Fakery

Like Welles posits…It’s not important whether it’s a “real painting or a fake painting, but whether it’s a good fake or a bad fake.” We don’t care who the artist is…we just like the work. This makes me think of our Foucault writings. We widely believe that all these works are that of William Shakespeare, but it has largely been speculated that some of them were not his at all. Or who is he? Do we care? Is the value of Romeo and Juliet inherent in the author or the work itself? Indeed, it would still be an amazingly romantic story with well-defined, relatable characters. But would us knowing there’s a hoax behind it…that part of its legacy was built on lies…cause us to devalue it?

Another thing that made me think of Foucault was when Welles described the scene where the girl is walking in the street and sly cameramen are capturing all the reactions of the men around. He described them as “actors acting away without getting paid for it.” I remember from my undergrad about Foucault’s overarching fascination with the reality and discourse. As in, what we deem is real is only real because we say it’s real, and we talk about its realness, and we define the qualities necessary for realness. So, Welles says these men are actors without realizing it. But aren’t we all? I think there’s a very famous quote that says, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” See my earlier post on real and personal introductions for more rambling. Like Elmyr says, “if they hang long enough there, they become real.” Even the “experts” in the film could not decipher the difference between a real painting and an Elmyr copy. Each one swore theirs was real or fake based on a set criteria x, y, and z. But they were wrong. So what’s real? Like Foucault said, it’s only real when we say (and agree) it’s real.

One of my favorite things about the movie was the restating of the word “fake.” Welles calls Elmyr “a fake faker,” which is an all-at-once enlightening and complicating description. I mean, he’s copying these original works of art with such precision, experts cannot tell the difference. So is he faking? Or are his works just as real and valuable as the original? He painted them. It takes skill to reproduce such a wide range of works with that kind of accuracy, so in reality he’s faking his fakeries.