Carry On... #phishing
Like many other "vocabulary nerds" around the world, I have lately fallen into the habit of playing Wordle every day.
For the blissfully unaware, the object of Wordle is to identify a five-letter word in six guesses. There are approximately 13,000 five-letter words in the English language, but not all of those words are included in the Wordle solution list. Some have been omitted because they are considered offensive or incendiary, while others are absent because they are merely obscure.
Unfortunately, the algorithm for including or excluding words is a bit arbitrary, and not always transparent. LYNCH and SLAVE have both been removed from the official list. PUSSY (which has a perfectly benign alternative meaning) was excised, although HUSSY (which only ever means one thing) was left in place. PENIS was cut from the list, but HYMEN is still intact. Go figure that one out (and take note, all you Wordlers: PENIS is out; HYMEN is in. And stop sniggering.).
For my part, it's the modern words that tend to give me pause; like PHISH, which I was recently surprised to discover is considered a valid Wordle word.
PHISH is the reason I have embarked on this whole rambling story (in case you were starting to wonder!) since it is a term of the internet age, and consequently (like EMAIL) a word you are unlikely to find in Shakespeare.
Irrelevant Sidebar:
I was delighted to learn that KNISH is also an official Wordle word, although it too is not to be found in Shakespeare - unless anyone finally locates the long-lost manuscript of Queen Alexandra and Murray.
Alack, the night ebbs long. Anon he comes-
Stealthy, from his midnight sojourn - kitchenward...
Bageled well, he brings us blintzes, and pastrami
On rye; But hark, a wry look indeed; for he
thinks to share, with I, such nosh as this-
O Murray, prithee hold awhile, and pause-
Wouldst thou bedeck our bridal bed with crumbs?
Cease thy dribbling; for ee'n now hast thou spilled
The mustard; golden blot, across the silken
contours of our finest sheets withal.
Out! Out, damn spot! O cursed spite,
Shouldst thou look to me to set it right.
Murray:
Do I dare to eat the knish?
Alexanda:
Prefer I the strudel, tender and gently moist.
Produce a slice of strudel, and all is well.
Murray:
Alexandra:
Awaits thy late-night command. A strudel, my love,
And some cheesecake (at the least)and more,
If thou lovest me as thou dost proclaim;
Go - get thee to a noshery.
Murray:
I go,
With all you ask, for such is my love for thee.
Say goodnight, milady-
Alexandra:
Good night, milady; goodnight, goodnight.
Murray:
Oy veh-eth...
Exit, in pursuit of a bear-claw.
Sorry, I'm not quite sure what happened there. Where was I?
Oh yes, phish.
For the benefit of anyone over the age of 30, phishing is a form of internet scam in which someone pretends to be someone (or something) they are not, usually for the purpose of obtaining money or personal information.
(Later in this series we shall be examining the 20th Century social implications of being "over 30". Stay tuned.)
Phishing can be a simple financial scam: fraudsters pretending to be from your bank or your internet provider for example - but it can also take other forms.
Despite the much lamented erosion of privacy in the modern age, the internet is a curiously anonymous space, where no one is quite who or what they seem to be. People can set up any persona they choose online: they can be younger, older, gay or straight. They can be famous painters, persecuted minorities or long-lost Shakespearian masterpieces, and who would ever know the difference?
In May of 2001, a 19 year old girl named Kaycee Nicole Swenson lost her battle with leukaemia. The news of her death was announced on a webpage she had been maintaining for several years in which she had been keeping an online diary of her struggle with the illness; posting daily updates for her thousands of followers and well-wishers.
When she died, people wept openly and paid tributes to this courageous and beautiful girl who had struggled so bravely in the face of a terrible, terrible illness.
There was only one problem. Kaycee Nicole Swenson didn't exist.
Shortly after her "death" it emerged that the entire web diary had been written by Debbie Swenson, a 40-year-old housewife from Peabody, Kansas who was neither a teenager nor dead. All of the daily minutiae of a teenage life with leukaemia: the hospital visits, the emotional ups and downs, the chemotherapy, the (ultimately) failing liver, all of it had been invented by Debbie Swenson and posted online. Ms Swenson had two real-life children, neither of whom were dead, or even ill.
Her followers were shocked and outraged when the truth emerged, not because they had been defrauded of money (they hadn't; she had never solicited donations) but because they had become so emotionally invested in a tragic and compelling narrative that proved to be pure fiction.
Over the last few decades, this form of online deception has become common enough to merit its own term: Munchausen by Internet. The rise of social media in the modern age has made it ridiculously easy for anyone to present themselves as anything, and some people are seduced by the outpouring of sympathy and attention they receive if they claim to be dying, tragically and photogenically.
Our film this week presents just such an individual, but it predates the era of social media by a few years.
Actually, it's from 1937.
Meet Hazel Flagg.
Hazel lives in the (fictional) town of Warsaw, Vermont, where she works for the town's primary employer, a watch factory.
Historical sidebar:
Watches in the 1930s were typically coated with luminous paint to make them glow in the dark, and girls like Hazel Flagg were employed to apply that paint to the watch dials. The luminous material used in this process was radium. Many of the girls employed in these factories developed radiation poisoning, some of them fatally.
At the beginning of Nothing Sacred, Hazel Flagg has been diagnosed with radium poisoning and her case is picked up by an ambitious New York newspaper reporter who exploits her tragic story to boost his own career. Hazel quickly becomes the toast of New York and a symbol for bravery and stoicism in the face of certain death.
There's only one problem. Hazel is perfectly healthy, and is using the radium story as an excuse for an all-expenses-paid luxury trip to New York. The journalist who champions her story is also using her as his ticket back to the front page after a humiliating episode involving an ersatz foreign potentate (in a very interesting deconstruction of some uncomfortable 1930s stereotypes).
Written (mostly) by Ben Hecht, who had recently written The Front Page (another vicious skewering of the modern media machine) Nothing Sacred more than lives up to its title: everything is fair game in this extremely transgressive and irreverent screwball comedy.
Carole Lombard stars as the not-at-all-dying Hazel Flagg, while Fredric March is the veteran reporter who champions her cause (and his own).
Filmed in 1937, Nothing Sacred is also one of Hollywood's earliest experiments in Technicolor (and the tragically short-lived Carole Lombard's only screen appearance in colour).
The film might predate the word by almost seventy years, but the story it tells is undeniably phishy. Sadly, it features no knishes; not even of any kind. (Don't worry, I'm not starting that again.)
We will screen Nothing Sacred at 7.30 on Thursday, the 5th of October, at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.
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