Caricature, Realism, Idealization

 How much of literature and art can be summed up in these three categories of representation? We either make fun of (via various modes: satire, mockery, caricature), represent as object impinging on the senses or via some believable psychology, or we idealize, making the thing better, more perfect, than it would otherwise appear, via halos and photoshop and air brushing etc. 

Of course the difference between caricature and idealization is a matter of attitude as much as of representation itself. Someone too pretty or too virtuous might eventually reach ludic proportions. I think of the greatest gunslingers in classic westerns. They can be so good, so prescient, so precise with a bullet that it's hard not to laugh at them.