Pro-Plagiarism and Postmodernism

I've just read Kenneth Goldsmith's intriguing article about what he calls "uncreative writing" as the future (or even present?) of literary output. Rather than attempt to create something totally original, which is impossible anyway, Goldsmith suggests that the most cutting-edge literature may be that which includes cutting and pasting, harvesting, "copying, and appropriation." He also, however, distinguishes between this literature and famous memoir frauds (Frey and LeRoy), suggesting that a difference in intent makes all the difference to quality and reception. Goldsmith spends little time on this point, but I see it as the crux of his argument. The work Goldsmith acknowledges to be plagiarism I myself consider to be as original as Shakespeare or Joyce (not that I necessarily say it's all as good). We never believe that the 900 page book made verbatim from the New York Times is new writing, and its "author" doesn't pretend it is. Pretense and fraud are not apparent in the works Goldsmith describes, though one could technically call them "plagiarism." Computers perhaps make this issue more interesting because it is now so easy to copy something and appropriate it wholesale, but it can't be a new one. We also come around to the perennial "what is art?" question, which may actually be more relevant to this article than the "what is plagiarism?" one. Is a shark in formaldehyde art? Is a bound book of credit card offers art, or even a novel? Can everything be argued into art status?

Quick Note on Outlaws

I've just come across this update to the Butch Cassidy story I wrote about a few weeks ago, which claims that the writer of Cassidy's biography was not, in fact, Cassidy himself, but an impostor who had pretended to be Cassidy and was in prison at the same time as Cassidy. It appears, then (according to this information), that instead of Cassidy impersonating William Phillips/Wilcox, Phillips/Wilcox actually spent most of his life impersonating Cassidy impersonating Phillips! It sounds, perhaps, as though Phillips/Wilcox might be a better topic of study in terms of fraud than Cassidy is, and more or less debunks the theory that Cassidy did not die a violent death in South America.

Based on a True Story of Impostors and Lies

I have written before about Frédéric Bourdin, the Frenchman who for several months successfully passed himself off as a kidnapped American teenager, living supposedly undetected with the boy's family. Yesterday I saw the feature film based on this story, The Chameleon, which was almost exactly what I would have expected based on the story I had already read. It raised all the same questions about this story that I've read (and asked)before: how on earth could an entire family mistake a 25-year-old Frenchman for their 16-year-old relative? If they couldn't, why were they pretending to? Whose lies were worse, the impostor's or his adopted family's?

I, like the film, am pretty certain that at least some members of Nicholas Barclay's family know what happened to him, but I was surprised to see this "review" on Netflix:
This movie is based on my family and is a far cry from the truth of what really happened. Based on real life??? Not really! My family is against this movie.

The review is not signed, so we have no way to know whether it was really written by a family member, but I wonder what parts the family member objected to most. Did Bourdin resemble Nick Barclay more than the film and news article suggest? Were the family's character flaws fabricated for entertainment purposes? Despite Netflix's description of the film, it was in no way a "thriller," and exhibited few characteristics of a typically highly manipulated "Based on a True Story" film. I'd love to know what its inaccuracies are; that knowledge might give this bizarre story some closure!

On Women and Fraud (first of a potential series)

I was excited to see the title Confidence Girl as an option to watch instantly via Netflix, because I've rarely found a film in which a woman was running a con or perpetrating fraud on her own. I probably should have expected less, because despite the film's title, the titular character seems in no way to run anything and is decidedly not on her own. In fact, if anything, she is the movie's moral redemption, and her only independent actions involve giving herself up to police. We could dismiss Confidence Girl as a typically sexist 1950s Hollywood film ("she'll take you for all you've got and you'll love it!"), but I suspect ther is more to this than socially-sanctioned sexism.

In fact, I suspect there is a lot more. Though women seem to lie, cheat, and steal as much as men do, there appear to be far fewer famous female forgers (say that five times fast!) and impostors than there are male ones. I'm so far afraid to conjecture a reason for this and I don't even have stastistics to prove it, but I've been mentally developing a project (dare I say paper or even dissertation?) that will help realize some of my ideas. Stay tuned for updates!

On Evil Twins and (Un)Successful Imposture

Yesterday I somewhat unintentionally watched two films with very similar premises, about people who commit crimes against their exact doubles in order to improve their own lives in one way or another. The two films are, of course, wildly different in their respective characterization, plots, and perspectives, but they both answere the age-old question "can I replace my exact double?" with a resounding "NO!" Bette Davis thinks she is very successfully impersonating her rich twin sister though several people see right through her, and Chick's friends and acquaintances in The Man with My Face can almost immediately spot the impostor. Perhaps it's not as easy as this to spot fakers in real life, but maybe the most successful impostors are without close friends or relatives and thus have no one to give them away. Bette Davis's character in Dead Ringer is certain that she's "all alone" and the realization that she's not is both her emotional savior and legal undoing. Is the best impostor incapable of forming close relationships? Does he avoid them? Perhaps The Talented Mr. Ripley answers some of these questions, but I'll leave that for another day.

On Legends and Faking One's Death

I was drawn to this story about the possibility that Butch Cassidy faked his death and lived quietly into old age both because I love a good faked death story and because I was bombarded with postcards and historical sites referring to him on my recent trip across the country. The story claims that a biography of Butch Cassidy written in the 1930s is actually an autobiography, and that he survived a shootout in Bolivia (his supposed place of death) to live "peacefully and anonymously" in Washington state. I'm skeptical, not that he could have faked his death, but that he would change his life so drastically after twenty years of robbery and general banditry (I hope "banditry" is a word). It seems to me that a bloody death is much more likely than a peaceful machinist's existence for one of the most notorious outlaws in U.S. history.

I'm also struck by our perpetual obsession with the (fake) deaths of celebrity figures, from Butch Cassidy, to Elvis Presley, to, most recently, Jackass star Ryan Dunn. These people have taken the place of gods and kings of religion and folklore, those dead-but-not-dead leaders who live on in the promise of their eventual returns. But the return is key, because without it, the untimely, glamorous death is far better than any life beyond a fabricated demise. Perhaps Butch Cassidy didn't care about being glamorous and truly wanted a peaceful life all the time he was committing crimes, but the bullet-riddled corpse makes for a much better movie.

On Pecuniary Emulation, Product Placement, and Film

I've just seen the 2009 film The Joneses, about a marketing company that employs groups of people to act as families in order to sell everything they own, eat, and do to their well-off neighbors. The idea is nothing new, of course: I've just been re-reading The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, who in 1899 wrote that "the currently accepted legitimate end of effort becomes the achievement of a favourable comparison with other men; and therefore the repugnance to futility... coalesces with the incentive of emulation." I can almost imagine that the characters read Veblen as part of their training (which would have been nice to see in the film, perhaps).

