I have a few questions I’d genuinely like to ask everyone who’s been responding to recent events surrounding Mike Daisey and The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs:
What is your relationship to the truth? What are your personal beliefs about it? What’s your history with it? What does truth mean to you?
And, most importantly:
Do you believe your ideas about truth are either universal or morally preferable to others’ ideas? Do you believe there are multiple perspectives on truth that might be valuable, even if you don’t share them?
I ask these questions with genuine sincerity. I’ve been asking them of myself, over and over again, for the last four days, and I’m not coming to any easy answers. The one thing that HAS been getting clear to me: these are important things to be thinking about.
The reason for my introspection here is simple, though I’ve been a bit scared to admit it publicly: I cannot seem to muster even close to the same level of ire several of my friends and colleagues and other notable commentators have been expressing these last few days. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve felt (ulp) almost nothing at all, other than a kind of detached intellectual interest.
This is not to say, I must add quickly, that I don’t both understand and sympathize with those who’ve been furious. I do, to be sure. And I am very clearly NOT saying they shouldn’t have the feelings they’re having, or that they’re wrong. That’s not for me to judge. I’m simply saying that I don’t share those feelings, and it’s made me ask myself: what’s wrong with me?
Why, to be specific, doesn’t it bother me one whit that elements in his show, which he labeled a work of non-fiction, were either wholly or partly fictionalized?
(A brief diversion: I understand that Mr. Daisey evidently engaged in other morally questionable behavior in working with the producers of This American Life, among others. Given that those things don’t involve me personally, I’m not going to respond to them. I’m only going to respond to the work itself, which—for the record—I listened to online.)
Before you read any further, however, I want to ask you a favor. Check in with yourself for a second. When I just confessed that I’m not bothered by what Mike Daisey did, did you judge me a little? Did you get frustrated or angry? If so, I’d like to ask you another favor: set those feelings aside for a second. I’m not trying to invalidate them; I’m merely asking for a bit of indulgence. Bear with me.
Again, I’ve been asking myself pretty regularly the last few days what might be the matter with my mind. Everyone else seems to be so upset: why not me? What makes me different? Am I morally misguided in some way? And the answers to those questions keep leading me back to the same place: my father.
Between my father and I there was always great love; there was never, however, anything even remotely resembling verifiable truth. My father had an immensely difficult childhood; if you recall the very worst stories you’ve ever encountered and then imagine something far worse, you’re still probably only on the outskirts of the neighborhood in which he lived. As a result, for a variety of complicated psychological reasons, my father was never fully truthful with me in my entire life; actually, it would be more accurate to say that, of all the thoughts and feelings and facts he shared with me in 43 years, I may never know with complete certainty which were real, which were not, and which were “based on a true story.†Before you ask, yes, that was immensely difficult… and yet, as I’ve said, we had tremendous love: a real love that I have no cause to doubt whatsoever.
Being my father’s son has forever changed my relationship to the truth. I’m thoroughly accustomed to living without it. I never, ever expect it, even when someone has promised to give it to me, and I never believe it when I am actually given it, either. I’m a skeptic. I believe in nothing, or almost nothing. I live to question; my work as a playwright comes from that place, as does my writing and thinking about the arts, as does my devotion to science and the scientific method. I married a woman who lives to ask questions; it’s almost her religion. My own assertions and pronouncements are often invitations to question my point of view, too, whether I realize it or not; in fact, I find that the more assertive I am about the veracity of something, the more (deep down) I just want to be questioned.
My father told me lots of outrageous things were true; some I was able to verify, some I refuted, some I determined were half-truths, and the rest are still mysteries. In fact, in later years, I stopped trying to assess the truth value of things he said almost entirely. I learned to ask myself other questions about the stories he told instead, like What do I think about this? What would it mean if this was true? What feelings am I having as I listen to this story? How do I want to respond?
Do you see where I’m going with this? I think the reason I’m not bothered by what Mike Daisey did is that I simply never assumed that his story was the full truth in the first place even though he said it was. That’s simply what I do. I do it when I listen to politicians, when I read the news, when I talk with friends, and when I experience art. It’s unconscious. I can’t help it. Or if I can, I’ve long since forgotten how.
