{"id":622,"date":"2013-05-30T06:03:20","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T06:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/?p=622"},"modified":"2013-05-30T06:03:20","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T06:03:20","slug":"the-taste-for-true-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/theory\/the-taste-for-true-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"The Taste for True Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

We see Spielberg’s film for the promise of the true Lincoln hidden by the image. \u00a0Photo Alexander Gardner \/ Wikipedia Commons \/ Public Domain<\/p><\/div>\n

The idea of a true story functions as a fantasmatic inducement almost without equal.\u00a0 Movie studios like to green light projects that have a basis in actual historical events, and when they releases these pictures, they inevitably emphasize that the films are not just fiction but depict a lived reality.\u00a0 Even filmmakers play a part in this fantasy by often including the phrase \u201cbased on a true story\u201d or \u201cbased on actual historical events\u201d in a title card at the beginning of their films.\u00a0 Quentin Tarantino ironically mocks this practice in Django Unchained<\/i> (2012), but this irony works only because the practice is so widespread.\u00a0 The controversy that surrounded Tony Kushner\u2019s screenplay for Lincoln<\/i> (2012) stemmed from his departure from historical fact concerning the vote for the 13th Amendment, and it bespeaks our investment in true accounts in relation to fictional ones.\u00a0 Some prominent figures in Connecticut experienced his failure to relate accurately their Representatives\u2019 support for the Amendment as a psychic violation.\u00a0 Fidelity to factual events matters so much because we invest ourselves in what a truthful depiction portends.\u00a0 Despite the prevalence of unprecedented special effects that render the screen ever more distant from our everyday experience of social reality, the depiction of reality continues to occupy a privileged position in our fantasy structure.<\/p>\n

The idea of the true story plays such an important role for the psyche not because it reflects our everyday experience but because the true story promises what everyday experience obscures.\u00a0 When we meet the Other within our social reality, the encounter takes place within a context that establishes a relatively rigid set of rules that govern the possibilities of the encounter.\u00a0 For instance, the social codes of a work environment prevent workers from screaming profanities at co-workers or from masturbating in their cubicles.\u00a0 Even in an epoch of casual office attire, the unwritten codes that determine how we interact constrain the possibilities for encountering an Other acting outside these constraints.\u00a0 We don\u2019t see a naked Other but a denuded one, an Other absent the manifestation of desire that would rip this Other out of its symbolic situation.<\/p>\n

But the problem with our fascination with true stories is that such stories hide the structure of desire that they utilize.\u00a0 Our desire doesn\u2019t seek the truth but the desire of the Other\u2014an object that has no true existence.\u00a0 As long as we commit ourselves to true stories, we miss the structure of desire that finds satisfaction in the failure to find its object rather than in successfully accessing the true.\u00a0 As the social order becomes increasingly mediated and illusions of immediacy become more and more rare, the appetite for the true story will grow.\u00a0 Moral indignation about excessive exposure will only have the effect of augmenting this growth.\u00a0 The only possible response lies in the act of properly locating our satisfaction and identifying its source in the repetition of failure.\u00a0 When we align satisfaction and the failure to see the authentic desire of the Other rather than the successful glimpse of this desire, we free ourselves from the trap of the true story.\u00a0 We gain the possibility of seeing the virtues of the fiction.\u00a0 It is the fiction that is the true path to the real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of a true story functions as a fantasmatic inducement almost without equal.\u00a0 Movie studios like to green light projects that have a basis in actual historical events, and when they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}