Dysfunction Sells

If you watch enough theater, or television, or even read a few books, it doesn't take long to draw the conclusion that dysfunction sells.

Across all platforms, dysfunction sells. 

The desire to in someway witness (in some form or fashion) the lives of characters real or imaginary, fall apart, implode, go belly up, get thrown to the wolves, etc., and then be resurrected, saved, reborn, vindicated - is apparently an innate aspect of the human condition - the whole vicariously living dealio.

Not many writers, producers, publishers, actors, etc., have been able to make a living spinning tales of people who live normal lives with healthy, no-confrontational relationships with family members, friends, co-workers, and random strangers.

Few characters that inhabit the worlds created by the talented (and yes, even the untalented) minds of Hollywood or Publishers Row get up and enjoy a simple breakfast with their family, go to work and greet their co-workers amiably, do their jobs diligently, stop off at the grocery store on the way home for milk or bread or whatever, and then go home to a family they love and cherish and enjoy spending time with.

Nope, that does not happen in the wonderful worlds created by the best (and worst) creative minds in the business.

In the business of entertainment the things that are least likely to happen ever, and I mean ever ever, in the lives of anyone on the planet earth, is exactly what happens to characters depicted in shows, plays, novels, etc.

Which is all fine and good until the imaginary content begins to affect the opinions and attitudes of real people - people who in this day and age have platforms via the internet with which they are able spread their misinformed ideas throughout the world with nary a fact checker to be had.

Or who sit down next to me in bars.

Hollywood has long been notorious for distorting (or re-imaging) historical facts to create more tension or exaggerate the dysfunction.  

For example (as if anyone really needs one), in the Biopic of Ray Charles released in 2004, one of the tension-creating plot elements is Ray Charles refusing to play a concert in Atlanta due to the black fans in attendance being regulated to sitting in the balcony of the theater, and his refusal to play subsequently results in him being banned from performing concerts anywhere in the entire state of Georgia, forever.

This plot point is resolved at the end of the movie, depicted in a scene set in 1979, wherein the state of Georgia issues an official apology to Mr. Charles and designates his hit :Georgia On My Mind" the official state song.

At which point Ray and his family (wife he'd married in 1955, three grown sons) are applauded by an appreciative audience and Ray sits down at his piano and performs a soulful rendition of the tune.

It's a heart-warming, uplifting scene...and it's all horse puckey.

For starters, and most importantly, Ray Charles was never banned from performing in the state of Georgia. That is 100% fiction, or as more contentious people would state, a bald-faced lie. 

The state of Georgia never held a ceremony to apologize to Ray Charles because the state of Georgia never had any reason to apologize.

However, there was a ceremony in Georgia that Ray Charles did attend in 1979, but that was his induction into the Georgia Musician's Hall of Fame and the subsequent announcement that his song "Georgia On My Mind" had been named the state song.

Oh, and Della wasn't there, they'd divorced a few years before that actual event occurred.

But the truth was lacking, at least as far as Hollywood was concerned, so something that never happened had to be inserted for "dramatic effect".

Which wouldn't be too bad if the person I was discussing race relations with (the aforementioned guy next to me at the bar - well, not actually next to me - about six feet away - 'rona social distancing and all) last night hadn't brought up Georgia banning Ray Charles from performing as support for his argument that even successful black Americans had been relatively recently persecuted by the government, and I had to use the good 'ol Google to prove him wrong.

Seriously Hollywood, black Americans, including black entertainers in the 1940's and '50's, have suffered and endured mountains of real crap at the hands of ignorant racists, there's really no need to make things up about that for "dramatic effect".