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Actual footage" of a merman… sort of: courtesy of Animal Planet./caption
The growing trend among television producers to grind out fake documentaries has numerous worrisome implications for the survival of a free society.
The grainy crepuscular quality of the photo above is deliberate. The image was presented on The Discovery Channel/Animal Planets now infamous mock-documentary Mermaids: The Body Found as appearing on a boys cell phone just an instant before the terrified kid took to his heels. Two lads so the story goes somehow sneak onto a beach along the Pacific coast which the military has cordoned off (after testing a mysterious deep-sea sonar weapon). The boys find the sandy corpse of a seal-like creature with oddly human hands. As they poke further the beast summoning its few remaining vital sparks rears up and yields the image almost accidentally captured as the young explorers flee in horror.
The ensuing hour proceeds to document" the frustrations of three researchers whose work is constantly discredited confiscated impeded and otherwise shut down by information-stifling government entities both in the US and abroad. Two of the team appear frequently on camera in an interview-like format: the thirdthe leaderis ostensibly so upset by the resistance he has met that he cannot be reached for comment. Other grainy snapshots that have escaped the censors black vault crop up now and then along with a few yarns offered by leathery fishermen at their respective wharves. A Darwinian explanation for how mermen and mermaids might plausibly have evolved from homo terrestris is also provided.
And the explanation frankly follows the actual evolutionary path of the whale which we know came from sea to land before returning to the sea. In fact when this mock-doc was first aired in May of 2013 yours truly swallowed the bait and allowed himself to be reeled in. Apparently a lot of viewers continue to bite on the same hook to judge from Internet discussions. Only after tuning into a rerun of the show and freezing the final credits as they blurred by was I able to locate a small disclaimer. No narrators voice had announced the fraud at the beginning and no frozen screen of large letters (of the Viewer Discretion Advised" variety) had been posted at any point. Part of the joke or the ruse or the shtick or the experiment or whatever-the-hell this was seems to have consisted of sitting back and watching the public try to figure the whole thing out by itself.
I should like to know why. Was Mermaids indeed an experiment? If so of what sort and by whom? The Discovery Channel clearly hadnt learned enough or had enough of a laugh in any case because it continued to run hoaxes. A sequel crockumentary Mermaids: The New Evidence soon followed. Then we had Megalodon. More grainy footage more fidgeting interviews with edgy researchers more allegations of high-level government obfuscation more fantasy woven plausibly from shreds of hard science: had my neck not already been stiffened by Mermaids I would have come away believing that a Cretaceous-era shark was still cruising the oceans unplumbed trenches. After all the coelacanth was also supposed to have died out with the dinosaurs yet one was dredged up off the coast of Madagascar about the time I was born. Im not that old!
Over the past month I discovered something on Netflix called Dark Secrets. I was again at first suckered in. A bit of research indicates that this series originated on The History Channel rather than Discovery. Perhaps thats why my mermaid alarm" failed to sound instantly: i.e. the subject matter did not address natural science. The format seemed closer say to Forensic Files. Yet parallels to Discoverys hoaxes lay just beneath the surface. We were once more given a sleuthing insider-type (who however was now the narrator himself rather than an interviewed field-worker; I was bothered immediately that this Joe Friday voice-over was inadequately identified). Thick layers of conspiracy also enveloped episodes about vanished persons inexplicable deaths quasi-demonic possessions and so forth. Finally there were always those who didnt want us to know" (the pretext of the show appeared to involve a trove of documents sealed in a condemned building) and they" were always agents of some government at some level.
Any observer of pop-culture must surely observe this much (and the observation may somewhat redeem the fraud practiced upon the public by various producers): Americans are constantly being lied to by their elected representatives and their appointed defenders and protectors". Fictions like the above would never be able to command a loyal audience in an age when men and women of honor served us in high places. Today however the notion of cover-up and spin seems instantly plausible to us. From the nations president on down we receive slap-in-the-face lies daily and often almost gratuitously (as if the liars were just refining their technique or as if they wanted to be able to smuggle an occasional truth by in all the smoke). Part of the reason we are so ready to accept that aliens are mutilating cows in New Mexico or Sasquatches exchanging howls in the Cascades or HAARP transmissions turning our brains to jelly on Election Day is precisely that NSA is tapping our phone conversations Google sharing our email with Homeland Security and the DOJ running guns to murdering terrorists. If the people we once trusted implicitly now smell of sulfur why cant a seal have hands?
