Markup View

Author: MasoTey

Sep 21st 2009 at 4:59:07 PM

@{{Triterope}}:  Agreeing with AutobiographicalRole, for the reasons you stated.

However, I ''don't'' agree that "person playing himself straight in fictional story" should qualify.

I see this trope as having to do specifically with attempts to radically re-create reality, to the extent of softening barriers between the original event and the staged re-creation.  The person is, in a way, secondary — the focus is on the idea that "this really happened," and including the real person is a technique to emphasize the reality of the event.  This doesn't apply when, although the person is real, the event is not.

Put another way, it's a question of universes.  The universe of a strictly fact-based film is, by definition, closely connected to RealLife, and the participation of the true story's original players — whether as writers, consultants, or performers — is used to make that connection stronger.  So when a person re-enacts for the camera events he really participated in, the person in RealLife and the character in the film have essentially the same relationship to those events in their respective universes.

But when a person plays himself (however accurately and unexaggeratedly) in the midst of fictional events, this does not happen.  The way he relates to events in the fictional universe may be true to his personality and to the behavioral precedents he has set in the real world, but it does not portray the way he actually related to any specific real event.  Instead of showing the way he ''did'' react to something that happened — a recreation of reality — it shows the way he ''would'' react to something that hasn't happened — an alternate reality.

ETA:  I'm not greatly familiar with many of the examples, so I'd appreciate any comments on whether or not specific examples in the top post fit.