People who don't know how to read or view art/literature can make a real mess of works based on an event or person they "recognize." This has already happened with Deconstructing Sally, to my utter astonishment. I should know better. This is not the first time something like this has happened.
At the end of the video is a title card that reads, "Some of this happened, and some of this is made up. Therefore, this is a work of fiction." I don't know how I can be clearer than that.
And yet there is someone, and there will be more, who thinks this "fictional memoir" actually happened literally the way it is presented. This is the great mental disease of our culture, the inability to discern or respond to imaginative works. As a matter of fact and historical record, the fictional Sally is nicer than the woman who inspired her. I didn't take a leave of absence from the university, I dropped out -- and it was my idea, not hers. She didn't support me in Portland: I got a job as editor of the NW Mobile Home News (now there's another story!). I made her nicer and more supportive because I thought it made the drama of the story better -- the higher you are, the farther you fall and all that. There are many more examples.
Our culture, with its reality shows and "based on a true story" dramas, has created a population abysmally ignorant of the workings of the narrative imagination -- even though "creativity" long has been a buzz word.
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