hoax

So after Friday's class, I started thinking about the point Zach made about hoax photos. Hoax photos are obviously fiction in that they aren't real, but they are different than fiction because people actually want to believe them and sometimes do. Like Zach said, a fictional character like Sherlock Holmes is understood to be fake, and the reader normally has no want or need to believe in his true existence. In the case of hoax photos, however, many people seem to have an innate desire to believe in them, so much so that the desire translates to acceptance. I think the difference here lies in presentation, subject matter and medium. In a novel, for instance, characters and events are not normally presented as "real." The author uses the characters and events to tell a story but makes no effort to prove or suggest their actual existence. In the case of hoax photos, however, photographers claim to have captured something actually in existence and pass it off as such. What further strengthens belief is the medium, itself, because photography is understood to capture actual moments in time, giving photos more credibility than written accounts of something's existence.  read more »

We discussed in class the idea of fiction and non-fiction and how elements of each are present in both. In Avatars of Story, Ryan writes, “In the past few decades, the boarder between fiction and nonfiction has been the site of numerous violations which have caused, if not the spilling of blood, at lest the spilling of ink.” There as been some controversies as to how much truth goes into fiction, or how much fiction can go into a nonfiction.
This idea made me think of an Ernest Hemingway quote: “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened…” The idea of a true fiction. I believe that Hemingway was referring to the idea that the author has to tell the truth about his story, even if it is not real.  read more »