Hillary Swank has been praised by Hollywood for her portrayal of Teena Brandon, a young woman who lived her life as a man before being murdered for her lifestyle.

The story has been embraced by many as a call for tolerance of non-traditional sexual orientations. Now her mother claims that it may not be the right story.

Following Swank’s Oscar acceptance speech, Teena’s mother, JoAnn Brandon, lambasted the way filmmakers portrayed her daughter’s life. Her biggest criticism was that filmmakers failed to mention that, as a young girl, Teena had been sexually molested by a man.

“She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her,” Brandon was quoted by the AP as saying.

JoAnn Brandon’s opinion of why her daughter chose to live the way she did is, like the filmmakers’, just speculation. Beyond recorded events and personal conjecture, the “true” story died with Teena Brandon.

This is why I don’t like movies about real people. They take someone’s life and fill in the “why” questions with fiction.

Even a very well-done film, like Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” pales in comparison to a well-made documentary of Malcolm X. The reason is that any film has to apply a particular slant to the life of the person.

We have grown up amidst stories of heroes and villains and insist on applying these labels to historical figures as well. Unfortunately, real people are rarely, if ever, worthy of either.

It is impossible to find a profile of an athlete that doesn’t make him or her out to be a disadvantaged kid pulled up by the bootstraps.

When a firefighters die, they are revered as heroes. Still, they aren’t doing any more than the thousands of other firefighters in the world. But making them out to be extra-special makes for a better story.

It’s interesting to speculate if any of us were to become successful, what version of our life story would be chosen. By selectively choosing what we tell, most of us could probably be made out as heroes or villains.

Granted, there are often conflicting accounts. Nixon, for instance, has been portrayed as everything from a viscous abuser to a passionate patriot.

In general, however, we are given things fairly black or white and left to speculate as to the shades of gray. As a result, we try to see the world in the kind of absolutes that exist only in Hollywood.

When a convicted killer faces the death penalty, people attempt to portray him or her as a horrible, inhuman monster. There are no monsters in our society. There are people who do very bad things, and people who do very good things. At the core, people are pretty much the same.

This should be an idea that brings with it a sense of unity and compassion. Instead, people insist on believing that they don’t have anything in common with each other.

We consider people who are recognized for heroism to be a cut above us, and those who are criminals to be a cut below. These ideas are even less real than the projected images on the movie screen.

Any good movie touches us on some fundamental level. The best way to do this is through clear, crisp storytelling. Unfortunately, the lives of real people are usually muddy.

Trying to make these stories more clear by inventing or manipulating the facts betrays the truth of the person’s life.

Maybe this is a lost cause. One of the best movies about a real person I’ve seen was “Man on the Moon,” because it didn’t try to speculate as to why Andy Kauffman did anything. It was criticized by many critics for exactly this reason.

If the fact is that real life doesn’t make for compelling cinema, we’re in trouble. Sure, film is art, and any art must employ a degree of selectivity. But this isn’t the same as slanted storytelling.

If watching a factual story isn’t compelling without a healthy helping of Hollywood glitz, we are completely out of touch with who we really are.

The best way to overcome this is to take movies for what they are. Even an excellent movie like “Boys Don’t Cry” may not be entirely accurate. That doesn’t make the story less important or compelling.

Even more important is to recognize that the stories you see happening around you every day are both important and compelling. They may not be pleasant, and they may not be happening in Dolby Digital, but they do carry with them truth.

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Ben Godar is a senior in sociology from Ames. He is an assistant arts & entertainment editor for the Daily and enjoys long walks on the beach.