The title of the film itself is, of course, a nod to the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses," and in some ways it does critique a society which seems to prize possessions above all else, and the costlier, the more prized. The movie does take a tragic turn as a direct result of this "pecuniary emulation" (to coin Veblen again), and certainly the satire does, at times, come through to the viewer. However, at least as much as The Joneses tried to satirize a love for things over human relationships, it also actually attempted to sell us the products supposedly being critiqued. At one point in the film, David Duchovny's "son" says "doesn't it bother you that we're lying to them?" and Duchovny replies with "I'm not lying, I LOVE this car!" The movie is ultimately little more than one big advertisement for Audi, Ethan Allen, HTC, and dozens of other products the "Joneses" are very happily consuming and selling. It seems to me that a satire would be better served by use of products that don't actually exist in real life, and that this movie is at least as insidious as its characters by pretending to make fun of what it is actually trying to sell to its viewers. I felt slight outrage (while secretly wanting an Audi for myself), and my only consolation in all of this is that the film made far less at the box office than it cost to produce.

On Branding and Counterfeit Goods

Today a friend came across a story about a fake Apple Store in China that was made to be a more or less exact replica of a real Chinese Apple Store, to such an extent that the bloggers and reporters discussing it weren't even sure whether or not it sold actual Apple products. It is even thought that the employees of the store believe that they are working for the actual Apple company. This article appeared on the heels of an announcement that Apple had a 125% increase in quarterly income compared to a year ago and shows no signs of slowing its pace.

I've written very little on counterfeit products because my opinion on them has not been cemented. On one hand, I believe that people should get what they think they're buying, and that counterfeit goods are almost always inferior in quality to their originals. People often buy name-brands because the quality and consistency of these products is ensured, just as people eat at chain restaurants or buy Starbucks, and counterfeiters often circumvent quality control by simply pasting the label of this brand on their sometimes lamentably inferior product. On the other hand, I'm often shocked by the extreme price mark-up that comes with a well-known brand, and almost feel that consumers are getting what they deserve if they are fooled by a counterfeit of that brand. Apple products, for instance, are aesthetically pleasing and generally work very well, but cost twice the price of their PC/smartphone/tablet counterparts for little discernible reason. I know I'm speaking blasphemy in the opinions of some of my readers, but the brand loyalty Apple has garnered is almost as insidious as the counterfeit rings that copy Apple's logos. The counterfeiter exploits the already brand-brainwashed public--is he a criminal, or an opportunist?

Legitimate Forgery

What does the con man, counterfeiter, or art forger do after he gets caught? He gets his own television show or works with the FBI helping to catch people like him! Television shows like White Collar and films like Catch Me if You Can emphasize the psychological issues that inveterate con men have when forced to work for the power they've always fought, but I'm more interested in the fact that former criminals can have legitimate, lucrative careers doing essentially the same things they did illegally before. John Myatt, for example (pictured above), is a famous British art forger who went to prison in the 90s but now stars in a television series and "Hollywood Film" about art forgery and his own life. His website (which could use some significant grammar editing), claims that his life story is extraordinary, yet suggests that he started forging artists' works for mainly pragmatic reasons. I wonder then, if the reformed con man misses some kind of glamor that comes with criminality, or if it's a relief to be doing a similar activity lawfully. I suspect that each forger has a very different reason for his forgery, so maybe the answer to my question is different for each individual.

The Impostor as Celebrity

On Sunday The New York Times published an obituary for Barry Bremen, self-proclaimed "professional impostor" who gained notoriety after mostly unsuccessfully impersonating athletes and celebrities in the 1980s. It seems clear from the warm, sympathetic obituary (do obituaries come in other tones?) that Bremen was admired, perhaps even envied, for his outlandish attempts to become part of events that only a select few ever experience. It seems to me that his greatest act of imposture is this New York Times obituary; just like he snuck onto professional ball fields and awards stages, Bremen has somehow slipped into the most popular daily newspaper in the country.

It also strikes me that Bremen was a sort of class-clown impostor, the type whose existence depends on the (often fairly hasty) revelation of his impersonation, and that perhaps this is why he's been so sympathetically treated. After the initial con, I conjecture that there is an inverse relationship between length of time conned and sympathy for the conman. We all like a trick, but we don't like to feel as though we've been tricked for very long, or the trick becomes the more pejorative "deceit" or "fraud." I doubt anything Bremen every did was termed "fraud," and perhaps for that reason he is celebrated instead of reviled.

Acting as a Liar

I recently viewed the 1997 film Deceiver, which I had never heard of before but was recommended to me (based on my previous murder mystery/deception viewing) by Netflix. The film stars Tim Roth as an overprivileged epileptic alcoholic liar accused of murdering and cutting in half a call girl, and I initially expected it, based on the film's tag lines and first ten minutes, to be the portrait of a deceptive serial killer. Instead, the identity and intentions of the murderer (Roth's character?) are further and further confused, leaving the viewer with no confident grasp on the truth, even at the end of the film. What particularly struck me, more than the plot or (quite captivating) cinematography of Deceiver, was the similarity of Tim Roth's character to that of Dr. Lightman, Roth's more recent television character on the now canceled FOX show Lie to Me. In both the film and TV show, Roth uses his powers of deception to root out the deception of others, and in both he is somewhat creepy yet oddly alluring. The similarity between the two roles makes me wonder what Tim Roth is like in real life, and what makes him particularly suited to play this type of character. Can we pretend to be liars if we don't actually lie, and does pretending to be liars actually make us liars? Is acting one of the honorable reasons to lie, like deceiving criminals to get them to confess or telling a child Santa Claus is real?

As American as Mock Apple Pie

For several years I have half-heartedly questioned whether fraud is a quintessentially American preoccupation, or a universal and eternal activity somehow ingrained in human nature. I have so far made few conclusions, but have found much evidence in literature and news headlines to suggest that, at very least, I am not the only person who suspects that (since its foundation, anyway) the United States has always contained fraud's richest soil.