When I listened to Daisey’s piece, I believed in some sense that he did the things he said he did “for real,†like everyone else… but I believed without being “attached†to that notion, which means that I’m relatively unaffected by the revelation that he didn’t do some of those things. I still haven’t fully parsed which things were “true†and which weren’t, in fact, because I just can’t be bothered. The story he told is what matters to me. The story he told and the various thoughts and feelings I had in response.
I often have a similar reaction when encountering a homeless person holding a sign with a brief narrative designed to move me to generosity. Stranded in DC, trying to get home to my ten month-old baby – I saw that one just today. I never ask myself whether the signs are true or not; in this case, I typically assume they’re all false, but I don’t care much either way. I note instead whether I’m moved by the story, do a quick assessment about what a reasonable response might be (give some money, walk away, buy the person a sandwich), and act.
Would it change my response if the sign in question said “This is a work of non-fiction?†Or, as some have suggested would have been appropriate for Daisey’s piece, “This is a work of fiction?†I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I don’t think I generally let the author of a piece (or the context in which it’s presented) tell me whether a story is fiction, non-fiction, or somewhere in between. I think I either figure it out for myself, or I ignore the question entirely… because I don’t care.
I find myself thinking these last few days about Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America. Roth’s story is a kind of imagined history; it’s written as if it’s an autobiography, except that in relating the story of his childhood, he alters a few key details in American history: notably, he depicts FDR as losing the 1940 election to Charles Lindbergh. As the story of Roth’s “life†progresses, we watch as America succumbs to rabid anti-Semitism. It’s chilling. The reason the novel is so powerful, for me, is that it lives in a complicated space between fiction and non-fiction. The novel works precisely because “real facts,” slightly altered truths, and fully imagined events are pressed up next to one another.
I have similar thoughts about Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation: fiction about non-fiction (very roughly speaking). About reality television: fiction presented as non-fiction. About Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of nature dioramas: fiction about non-fiction. The whaling passages in the middle of Moby-Dick: non-fiction inserted into fiction. We clearly have a long and fertile cultural history of creative tension between what’s true and what’s imagined… at least in art.
We do not, however, have the same tradition in journalism. (With notable exceptions, of course.) We have, instead, a tradition of objectivity, one that (I hope we’ll all agree) has been at least significantly tested these last few decades, by both outright fabricators and by more subtly biased news producers of one kind or another. Given what I’ve shared about my own family history, I assume it will come as no surprise that I read most news with a great grain of salt. I stopped believing in objectivity a long time ago. To the extent that I think about it, I typically assign (sub-consciously) a degree of objectivity to every news story I read… and I never get to 100%.
(It’s not that I don’t want the news to be 100% objective and true. It’s not that I don’t value what fact-checkers do. It’s that I don’t expect them to get it right all the time, or to eliminate all sorts of biases from the stories I hear. Not even close.)
This is why I’m not bothered by the fact that Daisey’s piece appeared on This American Life. I don’t consider the show—which is one of my favorites—to be tarnished in any way. I don’t think the estimable Mr. Glass owes me any kind of apology as his listener, and I (politely) decline to accept the one he offered. In fact, I have to admit that it never even occurred to me to consider the show journalism at all. (I suppose it makes sense in hindsight, but the thought never entered my consciousness in all the years I’ve been tuning in.) I have the show squarely in a “storytellling” bucket in my mind, which means Daisey’s work is still, at least as far as I’m concerned, a natural fit… even after the recent revelations.
I think the real, primary question we all ought to be asking is why we’ve been blurring the lines between fact and fiction in our narratives for the last, oh, 150 years. What is the blurriness doing for us? Do we want it to continue? Do we want to try to reinforce some clear distinctions between fact and fiction in our culture, and if so, why?
It’s clear, from the vitriol I’ve been seeing in blog posts, tweets, and comments that some people DO seem to want a clearer distinction. Frankly, some of the vehemence I’ve seen scares me, and I’m not sure I understand it. It’s as if some people loathe (or fear?) the category error of finding fact in their fiction or fiction in their facts. My mind, as I’ve said, doesn’t usually work that way.
Yes, I get angry as hell when I read (for example) some conservative commentator’s lies about President Obama’s birth country, but it’s not the surface untruth (that he was born in Kenya) that bugs me as much as the deeper untruth (about the legitimacy of his leadership). Likewise, I don’t particularly care whether Mike Daisey met a 13 year-old factory worker or a 17 year-old factory worker; I care about whether our world is structured in a just and fair way.
