Humbug! Hoaxes in Literature and Culture.

The main tactics people use to persuade others that their hoax is real is ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos gives evidence of credibility, pathos taps into people’s emotions, and logos provides logic behind the hoax. In the piece about Joice Heth, Barnum uses ethos by providing “certificates,” “newspaper articles,” and even dialogue from the character herself to verify her story and her age. Having evidence from multiple people makes the hoax more credible. Barnum provides a backstory that uses logos. The backstory of Joice Heth is relevant to a historical time period that existed, and he uses specific details about her origin, marital relationship and slave work that seems like a logical life that someone would have. Pathos is rarely used in this piece, but Barnum does provide detail about the woman being close to death. The tale of Joice Heth’s hard lifestyle of labor and losing her husband makes us want to believe that she persevered through it to live to be 161 years old. It feeds into our human instinct to want a “happy ending” despite the adversities we face. In order for a hoax to be successful, it has to relate to the human experience. Being 161 is outside of the human experience, but the supporting story behind Joice is logical, which makes people believe that it is true. A successful hoax always has to include a factor that people in the time period don’t know much about. The unawareness of that factor makes people believe that anything is possible and creating a picture for them about that topic makes it believable. A unsuccessful goes outside of the human experience. It includes unrealistic things and doesn’t have logical factors to support it.

For a hoax to be persuasive or successful the source must have an authority on the topic or Ethos. Alike, the audience is more apt to believe something that is highly detailed and supported by secondary sources. For example in Barnum’s “The Life of Joice Heth” he uses elaborate detail to imply the legitimacy of the case he presents. He explains her diet down to the way she prefers her eggs and tells the audience her average. These random details are important in establishing a convincing hoax. However, Barnum does not solely rely on his own accounts as evidence. He presents the reader with multiple secondary sources from not only other established newspapers and published but from the subject herself. Since the article is presented in a published medium, it legitimizes Barnum’s accounts. The nature of newspaper is to present current events with an unbiased stance. He is seemingly impartial, with an informative tone making it a convincing article. An unsuccessful hoax is one with too much embellishment. Barnum presents this woman as the oldest woman alive as well as George Washington’s nurse, a coupling that is pushing the boundaries of what is believable and what is not.

Through the use of specific evidence such as dates, times, names, newspaper articles, and places, authors attempt to persuade readers that their hoaxes are non-fiction works. The tactic of using either common or uncommon names and other specifics often leads the audience to believe that the story would be harder to pull out of thin air, and is therefore more credible. For example, in the Joice Heth selection, it is stated that she was born in 1647 on the island of Madagascar. Also, the story uses familiar names such as George Washington and refers to his home in Virginia. By using these specifics, the reader feels familiar with the selection and therefore is more likely to believe that the story is true, not a hoax. Through the use of newspaper excerpts, professionally written articles that can be looked up in archives, it seems that there is no way the story can be falsified. It is easier to convince people that something exists than to prove that it does not. This is due to confirmation bias which is one’s tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s previous beliefs. In the Feejee Mermaid, there is one point where Barnum says that it is crazy that mer-people are seen so often. This is because if counter arguments seem obscure, then the hoaxes are more likely to be believed. Due to apparent sightings of mermaids, and the author stating that counter-evidence is absurd, he is twisting the audience’s mind to believe the message being portrayed and dismiss any counter-evidence to disprove his theory. Successful hoaxes are made by using compelling evidence and specific uses of familiarities to the audiences in order to convince the reader that believing anything aside from what the author conveys is absurd. Similarly, unsuccessful hoaxes are vague and lack evidence to convince the reader.

Everyone is capable of falling into the hands of persuasion. Whether one is extremely gullible or particularly inquisitive, a persuasive hoax is capable of fooling even the most credible people. People commonly use publicity, phony evidence, and a believable tone in order to deceive an audience. The Feejee Mermaid that was claimed to have been have caught was given much public attention due to people’s unrealistic fantasies. Barnum took advantage of everyone’s curiosity and advertised the mermaid so much that people began to take great interest in it. The mermaid is perceived as a beautiful, elegant creature and brochures as well as posters portrayed this fantasy. The public were also subjected to phony evidence and, as a result, made false inferences. People believed that because there are sea dogs and sea wolves, the existence of mermaids is just as plausible. Because no one had been given any reason to doubt the existence of a mermaid, the first “real” evidence was accepted. Hundreds reported mermaid sightings, which only makes Barnum’s claim more believable. Finally, Barnum’s tone about the reality of the mermaid is very persuasive. He uses scientific language to wave away any doubtful thoughts. Many people assume that an idea or proposition is correct if they do not fully understand the actual meaning; Barnum took advantage of people’s ignorance and was ultimately given the attention he craves. Hoaxes can be very successful or unsuccessful depending on the subject and audience. The hoax must be believable and not completely impossible. Hoaxes also serve as a false hope to some unsuspecting people. Although most hoaxes are harmless, an unsuccessful hoax may pose a threat to people. A flawed hoax with exaggerated details may also be unsuccessful because uncertainty will overcome curiosity.

