Ethics of "real person fiction"?

Just something I was thinking about today. You’ve got classic examples like Shakespeare’s histories, and more recently Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc , Schaffer’s Amadeus, and Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love. (All of which focus around persons deceased, I realize in typing them up.) Some of these I consider to be as much the writer’s creation as the original person’s life – Salieri and Richard III of course being notoriously maligned “characters” – and some to be reasonably accurate tributes – La Passion is apparently very historically accurate.

Then you’ve got things like Saving Jessica Lynch, the sort of Lifetimey, exploitative, “based on a true story!” fiction, which seems to me to be in a different ballpark.

Of course the issue of profit comes up: I believe Ms. Lynch accepted a fair sum for her “life story,” but then I don’t see Peter Schaffer forking over a percentage of his proceeds to the estates of any of his characters.

So is it ethically acceptable to use the story of someone else’s life as part of your own creation? Does it make a difference if that person is alive or dead? If you’re paying them off or not? I haven’t done enough research into the issue to be able to come up with a satisfactory answer, and I’d be interested to hear what other, more knowledgeable Dopers have to say about it.

Hah! Guess not. :slight_smile:

I’ve read in screenwriting books that dead people are pretty much up for grabs- they can’t sure for liable and there is no way to copyright an actual person. We all have as much a right to comment of, say, John Lennon or George Washington’s life as anyone else- they are a part of all our history. But with living people you have to cover your legal tracks.

This interests me, as I would like to make a musical based on a deceased executive of a very large overseas corporation- which I recognize may not be legally possible. I eagerly await replies.

I’m a fan of alt-history and I’ve wondered this myself. Frequently a writer will take a prominent historical character and make a fairly wild supposition about them and write. I always thought they could get away with it legally with the dead but had to avoid the living.

But the ethics of it (in effect potentially confusing the historical record) is a grey area.

When I saw this subject line I assumed it was about “real person” Internet fanfic, like about how all the actors from movie X or the members of musical group Y are all secretly having sex with one another. I’m guessing that other people made the same assumption and decided to stay away!

The OP’s actual question is one I have thought about, as I’ve done some “based on a true story” writing of my own about a long-dead minor historical figure. I don’t know that anyone but my mother and best friend will ever see it, but I still thought about what my moral obligations were to my subjects.

As others have noted, once a person is dead you can legally say pretty much whatever you like about them. There might be trouble if they have surviving spouses, siblings, or children – I doubt Yoko Ono would turn a blind eye to my writing a novel portraying John Lennon as an axe-murderer. However, there’d be no legal barrier to a novel portraying George Washington as an axe-murderer. For living people, public figures are less protected than ordinary citizens, as they’re taken to have voluntarily given up some of their right to privacy. Private citizens can of course choose to sell the rights to their personal stories.

On the ethical side, I think one could justify taking a lot more liberties in a comedy or satire than in something presented as a serious work of historic fiction. A mock slasher-flick about the Father of Our Country chopping down more than cherry trees wouldn’t be mistaken for the truth. A drama about the conspiracy to cover up Washington’s bloody past might confuse people. A case could be made that there’s no reason to worry about muddying the good name of a man who’s been dead for centuries, but I think everyone on the SDMB would agree that willfully spreading misinformation is a bad thing.

In general, I’d say that if you’re dealing with fiction based on real people (living or dead), you should make it clear to the audience that you are writing fiction. The more serious the work and plausible-sounding your invented events, the more explicit the disclaimer should be.

The tree, the tree. Will no-one think of the poor innocent cherry tree?

I love biographical novels-- not so much the first-person kind, but still, it’s an enjoyable genre.

I recently read Lucy by Ellen Feldman. It’s a first-person novel about Lucy Mercer, mistress of Franklin Roosevelt. It brought up many of the same questions that the OP had, being that it’s so recent in its timeframe. Feldman is very sympathetic to all of those in the story-- no one but Alice comes off as bitchy or “mean.” (And most people say Alice really was a bitch.) The author thanks decendants of both the Roosevelts and the Mercer family, so I assume there must have been some sort of approval.

I also read The Emancipator’s Wife : A Novel of Mary Todd Lincoln by Barbara Hambly. Hambly is not so flattering: she portrays Mary Lincoln as actually having incapacitating mental problems, a drug addiction, and a pretty nasty personality. Having read quite a bit about Mary, I disagree with all three assertions.

The difference between the two books was that if I were Eleanor’s daughter, I wouldn’t feel bad by Feldman’s characterizations, but I would be upset by Hambly’s book if I were Mary’s daughter.

(We really ought to have a Cafe Society thread about these things-- I have tons of recommendations, and would love to get some recommendations from others.)

Interesting point about “willfully spreading misinformation,” Lamia. A counter to that might be the ever-popular “artistic merit:” for example, Amadeus arguably created the “Salieri poisoned Mozart” myth, but it would have been a much less effective drama if that plot had been left out. Is that excusable in Amadeus because it’s a “good” play, but not in Mommie Dearest because it’s a “bad” book/movie?

Then there’s the sort of filling-in-the-blanks fiction like 1776, which is technically misinformation in that it’s not necessarily true, but contains no false information. (Setting aside the whole song-and-dance business, of course. ;)) Sort of, “Well, it COULD have happened this way!” I think that’s more ethical than fiction which contradicts known information about the person(s) in question.

The point of slander (which is what I think you’re getting at, Lissa) is also a good one, and I think it falls under the same branch, but misrepresenting personality instead of facts. Which can go both ways, come to think of it: it may be nicer to whitewash a real-life jerk than to slander a real-life good guy, but as far as spreading misinformation goes, both are equally bad.