But you might care differently (or about both truth and fairness/justice); I get that, and I respect that. I don’t need you or anyone to hold the same ideas about truth that I hold. I don’t think I’m right here, and I don’t think you’re wrong. I just think I have a different perspective on the truth than some people, owing (at least in part) to my family history.
I would, however, like to suggest (humbly) that you ask yourselves the questions I’ve been asking. What is your relationship to the truth? What are your personal beliefs about it? What’s your history with it? What does truth mean to you? Do you believe your ideas about truth are either universal or morally preferable to others’ ideas? Do you believe there are multiple perspectives on truth that might be valuable, even if you don’t share them? Maybe you’ll arrive at the same answers you’ve already arrived at; maybe the deliberation won’t even take you that long. But maybe you’ll find, as I think I have, a new perspective. You never know.
One of my biggest beliefs in life is that if I want to have my own opinion on something I have to leave room for someone else to have their own opinion and accept its valid from their perspective. Â I don’t have to agree with it, I don’t have to get angry at it, I don’t have to love it, but I do have to accept it and try to understand it. Â I don’t always succeed, but thats the goal.
Before I get into my response let me just say I know how hard it is to put out there an opinion you think others disagree with, especially when your opinion is “Why is this such a big deal?” I completely feel for it man and have a number of times had a similar situation where I know others are very opinionated and passionate about something that just for me, isn’t as important, and they of course can’t understand how its not as important to me as it is to them.
So here is my response.I of course didn’t grow up the same way you did. Â While I find my father sometimes really annoying and inappropriate (I of course still love him) I don’t think I grew up with the same skepticism (not meaning that in a bad way, if it all sounds that way) you did.For me growing up in a fairly functional family in middle class planned community as a reformed Jew, I was taught as a child two divergent things. Â I was taught to just believe in things, but also taught to question some things. Â This only has a little to do with Daisy and more to do with who I am. Â I am sure you and I could go back and forth for sometime with why we believe or don’t believe in some things, which I am sure would be a lot of fun, but not the point of your post. Â Just context.So to your questions:What is my relationship to the truth? Â What are my personal beliefs about it? what does it mean to me? Â For me there is truth and there are lies and all shades of grey in-between. Â Truth has a lot to do with perspective and point of view. What I believe to be the truth, is not what everyone does and only some of it might actually be true. Â Do I believe my ideas of truth are universal or morally preferable to others? Â Well I don’t believe they are universal, but I would be lying if I didn’t think that my beliefs are preferable to others, I think I wouldn’t keep them as my beliefs if I thought others were more preferable. Â But I do believe that they are preferable for me. Â They are not for everyone.I like to ask questions, I like to argue, I like to debate. Â It helps me to clarify what I am thinking and feeling. Â It may change from one min to the next, but its how I process…so this is all how I feel right now, could change in a min.So all this is to say Mike Daisey. Â Should you, Gwydion, be upset and offended and incensed by whatever situation is going on at this particular moment or for the past couple days? Â Of course not. Â You have a ton of strong opinions on a number of issues, I don’t think any person can have strong opinions about EVERY issue. Â Even if they could, they don’t have to. Â Should you care about any of this, no. Â If I were you I would want everyone to get back to the topic of local playwrights works in local communities. Â But I am not you, and that is just a guess.
For me, I agree with you that whatever he writes in his piece of theatre is his to write. Â He doesn’t need to tell the truth, he doesn’t need to have all the facts straight, he doesn’t need to tell a story and then tell you it was someone else’s story. Â Although I like to believe that everything that a Josh Kornbloth tells me in his monologues is true, I honestly don’t know if they are. Â Do I know for a fact that everything in one of my favorite plays “The Exonerated” is true? nope, but I believe it is. Â Does the fact that I don’t know if everything in those plays are true change how they made me feel or what they did to me? Â Nope, thats the power of storytelling and theatre. Â Now if I found out that something in those pieces wasn’t true would that change the piece to me? Â Nope. Â The story is still powerful and the story is still passionate. Â
What am I upset by? Â
Well this is where we differ a lot and I may not be understandable or even valid, but its how I feel. Â If someone tells me they are telling me the truth and I find out that they knowingly lied to me, I get upset and angry. Â Even when someone tells someone else they are telling the truth and it turns out they lied, I get maybe not angry, but really disappointed. Â I know how that feels and I empathize. Â Especially when I have been a producer and have been a partner in creation. Â It sucks to feel betrayed. Â To take someone at their word and to find out that their word wasn’t as solid as you thought it was. Â To be caught up in that situation is terrible and could have been avoided.