H.G. Wells's Tono-Bungay is a wholly English story which somehow manages to be American in all of the places forgery, quackery, and money are involved. Edward Ponderevo, king of quacks, follows American models in all of his dealings, rising to financial prominence through (false?) advertising, dubious acquisitions, and shady stock exchange transactions which seem very much at odds with his nephew's understanding of England and its people. A new way of doing business is simultaneously an American and an illicit way throughout the novel, and George never quite comprehends it. Uncle Ponderevo wishes he'd "been born American--where things hum," and is continually trying to convince his nephew that the current times are best suited for advertising and show and selling things not for what they're worth, but for what you can get for them.

I thought I might get some insights into the relationship between Tono-Bungay and America from Theodore Dreiser's introduction of it in the edition I got from the library; I could find many parallels between Dreiser's Financier and Uncle Ponderevo, though financial speculation is a serious business in Dreiser, while in Wells it's mostly absurd. Dreiser's introduction just told me to read the novel, and made no mention of America or quackery or anything financial, so I am left to make my own conclusions. Wells writes about the state of England in 1908, but I think he's wary of America's increasing influence in it as much as he is of the country's natural decay. The narrator does not see buncum and shady dealings as innate to England, and it seems to me that America and fraud could be nearly synonymous in the novel. Whether or not this is/was a commonly held view of America, I am still attempting to discover.

Pop and Individuality

Last week a flood of news sprang up about the Japanese pop supergroup AKB48 and its member who is not an actual person, but a computerized conglomeration of several of the group's seventy seven (!) members created to market a candy product. I've been working at forming a clear opinion of this for several days, and I keep thinking of America's spray-tanned, plastic-surgery laden pop stars and wonder how much different they are from a computer program. It seems we are moving toward an era when there will be no "talent" to pay except for the computer programmers creating it, and that this state of things will be much more lucrative for the parties in charge. Just think how much easier seventy seven virtual teenage girls would be to manage than seventy seven real ones! However, it also strikes me that the consumers will be bored. We pay attention to celebrities as much to emulate their perfectly quaffed hair-dos as to sympathize with and/or deride their true, human foibles. Aime Eguchi can only have made up flaws, and screaming fans can never hope to meet her. Her face might sell candy, but I expect that this week will be the last one we hear much of her.

Ruminations on Miscellaneous Forgeries

A few bits of information have been knocking around in my head, but I don't think each of them warrants its own individual post right now.

Wine Forgery:
A recent story in The Economist discusses a recent surge in forgeries of astronomically expensive wines, such as 1982 Chateau Lafite, by buying empty bottles and filling them with similar, but less expensive wine. I also came across this subject on a recent episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, so it must be happening quite frequently. The article equates this to art forgery, and I see the similarity, but since wine is produced for consumption, I relate less readily to victims of wine forgery. I am no wine connoisseur, let alone a wine collector, but it seems to me that wine collecting is a special form of avarice, so I'm not so likely to condemn wine forgers who fake the most expensive wines.

Peter Sellars and Crime:
Last night I watched the 1966 Peter Sellers film, After the Fox, in which a thief/con man pretends to be a film director in order to smuggle millions of dollars of gold bars into Italy. The movie (the real one, not the one the character creates) is rife with racial and cultural stereotypes that contribute to it being not especially good in general, but I enjoyed the premise of pretending that something real is fake. In one scene, the chief of police of the small town in which the phony film will be made is convinced to play a policeman in the film because it "won't be acting," which he couldn't possibly do because he is "not an actor." Sellers' character seems to own no real clothes, but only costumes, and when he is re-imprisoned at the end of the film, it is assumed that he has traded places with the doctor (who happens to be his doppelganger) until he tugs at his false beard and finds that it is, in fact, real. "The wrong man has escaped!" finishes the film, suggesting that the Sellers character himself has lost track of who he actually is. The movie was mostly ridiculous, but really right up my alley.

Self-Forgery?

When I sign a document with my own signature, that signature is always an authentic "original" no matter how similar it is to the signature I made before it. Apparently not so with works of art! A recent article in The Independent discusses René Magritte's forgery of his own work, suggesting, indeed, that an artist can actually forge himself. I'm inclined to call this something else, like "deceptive creation of copies," but we nonetheless have two paintings entitled The Flavor of Tears, nearly identical to one another (down to caterpillar-holes) and both painted by Magritte. Magritte apparently also forged the works of other artists like Picasso and was well-acquainted with the problems of both originality and the international art market. The article suggests that a lot of Magritte's reason for making the copy was to make money, but then why not create a similar, but not identical piece? Magritte was apparently having a laugh at art collectors and possibly making an artistic statement in addition to making some money.

 I find this story interesting in that Magritte's "forgery" of his own work actually makes both works copies and eliminates the possibility of an original. Artists often create multiple prints of works, but each new print diminishes the value of the previous ones. I need to re-read Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," but I feel that there is much to be said here in terms of reproducing art. Magritte created two identical works which are both the original and copy, as if to say, if it's impossible to tell which is the original and which the copy, does it even matter?

Internet Cross-Dressing, or, The Altruistic Impersonator

Many of you may have seen this story about a blogger who recently revealed that she was not, after all, a gay Syrian woman who went missing, but a heterosexual American man who had been impersonating one online for several years. The actual blogger, Tom MacMaster, confessed to his deception only after the story of Amina Arraf fell to pieces under outside scrutiny (including that of the State Department), saying:

I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.

I'm reminded both of Greg Mortenson's story and that of teen prostitute JT LeRoy/housewife Laura Albert, and I wonder how many more stories like this there are. MacMaster claims he wanted to bring important social issues to light, but something about his "six-month friendship" with a woman with whom he "exchanged some 500 emails" and several photographs suggests more selfish motives. Other than a picture of MacMaster and his wife vacationing in Damascus, there is no mention in the article of his level of knowledge about Syria or oppressed homosexuals, and I wonder where he got the material for his blog. I also suspect that "Amina" went missing just as her followers started to become suspicious of her existence, but I begin to conjecture.

Perhaps the blog "Gay Girl in Damascus" raised positive awareness about a real issue, and maybe no real harm was done, but I see the time and resources spent looking for an imaginary missing person as depleting resources for real rescues of and aid to real people. It's probably true that gay people are arrested in Damascus all the time, so shouldn't we help them instead of playing at being one of them?

Creation and Lies

Yesterday I considered that perhaps I should stick to fiction instead of attempting to delve into the minds of forgers and liars, but then today I came across this article which seems to cover both. Most of the article discusses what are called "honest liars," those who make up stories to fill empty space caused by brain damage, usually to the part of the brain "responsible for self-regulation and self-censoring." I never before considered lying as produced by a lack of self-censorship, and the consideration of this is a revelation to me. Part of my obsession with liars and deceit stems from my near-inability to lie myself, and after reading the article I'm convinced that this inability is connected to my extreme self-censorship, though I hadn't considered them connected before. I suppose that the opposite of extreme self-censorship, or always believing you are not quite right, is always believing you are absolutely right no matter what lies you tell.

