Self-Recognition Through Film and Literature Essay

For centuries on end, mankind has been making an effort to understand the meaning of life and the laws that govern its flow. Striving to conceive the ultimate principles that direct a proper existence, one often arrives at the notion of truth being a foundation of a virtuous life. Behavior characterized by being truthful to people, keeping one’s word, avoiding any falsity, hypocrisy, and insincerity is categorized as the righteous one, and the truth is elevated on a pedestal as the hallmark and the source of all virtue. However, in real-life practice (including that depicted in literary and cinematographic fiction) it is frequently the case that rule of truth is violated, and not only by vicious people but also by those striving to construct positive relations with the surrounding environment and thus resorting to a kind of “lie for the greater good”. In such cases, there emerges a question: what really is the truth, and do people really need pure truth for ensuring their happy existence? This issue is touched upon in multiple works of literature and cinematograph, among which three were chosen for a closer examination in the present paper: Orson Welles’ documentary F for Fake, Mike Nichols’ drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, — all the pieces linked together by questioning the mere existence and significance of truth in human life. Following the characters line and the way they interpret the course of their life, a hypothesis emerges about truth being only phantom humanity created in a vain attempt to idealize the world around, as what directs and defines human behavior, in reality, is based on illusions people create for their own comfort.

Indeed, whoever can estimate what truth is and where is the yardstick and measure of truth and authenticity? F for Fake represents a brilliant provocation presenting a story of fraud, lies, and trickery based on solid facts — a fraud in itself, as firstly, it is a reenactment of possible events in the past, and secondly, the existence and identity of a few characters involved in the story has never been proved. Telling a story of a professional art forger, Elmyr de Hory, Welles actually focuses on the issue dealing with the basis of the art value: does the creator’s personality matter for the true value of a work of art, or the latter represents a value of its own, without the necessity of its creator’s big name?

Demonstrating in his film an art forgery of utmost professionalism and skillfulness, Welles attempts to show the unreliability of any assessment, even that done by professionals: “Value depends on opinion; opinion depends on the experts… And who are the experts?” (F for Fake). Citing examples of experts confused over a skillfully done fake painting, Welles destroys the spectators’ faith in the concept of expertise, backing the result by Elmyr’s quote: “It should not exist that a single person makes a decision about what is good and what is bad” (F for Fake). Indeed, even Picasso admitted, after calling some of his own paintings fake, that he could paint false Picassos, as well as everybody (F for Fake) — that claim utterly confuses the notions of fake and genuine, for how can a fake painting be done by the painter himself?

Remembering Shakespeare with his “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”, it appears obvious that any of our actions can be interpreted as play, performance, pretense. The more skillful the pretense is, the more pleasure it affords to the spectators. In a case with the art forgery, the reason Elmyr was never prosecuted even after the forgery had been discovered was that none of the famous museums owning a ‘genuine’ painting — actually done by Elmyr — really wanted to acknowledge the lack of professional insight of its experts. In the times of Michelangelo, art forgery used to be admired. Moreover, one of the film characters rhetorically inquires, “If there were not any experts, would there be any fakers?” (F for Fake). Human nature enjoys when experts and influential establishments are “made a fool of”, thus the public cheered at the artful artist who, possessing no personal vision of his own which he could communicate, nevertheless succeeded to reach prosperity by presenting so convincing copies of famous painters that even the shrewdest eye could notice no fraud (F for Fake).

The most striking fact about the story of Elmyr appears to be his utmost belief in his own righteousness. As his notorious ‘hoax-biographer’ Clifford Irving claims, “all things he is telling now are things he has built up in his mind over the years and come to believe it is true!” (F for Fake). This reflects the typical feature of the human mind, tending to view a situation in a certain light, even if not the most realistic one, and gradually reaching the stage when it becomes impossible to view that situation from a different angle as ideal thought has ‘materialized’ for the individual possessed by it.

Thus, one proceeds to the issue of people creating truth for themselves as a substitute for and an escape from reality which for certain reasons does not satisfy their ambitions and aspirations. Such is the unhappy couple involved in a violent and volatile relationship in Nichols’ film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: an associate history professor George and his overweight, hard-drinking, and crudely boisterous wife Martha, the daughter of the college president. During the whole night depicted in the film, Martha and George are drawn into an endless stream of aggressive sparring with each other and their guests, a young couple of newcomers to the college. The action proceeds through a series of ‘games’ — Humiliate the Host, Hump the Hostess, Get the Guests and Bringing up Baby — the rules of which are known only to the hosts themselves, and thus for a detached onlooker the whole situation appears as a nightmare of matrimonial aggression which in its wave engrosses anyone who would be unlucky to stay in its way.

It is never quite possible to tell whether the scorns, swearing, humiliations, and insults are meant by their authors or whether it is a pure pretense for the sake of entertainment. George’s aiming a shotgun at Martha’s head seems totally predictable and grounded, as she drives him out of his wits by her outrageous drunk behavior. However, as he pulls the trigger, a mere umbrella appears out of the muzzle and converts the whole situation into a joke. The young careerist Nick, after being welcomed as a lover and then humiliated by Martha, utters an astonished “I don’t know when you people are lying” — and indeed, at times they can hardly tell it themselves (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Martha, who claims her husband George does not know the difference between truth and illusion, still values him as he is the only person who “can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them” (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). And as it appears, though the games change at a great rate, there is one that persists and not without a reason.