But a great irony slinks about in this sympathetic formulaand its slinking isnt very friendly. If producers of fake documentaries are somehow expressing our collective outrage with a mendacious public sector why are they doing so through mendacity? Are they giving voice to our mistrust or are they mocking our voice with exaggerated imitations? We may be crying out We dont believe anything you tell us!"... but the mermaid" translation somehow becomes These people will believe anything if you tell them it doesnt come from the government!"
And of course there is a patently sinister side to operations calling themselves The History Channel and The Discovery Channel feeding us realism-coated garbage. When did fantasy become history? When did delirium become science? Would the producers contend that they are somehow reviving the interest of the nations youth in science by blending lurid adventures from a few hard facts? One might as well seek to create a youthful enthusiasm for chemistry by designing lab exercises that concoct new aphrodisiacs. The bedrock both of history and of science is a skeptical objective method keenly resistant to intrusions of personal prejudice or involvement. Melodramatizing the labors of the responsible researcher in this manner undermines the very possibility of research.
Still more concerning to me thoughfor I doubt that the producers conceived of their audiences as young students rather than infinitely credulous marksis the precedent now created for inventing sexy spicy news stories ex nihilo. How long now before we see a storynot on History but on NBCabout Ted Cruzs being an Israeli robot or Barack Obamas being a benign visitor from the outer cosmos who entered earth through a Kenyan stargate? What protest could be raised against such stories? That theyre lies? But the mermaid/megalodon hoaxes were woven from truth and lies as well. So is everything (the argument would run): given that can we say just where the truth ends in any fabric of lies? And anyway the people" enjoy it all. No one ever used to watch the NBC News: now with its new format it will be must-see entertainment. The people have spoken. In a democracy who dare say nay" to them?
I dont like the vector along which crockumentary" travels. Neither do a lot of my fellow viewers it seems: Discoverys Shark Week" was effectively boycotted in 2013 when the truth about its false body found" emerged. Yet not only do these producers persist in spinning their fishermans talesThe History Channel has also entered the Counterfeiter Sweepstakes. Were crossing a threshold with this entertaining" claptrap into a profoundly Orwellian moral chaos. Something should be done to pull us out of Discovery/Historys little house of horrors and lock the door. At the very least producers should be required to warn the public loud and clear of the impending fraud just as they warn of graphic and disturbing content. What theyre now doing with and to the truth is a helluva lot more disturbing than a headless corpse.
Actual footage" of a merman… sort of: courtesy of Animal Planet./caption
The growing trend among television producers to grind out fake documentaries has numerous worrisome implications for the survival of a free society.
The grainy crepuscular quality of the photo above is deliberate. The image was presented on The Discovery Channel/Animal Planets now infamous mock-documentary Mermaids: The Body Found as appearing on a boys cell phone just an instant before the terrified kid took to his heels. Two lads so the story goes somehow sneak onto a beach along the Pacific coast which the military has cordoned off (after testing a mysterious deep-sea sonar weapon). The boys find the sandy corpse of a seal-like creature with oddly human hands. As they poke further the beast summoning its few remaining vital sparks rears up and yields the image almost accidentally captured as the young explorers flee in horror.
The ensuing hour proceeds to document" the frustrations of three researchers whose work is constantly discredited confiscated impeded and otherwise shut down by information-stifling government entities both in the US and abroad. Two of the team appear frequently on camera in an interview-like format: the thirdthe leaderis ostensibly so upset by the resistance he has met that he cannot be reached for comment. Other grainy snapshots that have escaped the censors black vault crop up now and then along with a few yarns offered by leathery fishermen at their respective wharves. A Darwinian explanation for how mermen and mermaids might plausibly have evolved from homo terrestris is also provided.
And the explanation frankly follows the actual evolutionary path of the whale which we know came from sea to land before returning to the sea. In fact when this mock-doc was first aired in May of 2013 yours truly swallowed the bait and allowed himself to be reeled in. Apparently a lot of viewers continue to bite on the same hook to judge from Internet discussions. Only after tuning into a rerun of the show and freezing the final credits as they blurred by was I able to locate a small disclaimer. No narrators voice had announced the fraud at the beginning and no frozen screen of large letters (of the Viewer Discretion Advised" variety) had been posted at any point. Part of the joke or the ruse or the shtick or the experiment or whatever-the-hell this was seems to have consisted of sitting back and watching the public try to figure the whole thing out by itself.