But then we come to fiction and creativity. It can definitely be argued that the best actors and fiction writers are those who lie the best, and perhaps for that reason I don't act or write fiction. The article eloquently finishes with the following:
Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attempting to deceive us, because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre, or open this book, and we’ll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we felt it necessary to invent art in the first place: as a safe space into which our lies can be corralled, and channelled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion to tell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularly outlandish or insightful ones. But that is not the whole story. The key way in which artistic “lies” differ from normal lies, and from the “honest lying” of chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning and resonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artist tell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, they compel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario Vargas Llosa has written that novels 'express a curious truth that can only be expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not'. Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.

I'm not sure I can put it better, so I won't try to make something up.

Forged Expression(ism)

It's quite possible that I already knew about this forgery ring in Germany and simply forgot to write about it, but it is back in the news today because actor Steve Martin apparently bought one of the forged paintings involved in this scandal. I encourage everyone to read at least part of the story, which has all the makings of a Hollywood film (maybe Steve Martin could star?): heroin-addicted draftsmen, fraudulent art-marketing companies, a forger's dreams of being the next Andy Warhol (and more!), and follows the trend of art forgery stories to be completely bizarre.

Perhaps the FBI or Interpol has a pathological profile of forgers, but it seems to me that it would be quite difficult to create one. I'm no psychologist, so I mostly just wonder whether the most successful forgery rings all have the same goals and major players; I suspect, however, that they don't. It's hard, at any rate, to imagine that Mark Augustus Landis and Elmyr de Hory, for example, made forgeries for the same reasons. Maybe their great differences are what make them so hard for me to understand, or maybe they are not so different as I suspect. Maybe I should stick to fiction.

Fake Child Abuse?

The world was recently horrified by the story of a woman named Kerry Campbell who proudly described (and showed on video) her injections of her eight-year-old beauty pageant-bound daughter with botox. After investigations by Child Protective Services, the mother came forward, saying her name was actually Sheena Upton and that she had been paid $10,000 by a tabloid to pretend to inject her daughter with botox. The actual truth is now unclear; some claim that the video of the woman clearly shows her injecting her daughter with something, while there also appears to be testimony from the UCLA Medical Center that claims there is/was no botox in the eight-year-old's system.

At some point the question becomes not whether or not the woman tried to paralyze her daughter's face, but why all of this is of interest to readers or viewers. Are we happy that she didn't actually do this to her daughter, or are we annoyed that someone came up with this idea for media attention, or do we feel something else? How different is agreeing to pretend to be a horrible person on Good Morning America from actually being that person? One of the biggest problems with this story for me is that it proves how little news can be trusted. If, indeed, someone can get everyone to believe a fake scandal for only $10,000, what stops any "news" group from doing it?

The Truth is Out There...Really, Really Out there.

Over the weekend I attended the U.S. Premier of a documentary called THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, perhaps not surprisingly starring and co-produced by Dean Haglund of X-Files and The Lone Gunmen fame (and directed by Phil Leirness). The film explores conspiracy theorists and theories, and although this subject does not exactly fit with that of my blog, I figure I can stretch it to the dimensions of my interests.

The film mostly consists of a cleverly cut together series of interviews between Dean Haglund and various conspiracy theorists from around the world (mostly North America and the U.K.), in which for the most part Dean Haglund simply lets the theorists talk to him about their theories. These theories cover UFOs and aliens (including alien-human hybrids), crop circles, food production, government, banking systems, angels, the military, 9/11, consciousness itself, and probably several other topics I've already forgotten about. Rather than passing judgment on any of the theories, the film (and Dean Haglund) lets the theorists speak for themselves and the audience make its own judgments; of course the audience laughed at various figures on the screen, but I imagine that a different audience would laugh at completely different interviews. The ultimate effect, then, was not one of ridicule as I had expected, but of contemplation and even acceptance to some extent. In a way, I realized that I, too, was a conspiracy theorist.

But of course I am always thinking about truth and lying, so while watching the film I often considered the sincerity of the characters on the screen. From my perspective, every person interviewed in the film was completely sincere, whether he talked about consorting with angels, seeing UFOs, or destroying cancer cells with apple seeds. Although most of the country would agree that most of the theories probably aren't verifiable, no one in the film really thought she was making something up. Phil Leirness mentioned that one woman, who believed she was an alien-human hybrid, was one of the nicest people he had ever met and someone he would trust to look after his pets. Are these conspiracy theorists harmless wackos who can be left to their own devices? Should people try to convince them that what they believe is not the truth? Or must we all just realize that truth actually is subjective and there's no hope for anyone believing anyone else's truth, so we should all just live and let live?

I'm not sure I've really given a review of this film, just as I'm not sure I've come to any conclusions about it or conspiracy theories or truth. A second film with the subtitle "Ancient Knowledge" is forthcoming, and I look forward to watching that as well. I welcome any comments and questions.

Making Yourself Sick

MISS HOOVER: My Lyme disease turned out to be PSYCHOSOMATIC.
RALPH: Does that mean you're crazy?
JANEY: No, that means she was faking it.
MISS HOOVER: No, actually, it was a little of both.

I don't generally write about unintentional fakers but I was interested enough in a recent study on Morgellons Disease to discuss it here (and it was a good excuse to quote The Simpsons). Sufferers of Morgellons Disease apparently have "delusions of parasitosis," falsely believing that they are infested with invisible parasites that cause itching and rashes on the skin. The story linked to above explains the disease as a phantom one, but the Mayo Clinic website seems less willing to relegate the disease entirely to psychology. The site calls the condition "mysterious" and urges health care professionals to "keep an open mind."

Our minds contribute to all sorts of physical ailments, and though I'm not a medical doctor, I would guess that some of the most common psychological ailments involve skin conditions (rashes, hives). These ailments, while usually not brought on intentionally, perhaps could be (see, again, a Simpsons episode where Bart wills his body to stop fighting infection in order to stay home from school and actually becomes ill). I don't want to suggest that people with Morgellons want to be ill, but I'm curious about a person's psychology that causes him to manifest real physical reactions to an imaginary infestation.