I think that might be why I am upset and angry. Â All this was avoidable. Â If Daisey hadn’t insisted that theatre’s put “This is a work of Non-fiction” on their playbills (he could have not said anything and then its up to the audience to decide), if theaters and producers had done research (which not all have the time and money to do) when asked to put “This is a work of Non-fiction” on their playbills or claimed it as such, If Daisey was a little more honest and direct with how he interacted with his artistic partners. Â But none of that really happened. Â And while TAL and other producers have said that they should have done a little more research, Daisey has couched his apology. Â He has apologize and not apologized. Â He has been sorry for bending the truth, but then stands up and defends. Â He believes that there is journalistic truth and Theatre truth…and for me I am not sure I believe the same thing…I believe there are Journalistic stories and Theatre stories, but a difference in truth I am not sure I fully buy into that.
Back to you:
Last night I watched a bit of Neil Degrasse Tyson host a panel on Nutrinos. Â I only understood about half of what was said, and at some point got completely lost and frustrated so stopped watching, but what I got is that in the world of science there are no fundamental truths. Â There are the truths we believe at the moment. Â At any time those truths can be called in to question. Â For a little while we believed that nutrions could move faster then the speed of light. Â Not everyone, but a lot of people believed it and had an experiment to prove it. Â But as scientists what did they say? Â They said, “Look we prove this thing is true, here is our experiment. Â Someone else please test it and see if your get the same results.” Â When someone didn’t’ they went back to the original experiment to see what was wrong. Â By proving this belief wasn’t true did that change anyone’s opinions? Â not really, some people still believed that things can move faster then speed of light, others still don’t. Â But there is a mutual respect between scientist while they might not believe in fundamental truths they strive for them.Â
Thats what I think you do man. Â You may not believe in something, you may not think something is true, but you question it and strive to get to the bottom of if its true or not…thats important. Â Someone has to disagree, someone has to give the dissenting opinion and someone has to strive to not just react but to respond.
This comment may be a bit wondering and I apologize, there are a lot of thoughts and feelings going on right now, but I wanted to make sure my comment was fresh. Â So if its hard to follow and if it turns out I claimed anything as fact when it turns out it was fiction, I apologize in advance.
Lee, you’re terrific. This is terrific.
I think I may have responded to everything you’ve said in my responses to Ralph and Shawn above, but let me add one thought…
For what it’s worth, whenever someone tells me a story in ANY context, I simply don’t abdicate my responsibility to determine whether the story is true or not (or somewhere in between). I don’t trust anyone else to do that for me; in fact, if someone goes so far as to tell me a story is true or “a work of non-fiction,” that actually raises my eyebrows a bit: I’m less likely to consider it real, not more so. People are spending a lot of time asking for labels, as you have done, and I completely understand that impulse… but labels don’t really do me much good. And I prefer we went WITHOUT labels EVERYWHERE, and let every listener make up his or her own mind about whether a story is true or not (or, once again, somewhere in between). I’d like us to develop a culture of personal responsibility about engaging with stories… and Daisey may have inadvertently inspired just that sort of thing.
Thanks man. Â I think you are pretty terrific.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear.  I am totally not asking for labels.  I am asking  for no labels.  Suggesting that Daisey labeling it is what might upset me.  That the whole thing could have been solved if that label had never been there.  I prefer 100% as you do (maybe for the same, but maybe for different reasons) that there are no labels because then its completely up to the viewer or listener to make up their own minds or to go do research or to figure out what is true and what is not if you want. Â
You don’t take people at their word and are skeptical of that…totally cool and totally valid. Â I take people at their word and believe what they say, most of the time/not all of the time. Â
But I think we both wan the same thing. Â Don’t label shit and let an audience make up their own mind.
Awesome. Just awesome. Thanks, Lee, for sharing.