The more detail that one includes in a hoax, the more credibility it has. As in any media form intended to persuade unconvinced viewers into accepting something as true, evidence dictates the weight the idea holds. For example, an argument gains legitimization based on the quality and quantity of supporting details. Barnum understands the ability to persuade using evidence and does it well; conveying of the absurd idea that Joice Heth nursed George Washington relied heavily on minute details about her upbringing that flesh out her character significantly. He gives an intricate biography of her life up to the point in which he slips the notion that she was George Washington’s maid. By giving Joice Heth a developed background, his claim that she served George Washington in addition to all the other things she has done. Barnum begs the observer to ask a skeptic’s question: how could the fact that she worked for George Washington be made up if the rest of her lives details feel so real? Since a hoax is intended to deceive its audience, a hoax succeeds if it convinces people to believe in something untrue.

A hoax is a deceptive story, meant to make the readers or audience believe that it is true. Hoaxes are often viewed negatively as being ruthless, not caring about the impact that it may have on the public and are often associated with dark humor. Hoaxes are used to gain attention, as a fabricated story which is believed to be factual often attracts more people. For example, the recent ‘Balloon Boy Hoax’ which took place in 2009, is speculated to have been performed as a publicity stint. So if hoaxes could potentially make you famous, why isn’t everyone doing it? The answer to that would be that there are consequences for deceiving the public, such as Richard Heene, father of balloon boy, who received 90 days in jail! However, hoaxes are not just used my people wanting fifteen minutes of fame, they are also popularly used by the government.

So it may be clear to see now that the difference between literature and a hoax, is that a hoax is an outright lie, meant to mislead and delude people, however literature is merely there for one’s entertainment. Literature may be fiction, but the readers are fully aware of it. Even though it may speak of an event involving fictional creatures, it is not aiming to make people believe the myths. Literature can be seen as a creative outlet, allowing the writer and the reader to delve in a world that they know to be false, in order to escape the real world.

A hoax is often the truth twisted in a way that benefits the person telling the fraudulent story. A hoax is meant to convince a large population that something that does not exist, exists. Meanwhile, literature is often perceived as artfully written and bias-free work that tells a story. Literature and hoaxes both rely on the audience’s participation and interpretation. With the help of the audience, a small hoax can be blown out of proportion and into a worldwide phenomenon. For example, the haunting movie “The Amityville Horror” which was “based on a true story” turned out to be a hoax started by the Lutz family. The Lutz family benefitted financially from the movie. People all over the country believed in their story, which claimed that there were ghosts in the house, and paid to watch the movie.

Hoaxes are meant to commit a type of deception. The word “hoax” is often used when referencing urban legends or rumors. Hoaxes are also typically portrayed in a multitude of ways, whether it be through propaganda,  media, or even “word of mouth.” There are also several instances of “literary hoaxes,” or a hoax supposedly crafted in the form of literature. While hoaxes may come in many different forms, literature usually does not. Literature is any written work and, while there are many different genres within literature, the definition itself typically does not vary. Although literature and hoaxes may overlap with one another, there is a distinction between the two. Literature is often used as a source of entertainment or information to the reader, seen as a piece of art. Yet literature is not, unlike hoaxes, created for the sole purpose of deception.

Before determining whether a hoax should be considered a piece of literary work, it is first necessary to understand the definition. Literally, the word conveys a sense of mischievous deception: one who seeks glory, fame, or recognition through artfully taking advantage of, or “hoodwinking,” his/her audience. But this does not always seem to be the case. Take Jonathan Swift’s, “A Modest Proposal,” for example. In this short work, Swift employs satire in order to raise awareness of how the rich exploit and even dehumanize the poor in eighteenth century Ireland. His purpose was not to propose such an outrageous idea as feeding poor babies to the rich to solve Ireland’s famine. Rather, to illuminate the deeper societal issues to bring about change in the social construct. This highlights another important theme: context is essential in order to extrapolate a purpose from hoaxes. Technically speaking, literature is considered to be any piece of written work, though it is often associated with a purpose. Swift’s short piece falls into this category; however, what effect does the content have on its validity (or lack thereof), and should this still be considered literature? There are a multitude of other examples of hoaxes that do not have as honorable intent as that of Swift’s, such as the Hitler diaries; nevertheless, it is ultimately up to the reader to determine for his/herself which pieces of written works should be accepted as literature.