He Who Mimics Best Wins

The attached video shows the Australian lyre bird, who (somewhat magically) mimics not only any other bird's call, but also the sounds of various human noises such as car alarms and camera shutters. According to David Attenborough's narration, the bird performs this mimicry in order to attract a mate, creating an extraordinarily complex and ultimately unique song out of the songs of "all the other birds" he hears. What is perhaps most interesting to me is that the female lyre bird is attracted not to the kookaburra or the sparrow or the chainsaw, but to the unique combination of their sounds reproduced by the male lyre bird.

Besides fueling my fascination with the vocal capabilities of various birds, this video causes me to think about human mimicry and social relations. All of our language and gestures arise from mimicry, first of our parents and then of other people, but it's hard to say whether this mimicry is equivalent to that of the lyre bird. We do not make car backfire noises to attract mates, but do we not amass knowledge and mannerisms (that we essentially copy) from dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of people and other sources to impress others and prove our intelligence or wit or creativity. Is uniqueness, then, well-ordered or unusually fluent mimicry? Are we original only in how we combine what we've copied?

Thou Shalt Not Lie

I discovered this story prominently displayed on Yahoo! today, a story which mostly ridicules a church pastor for pretending to have been a Navy SEAL. It points specifically to the fantastic story, saying "the prevaricator in question seems to have lifted at least some details of his account from the 1992 Steven Seagal SEAL-themed blockbuster, Under Siege." Despite his apparently ridiculous story, though, Pastor Jim Moats made everyone believe it for five years and was only recently outed as a fraud by Navy SEALs themselves.

I laughed at the reference to Steven Seagal, but this story also made me think about the association of lying with religion and religious figures. Lying is neither against one of the Bible's Ten Commandments nor is it one of the seven deadly sins, and Christianity has a long history of manipulating the truth for its own ends. Is truth something we should expect from our religious leaders, and if not, what do we expect from them? Pastor Moats probably got some good sermons out of his Navy SEAL stories, so should we equate them with the Bible's parables, made up to teach a lesson? Is it okay to lie if you're imparting a good moral lesson? Is that what Pastor Moats was doing?

Philanthropy Through Lies, Or, The False Memoir

Few have been able to escape recent discussion of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea and its inaccuracies/lies/libel, and likely much more insightful things have been said than I will produce here, partially because I must admit that I have not read Three Cups of Tea and did not intend to either before or after the scandal. If you want accurate information about the story you can find it here or here or here. I do have some things to say about the purposes of lying, however, and I also wonder what my readers think. Mortenson's book, about founding schools for girls in Afghanistan, has helped his foundation, also created to run schools in Afghanistan, raise millions of dollars. In order to help sell his book, Mortenson apparently made up a story about being nursed back to health by Afghani villagers after a failed attempt to climb K2. Or perhaps you would like me to rephrase: in order to raise awareness about the need for schools for girls in Afghanistan, Mortenson embellished a story about the kindness of strangers and overestimated the number of schools formed out of his life-altering experience. It is undoubtedly true that Mortenson has worked to found schools in Afghanistan, many of them for girls, so should we care that he wasn't nursed to health or kidnapped by Taliban?

It's difficult to say. Perhaps the whole issue should be a matter of where money is currently going and how effectively it is forming and maintaining schools. My blog is not about philanthropy, however; it is about lies. People lie, embellish, exaggerate, falsify, and prevaricate "for good" all the time, and in many cases we just assume it is happening. Is Greg Mortenson's dishonesty worse than James Frey's, for instance, because Frey only duped Oprah and got millions of people to buy a really crappy book, while Mortenson acquired actual money on potentially false pretenses? Is the main issue money, then? Should we distinguish among who lies to us in what contexts for what goals?

Is Fraud Funny?

Yesterday I read about a man in the Los Angeles area who scammed Chinese immigrants out of hundreds of dollars each by telling them they could join a special group of the U.S. Army. This article from the L.A. Times discusses the situation and the case against David Deng in a very serious way, emphasizing its deleterious effects on both unsuspecting immigrants and the military; it even mentions that Deng "was also charged with possession of child pornography," further pointing to the serious badness of the scam artist. However, I read the article from Reuters first, and although there are few major differences between the information the two impart, something about the Reuters article made me laugh. Perhaps it was this statement: "Deng, 51, allegedly gave his 'recruits' military uniforms, had them parade in a Los Angeles suburb and took them to the decommissioned USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is a museum in San Diego." I feel for the poor duped immigrants, but there is some humor in imagining a suburban parade of the men and women pictured above.

My conflicted feelings about the story lead me to question both news reportage and whether fraud can be funny. The L.A. Times paints this particular fraud as a horrible trick on impoverished immigrants with little to no knowledge of English, while the Reuters article seems to focus on the spectacle of the situation more than on its impact on those involved. I often express outrage toward those who commit fraud because they prey on those who assume people to be honest, but sometimes it is easier to laugh at the people who are so easily tricked. Fraud, like counterfeit (see Derrida), can be seen to not exist until it is discovered (and subsequently loses its power), and only those who "discover" the fraud, who divest it of its power, can really laugh at the people who were duped. I think that laughing at conmen and fraud puts us in the position of discoverer, which both absolves us of the conman's guilt and makes us intellectually superior to those conned. I don't think those Chinese "soldiers" are laughing at all.

On "Fakery"

The front page of today's New York Times features the headline "Qaddafi Fakery, Still Revealing," leading me to consider the increasingly widespread use of a word I consider only marginally legitimate. The Oxford English Dictionary lists "fakery" within the second definition of the verb "fake," itself considered slang, and the first printed use of the word "fakery" was not until 1887. "Fake" in its use as a noun has a much longer history, but even its etymological origins are unclear. In the seventeenth century, the word seems to have been a synonym for "fold," but how it evolved into its current definition (only in existence since the late 18th century) can only be guessed at. Might we go as far as to say that the work "fake" was made up, itself faked? Perhaps I move too far away from reality with that conjecture, but the point is

"If you don't believe that "fakery" is a word, why is it the title of your blog?" you may ask. I consider The Fakery to be a place where falsifications are cooked up and ruminated on, a sort of fake bakery, if you will. That the word "fakery" itself has questionable origins only aids the cause of sussing out and expounding on the false, I think. I could have called this blog the "Bunco Bakery," but how many people really know what "bunco" is? I welcome your commentary on this subject.

