Topic 4 – Forbidden Lies

The problem with Khouri's book "Forbidden Love" was not so much that there were so many things false about it, but more so the fact that she claimed it all to be truthful.  Understandably she would want to change a few details so as to preserve the privacy of the family that's written about, but she went as far as to change street names, years, dates, who actually did the murder, the laws, the history behind the family, the character, etc, so much so that the story is more like a work of fiction than true life.  She could get away with calling it under the genre of creative non-fiction which would again give her some leniency in her story telling, but even then some facts would need to have been accurate.  Everything in Forbidden Love however, has been disproven by those who chose to investigate the facts, hence the documentary Forbidden Lies.  This upset many people; the readers, the publishers, many who fell for the story believing it to be true.

What this says about our culture's obsession with authenticity is that we are a culture where if someone tells us something is a true story, we would like them to be stating the truth and have everything in the story accurate.  We feel that failure to meet such authenticity is insulting our intelligence as a whole, and do not appreciate being lied to. By failing to be authentic, it affects how we look at the author of the book who has made the claims of authenticity, we lose all respect for them.  A good example is, after Khouri was found out, she went into hiding to get away from the outrage of the many that believed her book.

Vilification of false autobiographers serves to reinforce an ideological notion of authenticity to a great extent.  It creates an unspoken rule to anyone thinking of writing a life narrative that they have to consider the ethical and moral implications of their writings, and to counter in the fact as to how it affects others, not just those reading the narrative, but those being written about.  It's ok to change names to some degree to respect their privacy, but stories shouldn't be changed so much that the historical facts in the story can't be proven due to the amount of alterations given.

The kinds of stories that resonate as authentic in our culture are those stories which facts can be proven by other sources, either by media articles in print, or by those who have witnessed first hand the event being written about.  Stories where accurate references can be provided so that those reading the narrative can also check up the facts if they so choose to.  Mostly the kind of stories are those that have shown to change the course of history, either for one individual or for many, where outcomes are either positive, or if not positive, that valuable lessons have been learned in so much that we don't make the same mistakes again.  Stories that share the challenges an individual would have faced and how they managed to overcome such challenges.  Where facts can be proven in these types of stories, then they are more likely to resonate with our culture.