A long time ago, Roald Dahl and Gene Wilder introduced me to the magic of objects. Toward the end of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the 1971 film adaptation of Dahl’s book, Wonka (Wilder) guides a group of visiting families into an all-white space in the factory to demonstrate WonkaVision: a technology that sends chocolate bars through the airwaves, to be reconstituted (smaller, of course) inside your television. While much of my delight at this scene came from seeing bratty Mike Teavee get what he deserved, I also loved the idea of things transforming from image into object, the fictional made real. Like Mike, I watched a ton of TV. If I could have anything I saw, what would it be?

Chocolate was great and all, but I could get it from the store. I was a big fan of shows with cars so I wanted The Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers’ chunky sports car (a gift from Santa that was sized for dolls and not me), The Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee (had to settle for Hot Wheels), and Steve McQueen’s ‘68 Mustang fastback in Bullitt (still on my wishlist). I lusted after what I couldn’t have and my intensity of feeling makes me remember these shows fondly today. 

This syllabus explores the concept of fake objects, defined as material replicas of originals that are absent, fictional, immaterial, or otherwise unobtainable. Fake objects are created to satisfy the desire for things that never were. Their worth is not necessarily tied to the rarity of the original or the fidelity of reproduction. Value is found through fakeness, not in spite of it, giving the fake object the potential to be even better than the real thing. We’ll first look at what fake isn’t, then investigate examples of fake objects used to celebrate, mourn, and preserve moments in time.

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Beyond Fake

Fake is a broad and loaded term. Fake things are all around us, but they aren’t all fake objects. A fake Hermès scarf is not a fake object because it’s based on an actual scarf. Made from the same materials, the average person would not be able to tell them apart. It’s readily obtainable, created to fool the consumer into thinking it’s real and to spend accordingly. Art forgeries are also made primarily for economic, rather than emotional, reasons. While painting a fake Vermeer takes time, skill, and artistic effort, in order for it to sell, any unique characteristics of the forger’s hand that might signal its fakeness need to be eliminated.

Courtney Love must have been channeling Jean Baudrillard when she sang, “I fake it so real, I am beyond fake.” Baudrillard believed media and consumer culture responsible for shifting us from reality into hyperreality. He theorized four stages of simulacra, beginning with an image reflecting reality and concluding with it having no relation to reality whatsoever. The challenge of perfect duplication has taken some manufacturers deep into hyperreal territory. Some of the eeriest residents of this uncanny valley are RealDolls, silicone and steel sex dolls with customizable hair, faces, and body types. Their parent company, Simulacra, emphasizes the dolls’ realism and their owners treat them accordingly. However, RealDolls aren’t clones and they will never be living, breathing beings. RealDolls are modeled after the fantasy of an ideal woman—a fake without an original, hyperreal instead of real or fake.

Reading:
Kati Stevens, Fake (2018)
Sherry Turkle, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (2011)
Antony Hudek, ed. The Object (2014)
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1988)

Activity:
Watch Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Life in Miniature (2019), and Is It Cake? (2022). Do you think of these fakes the same or differently? Are there instances where the fake version is “better” than the real version? 

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Fanaticism/Fan Culture

When the object of desire is a product of fiction—a movie prop, a digital rendering in a game, or a description in a book—true fans get crafty. Cosplayers and superfans spend long hours sewing elaborate costumes or carving weapons from their digital arsenals so they can get closer to the fictional world they love. A fan-turned-propmaker explains: “For some of us, the screen experience isn’t enough. We seek a more tactile connection to the stories that have touched us in some way.” The fake version is a hybrid object that promises access, both faithful to the original and tailored to individual emotional response.

One famous fictional object is a black jacket that features prominently in William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition. It was based on a real garment manufactured by Japanese clothing brand Buzz Rickson; in the book, Gibson describes it as “a fanatical museum-grade replica of a U.S. MA-1 flying jacket” that the company duplicated and improved “so that their product has become, in some very Japanese way, the result of an act of worship…It is an imitation more real somehow than that which it emulates.”

Gibson described the jacket as black, but it was never made in that color. However, his fans willed it into existence by sending requests for it to the company. The clothing brand, a superfan of 20th century American military fashion, joined forces with Gibson’s own superfans. On his blog, he writes, “[Buzz Rickson] amazed and delighted me by asking my permission to make a repro of *Cayce’s* jacket…It reminds me of the title of a Surrealist sculpture, ‘An Object From The Other Side Of The Bridge’. It’s real, but it emerged from a work of fiction.” The real (the US version) became “more real” (the Rickson), then fictional (Cayce’s version), and finally became tangible again. After multiple translations, the black jacket emerges as a fake object.

Reading:
Mark Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture (2013)
William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (2003)
W. David Marx, Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style (2015)
Andrew Liptak, Cosplay: A History (2022)
Joe Skrebels, “Game Developer Accuses Real-Life Weapons Manufacturer of Stealing Its Gun Design… Twice” – bonus reading: an inversion of the Rickson’s jacket scenario

Activity:
Think of an object from a favorite movie. (If you don’t have a favorite, choose one: lightsaber, sandworm, ruby slippers, sled, leg lamp.) Recreate it in clay. As you do, note what memories the movie brings up for you. Rewatch the movie and compare your object to the object on the screen. How much does your object look like the original? How much do you think that affects what you remember?

