Think of this blog as a semi-sequel, if you will, of my December blog all about confabulation… that is, the things that you remembered that just weren’t so.
But in this instance…it’s all about the things that you were told over the years that, lo and behold, turned out to be untrue.
Yes, misinformation is alive and well and on cyber-steroids today – but that’s mostly intentional. The somewhat unsettling thing is that – for us Gen Xers at least – some what we were told in the last quarter of the last century during our formative years, turned out to be misinformation.
Where do we begin? Reading in low light will damage your eyes. Always wait at least half an hour before you go swimming. The Great Wall of China is visible from space.
Wait, WHAT?!?
Yes, that last one seems to have perpetuated and made the rounds over the years, even finding its way onto an original Trivial Pursuit question card. It’s astounding, really, how even years after the moon landing that this myth got around. It’s like there’s some unwritten law that the more often you repeat something, the more it becomes ingrained as truth (sorry politics, you don’t have the monopoly on that maxim.)
Indeed, we’ve discovered so much about the cosmos out there, but…suspiciously comparatively little about how Planet Earth looks like from “out there”. Neil deGrasse Tyson would be disappointed.
An article from Scientific American sums it up well: “Sadly, no. The Great Wall is made of stone that generally doesn’t contrast well against the terrain, and it tends to curve as it follows the landscape, especially near steep cliffs and hills.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-you-cant-see-the-great-wall-of-china-from-space/
Well, that was all very anticlimactic. But let’s forget about rules and places, and think about people and legends along the theme of the blog.
So let’s start that bit with a question: what do Frank Abagnale, Alanis Morissette, and George Washington have in common?
There were stories woven around them, or by them, that rang of irony – or perhaps not, depending on what you were led to believe.
Let’s think about Alanis Morisette’s famous song “Ironic” (which turns 30 this year, wow!) – the “irony” was that the song wasn’t about irony after all. Many of us questioned how things like rain on your wedding day or a free ride when you’ve already paid were ironic, when it was really just plain old bad luck.
What a paradox, I know.
Now think of Frank Abagnale, the con artist who was profiled in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular con. In the movie, he was shown pulling off all sort of bold cons during his youth in the 1960s: an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. But then it came to light later on that a good deal of his escapades were embellished or fabricated. Now isn’t that ironic… don’t you think??
Then rewind over 200 years prior to the mid-18th century, when a very young George Washington became, in our minds, the very epitome of honesty – for he supposedly chopped down a cherry tree on his father’s property, then told his father “I cannot tell a lie; it was I who chopped it down.”
But all along, that was a made-up story that cemented the great man in popular legend. Not made up by Washington himself, but by someone who greatly admired him. And it stuck. Irony strikes again – that his popular image was all about honesty, and then apparently not (shame on the originator!)
Rewinding back to the ‘90s, it puts one in mind of another great George, Costanza – whom I’ve quoted in blogs past – that one day he decided to do the complete opposite of his usual antics.
Then we fast-forward a few years later, to the turn of the millennium, which had three movies whose content – and endings (especially!) – left you wondering whether what you just saw was really real, or all in the minds/imaginations of the main character. I’m talking about The Matrix, American Psycho, and Vanilla Sky.
Didn’t these have you scratching you head, pondering and wondering about the title of this blog, “WAIT, what?!? You mean this whole time…or was it…no…or maybe it was…” But then, you might as well be pondering and wondering why pondering and wondering don’t rhyme.
Inception is another movie that falls into that ambiguous ending category. And we don’t know if the spinning top eventually came to rest and fall off the table. Maybe we don’t want to know. But if I ever read a suspense book, I know that reading it in dim light will set the right mood without the risks.
But, just before we fade to black… think of the first Men in Black’s movie ending (and go see it if you haven’t already)… how our galaxy and beyond has been nothing more than just a marble in the palm of the hand of some great beast…and we’re being toyed around with.