Like Winona, we're all preparing for our next role

At a hint of public exposure, people cease to be themselves and present their lives as high drama

It was a good try, but somehow it always seemed unlikely that the I-did-it-for-research line, used by misbehaving creatives down the years, was going to swing it for the light-fingered actress Winona Ryder. Becoming extremely fat for a role, or using drugs, or experimenting sexually, or impersonating a publisher, can all be passed off as signs of dedicated professionalism; heaving thousands of dollars' worth of goods into a bag in the Saks department store was taking research too far, even for a jury in Beverly Hills.

Yet the easy assumption that here was another pampered star driven round the twist by an excess of money and fame may well turn out to be simplistic and unfair. Like any good actor, Winona Ryder may have been doing little more than reflecting the times in which she lives.

When, a couple of years ago, I was accused of shoplifting and wrote about my experience, I was contacted by someone who stole from shops for a living. Over the telephone, he told me of some of his scrapes, his appearances in court, how he was banned from the larger supermarkets, the day he was chased through a busy town by security guards. Why was he telling me all this? He wanted his story to be told, he said. It would make a really interesting article in The Independent.

Winona Ryder, it seems, is not the only person who is preparing for her next role. The boom in fly-on-the-wall documentaries and the new obsession with fame has had a bizarre social effect. Reality – that is, things happening in and of themselves – is changing, to be replaced by the kind of tightly edited, fast-moving, semi-scripted "reality" that we see on TV. At the merest hint of public exposure, people cease to be themselves. They begin to present their lives as high drama in which they are the producers, writers, directors and stars.

This strange, unhealthy mindset seems not only to blur fact and fiction, but it often actually propels the news. When a sniper started killing Americans in the Washington area, he was soon behaving in the manner of a psychotic baddie from a Hollywood movie. He left tarot cards at the scenes of some of his crimes, taunted the police and adopted a naff, self-consciously chilling slogan: "I am God."

Soon everyone was playing a role. Charles Moose, the police chief leading the investigation, conducted press conferences as if they were screentests for yet another sequel to Silence of the Lambs, even at one point playing that old B-movie line: "Now it's getting personal". Ex-cops and pundits pronounced publicly on the case, and were accused by Moose of putting the community at risk for the pleasure of appearing on TV. It was "an absolute ego problem", he said.

Then, for the love interest, his wife stepped into limelight. When her husband was in despair about his next press conference, and was worried that he had nothing to report, she would, she told the press, send him off with the words: "You go out there. Tell your public you love them and you're working hard to keep them safe."

When a police officer seriously believes he has a public and that he must love them, something very peculiar is happening. Reassuringly, real life played as drama usually suffers from the same problem as many films: the performances can be fine, but the plotting and dialogue are dire. The dodgy royal butler who is currently in the news played the part of loyal, old-fashioned retainer rather well during his trial, but, now that he is having to flesh out the role with words, the whole thing is beginning to fall apart. That three-hour meeting with the Queen will cause major credibility problems with audiences, while some of the screenplay – "The trouble was, Your Majesty, that you spoke in black and white. The Princess spoke in colour" and so on – screams out for a rewrite. But then, in that case too, from the moment that police officers arrived at Burrell's house to announce, like characters out of The Bill, "We're looking for the crown jewels", there had been signs that those involved had been attending to their own internal film director rather than behaving normally.

Now that everyone is, like Winona Ryder, preparing for their next big role, it is those who refuse to play up to the camera, or participate in tearful, dramatic press conferences, who begin to seem odd, emotionally dysfunctional. It is perhaps fortunate for our own sanity that these dramas of self-consciousness are frequently so inept. The timing is hopeless. The performances are frequently over the top. The dialogue creaks. When President Bush, talking of war, adopts the tone and phraseology of a sheriff chasing an outlaw in a cowboy film, it is merely embarrassing. Or when one of our own politicians responds to a spot of bother with a hilariously melodramatic soundbite, "Unite or die", we reach for the remote control and check what better dramas are on the other channels.

terblacker@aol.com