Liza commented on the not-James-Frey-again-for-the-love-of-Jesus post:
as to the Frey thing … I’m fascinated by this whole “betrayal” drama. Why don’t people feel betrayed by the falseness of reality TV but with a book like this is different? It’s because people who think of themselves as smart and cool are outraged not by the lie but by the fact they got snookered? I think Frey is not the issue. Snobbery is.
Perhaps because the scare-quotes around “reality” TV are understood by this point? Teevee has been fake fake fake since “The $64,000 Question” scandal. While people might be happy to ignore many of the levels on which they’re being manipulated–and, okay, maybe that’s where the anger comes from–the idea that this stuff is choreographed is an open secret. Plus, reality teevee itself has become more and more literally choreographed–a “reality” obstacle course, or a “reality” game show–as the audience has become less inclined to award it the veneer of legitimacy it may once have had. The real people are thrown into increasingly contrived situations.
I think that “reality” in the sense it’s being used in “reality television” is better understood as a fictional genre attempt to evoke reality than an attempt to be real. I think that part of the lure of “reality” is not the idea that these people will react naturally, but merely that they will react unprofessionally. They’re not actors, just people living anxiety dreams.
James Frey, on the other hand, was not attempting reality literature by telling stories his audience knew had to be embroideries. (Smackdown: My Life and Times as a Pro-Wrestler.) We’re got stories that evoke reality already, including stories that evoke reality by openly mimicking journalistic or autobiographical accounts; they’re called fiction and they call themselves fiction.
James Frey lied knowing that most people would probably not know that he was telling lies. His protagonist was not a clown walking onto a deadfall or even a gladiator in the ring; his protagonist was a real live human being living a real life. Him. Us. We were supposed to empathize, not applaud, when something awful happened.
His subject matter also touched on an actual life, not an experimental hiatus from real life. The scenarios generally presented on reality teevee shows are presented as, well, scenes. They’re controlled environments, and when the show is over everyone gets to go home. You don’t actually get hurt, injured or killed. You don’t actually lose all your money. You don’t actually have to start again from zero. The level of reality that James Frey falsely claimed was more documentary than “reality.” Imagine getting all the way to the end of Thin Blue Line and then finding out that Errol Morris just rounded up a couple of drinking buddies and had them read from a script. Imagine seeing a “reality” teevee show about putting various temptations in the way of an addict so that the audience can see his or her fuckups in all their horrifying glory. (I’m not saying people wouldn’t watch. I’m saying it’s in a different class from The Apprentice.)
If there is a certain amount of chagrin amidst all the rage–and I agree that there is–I think it might have to do with how very easy people were to fool, and how very eagerly they assumed the role of fact-checkers. It got reviews like this:
Anger, hurt, love, and pain are all laid bare; his writing style is as naked and forthright as the raw emotions that life in the rehab center brings to the surface. Starkly honest and mincing no words, Frey bravely faces his struggles head on, and readers will be mesmerized by his account of his ceaseless battle against addiction.
(The reviews also tended to call him a crappy writer.)
People who probably had never struggled with addiction were calling this an authentic account of addiction. A tissue of lies cannot be authentic, but this book apparently cannot claim verisimillitude, either. To hear Heather King tell it, most people with actual experience with alcoholism and drug addiction would immediately twig to its inauthenticity:
I’m not sure where his Hazelden was, for example, but it couldn’t have been more different than mine. When I washed up on its shores, nobody told me I had to believe in God and join a “Program” and that I’d drink again if I didn’t. Nobody gave me a coloring book. Nobody made me do a moral inventory with a priest. Nobody said I had to be on “constant alert,” for the rest of my life, against cross-addictions.I wasn’t thrilled to be there either, but the place where I spent 30 days was acountry club-like facility, manned by an expert staff, and peopled not with Hollywood caricatures, butstruggling, flesh-and-blood human beings like me. The place Frey describes is a combination federal prison, inner city detox and B-movie stage set. Who were these vicious thugs (though never as vicious as the macho James, who, in spite of his supposedly severe physical, mental and emotional degeneration, never once in the course of the entire book comes out on the losing end of a showdown) who have the thousands of dollars and/or health insurance to pay for a state-of-the-art rehab? Who are the gatekeepers who let him leave the premises, rendezvous with his tormented rehab girlfriend at a crack house, and breeze back in? Who are these shadowy Dr. Mengele types provoking screams from the medical unit? The only screams I heard during my stay were of laughter—at people who made lame-ass statements like “I have lived alone, I have fought alone, I have dealt with pain alone.” With two rich parents, a decent education and an array of loyal friends? Please!
(Incidentally, a bunch of transpeople were saying similar things about JT Leroy’s stories and public persona. That and that if JT Leroy were real, she’d probably have exes, housemates, best friends, and nemeses all over the place.)
Way back, before I found out they were making the movie anyway and decided never to mention JT Leroy’s name again, Pam Noles wrote in her blog about this story (follow-up here), which is also discussed here.
And the same dynamic emerges: people who are not only not-Navajo but who clearly don’t know anything about them are calling an account authentic:
The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping was published to more glowing reviews — “vivid and immediate, crackling with anger, humor, and love” (The Washington Post) and “riveting… lyrical… a ragged wail of a song, an ancient song, where we learn what it is to truly be a parent and love a child” (USA Today).
Predictably enough, the people who would actually know are not fooled for a moment:
Morris has suspected for years that Nasdijj is not who he says he is. A full-blooded Navajo and a professor of literature and Navajo studies at Dine College in Tsaile, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, Morris is among the world’s foremost authorities on Navajo culture. Shortly after The Blood was published, he saw Nasdijj’s name listed on the national index of Native writers. Under the author’s bio, it said Nasdijj claimed his name meant “to become again” in Navajo Athabaskan. This came as news to Morris, who is fluent in Athabaskan. “There is no word ‘Nasdijj’ in the Navajo language,” he explains. “It’s gibberish.”
(snip)
While a non-Navajo may see these gaffes as minor, Morris asserts they add up to a character that doesn’t exist. Like a rabbi eating pork or a Hindu beating his cow, they are culturally incriminating; and the book is littered with them, he says. Nasdijj writes that as a boy his mother used to have sings (a religious ceremony) for him to familiarize him with his culture. “That’s a communal activity,” Morris says. “To have a sing by yourself is highly aberrant behavior. Like holding a church service for yourself.”