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.