An interesting and mysterious phenomenon in art - a hoax - is an attempt to deliberately deceive readers or viewers, to mislead them. Consider what it is and give a few examples.
Essence
Let's get acquainted with the meaning of the word "hoax". These are thoughtful actions by the author or creator of a work aimed at fooling the public. The role and significance of this technique can be different:
- Shocking and attracting attention.
- Making fun of an audience or a specific person.
- Experiment. Often, mystification writers, inventing a fictional character on whose behalf the narrative will go, supplied him with a very specific biography, which gave the work credibility. And the author himself became a simple publisher, executor or acquaintance of his own hero.
- Often, behind the image of a fictional storyteller, writers hid their true faces.
Thus, hoaxing is a very interesting phenomenon, which is even more exciting to expose. Often it is so well thought out that it confuses even genuine professionals.
Distinctive features
Hoax is an amazing phenomenon, a deception in its own way, but several features distinguish it from the latter:
- The purpose is not to cause harm. So, a hoaxer in no case sets as his task a fraudulent way of appropriating other people's money.
- The hoax is not a fake, the writers did not try to pass off their works as works of ancient authors and sell them at exorbitant prices. But they could imitate the style of folklore texts.
- Thoughtfulness and attention to detail. Every effort was made to stylize the speech of a fictional hero, to distinguish it from the particular stylistics of the mystifier himself.
These features help to distinguish mystification from quasi-mystification, falsification of works or historical monuments, intentional distortion of events of past eras.
Examples
Hoax is a phenomenon that has taken place in Russian literature. So, A.S. Pushkin wrote his famous "Belkin's Tales", but experts in his work know that no Belkin actually existed, and the works themselves are the fruit of the work of the great classic. This hoax was used to give credibility to what is happening in the stories.
Many aphorisms of Kozma Prutkov are known , this “man” even had his own portrait, signature and biography. So, it is known that he was a hussar, had his own political views. Meanwhile, it did not exist, 4 poets were hiding under this pseudonym at once: Alexei Tolstoy, Vladimir, Alexei and Alexander Zhemchuzhnikovs.
Hoax is a special phenomenon that may have several goals and objectives, but it does not belong to harm science or receive undeserved benefits. In the latter case, it is a fake or outright fraud.