Orson Welles & ‘fake news’

MANILA, Philippines — Two words rule our awareness today: “plastic” and “fake.” Plastic, while having many uses, has also caused many miseries. Fake, designed since biblical times, has caused just as much misery and confusion — social and political. These two words have become synonymous since then.

Whoever invented plastic is godsend, but also a purveyor of harm and disruption. Plastic, which does not decompose, is durable for practical uses, replacing many materials, which have become obsolete. But too much of a good thing is hazardous; and unregulated plastic has caused environmental damages in many places such as floods due to plastic-clogged waterways.

Metropolitan Manila, for instance, has been found to be one of the cities most prone to urban flooding. The once beautiful Manila Bay, Laguna de Bay, Pasig River, Malabon-Tenajeros River, esteros such as Tripa de Gallina and the other natural water canals in the metro have been converted into garbage dumps without any serious governmental effort to alleviate the situation.

If it is any consolation, we are not alone in this idiocy — a convenient government excuse for its insensibility. Due to millions of tons of plastic garbage floating in the oceans around the world, fishes mistake them for food and like humans die of “excessive evacuation of watery feces” and indigestion. Which brings us back to the Sixth Congress when this writer filed a bill “regulating the manufacture and use of plastic products,” which did not even merit a Second Reading for being a “ridiculous bill.” That was 52 “ridiculous years” ago!

It is exciting wonder when the meaning of two trivial words uncannily overlap and overwhelm their unintended prey and become words of the day to delight or dismay. Plastic surgery of the face, for example (with apologies to showbiz “beauties”), is intended to fake what was once real but ugly or disfigured — fake being unauthentic, as in forced enhancement or alteration. Fabricated information disseminated as true, for whatever intention, is fake news. Fake news, therefore, is plastic — plastic being non-biodegradable — and just like it, fake news remains the favorite focus of busybodies — lovers of intrigues and social gossip — for many years. Even in the biblical account of Adam and Eve (with apologies to Du30), there’s unending debate as to who gave them fake information about eating the apple.

There are also “faked realities” in showbiz. The most unforgettable was in October of 1938 when a young actor-director named Orson Welles dramatized on radio H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Halfway in the broadcast, Welles “interrupted” the drama with a “distress live report” from the East Coast that a “large round thing from outer space” has landed full of “Martians” who have invaded the area. People panicked and calmed down only when Welles announced that it was a “fake report.” In the homefront in the ‘70s, in one of our earlier episodes of the pioneer television drama anthology Kahapon Lamang drama television, a love scene of award-winning actors Charito Solis and Romeo Vasquez was so realistic we darkened the set and increased the audio for cinematic impact. The next day, we received an urgent call from censors chief Mary Kalaw Katigbak about complaints by viewers against “televising two people making love.” When I explained that it was only for dramatization, she admonished, “Don’t make such faked reality too real because pornography is against the law.”

Up to now, sham, fraudulence, falsehood, counterfeits, fakes are still very much in vogue — reasons why this crazy world is interesting, yet disgusting in many ways. This country, alas, is reputed to have all kinds of “fakes” such as fake marriage licenses, fake diplomas, bogus birth certificates, false teeth, silicone breasts, fake designer bags, fake Bally shoes, fake Rolex watches, counterfeit P10,000 paper bills, fake election returns, fake shabu, fake Sleek’s jeans, fake cities — the list seems endless. Like plastic, which decomposes after a hundred years, “fake anything” will be with us for a long time.

So you see, falsehood plays a larger part in the world than truth. Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” And finally, Francis Bacon’s “…lies breed opinion and opinion brings on substance.” That is why up to now we still have a surplus of fakes and “plastics” in the entertainment circuit, and liars in the government.

(Eddie Ilarde is a former senator, author and freelance writer, independent radio-TV host and producer. Lifetime Achievement Awardee for Radio-TV, he is the founding president-chairman of Maharlika Movement for National Transformation, Inc. He is heard in his radio program over DZBB, 1:30 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday. )