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"The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event."
Does placing a disclaimer before a show give you unlimited ability to then defame a person? Yes I am talking about Law and Order. And specifically the episode that aired last night “Facade”. Airing March 21, 2024.
The first 45 minutes or so fairly accurately portray the case of Daniel Perry who using a chokehold caused the death of Jordan Neely a homeless man who frightened passengers on a NYC subway.
Spoilers now so watch the episode or just read. The last 15 minutes show that he’s every leftist fantasy of what a white male really is. Turns out while doing the chokehold he said “blood and dirt” an obvious reference to Nazis and “blood and soil”. Furthermore the gym he goes to is ran by an undercover cop investigating white supremacists. He’s actually a full fledged Nazi collecting weapons to plan another very violent January 6. Non of this can be presented at trial because the white supremacists investigation is more important than convicting him at trial of murder.
Where am I going with this? This feels like defamation to me. There is no evidence that the real life Daniel Perry has any ties to actual Nazis.
I completely think art needs to have an ability to show real events. And I liked Law and Order back in the day. But there is a real life Daniel Perry and if I loosely followed the news I would 100% know the episode is referring to him. They followed the facts in the case accurately for 45 min. The last 15 min he is a terrorist Nazi. I would assume the last 15 min are referencing something in his background and he has some ties to real Nazis.
Without ruining the entire genre and making it impossible to do this feels like defamation to me. A midtwit would be under the impression it’s about him and he’s a real Nazi. But the real Daniel Perry is not a Nazi.
This leads to two questions for me. The lawyers can comment on the actual legal line here. The non-lawyers can discuss whether he’s damaged any differentially than if CNN just ran a bunch of made up stuff he was a Nazi. He’s a real private person and I think I can fairly say a lot of people would watch the episode and assume he has real Nazi ties.
There is one more element of art depicting reality. The FBI has instigated and put under covers in against normie Republicans and Pro-Life people on the grounds they are a national security threat but they probably aren’t in those cases full fledged terrorist.
If I were Daniel Perry I would try to sue. I feel like his reputation was damaged and he has real damages but not a lawyer to know the legal lines and I would assume NBC has lawyers but I still feel like he has a real reputational damage. Plus he’s going on trial and a juror who saw the episode would now think he has undisclosed nazi ties.
There is probably some who is the bad person thing here. In their fictional depictions from episodes 20 years ago I probably didn’t care when they added some negative stuff to a black character etc. But now that white people are bad I get upset when they add he was a Nazi about to commit 1/6 or 9/11 to their fictional portrayal of real events.
In summary his obvious fictional portrayal of his actions added a whole he’s a real Nazi plot line but they began the episode with a disclaimer it’s fictional.
Edit: I would be curious if anyone else watched the episode. Or if everyone is assuming I am appropriately representing the episode as they portrayed him as a “full-fledged nazi with a desire to kill black people” as accurate. And that exaggeration is expected now.
This reminds me very heavily of what I wrote last year regarding how I believe that movies like Knives Out are basically trying to implant progressive "brain worms" into people's heads, to kind of overwrite their perception of famous people:
And here
I haven't noticed this blatant trend so much these days, but maybe it's because I simply am checked out of modern media and the culture war.
Yes, imagine something in media doing a 'serial number filed off' story of a very prominent person currently in society, done to affect the public image of that person - god knows that's something new and never done before.
Obviously, I'm not saying Knives Out is equal to Citizen Kane, but this is nothing new, and people who were on the side of those being put in less than a fantastic light in past times didn't react well back then, or think said portrayal was actually good - Hearst famously basically tried to ruin Welle's career.
Again, none of this is new - it's just people you're closer to supporting than prominent media creators are the ones getting their ox gored, and just like all of history, you're claiming it's a terrible, bad portrayal.
Just because it's happened before, does that mean it's good to do? I love Citizen Kane and think it's an amazing movie, but would I feel like it was crossing a line if I were of the time period when William Randolph Hearst were a prominent figure? Maybe.
I also know that Citizen Kane is clearly driven by an artistic vision, more than just character assassination. I don't know if it's something I can quantify, but I can tell you that Knives Out is no Citizen Kane. If someone is trying to tell a great story and that happens to be inspired by someone real and portrays them in less than perfect light, that's far different than specifically trying to make something just to make them look bad and pander to a political audience.
One way perhaps this can be measured is in how sympathetic the movie is to the character in question. Charles Foster Kane was clearly a sympathetic character. We were taken along for the ride with him his whole life. Even if he is a ultimately a tragic figure, he is still a great figure, and one that we can understand exactly what happened to him and see ourselves in his shoes. When Knives Out portrays Musk and Rogan, there is no sympathy, and they're just portrayed to be incompetent, bratty, lucky, talentless backstabbers, and we are made to feel like only the most wrong hearted and selfish people could ever end up like them.
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