The love-hate relationship of history and pop-culture

There's often a disconnect between those that want  to capitalize on a town's true historical value and that which has been assigned to it through popular culture.  I think of Dodge City's identity crisis as the town where Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson walked our streets versus Marshall Matt Dillon and the mountain range only a few miles away.

Which is why I have to wonder of those in Deadwood, S.D. consider their HBO namesake a curse or a blessing. Granted, I'm several years behind the times on my affection for the show. But a channel on my wife and I's satellite provider has recently begun airing unedited episodes of the excellent — and incredibly profane — series and I find myself hooked.

Growing up among the Wild West lore of Dodge City, it was

easy for me to ignore it as a kid. When you see it every day, it's hard to get jazzed about it. But, to me it seems like a series along the lines of “Deadwood” paints a more vivid and historically gritty look at the frontier than a more neutered Western may have.

It would be an understatement to call “Deadwood” child inappropriate. The prostitution, murder and outright scalliwagism is played to full force. A good chunk of the series focused around those who once actually lived within the outlaw town at the edge of civilization.

Which leads me to question: Does fictionalization of real-life people and events lessen the impact they actually had? Or does it serve as a boon for those towns that are subject to the fiction, drawing more attention to the town or events than they otherwise may have garnered?

In other words, is the occasional love-hate relationship with things like Gunsmoke and the countless novels written about Dodge fully deserved?

Discuss!

Photo from variety.com.