American Sham

From Frank Norris's The Octopus:

"It was the Fake, the eternal, irrepressible Sham; glib, nimble, ubiquitous, tricked out in all the paraphernalia of imposture, an endless defile of charlatans that passed interminably before the gaze of the city, marshalled by 'lady presidents,' exploited by clubs of women, by literary societies, reading circles, and culture organisations. The attention the Fake received, the time devoted to it, the money which it absorbed, were incredible. It was all one that impostor after impostor was exposed; it was all one that the clubs, the circles, the societies were proved beyond doubt to have been swindled. The more the Philistine press of the city railed and guyed, the more the women rallied to the defence of their protégé of the hour. That their favourite was persecuted, was to them a veritable rapture. Promptly they invested the apostle of culture with the glamour of a martyr."

Setting aside this passage's mysogyny, there's something strangely timely about it. I see today's reality television, fake memoirs, and religious telethons in this passage written over one hundred years ago. Has America changed very much since then?

(")Counterfeit Money(") and Mis/Understanding Derrida

I recently finished my struggle through Jacques Derrida's Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, a book-length study of Baudelaire's short story "Counterfeit Money" and its implications for the gift. It's nearly impossible to discuss a work by Derrida without excessive wordiness and potential confusion, so I apologize in advance. Consider this insight:

"Counterfeit  money is never, as such, counterfeit money. As soon as it is what it is, recognized as such, it ceases to act as and to be worth counterfeit money. It only is by being able to be, perhaps, what it is. . . . It obligates you first of all to wonder what money is: true money, false money, the falsely true and the truly false--and non-money which is neither true nor false, and so forth."

Perhaps one of the more lucid passages of the book, this quoted portion, to me, illustrates the fascinating quality of counterfeit money. Counterfeit money only has value as long as it passes for real money; it has a strange quality of non-existence even more profound than the art forgery or impersonator. When the art forgery is discovered, it retains its identity as a work of art, and the impersonator does not completely forfeit his existence when he is found out. As much as Frank Sinisterra, the counterfeiter from The Recognitions, tries to convince everyone that he is "a real artist," everyone, including his wife knows that the bills he makes are just "worthless, worthless paper."

Much of what Derrida discusses concerning both counterfeit money and "Counterfeit Money" involves their semiotic implications, so in many cases Derrida's analyses do not move away from the actual letters of the text. I find much of what he wrote oddly thrilling even in its obscurity, but it's also easy to dismiss everything as overly intellectual BS. I encourage you to think for yourselves and share your thoughts!

The "Doktor" is Out

A friend pointed me to this story from Germany about a public official in a scandal over his plagiarized doctoral dissertation. I encourage everyone to read the quite well-written, entertaining article, but here's a snippet from it:
"The trouble started last month when this country’s most popular cabinet minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a handsome, media-savvy, conspicuously pomaded 39-year-old baron widely presumed to be a leading candidate to succeed Angela Merkel someday as chancellor, tried to brush off charges that he had plagiarized parts of his 2006 thesis."
The article makes a point of distinguishing between a PhD in the U.S. and one in Germany, suggesting that having a PhD in the U.S. is almost "embarrassing," whereas in Germany it makes someone both qualified for specific jobs and worthy of several honorifics. Perhaps because of the doctoral degree's caché in Germany, it is "literally a crime" to have one's dissertation written by someone else ("farming" it out), and while the man in question does not admit to doing that, he appears to have stolen parts of his thesis and had "help" writing many others.

Guttenberg has stepped down from his government position after widespread uproar, and the event is being compared to former President Clinton's impeachment trial. Is this an apt comparison? I'm almost more likely to compare the story to that of James Frey and his fake memoir, but the repercussions for Frey were much less serious. There are few doctors in high political positions (other than a few M.D.s), and it seems unlikely that a senator would quit office over an uncited or mis-attributed paper. Are we more willing to forgive liars and plagiarists in this country? Do we consider academic integrity separate from personal integrity here?

Fibs, Lies, and Rotten Lies

I've just finished reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the first time in a dozen years or so, and I find that the lies in the novel come in various forms. There may be one or two others, but I will call the three primary types of lies Confabulist, Survivalist, and Criminal.

1. Confabulist
Tom Sawyer is the greatest confabulist of the novel, constantly making up outrageous stories for no reason other than entertainment. Tom steals copiously from the adventure stories he reads, and sustains a nearly quixotic adherence to them. The simple and true are no fun for Tom, and he insists on ridiculous complications to every scenario. His plot to help Jim escape captivity, furthermore, is an elaborate game that only he knows is completely unnecessary. Though Tom is thrilled that real, dangerous events have happened as a result of his imaginary schemes, I see his bullet wound as a punishment for his antics.

2. Survivalist
Huckleberry Finn, and to a lesser extent Jim, lies for survival. Nearly all of Huck's own lies keep him from trouble and Jim from capture, and for the most part hurt no one else. He constantly invents new names and ailing families for himself, but unlike Tom, Huck is not an especially good liar and has trouble keeping his story straight if the lie is not extremely simple. Huck's brief forays into other types of lies get him into big trouble; his prank on Jim after they are lost in a fog (an attempt at confabulation?) results in more remorse by Huck than almost any other action in the book:
     "It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. . . . I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way."
Still, Huck doesn't generally consider his types of lies bad, but rather akin to "borrowing" food along the river. He doesn't mean any harm in them, and only lies when necessary.

3. Criminal
The King and Duke are the worst kind of liars in the novel, because they use all sorts of trickery, lies, and deceit to cheat others (mostly the poor) of their money. Huck goes along with their schemes to avoid trouble, as long as they are only cheating people out of a little bit of money, but when they plan to cheat a large sum from an innocent family, he takes action against them. When Jim and Huck imagine the two men coming up with even worse schemes, they "made up [thei]r minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something." It seems that the only thing worse, for Huck, than stealing and cheating, is to fabricate money itself. The faux royalty's deceitful acts get the better of them eventually, and they leave the novel tarred and feathered.

I could say much more on this subject, but the treatise is getting a bit long already. I'm sure that Huckleberry Finn's complicated morality has been the subject of hundreds of pages of scholarship already, and I imagine that there is still much more to say.

Lying About Dying on the Internet

I've written before about people who pretend to be sick in order to get money or attention, but a recent story in The Guardian online discusses the rash of "Münchausen by Internet" cases in more depth than any I have seen so far. It's easy to lie on the internet; you can pretend to be almost anyone and avoid exposure by claiming a need for privacy or disappearing when things start to get hairy. When I read the stories about these fakers, I think to myself that there's no way I would believe such fantastic stories, but I can't be sure that I wouldn't. No one wants to say that someone is pretending to be sick, especially if she is sick herself.

