When does earnestness work, and when does it collapse into tedium?

Why does Elizabeth Streb's earnest addiction to reality (REAL cinderblocks, REAL dancer's heads practically diving into the cinderblock, REAL flying, resulting in REAL landing with a REAL thud!!!) thrill me and make me cry, while Hal Hartley's earnest addiction to reality still pisses me off 48 hours after watching The Girl From Monday?

Is it just a question of schaudenfreude? Of thrillingly high stakes compared to the easiness of fiction?

And since this is a sculpture blog, what does sculpture have to do with reality?

It is interesting that sculpture depends upon reality in the same way Streb does. Rather than creating an illusion out of whole cloth, like a painting, photograph or film, sculpture (well, sculpture that is formally interesting) creates an improbable but completely true situation by manipulating physical reality, not by denying it.

In other words, a sculpture doesn't just look like it shouldn't be standing. It actually stands there looking like it shouldn't stand.

So much contemporary art is having a problem with being too literal, with illustrating reality. What's the difference between illustrating reality and fucking with reality?