Quick Takes on Fake Stuff

1. Every day this week (and most days last week) Darwin and I have looked at each other and said, "Someone should write a post." We even discuss what we want to write about. And then -- nothing. So here's a roundup of the things we would be writing about, were we to write.

2. Amazon is streaming a version of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence. We read the review of it in the WSJ, and found it highly praised although controversial because whodunit has been altered from the book. Hm. That's not the only thing altered from the book. This Ordeal by Innocence had fantastic production values, excellently claustrophobic cinematography, and costuming to make your fifties-lovin' heart sigh. But the sensation factor was amped up to eleven. The essence of the Agatha Christie oeuvre is that petty evil spills out into larger evil, that sin cascades through generations. And everyone sins. Ordinary people sin, and then compound their sin, and that's how the ordinary, unexpected person ends up taking a life. Not everyone takes vengeance or malice to this level -- the point of Ordeal by Innocence (the book) is that as long as murder is unsolved, the innocent will suffer suspicion, and will suspect each other. Only truth brings relief.

3. But this movie runs roughshod over Christie's moral realism. The altered ending is ultimately bizarre and unbelievable. This family is so dysfunctional -- more dysfunctional than the family of the book, and that's saying something -- and everyone is so grotesquely nasty or traumatized in one way or another, that the human, personal element is lessened. Instead of watching it and thinking, "Yes, I understand how an otherwise ordinary person could be driven to this extreme," the viewer sits back passively, complacent in his conviction that this could never happen to me because these people are so ridiculously messed-up. The movie underlines this through it's horror framing, and indeed, I noted that the script writer is Sarah Phelps, who penned the recent adaptation of And Then There Were None, a similarly horrorized production of what is already, without embellishment, a pretty scary story.

4. Which brings me to the hollowness of aesthetics. This production of Ordeal by Innocence was the total package: visually compelling (if at times overwrought), well-acted, well-costumed, dramatically structured. And all in the service of a hollow, ultimately false conclusion. The moral content of all this packaging is rotten.

Several months ago I was browsing a pretty little gift shop, and came across a book of postcards. "Great American Authors" was the theme. Each postcard had the silhouette of an author and a quote. The silhouette was artsy. The quote was in elegant calligraphy. The paper was thick and satisfying to the hand. The whole had a crafty, authentic aesthetic.



One of these authors is Jane Austen (bottom left).

My friends, how much knowledge of literature does it take to know that Jane Austen is not a Great American Author? And it takes merely the act of flipping through Emma to realize that "There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart" is not actually an encomium to tenderness; Emma is trying to convince herself that tenderhearted Harriet Smith is a better friend for being a complete feather-head. The quote, in context:

"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart," said she afterwards to herself. "There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will. It is tenderness of heart which makes my dear father so generally beloved—which gives Isabella all her popularity.—I have it not—but I know how to prize and respect it.—Harriet is my superior in all the charm and all the felicity it gives. Dear Harriet!—I would not change you for the clearest-headed, longest-sighted, best-judging female breathing. Oh! the coldness of a Jane Fairfax!—Harriet is worth a hundred such.—And for a wife—a sensible man's wife—it is invaluable. I mention no names; but happy the man who changes Emma for Harriet!"

5. Another quote, top center, E.B. White: "Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder." (source, Charlotte's Web.)

This sounding not much like something E.B. White would actually say, I did a google search for the quote on the text of Charlotte's Web. The direct wording brought up nothing, but when I searched for wonder, this passage from chapter 11 was the closest analogue:

On Sunday the church was full. The minister ex- 


The Miracle 


85 

plained the miracle. He said that the words on the 
spider’s web proved that human beings must always 
be on the watch for the coming of wonders. 

This is perhaps less akin to the starry-eyed postcard sentiment than to another quote from Charlotte's Web:

“But Charlotte,” said Wilbur, “I’m not terrific.” 

“That doesn’t make a particle of difference,” replied 
Charlotte. “Not a particle. People believe almost any- 
thing they see in print. Does anybody here know how 
to spell ‘terrific’?” 

...which itself is misattributed on the internet, with pages of results for the fake packaged version:

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.”

Indeed.

(A note: "trust" and "gullible" and "print" never appear together in the text of Charlotte's Web.)

6. While we're at it, let's clear up another faux-tation. A favorite inspirational sentiment of many is attributed to St. Augustine:

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

Let alone for the moment that this does not have the ring of anything an intellectual of the 4th/5th century would say, let alone St. Augustine. What does this even mean? Hope does not presuppose anger

The most cursory of Google searches turns up not a single text actually attributed Augustine of Hippo, but a circular firing squad of people attributing the quote to Augustine because they found, somewhere else, someone attributing the quote to St. Augustine. (Perhaps the most egregious example of this is Archbishop Chaput, who said in an address to the National Prayer Breakfast in 2005:

St Augustine, who had such a deep influence on the mind of our new Holy Father, once wrote that, "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are." Are we angry enough about what's wrong with the world -- the killing of millions of unborn children through abortion; the neglect of the poor and the elderly; the mistreatment of immigrants in our midst; the abuse of science in embryonic stem cell research? Do we really have the courage of our convictions to change those things?

The earliest version of this quote I can find is from Speaking of Christianity: Practical Compassion, Social Justice, and Other Wonders by Robert McAfee Brown (1997):

My own greatest help comes from Augustine -- not from his philosophical struggles with neo-Platonism or privative evil, but from a reflective comment whose location in the Augustinian canon I wish I could pinpoint. Augustine writes, "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."

Brown specifically says that he does not know where Augustine says this. He offers no context, or even milieu where others might source the quote. He does not say where he first encountered it, or why he thinks it is from Augustine.

I trust you are not so gullible as to believe everything you see in print.

7. Now I don't remember what else we talked about posting.