Much of the article talks about the pathology of the "MBI" perpetrators:

"These aren't just people with a sick sense of humour. Jokers want a quicker payoff than this kind of hoax could ever provide. It requires months of sophisticated research to develop and sustain a convincing story, as well as a team of fictitious personas to back up the web of deceit. Psychiatrists say the lengths to which people like Mandy are prepared to go mean their behaviour is pathological, a disorder rather than simply an act of spite. The irony is these people might actually be classed as ill – just not in the way they claim to be."

Should we pity elaborate liars for having some sort of mental disorder that makes them lie? Should we all know better than to believe things people say on the internet? For that matter, should we know better than to believe things people say to us in person? I struggle with these questions because I want to believe everyone's story, whether it is of triumph or woe. I have yet to understand why false attention, acclaim, or pity is better than honest modesty or even honest anonymity.

All About Lies

One of my favorite movies of all time is All About Eve. There are many reasons to love the film: Bette Davis, witty banter, costumes by Edith Head; none of these reasons make my love for it appropriate to this blog. All About Eve is about misguided trust, about the ease with which a pretty girl can get anything she wants through lies and treachery, about the difference between acting and lying. The best actors (or is it the best liars?) seem to catch on to Eve's deceit early in the film, but the non-actors are more naive and thus truly shattered by the revelation of her lies. Eve only speaks in truth when she talks of acting in front of a theater:

They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth it.

A running trope of life-as-play runs through the film, but it seems that only Eve takes the idea seriously. Eve's an actress from the start whose life is a fictional play. She wins because she has no life separate from her act; she nullifies any true self to fake her way into the theater, to "belong" at any cost. 

I've not done this film justice in my discussion, but I doubt this will be the last time I have something to say about this film and others like it. I encourage commentary.

Documentary and the Truth

I saw the film Exit Through the Giftshop several months ago in theaters, but it's just begun to get more attention due to both its video release and recent Oscar nomination. The documentary follows a French expatriate obsessed with filming himself doing everything from shaving in his bathroom to scaling buildings in the name of radical street art. Despite its fairly sophisticated commentary on the economic and political value of art, the artistic merits of graffiti, and the stupidity of the general public, the film seems notable to most people for its dubious authenticity. Is there really such a person as Thierry Guetta? Is he really this moronic? Has he really duped Los Angelinos into buying his terrible art, or is the whole thing a stunt created by Banksy (pictured above) in order to piss on (or off?) art connoisseurs and the general public?

Though I rarely say this in my blog, I feel that the viewer misses the point if he looks for the line between truth and fiction in this documentary. Whether or not Thierry Guetta is real, tons of the terrible pseudo-street quasi-pop art by "Mister Brainwash" was viewed and sold at an exhibition in Los Angeles. The crazy Frenchman subject of the film is annoying/unbelievable/interesting whether he is made up or not. The point is still that most people who buy art are following ridiculous fads and that it is extremely easy for people like Banksy to exploit those people. Banksy is prosecuted for the free art he puts on public walls, and paid millions of dollars for essentially the same art placed in private spaces. I'm not necessarily entirely on Banksy's side in this matter, but I agree that the question of Guetta's existence/authenticity is not the main one here.

Art Forgery and the Law

A few months ago I discussed this breaking story, of a man who appeared to be posing as a Jesuit priest and donating forged art to museums across the country. The forger has now been identified as Mark Augustus Landis, and it appears that earlier claims that he took no money for his dozens of forged artworks is true. His story has been discussed at length in the Financial Times and New York Times, and the FT article was even featured on one of my favorite arts news websites, Arts & Letters Daily. The elaborate masquerade involved with the donation of Landis's forged artworks seems a work of art in itself; Landis had to create not only the fake artworks, but also the benefactor priest persona.

Authorities are now attempting to find a way to prosecute Landis for something but are having trouble because the man doesn't seem to have stolen anything or acquired compensation for any of his forged gifts. It appears that the only harm he's caused is injury to the pride of museum curators who probably should have known better than to authenticate these works (and some did). What do you think about this enigmatic figure? Should he be punished in any way possible, or slapped on the wrist and told to stop giving away fakes? I'm still not sure what I think.

Authentication Euphoria?

Today Yahoo! featured this article about a document purported to be one of Lincoln's last actions before his death in 1865. As is fairly evident to us (especially once we know it's a fake), the "5" on the document does not quite match the other numbers and there appears to be an ugly smudge underneath it. The document was "discovered" by Thomas Lowry in 1998, so one wonders why it took so long to prove that it had been altered.

It seems to me that everyone wants to believe that others are truthful and well-meaning. We especially like the idea of "Honest Abe," and probably hate the suggestion that anything connected with him would be fraudulent (even if it's not his fault). Tests to gauge authenticity are also expensive and time-consuming, and question the expertise of the experts. It makes everyone feel better (I imagine) to authenticate a work than to expose a forgery. Lowry counted on this, and though the National Archives now "has banned Lowry from its facilities," he likely rode the wave of that discovery for a decade with publications and lectures, and is now nearing retirement age anyway. His rivals are gloating at their discovery of the alteration, but they get little else from it. No one's really proud of the guy who annoyingly points out an inconsistency in a document or work of art.

On the Double Life and Television Entertainment

I'm several months late on this post and I'm not quite sure why it occurred to me now (maybe the Golden Globe Awards stirred it up?), but I'd like to discuss the (extremely) short lived FOX television drama Lone Star. I was one of only 4.1 million people to watch the first episode of this program, which involved a con man in Texas who leads two separate lives and is partnered with two separate women, but starts turning his life around when he gets hired by Jon Voigt (at least I remember it to be him) and can start making money legally. But there is still the issue of his two women...

I'm fairly certain that the main problem with the program was that all of the things mentioned above happened in the very first episode. The character development was so rapid as to seem unimportant ("I'm not going to con people anymore, Dad!") and the protagonist's supposedly well-built life/lives of lies was already beginning to crumble by the end of the first episode. Despite my obvious love for con men and double lives, I didn't bother to watch the second episode, and neither did most of the rest of the country, apparently. FOX canned it after only two episodes (supposedly that may be some kind of record) and put another show about fakers, Lie to Me, into its Monday-after-House spot. I'm slightly surprised because like me, the American public seems increasingly interested in manipulation of truth and con men, but I'd prefer an episode of Lie to Me any day.

Layers of Fake

Orson Welles's last finished movie is the anomalous pseudo-documentary F for Fake that I need to see at least one more time in order to make a complete analysis. The film involves, among others, notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory, his biographer and fellow faker Clifford Irving (whose story involving the fabricated autobiography of Howard Hughes is told in the film The Hoax starring Richard Gere), and Orson Welles himself, who variously purports to tell the truth "strictly based on the available facts" and confesses to falsehoods while simultaneously creating others. The result is less illuminating than further confounding; rather than fully expose de Hory and Irving's lies, Welles appears in some sense to join forces with them or even attempt to beat them in some sort of faker competition.