I’ll just join the discussion by adding some notes, since I
don’t think that I have the lifetime necessary to adequately answer the
question “What is your relationship to the truth? What are your
personal beliefs about it? What’s your history with it? What does truth mean to
you?†I mean, if Socrates couldn’t answer that question, I don’t think I can
either.
Â
First, here’s what
flummoxes me (among many things that do, to be sure): Looking at the
descriptions of monologues Daisey has previously written and performed
(descriptions available on his webite), it’s obvious that the guy falls pretty
clearly in the post-modernist
“everything-is-narrative,
anything-processed-by-the-memory-is-fiction” camp. Monologues such as
“Truth” (“…an autobiographical accounting of Daisey’s own
history of lying and telling the truth in an attempt to illuminate the uncertain
landscape of the emotionally true, the literally true, and the constant
struggle to speak the truth…”) and “All Stories Are Fiction”
should have been dead giveaways to anyone in TAL’s vetting/research department
that Daisey’s pretty squishy when it comes to what’s “truth” and what
isn’t. I’ve never liked Daisey’s stuff, and have been skeptical of the
“power” of his monologues when he tried to tell me “How Theater
Failed America” and why I “was to blame,” and never really got
around to discussing either of those two flimsy propositions. But I’m still
wondering why TAL failed to notice these obvious red flags before it
broadcasted “TA&EoSJ” as, er, a “journalistic” story.
Â
Second: of the attitudes that the 18th Century
overmind floated quite frequently was the idea that fraud or willful
dissembling of another should be punished much more harshly than, say, horse
thievery or pickpocketing. Why? Because the former damaged more than your
pocketbook: it damaged your ability, perhaps forever, to trust your fellow man,
to engage in social intercourse without assuming nefarious intentions or
motives on the part of another. In short, in made you, perhaps forever, a bit
more paranoid in your daily dealings, which in turn made you lose faith in
institutions, people, your nation. It’s actually something that Nixon realized:
that his lying to the American people had made them no longer trust the
government, that it had damaged the faith that young people had in the
governmental institutions, which in turn made them turn away from public
service. One could argue that we are still suffering the effects of that awful
political tribunal.
Â
This is perhaps why I’m a bit more impatient with Daisey
than most others. In his efforts to tell an “artistic truth,†he’s damaged a
number of institutions who strive daily to cut through the canting,
hypocritical wheedling nonsense attempting to pass itself off as the truth, and
I’m not just talking about journalism. Even theatrical efforts toward truth
have suffered, and the next guy or gal that comes along with a true story that
attempts to use theater as the medium to tell it we’re going to be that much
more suspicious of. Extraordinarily sad, in a way.
Â
Which leads me to an even more daunting conclusion about
Daisey: he keeps falling back on what appears to be a belief in the
“relativity†of truth, that there are “multiple perspectives†about it or on
it. But what if one of these multiple perspectives regarding say, the
Arab-Israeli conflict leads one to believe in, say, the veracity of “The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion?†An extreme example, to be sure, but beliefs
like Daisey’s are ones where notions like this take root: narratives, stories
that are quite patently untrue, but held up as truth. You see where I’m going
with this, right? And perhaps which side of the fence I’m on?
Â
Third, and finally: I wonder if the literary-artistic
culture’s disappointment with Daisey rests with how much our current artistic
culture has dispensed with artifice or the trappings of art to locate truth.
Think about how much “reality†we need these days: reality television, a man
sitting on a bare stage telling us “the truth,†“memoirs†telling us what
“really happened.†We’ve dispensed with those artistic genres we once used to
discover truth: if you needed to know about the horrors of, say, the
meatpacking industry? Well, you could read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.†The
deleterious effects of being a corrupt war profiteer? Read or go see “All My
Sons.†What an dissembling Southern politician was really like? Read “All the
Kings Men†(or even Joe Klein’s/“Anonymous’†“Primary Colorsâ€). But these
venues no longer seem good enough for us: in a somewhat hypocritical way, we
hanker after the truth so much that we want all our stories to be “true,†even
when some of them clearly aren’t. And when we discover that they aren’t…
Â
I’m very interested, my friend, to see that you call yourself “more impatient” with Daisey than others. Your post here actually seems restrained by comparison to some of the other assessments I’ve read.
