I
Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Other times they are. I’ll say more.
Last weekend, I was at a party and wanted something to drink. Truthfully, I was happy with water, but I’m more than 70% water, a fact I delight in telling people. I drink a lot of water. Imagine a big amount of water. More.
Anyway, I got tired of throwing elbows to get to the faucet (and hadn’t yet been politely informed of the existence of Fridge Water), so I made my way over the cooler, pleasantly divided into alcoholic and non alcoholic sides. I poked around for a bit and settled on a pomegranate hops water. I don’t particularly like pomegranate. I don’t especialyl like hops. I wasn’t expecting to like this drink, but it was the least unappealing option I could find. So hops.
It was surprisingly good! It didn’t taste like hops at all! I told the host, looking for approval, and he grimaced and told me a friend had left a box of the stuff here in ages past.
I liked the stuff enough that I went to my local grocery to buy a box. Except they were sold out of that brand. However, next to it was a box of hops water with very similar graphic design. Must be a close competitor, I thought. Perfect elasticity. I grabbed a box and headed home.
It was terrible! Tasted like hops. Every sip I’d sigh and say ick, I wish I had something else to wash this down with. But that’s the Greek tragedy of it all: I can’t complain when my complaint is that my hops water tastes like hops.
To quote mick jagger, You can’t complain about what you get when you get what it says on the tin that you asked for. I think that’s how the saying goes.
II
Other times, things aren’t what they seem. Last night I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop, a rather funny mockmentary about a sad cameraman who accidentally becomes a famous street artist by paying a bunch of other artists to hype him up and even make art for him.
I went into the movie knowing (or rather, believing) that it was the only interview Banksy had ever done. That’s… technically true, I guess? It’s true in the way that Alec Baldwin is the star of Glengarry Glen Ross. He’s only there for a few minutes, but it’s the part people remember!1.
Except here’s the thing: no one involved in the production of this film will admit that it is a comedy, or even a mockumentary. They insist it’s all above-board, that it’s a true story about how Banksy, a famously secretive man, allowed a french fool with a camera and the world’s most Disco Elysium haircut to record him, that same man invested tens of thousands of dollars, produced a film so terrible they only showed 15 minutes of it in the special features (“but trust me bro, it’s 2 hours long), and then after all of this Banksy took over, confiscated the film and created a movie where the star of the film is made to look like a buffoon! I simply do not believe it. The whole thing is a joke with two layers. One on Thierry, the Frenchman with the facial hair, and the other on the audience. There may be a third target of the joke, those who believed in Mister Brain Wash enough to attend his galleries.
But the joke only works as long as you insist it’s true. It’s wrestling’s kayfabe on the silver screen.
The truth cuts both ways, and it’s not always easy to tell what side you’re on.
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And, much like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, Banksy is absent from the original play version of Exit Through the Gift Shop, though in this case it’s because the play never existed. ↩