4 ms·
Yes, how provincial and constraining are those rules about not lying!
by jessriedel 10y ago
Yes, how provincial and constraining are those rules about not lying!
- scrollaway 10y agoWhat "rules about not lying"? Movies are entertainment. Most of them are based on lies, regardless of what it says at the beginning or in the credits. Actors are professional liars. Hollywood thrives in fiction; story and tropes.
- jessriedel 10y agoLies are distinguished from fiction by the intention to deceive about the real world, as opposed to counterfactual imagining.
- oldmanjay 10y agoGiven that, what point were you making?
- harryjo 10y agoThe point is, lying is bad, it rips the fabric of society. Fiction is not lying, it is useful, contextualized nontruth.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoLies are the lubrication of society; you're lied to anywhere between 9-200 times a day.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoI see what you did there.
- sverige 10y agoThat depends on what the definition of "is" is.
- jessriedel 10y agoThat lying to people in order to make your film feel more realistic is a bad thing to do, even if minor in the grand scheme.
- gingerlime 10y agoI don't think the intention was in any way to deceive the audience. I personally see it as part of their post-modern filmmaking[0] style. What personally makes this style interesting to me is that there are usually several layers of meaning and intention. And usually references to other films or common perception or convention. Even if the intention is to tell the truth or a true story, there's always the bias of the storyteller, the selection of what to tell, and what not to mention etc. So in this case, the Coen brothers re-used the "based on a true story" concept, and even exaggerated it. They re-use the format, but mock it at the same time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernist_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernist_film
- jessriedel 10y agoIt doesn't stop being an attempt to deceive just because it's self-aware, ironic, or motivated for other reasons. Likewise, murder during a robbery is still murder even if the primary is theft.
- ncallaway 10y agoThere are no such rules about not lying. We have societal norms about it, maybe. But there are certainly no explicit rules about this, and the societal norms about lying are already pushed to their breaking point when you walk in to a movie theatre.
- posterboy 10y agoRule and norm are synonymous, IMHO. What is the difference? What makes a rule explicit? Do you mean laws? Law itself is often rather abstract, does that still count as explicit? I think there are specific laws about fraud. In film they can claim artistic license, though.