There was an interesting book called Life, the Movie written back in the late '90s that argued people were even then already so steeped in entertainment media that they had internalized the mechanics of story and viewed their own lives through them: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Movie-Entertainment-Conquered-Rea...

I was reminded of the book and its argument the other day while watching David Simon's HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, so I wrote a blog post about the connection: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/08/show-me-a-hero-and-the-lim...