I should like to know why. Was Mermaids indeed an experiment? If so of what sort and by whom? The Discovery Channel clearly hadnt learned enough or had enough of a laugh in any case because it continued to run hoaxes. A sequel crockumentary Mermaids: The New Evidence soon followed. Then we had Megalodon. More grainy footage more fidgeting interviews with edgy researchers more allegations of high-level government obfuscation more fantasy woven plausibly from shreds of hard science: had my neck not already been stiffened by Mermaids I would have come away believing that a Cretaceous-era shark was still cruising the oceans unplumbed trenches. After all the coelacanth was also supposed to have died out with the dinosaurs yet one was dredged up off the coast of Madagascar about the time I was born. Im not that old!
Over the past month I discovered something on Netflix called Dark Secrets. I was again at first suckered in. A bit of research indicates that this series originated on The History Channel rather than Discovery. Perhaps thats why my mermaid alarm" failed to sound instantly: i.e. the subject matter did not address natural science. The format seemed closer say to Forensic Files. Yet parallels to Discoverys hoaxes lay just beneath the surface. We were once more given a sleuthing insider-type (who however was now the narrator himself rather than an interviewed field-worker; I was bothered immediately that this Joe Friday voice-over was inadequately identified). Thick layers of conspiracy also enveloped episodes about vanished persons inexplicable deaths quasi-demonic possessions and so forth. Finally there were always those who didnt want us to know" (the pretext of the show appeared to involve a trove of documents sealed in a condemned building) and they" were always agents of some government at some level.
Any observer of pop-culture must surely observe this much (and the observation may somewhat redeem the fraud practiced upon the public by various producers): Americans are constantly being lied to by their elected representatives and their appointed defenders and protectors". Fictions like the above would never be able to command a loyal audience in an age when men and women of honor served us in high places. Today however the notion of cover-up and spin seems instantly plausible to us. From the nations president on down we receive slap-in-the-face lies daily and often almost gratuitously (as if the liars were just refining their technique or as if they wanted to be able to smuggle an occasional truth by in all the smoke). Part of the reason we are so ready to accept that aliens are mutilating cows in New Mexico or Sasquatches exchanging howls in the Cascades or HAARP transmissions turning our brains to jelly on Election Day is precisely that NSA is tapping our phone conversations Google sharing our email with Homeland Security and the DOJ running guns to murdering terrorists. If the people we once trusted implicitly now smell of sulfur why cant a seal have hands?
But a great irony slinks about in this sympathetic formulaand its slinking isnt very friendly. If producers of fake documentaries are somehow expressing our collective outrage with a mendacious public sector why are they doing so through mendacity? Are they giving voice to our mistrust or are they mocking our voice with exaggerated imitations? We may be crying out We dont believe anything you tell us!"... but the mermaid" translation somehow becomes These people will believe anything if you tell them it doesnt come from the government!"
And of course there is a patently sinister side to operations calling themselves The History Channel and The Discovery Channel feeding us realism-coated garbage. When did fantasy become history? When did delirium become science? Would the producers contend that they are somehow reviving the interest of the nations youth in science by blending lurid adventures from a few hard facts? One might as well seek to create a youthful enthusiasm for chemistry by designing lab exercises that concoct new aphrodisiacs. The bedrock both of history and of science is a skeptical objective method keenly resistant to intrusions of personal prejudice or involvement. Melodramatizing the labors of the responsible researcher in this manner undermines the very possibility of research.
Still more concerning to me thoughfor I doubt that the producers conceived of their audiences as young students rather than infinitely credulous marksis the precedent now created for inventing sexy spicy news stories ex nihilo. How long now before we see a storynot on History but on NBCabout Ted Cruzs being an Israeli robot or Barack Obamas being a benign visitor from the outer cosmos who entered earth through a Kenyan stargate? What protest could be raised against such stories? That theyre lies? But the mermaid/megalodon hoaxes were woven from truth and lies as well. So is everything (the argument would run): given that can we say just where the truth ends in any fabric of lies? And anyway the people" enjoy it all. No one ever used to watch the NBC News: now with its new format it will be must-see entertainment. The people have spoken. In a democracy who dare say nay" to them?
I dont like the vector along which crockumentary" travels. Neither do a lot of my fellow viewers it seems: Discoverys Shark Week" was effectively boycotted in 2013 when the truth about its false body found" emerged. Yet not only do these producers persist in spinning their fishermans talesThe History Channel has also entered the Counterfeiter Sweepstakes. Were crossing a threshold with this entertaining" claptrap into a profoundly Orwellian moral chaos. Something should be done to pull us out of Discovery/Historys little house of horrors and lock the door. At the very least producers should be required to warn the public loud and clear of the impending fraud just as they warn of graphic and disturbing content. What theyre now doing with and to the truth is a helluva lot more disturbing than a headless corpse.