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Substitution as Ritual

Mourning practices aid in processing, healing, and moving on. People in grief can draw comfort from a favorite toy or shirt, a tangible reminder of the loved one that maintains presence in their absence. However, some cultures have superstitions around this practice, and keeping the possessions of the dead is associated with being unable to let them go.

A fake object, symbolic of the original, can be a proxy that bridges absence and presence for grieving people through representational magic. There are companies that create custom stuffed animals from photographs and they are popular transitional objects, used to ease feelings of grief and maintain connection to a dead pet. (This may seem a macabre choice but not as much as, say, preserving them through taxidermy.)

Other fake objects are tributes, intended to make the deceased comfortable in the afterlife. Crafted from materials like wood or paper, they resemble consumer goods or are stand-ins for complex concepts associated with the dead, and their destruction by fire or burial is integral to the grief ritual.

At the Hungry Ghost Festival and at funerals in many parts of Asia, burning joss paper is a long-established part of ancestor worship. Though more ecologically friendly practices are encouraged even at the government level, it still occurs. The paper represents ghost money which they can use in the afterlife. For centuries, people would fold simple squares of paper embellished metallic paint to look like ingots, and that labor was part of showing respect for the dead. Nowadays, if you’re short on time, you can burn representations of wealth from artisans who can make amazing replicas from paper, from the pretentious (Gucci handbags) to the prosaic (dentures and a toothbrush). These fake objects, destined to be burned, are important to cultures that emphasize filial duty.

There is another fake object that accompanies the deceased, even though it might cost a thousand times the original. In Ghana, funerals are big events that signal respect and social standing. In relatively recent times, abebu adekai, or fantasy coffins, have become popular additions to an already expensive tradition. A fantasy coffin can be made to look like anything: a Nokia cell phone, a jet plane, or an ear of corn. It is totemic and declares to the world something that represents who the deceased was or who they aspired to be. The ability to refashion identity, even after death, indicates another way that the fake object is desirable as an intensely personalized version of the original.

Reading:
Wolfgang Scheppe, Supermarket of the Dead: Burnt Offerings in China and the Cult of Globalised Consumption (2015)
Thierry Secretan, Going into Darkness: Fantastic Coffins from Africa (1999)

Activity:
Think of an object that represents an absent loved one. Was it meaningful to them or does it represent them? Make a model of the object out of paper. Place it somewhere visible in your home; every time you see it, think of your loved one. At the end of a month, flip a coin to decide whether to burn the fake object or not. How does the prospect of burning it make you feel?

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Materializing the Ephemeral

The last category of fake object is made with preservation in mind instead of destruction. Objects that break or decay, accidentally or on purpose, feature in metaphors about the transience of existence. People can find it hard to express this ineffability to others but a replica of the object at the moment its disintegration can capture and communicate the meaning behind its ephemerality.

Fake food, formed from plastic or resin, is not always a fake object. Shokuhin sanpuru, or food samples, are practical replicas, used by Japanese restaurants to show what their dishes look like. They are useful…so I can order the original dish. However, a fake melting ice cream on Etsy is a fake object for me. While it’s a wonderful bit of folklore, dropping my ice cream cone actually happened to me and probably a lot of other people. Contemplating the fake object stirs up very old memories of losing a scoop of mint chip at the California State Fair, which prompts more childhood nostalgia.

(Would a resin, half-eaten madeleine be considered a fake object? No, because eating it is the crucial moment that causes the rush of memories. If Proust just looked at it, baked it, or smashed it into pieces, that’s another story.)

It seems natural that thoughts associated with ephemeral objects turn bittersweet. The Crochet Coral Reef Project engages hundreds of volunteers to crochet vast reef sculptures. Though the results include some all-white installations that look like dead, bleached coral, most are brightly colored tributes to the originals, captured at an earlier, healthier time. Regardless of color, these fake objects serve a purpose: to communicate about rising ocean temperatures and their effect on ocean ecosystems. Making a statement about the ephemeral nature of the original coral might keep reefs from disappearing entirely.

Reading:
Christine and Margaret Wertheim, Value and Transformation of Corals (2022)
Edmund Levin, “The Way the Cookie Crumbles” (2005) – bonus reading: an amusing and pedantic essay that suggests Proust’s madeleine might have been a piece of toast

Activity:
Download Polycam or another 3D scanning app on your phone. Go on a walk and pick a flower. Scan it, then export the file and send it to a 3D printer. Place the printed flower next to the living one. (If you can print multiples at different polygon counts/levels of fidelity, that’s great.) Once a day, write down your feelings and observations about each flower. Do this until you compost the dead one. Do your feelings about the fake flower change after the other one is gone? Does it have the capacity to stir up meaningful memories? Why or why not?