Martha’s crushed hopes for George taking over the History Department and the whole college, later on, make her strive for an escape from her miserable existence. She plunges into drinking which obscures her mind and involves her husband into an imaginary reality that would never be possible to achieve. Desperately childless, Martha makes up a fictitious child ascribing to him all the best qualities a mother could ever dream of for her offspring. Presumably, that is the only reality she is happy in — and the only one that fills her life with sense. Naturally, as any mother proud of her child — even a fictitious one — Martha is filled with a desire to share her joy with the world. However, she is not allowed to do so by her husband who understands all the possible consequences of publicity. As a result of her drunken behavior, the subject of the child is raised, which enrages George: “You broke the rule, you mentioned the son to somebody else!” (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Thus to revenge all the injustice and offense caused to him by his wife, he ‘kills’ their son ‘involving’ him in a car accident — which crushed all Martha’s beautiful, yet imaginary world, and leaves her exhausted and feeble against the reality of life.

The tragedy of Martha is that she tried assuming an escapist approach to her unsuccessful life which did not bless her with the happiness of being a mother. Obviously loud and vulgar as seen by strangers and her own husband, she confesses, “I wear the pants in the house because somebody’s got to… But I am not a monster” (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Escaping from the truth and involving in fiction was the only way for the hopeless associate professor’s wife to reconcile herself to her fate.

A story similar in a way can be traced in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway — a novel that is calm and disturbing at the same time. A wife of a respectable man, Clarissa Dalloway as a social person is represented in the role of a successful manager of multiple parties — as the love of her youth Peter Walsh said, “she had the makings of the perfect hostess” (Woolf 6). However nice and sweet her parties may have been, however calm and undisturbed her marriage may have flown, Clarissa reveals the true standing of things by a thought that “half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that” (Woolf 8) — that is, she was all the time pretending to be living a life, which actually was a play, a masquerade designed for the pure opinion of others. And there is no doubting Mrs. Dalloway truly wished to change the course of events: “Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping onto the pavement, could have looked even differently!” (Woolf 8).

Involved in the process of lying to herself, to people around her by being always pleased with everything, always cheerful and merry, Clarissa “had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown” (Woolf 8). Being very reserved by nature, she barely revealed her true feelings, as according to Peter Walsh’s observation, “there was always something cold in Clarissa …. She had always, even as a girl, a sort of timidity, which in middle age becomes conventionality, and then it’s all up, it’s all up…” (Woolf 36). Playing hide-and-seek with her own feelings and perceptions, Clarissa constituted a puzzle to anyone who wanted to penetrate her soul or mind — and it indeed prevented from the true understanding of her by the people who were truly interested in getting a closer contact with her and developing a tighter bond (such as Peter Walsh): “…it was her manner that annoyed him; timid; hard; something arrogant; unimaginative; prudish. “The death of the soul.” (Woolf 44). And it was this “death of her soul” that prevented her from bursting out the whole truth about her feelings to Peter at a critical moment which decided her whole life afterward:

“She did not move. “Tell me the truth, tell me the truth,” he kept on saying. He felt as if his forehead would burst. She seemed contracted, petrified. She did not move. … “Tell me the truth,” he repeated. He felt that he was grinding against something physically hard; she was unyielding. She was like iron, like flint, rigid up the backbone. And when she said, “It’s no use. It’s no use. This is the end”— after he had spoken for hours, it seemed, with the tears running down his cheeks—it was as if she had hit him in the face. She turned, she left him, went away. “Clarissa!” he cried. “Clarissa!” But she never came back. It was over. He went away that night. He never saw her again.” (Woolf 48).

As a result of such timidity of self-expression, of assumed merriness which in fact was covering an empty existence, Clarissa arrived at the moment when nothing could give her emotional relaxation and enjoyment:

“She was not enjoying it. It was too much like being—just anybody, standing there; anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn’t help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake driven in at the top of her stairs. Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something, not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; much more real in another.” (Woolf 124).

Being too deeply involved in a social-friendly game that left nothing of genuine personality, Mrs. Dalloway represents the case when failure to keep to the true self does not lead one to happy and full-blooded existence. It may provide a social status and external success but it deprives one of any meaning as a deep-feeling and original personality.

Upon the analysis of the three works linked by a common idea of truth being questioned as a life value, it becomes obvious that in various contexts and situations the answer can vary. Substituting true feelings and reality by imaginary ones rarely leads to a satisfying and worthy existence; however, when viewed in terms of arts, a professional fraud can be regarded as possessing its own value — for, if art is for art’s sake and not for the name of the artist, whatever is skillfully created and affords esthetic enjoyment equals to the work of art as such.

Works Cited

F for Fake. Dir. Orson Welles. Video recording. Janus Film, 1976.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Dir. Mike Nichols. Prod. Ernest Lehman. Video recording. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1966.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Hertfordshire, Great Britain: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1996.