[Americans sure
can believe some cray
cray things. That’s right, I said cray cray. In this week’s series, I’ll
AmericanStudy five such conspiracy theories, past and present. Please share
your own conspiracy theories—ones you believe, or just ones you find
interesting and worth studying—for a suspicious weekend post!]
On two interesting
pop culture responses to conspiracy theories about the Apollo missions.
The third leg of
the Cold War triangle of cray cray that includes my two prior topics this week
(the Roswell and JFK assassination conspiracy theories) would have to be the ongoing
and multi-layered theories that the six manned NASA moon
landings between 1969 and 1972 were all
elaborate hoaxes. These theories, which commenced almost immediately after
the first landing, began to be developed in earnest with Bill Kaysing’s book We
Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle (1974);
they have since been taken up by the very appropriately named Flat Earth Society, have led
to numerous other works including William Brian’s book Moongate:
Suppressed Findings of the U.S. Space Program (1982) and Aron Ranen’s
film Did We Go? (2005),
and have most humorously extended to include a multi-faceted theory
about the landings as a blockbuster film, one financed by Disney and
directed by none other than Stanley Kubrick.
The moon landing
conspiracy theories are perhaps the most implausible of any I’ll engage with
this week (given the sheer number of people who would have had to be in on the
hoaxes and stay silent about them, for example), but a couple of the pop
culture responses to those theories are well worth our time and thought. In
2002, French
filmmaker William Karel created a brilliant mockumentary, Dark Side of the Moon
(its original French title was Opération
Lune), which explored and parodied the Kubrick connection at great length,
including invented stories of the assassination of Kubrick colleagues by the
CIA (among many other delightful such details). Karel’s mockumentary is so
expertly and carefully done, so rich with seemingly believable information and
interviews, that it has been accepted by many moon
landing conspiracy theorists as an authentic text within their canon of
evidence, perhaps the greatest compliment a mockumentary can receive (although Spinal Tap
songs becoming accepted rock and roll classics has to be on that list as
well).
Karel’s film isn’t
the only nor the first innovative and interesting pop culture response to the
moon theories, however. On their seminal 1992 album Automatic for the People, R.E.M. included the song “Man on the Moon,” a
tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman that uses those conspiracy
theories to engage with parallel ongoing theories
about Kaufman’s allegedly faked death. Filmmaker Milos Forman was so taken
by this metaphorical connection that he subsequently named his Jim Carrey-starring Kaufman
biopic—a film that ends with
a sly wink to the idea that Kaufman survived his “death”—Man on the Moon (1999).
And I would argue that the R.E.M. song and its connection of Kaufman to the
moon landing hoax also helps us think about another side to such conspiracy
theories—the ways in which they are irrevocably tied, as were Kaufman’s life
and work, to our age of media and celebrity, a period in which it has become
increasingly difficult to discern the difference between reality and performance,
the simulacra
and the simulations. It’s the truth that we put men on the moon—but it’s
equally the truth that we’ve been creating alternative truths ever since.
Next conspiracy
theory tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other conspiracy theories you’d highlight?
And PPS. Thanks
to AnneMarie
Donahue for the initial idea for this post (and thus the week’s series)!
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