In any event: I don’t share your point of view, Shawn, but I think I understand where it comes from. I do agree that we are hungering for reality — I know I am — but I think that’s because the political system in which we are living and the pretentious social structures of the middle class (for some of us) and the lies-posing-as-truth inherent in marketing (sorry) and capitalism keep us alienated from reality. In fact, I think we literally live, every moment of the day, in a kind of nether world between fiction and non-fiction… which is precisely why I think narratives of that nature are likely to increase in our future, not decrease. I think the old familiar categories — neat and tidy labels like “journalism” and “theater” — are doing to erode, if they haven’t already.
Or maybe I’m wrong. But that’s what I think… at least for the moment.
Gwydion,
I really enjoyed reading your article. Since this story broke, I have felt like i have been in the extreme minority, because I also wasn’t bothered.  In fact, on my own blog, I received plenty of “shame on you” responses for my thoughts on the subject, because myself and another artist took objection to the “reaction” podcast. We actually directly address that issue in the post, if you are curious (www.betoobyrne.wordpress.com). Â
Thanks for posting it and understanding the grey muck.  My relationship to the truth. If I experience something and feel it’s worth my time to uncover it, I search for the truth in as many places as possible.  I never take anyone’s word verbatim.  This tends to make me a skeptic and a cynic. The older I get, the more I think that’s ok.  But I think the truth is earned, not repeated.
“art is the lie that tells the truth” – Picasso
something can be factual and yet untruthful, while the truth may be arrived at through fictional devices. If Daisey had a disclaimer on his play stating it was “a work of truth, though not entirely factual”, would his critics be happier? I suppose, but isn’t that implicit in all works of art? Theater is not journalism; its form follows its function. Theater dramatizes the truth to get people to care enough about it to find it out for themselves. Daisey opened the discussion. It’s for journalists and others to investigate the truthfulness, not just the factualness, of his views and, if true, to do something about it.
That we are stuck in this quagmire, while ignoring the truths his play represents, is unfortunate. And maybe its his own fault for improperly labeling his theater piece as a theater piece, but one has to wonder if that shouldn’t be implicit in the medium, and couldn’t he have assumed that it was?
If a journalist makes up fictional interviews to validate his reportage, it rightfully gets the journalist booted from the club. If a dramatist does it, he’s employing the tools of his trade. That we have confused the two is a fault that lies not in our stars but in ourselves.
Thank you, Ralph, for chiming in.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about people’s desire for “proper labeling.” I understand, naturally, that people want things tidy and predictable: non-fiction in one box, fiction in another, and never the twain shall meet; theater over here, journalism over there — and no crossing the streams. So much of the anger I’ve seen toward Daisey reminds me of the anger one might feel toward someone who violated a taboo. (I use that word in the deep psychological sense, not in the trivial sense.) Again, I understand it, even though I don’t share it. And I feel (without knowing) as if we are likely to have more such violation to come in our cultural future, rather than less. We should perhaps get used to it, in fact, and learn how to respond when it happens. And… really… this may be (I’m speculating here) what Daiseygate (I hate that term) may come to stand for: the moment we all started to learn how to respond to narratives in less familiar ways, not the great betrayal it seems to be right now.
A great question! To me, the truth means that if you say you visited a place, you really did. If you quote someone as saying something, they really said it. And if you say that you saw something, you really saw it. I think Mike Daisey’s monologue fails on all of these grounds.
Now, normally this wouldn’t matter in the theater. But Daisey said in the program that this was a work of nonfiction. He didn’t leave it to the audience to use our imaginations as we would normally do. And he compounded the error by writing an op-ed in the New York Times, appearing on TV, etc.
I wasn’t totally taken in by it. I was skeptical even as I was sitting there listening, wondering what was embellished to make the piece more dramatic, more emotional. (I’m pretty skeptical by nature and if a quote sounds too perfect, it’s probably made up.)
But I do think labeling the work as nonfiction was unfair and stacking the deck. I mean, not everyone’s as skeptical as I am!
So, what you seem to be saying, Esther — and forgive me if I’m wrong — is that you’ve got what we might call a conventional relationship to the truth. You like clear categories and distinctions between true and false. And I certainly understand that.
But can you also understand my perspective? Which is less conventional?
Yes, I can certainly understand your perspective. And I do have a more conventional relationship to the truth. I can accept that a movie, play or novel based on real-life events might not be 100 percent accurate. But because Mike Daisey said this was nonfiction, I think it’s a different situation for me and it required a different level of responsibility on his part.
