society would collapse without it—basically, the plot of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''. Therefore, in the event of peace, they recommended that new bodies be created to emulate the economic activities of war, including [[Blood Sport|blood sports]], the creation of new enemies to scare the people (including [[Alien Invasion|alien invaders]] and environmental destruction), and [[Refuge in Audacity|the reinstatement of slavery]].
Before the hoax was revealed in 1972, even President [[Lyndon B Johnson]] was fooled by it (and reportedly "[[Berserk Button|hit the roof]]" when he read it), and there remain [[Conspiracy Theorist|conspiracy theorists]] who believe that it actually ''is'' the real deal, claimed to be a hoax [[Parody Retcon|as a means of damage control]].
* ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', a notorious anti-Semitic tract claiming to be the records of a meeting by a Jewish cabal plotting to [[Take Over the World]]. In reality, it was written by the Okhrana, the [[Secret Police]] of [[Tsarist Russia]], as a tool for starting pogroms with, and was later carried into western Europe and the US by White Russians in the wake of [[Red October]]. It was exposed as a forgery by ''[[British Newspapers|The Times]]'' of London in 1921, which revealed that large sections of the book were cribbed wholesale from a 19th century anti-Napoleonic tract. Even so, it was made part of the school curriculum in [[Nazi Germany]], and anti-Semites to this day cite it as "evidence" of a Jewish conspiracy.
* [http://www.cracked.com/article_17003_the-5-most-ridiculous-lies-ever-published-as-non-fiction.html Cracked.com has a whole article devoted to this.]
Line 150:
== Video Games ==
* The Japanese ''Tengai Makyou'' comedy [[Role
* Similarly, the US/Europe release of ''[[Fatal Frame]]''/''[[Market-Based Title|Project Zero]]'' is advertised as being based on a true story. Charitably, it could be said to actually be based on something that ''might'', at one time, have been an urban legend in Japan.
* At the start, ''[[Armed and Dangerous]]'' says that it was based on a true story. Considering that this game includes a tea drinking robot, miniature black holes, and a land shark gun, among ''many'' other things, this was probably not supposed to be taken seriously.
Line 158:
== Western Animation ==
* This is actually parodied in the episode "Arrgh!" of ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]''. SpongeBob and Patrick quickly come to believe their pirate quest is a scam (and that Mr. Krabs has gone [[Cloudcuckoolander]]) finding out the treasure map is just a game board they used earlier in the episode. Chance kicks in as they do find the treasure according to the map (the game board) with the remarks of SpongeBob saying "It really IS based on a true treasure map!" The Flying Dutchman comes in to take his treasure back, willing to share with SpongeBob and Patrick. But much to the dismay of Mr. Krabs, he only gains a piece from the game board, and gets replied "But it's based on a REAL treasure chest!"
** It's notable that this is rather Karmic, as it was a fight over the treasure (Patrick and SpongeBob wanted their shares, Krabs wanted it all) that woke up TFD in the first place.
* [[Tex Avery]] was fond of this trope. ''Drag-Along Droopy'' began with the disclaimer; "This is an absolutely authentic account of the grazing land battles of the sheep and cattle wars of the early west. We know this story to be true. It was told to us by--'''A TEXAN'''!"
Line 166:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:The Shades of Fact]]
[[Category:
| |||