The film gives an odd sense that fraud has a sort of viral quality, that either exposing fraud turns the exposer into a fraud himself, or that only fakers can see the falsehoods of others. I wonder to what extent the exposer of fraud feels he has power over the exposed, even that his exposé allows him to then commit his own frauds. It's difficult for me to discern truth from lies in a film that lies about telling the truth and lies about lying to its viewers, and perhaps this is the point. I'm comfortable with fiction because it does not say it is truth, but F for Fake, which seems to flip-flop the ideas of truth and fiction with varying amounts of success, makes me all sorts of uncomfortable.

When Forgery becomes Murder

I am twenty-five years behind on this story, but I can probably be forgiven since I was not even reading yet when it happened. In 1985 Mark Hoffman, on the verge of having his hundreds of forgeries discovered, sent bombs that killed two people before maiming himself with a third explosive. The story is reminiscent of several others I have discussed here, most notably those of Jean-Claude Romand and Brian Blackwell, in that it deals with a man who killed in order to protect his lies. Both Hoffman and Romand ended their deceptions with suicide attempts, but it is notable that neither attempt succeeded. Hoffman was obviously adept at making bombs, but only two of three he made killed their targets. I don't think that Hoffman ever intended to die.

I wonder whether these types of deception are forms of survival for some people, to such an extent that they somehow feel that they must ultimately kill or be killed (or discovered to be frauds, which is apparently just as bad). While I am extremely interested in forgery, I don't necessarily think that it is the worst possible crime, and find it almost unbelievable that a person would kill for the preservation of his forgeries. People like Mark Hoffman seem almost like another species, one that follows its own set of social/moral rules. I will probably continue to be baffled.

Motives for Imposture (and Believing the Impostor)

A year or two ago I was shown this intriguing story discussed in The New Yorker about a man named Frédéric Bourdin who had spent years pretending to be various adolescent boys in several countries and was known as the "king of imposters" and eventually "the chameleon." He mostly impersonated runaways and orphans, but his most famous feat of imposture was of missing American teenager Nicholas Barclay, whose family was supposedly convinced that Bourdin was Nicholas. Bourdin himself admits that he attempted this particular con to avoid the police, but unlike those of the imposter basketball player I discussed recently, Bourdin's usual motives are mostly unclear. Even his frank confession in the New Yorker article, though thirteen pages long, only partially illuminates The Chameleon's intentions and psychology.

I am excited to see the film that has been made about Bourdin (entitled The Chameleon), mostly because I am interested to see how it portrays both Bourdin and Nicholas Barclay's family. It's hard to believe that a mother would confuse an impostor for her own son, and many people (including Bourdin himself) think that members of Barclay's family know what happened to the boy. This situation makes me wonder what lies we accept in what situations. Will we allow ourselves to be lied to in order to conceal our own lies? Or are we just more likely to believe anything we really want to believe, for whatever reason (it makes us feel good, it hides our own secrets, it helps someone)?

Fake Pregnancy and Baby-Snatching

The woman pictured above is Michelle Marie Gopaul, an aspiring actress who told her friends she was pregnant and then held a fake movie casting call for infants in order to steal one and pass it off as her own. This article explains the story, which has broken in the last few days and is certain to become more detailed and bizarre in the near future. I envision testimonials from friends and the parents of the stolen baby, detailed inquiries into her upbringing, and tearful, overexaggerated apologies (likely on live TV) from Gopaul herself. It's probably just the kind of attention she wanted.

Of course, this type of story is hardly unique; fake pregnancies are all over the internet and translate well to television and film (especially crime dramas). The difference here is the much more rare kidnapping. Most other fakers manage to elicit extra sympathy by losing their nonexistent babies to fake miscarriages or some early infant malady, and then they can start over with a new fake pregnancy a few months later. Perhaps Gopaul actually wanted a baby. Perhaps she even believed herself pregnant for some time. Maybe she was just failing as a model/singer/actress and wanted people to notice her. I imagine the panic that must come with realizing that one's lie is about to be discovered, but I cannot imagine committing crimes to prevent that discovery. I'm interested to hear more about this person.

Celebrating a Year of The Fakery

I had forgotten that I began this blog on January 1 of last year, likely as one of many (mostly failed) attempts to start something new in the new year. Many of my initial postings consisted of books or people I'd been interested in before but had never discussed in writing, and I was excited to both condense the fakers in one place and provide my own personal commentary on them. My excitement has not yet waned, and my supply of "fakery" hasn't either, so I plan to continue this blog indefinitely. Hurray!

I would love for those of you who read The Fakery to give me comments, suggestions, or topics for discussion--I'm a one-woman show who loves to hear new relevant stories! Anyone can post comments, and I welcome them. Thanks for helping keep me interested in The Fakery for a whole year!

On the Creepy Film Double

I recently viewed the film Black Swan, a fairly uncomplicated tale of a ballerina's breakdown gussied up with mirrors, blood, and creepy special effects to create a relatively satisfying psychological thriller. Most interesting to me, though, was the only partially successful exploration of the double/impostor as a major theme of the movie. In the process of her transformation into the swan, Natalie Portman's character is tormented by both mirror images of herself and girls who seem to have her face, and of course everyone is a kind of double for her even from a sane perspective: the retiring swan queen who throws herself under a bus, the failed ballerina mother who has (creepily) transferred all of her energy to her daughter, the other indistinguishable ballerinas, and the mysterious new girl who becomes Portman's alternate/nemesis/double/lover/victim. The simultaneous splitting of self into two parts (black swan and white swan) and attaching the black swan self to other actual people made for interesting possibilities for special effects and even created suspense here and there, but ultimately lacked something. I will acknowledge the possibility that this was the point, that no one can possibly understand an unsound mind, but there is something of the cop-out in that idea.

However, I understand the sinister quality of the idea that one could be replaced by some sort of impostor. We all want to believe that we are unique, and that we are in particular careers or relationships because we are uniquely qualified to be in them. We are also afraid that this is not the case; we worry that some impostor could replace us, or even worse, that we are impostors and could be replaced by the legitimately unique and qualified versions of us. Black Swan used ballet to mostly successful effect (though I'm sure ballerinas are going to be livid!), and I'm going to be looking for my doppelgangers everywhere now.