Anna Nicole Smith

[softwareNerd]

Recently, the TV news couldn't get enough of the Anna Nicole Smith story. She had a short, but eventful life. Here's a question though: if her life-story (the "plotsy" bit) were fiction rather than real, would it qualify as Romantic fiction, or Naturalism, or some type of mix?

I asked a colleague why so many people followed the Smith story, and the reply I got was: "It's interesting, watching a train-wreck in the making". One can make a pretty decent case that the events in Smiths life were the result of the choices she made, not the result of exceptional luck nor of unexpected tragedy. One has the elements of volition, the elements of Romanticism.

The other key element to look for would be deeper motivation. In this aspect, I don't know enough about her specific case: it's possible that if one unravels her motivation, one might finds a psychology that has accepted "the world's like this" at some level, and is then simply playing by those rules. So, if there's an element to naturalism to the story, this is where one would probably find it.

Thoughts?

[Seeker]

Romanticism presents life "as it might be and ought to be". I don't know all the details of Anna Nicole Smith's life, but I find very little that was ideal. She attained wealth by marriage, not productivity. She was not an intellectual and was a tragic figure in many ways.