The Creations of Lies and Tells
Alan Abel was born in 1930 and graduated Ohio State University with a bachelor in Education. He is a very famous American prankster, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He is popular for playing jokes that brought upon strong reactions from the media. I believe the media can be considered art because it discusses our daily lives and after all art is based on daily images and scenarios. I do not think what Alan did was art. His scandals were full of juvenile jokes and he was after his own entertainment.
Some of his earliest pranks took place in the 1950's. Abel exposed himself as a golf expert who taught executives how to use ballet positions to improve their game. The “Society for Indecency to Naked Animals" was Abel's most detailed project. This project was introduced on May 27, 1959 and it appeared on the Today Show. The mission was to clothe naked animals throughout the world. The line of the club was “A nude horse is a rude horse". Animals are meant to be wild and free and there is no valid purpose for dressing animals up.
Starting on 1966 for a full year Alan wrote a weekly organized amusing column. The name of this column was "The Private World of Professor Bunker C. Hill". This column appeared in the San Francisco Examiner and a few other newspapers. Alan also went on to hire an imposter to pose as Deep Throat for a press conference in New York City. Agent Scott Meredith offered one hundred thousand dollars to buy this story. I would not consider this type of actions and moves anything but jokes. He truly is an overgrown child getting a thrill out of life. He obviously enjoyed playing with people’s minds.
In the 70's Alan appeared in a game show. The show was "To Tell the Truth" and Alan showed up with bandages covering his entire head. His focus was to cover who he was trying to be this time. He found delight in not having his audience know everything. He enjoyed trying his best to leave them clueless. The titles of his projects said it all. Alan produced two mockumentaries one called "Is There Sex after Death" and "The Faking of the President". The titles itself are clearly ridiculous and meaningless. The thrill of his own games was what made Alan keep on working on more pranks. Clearly, there would be no sort of movement coming from a dead person. The second mockumentarie could be interpreted in more than one way. One person could think of all the lies presidents tell at times. Another point would be that there is no way we can pretend that the one who is actually president or is a former president is not.
In 1979 Alan went so out of lines and faked his own death. He played it out so well and pretended he was having a tragic heart attack. A fake funeral director collected his belongings. A lady posed as his wife and notified the New York Times. There could not have been any better way to get the word out there. The New York Times published a notice on his death on January 2, 1980. The next day Alan held a news conference announcing that the news reporters had been grossly exaggerated. I find this joke cruel and out of bad taste. Alan went to such a disgusting degree that he did not care about anyone but himself. His entire focus was on trying his best to make the New York Times look bad and laughing at their expense. Selfishly, he did not think about anybody else's effects .It is not hard to understand why so many people would lose respect for this clown.
A media hoax is a prank played by an individual or group of individual longing for the media's attention. They stage what they are going to say, activities around their adventure, and set press releases. Media hoaxes are designed to trick journalist and make them believe their insane stories. They try their best to capture the journalist attention so that their lies will be published in misleading articles.
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to cover up the