Right. That’s where we differ, at least a little bit 🙂
I think the emotions tied up to “being lied to” have a great deal to do with our histories of abuse — lies, to cover up abuse; lies, to pretend the family/body of practice is normal; lies, to salve over the unpleasant truths we live with every day.
There was an awakening supported by the best of Daisey’s work, as if to say, ‘you don’t have to jump up and foment revolution, but you can pay more attention, even if what you find is uncomfortable’. But it’s one thing to observe embarrassment, to wonder what Apple or regional theatre mavens will do next, and to *be embarrassed* — to be exposed as thoughtlessly caring, as just another sucker. To be caught out so is still connected to older definitions of reputation and honor.
However, in our culture of notoriety, Daisey has the chance for his star to shine brighter. Conversely, through the strength of his con, our personal light, our faith, can grow weaker.
Also, as a business rule, our industry doesn’t tolerate that much scrutiny for long — most philanthropy depends on accepting help with little examination of sources. If we held those sources of our donations, either inherited or earned, to the same high standard we’d like to hold artists such as Daisey, we wouldn’t last long in this business.
Once the exposure started, I heard my personal voices, those remind me to trust no one but family, and even then, by measures. As for the long-term effects, we live in an age where fewer people vote, fewer people defend the Constitutional rights to free speech and assembly, and fewer still attend theatre performances where we select a few among us get to test those rights in action.
We’re used to lying, “reality shows” and soldiers for truth, excuses for more of it, and we know that because lying’s tolerated systemically, our culture keeps going downhill. It’s hard to make exceptions because the liar is talented, or the cause good, because we’ve been there before, too. And, from this post-war weight of cultural decline, we’ve learned one cast-iron lesson: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up, the greed for more influence, to keep the opportunities flowing to lie again.
It’s up to better people than me to determine whether, in the balance, we can survive more lying, or draw the line in the sand our financial betters have failed to, in tolerating fraud as a way of life.
This is beautiful.
In discussing similar matters last night with fellow theater practitioners, I asked: Where do you go for truth? Who DOESN’T lie to you? Your mother? She tells you how great you look even when you don’t. The government? Please. The news? Hello, Fox. Scientists? They get close, but their truths are provisional. Religion? That’s as far from the truth as it gets. So why is anyone anywhere ever astonished that the truth isn’t really the truth? Haven’t we all lost our naivete on that front by now?
Jeez, Gwydion, why do you care about truth? Deceit, dissembling, betrayal, hypocrisy… all part of the great panorama of life. And they’re all okay with me. If you want to lie to me, fine. If you want to tell me the truth as you see it, fine. It’s my job to sort it out…if I can. And if I can’t, well, some of us have a harder road in life. But I swear to you, I will never, ever, write a lame, whiny op/ed piece and include stuff-my-dad-told-me-which-may-or-may-not-be-true. That is nobody’s business.
As for Mike Daisey, I’m glad he got his dick fed to him on a plate. He’s a tedious old gasbag
I hope this made you feel better.
I’m not sure who the tedious old gasbag is.
I’m in agreement with Esther on this question. If Daisy wanted to create a live stage production based partly on a journalistic ethic, but with fabrications tossed in wherever and whenever his verifiable facts fell short, then why not label it as such?
It’s a genre called fiction.
But Daisy presented his show as verifiable nonfiction. Why? Because if he was honest and told his audience it’s partly fact, partly made up, it simply would not have had the same power, the same profound impact on his target audience.
Gwydion, I appreciate your assertion that Truth is difficult if not impossible to define. But your question about Daisy and his one-man show is not nearly so complex.
In journalism, we fire reporters when they fabricate quotes, sources and entire situations. Daisy passed himself off as a pseudo-journalist. He fabricated quotes, sources and entire situations.
Mr. Daisy, clean out your desk.
I understand your line of thinking and your worldview here, of course. I’ve seen similar opinions expressed by many, many others. What I’m asking is whether you can see that just because YOU see it that way doesn’t mean that everyone has to. (Or something akin to that.)
Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying you’re wrong to think that way. But I also don’t think I’m wrong, either. So what do we do with two mutually incompatible worldviews? My blog post offers my thoughts. What are yours?