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.

Medical Imposture--A Life Fraudulently in Your Hands

My three-year-old nephew has been saying for several months that when he grows up, he wants to be "a pilot AND a doctor." Perhaps this was always William Hamman's dream as well, because until recently, everyone thought he was both. Hamman evidently did not lie about being a pilot, but fabricated a "medical residency, fellowship, doctoral degree, [and] 15 years of clinical experience" as a cardiologist in order to falsely acquire grants, university positions, and lecture tours. As a result of this deception, Hamman has lost his jobs as both fake cardiologist and real pilot. Although no evidence is available to show that he actually performed operations, he has (as seen above) supervised them.

It seems as though more impostors pretend to be doctors than they do almost any other profession, and I don't think it has much to do with a doctor's salary. Pretending to be a lawyer or a businessman or even a psychologist would risk fewer (or no) lives and probably take less training, so there must be another reason for medical imposters to choose this particular fraud. Additionally, Hamman chose to be an expert on the heart, not a general practitioner or a podiatrist or some other, less dangerous, type of doctor. Hamman wants to be in control of people's lives. He wants to decide whether they live or die, just like he does when he flies those enormous aircraft. Hamman has taken daredevilry large-scale, to include hundreds of unwitting people.

How would You Start Over?

Remember that mediocre Drew Barrymore movie, Never Been Kissed, where Drew's character enrolls in high school to write an exposé, chosen because she is the only employee of a newspaper who can pass for a high school student? Remember that her brother, played by David Arquette, enrolls in high school too so that he can have one last chance for success with baseball? If you haven't seen the movie, no matter--I've just summarized it for you (minus the saccharine love story). My real point is that someone in real life, Guerdwich Montimer, to be precise, apparently took some advice from that film and decided to fraudulently start high school again at age 22.

This kind of crime intrigues me because its detriment to others is unclear. The article mentions that Montimer's trial is set "for the week of Aug. 1, following the conclusion of the capital murder trial of accused cop killer Larry Neil White;" one could hardly say that this crime is equal to cop-killing, but who has it affected most? The kid who got cut from the basketball team in Montimer's favor? The 15-year-old girlfriend who thought he was her age? The church faithfully standing by him even after they found out that he has fabricated both his name and age? Also, Montimer faked his whole identity--would he be less culpable if he only faked his age (like the little leaguer who was too old to play)?

My gut reaction to these events is to say "no fair" that some people can start their lives over while my honesty prevents me from it. But this type of story mainly makes me wonder both why I would start high school again and what I would do on a second try. All annoyances of high school aside (and can they really be set aside?), perhaps I would be more focused or try harder to make friends or manage to get accepted to Harvard, but these things don't seem worth the trouble of creating a false identity and pretending to be 16 again. I do wish I had done some things differently, but all of us must wish that. What makes a person decide that he can just be someone else, just slough off an identity for a more favorable one? Besides the law, what keeps most of us from doing that?

On The Forged Gift

Recently a member posted this link on the Gaddis listserv, asking the group whether the story might be the "most Gaddis-like" yet. The story involves an impostor Jesuit priest who has been donating forged artworks to American museums and institutions for the past 20 years. Like The Recognitions, we have here an impostor, forged art, and apparent disinterest of the forger in monetary gain; furthermore, like those in the novel, the people who have discovered the forgeries cannot imagine an act of this type of deception without monetary gain as its end. The article makes a point to say that the impostor "pays for his own hotels and airfare while traveling, but gets wined and dined by the institutions because he has told everyone that he has many more works in his collection." The curators are the Recktall Brown of real life, judging all value in terms of money. I'm sure Derrida would have much to say about this false gift-giving (but I'm still reading Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, so you'll have to conjecture on your own).

But the problem here is that we know nothing about this impostor. Readers of The Recognitions can (at least sometimes) understand Wyatt Gwyon's motives because he tells us what they are. We can conjecture that this false Jesuit will reveal himself eventually, but he has spent twenty years not revealing himself. It is difficult to even guess at his motives. If he is caught, what will his charge be? The article mentions that museums have been "a little bit embarrassed" that they were taken in by the forgeries, but have they lost anything other than pride? A few dinner dates? I hope the federal authorities do catch this forger, if only so I may better understand him.

"I am that Illiterate Undergrad!": The Forger Looks for Credit

An article/confession was published in Friday's edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education which discussed a man's job as a writer of academic papers for hire. The confessee humorously includes badly written emails from clients, half-brags about his salary, and admits to having written everything from personal statements to PhD dissertations. The article is interesting, entertaining, and perhaps even shocking at times, but mostly tells educators what we already suspected about academic dishonesty--that it is easy, pervasive, and getting worse.

But this post is not about the millions of high school and college students who cheat, and I suspect that the article isn't about that either. Pseudonymous or not (and quitting his job or not), "Ed Dante" is Michaelangelo yelling "I am Praxiteles!" when his forgery is mistaken for the real thing. He makes a point of saying that he has "attended three dozen online universities" and written papers toward hundreds of degrees, in an apparent attempt to both bolster his esteem and undermine the American education system. He offers no solutions to a problem, delivers no scathing exposé on a specific company, and hides behind a pseudonym. His confession is not one because he risks nothing and says little that most people do not already know. "Ed Dante" is proud of himself for helping to weaken our education system, and he wants you to know it.

The Real Thing (Also The Title of a Great Story by Henry James)

A recent article in American Scientist discusses our tendency to choose a real object over a textual or digital representation of one when shopping, even if we have to pay more for the object in front of us. I suspect that this tendency has decreased significantly in the last ten years or so, but its continued presence is interesting to ponder. The article suggests that being able to "grab" the item increases its desireability in our brains, and that items (such as food) behind glass, even if instantly available, become no longer more desireable than a picture of them on the computer. Certainly there are many neurological factors at work here, but the study points to our suspicion of the two-dimensional representation. It seems we are hard-wired to not believe everything we see, and touching and tasting what's in front of us verifies its authenticity.

I wonder to what extent this phenomenon extends to people. More and more people are finding dates online, but a large group of the population still considers online dating unnatural, suspect, or even dangerous. Meeting my date in person will (probably) tell me no better that he or she is dangerous (or intelligent or attractive) than would his or her picture and "profile" online, but I would not consider a date or relationship "real" until I met the person. I also wonder whether we are willing to choose less attractive people to date if they are in front of us (much like the students who spent 50% more for physical items than for their online counterparts). It seems to me that we would forgive many more foibles (like grammar errors and bad haircuts, say) in a live, 3-D person than in an online representation of one. We want as much information as possible before making decisions, and we still believe that the real thing simply gives us more than its two-dimensional representation.