Verity

Imagine you are in a restaurant with a friend. They are excitedly telling you all about their latest exploit: they found a backpack full of a thousand $100 bills sitting in their locker—no note, no indication of the owner. They talked to the office and no one reported it missing and they didn’t accidentally assign the locker to another person, so your friend figured that finders were keepers. Your friend started making a bunch of plans for the $100,000—new car, new clothes, putting some in a savings account just so Mom and Dad wouldn’t get judgy.

But then they started getting phone calls. Threatening phone calls. Calls that say the money is dangerous and they’ll be cursed if they spend a cent of it. Your friend didn’t believe it, but after using just a little of the cash to fill up their gas tank, their car was struck by another driver in a hit-and-run. After buying a couple hundred dollars’ worth of clothes, their house burned down. And now the phone calls won’t stop, with the voice on the other end yelling about how your friend is cursed.

Your friend pauses, and you finally ask the question that’s been on your mind from the start: “Is all of that true?

VERITY: Is it really true?

This same question is asked of all the stories we tell, regardless of if that story is on a giant IMAX screen, in a bestselling novel, or being rattled off by a teenager in a corner booth. Broadly, there are two terms used to answer this question: nonfiction is a designation given to stories that are true, and fiction is a designation given to stories that are not true.

But what if, after asking your friend if their money backpack story is true, they admit that some of the story is embellished: they did find a backpack full of money and they did get in a fender bender after spending it, but they haven’t been getting constant calls—just one every day or two. Their house also didn’t burn down—the kitchen caught fire and is wrecked, but it had nothing to do with the money, and the rest of the house is still habitable.

So… is their story fiction or nonfiction?

Or what if they tell you that all of those things did happen to them… in a VR simulator for a new immersive horror game? It felt real, and in the game, all those events took place… does that change how true the story is?

In practice, the terms “fiction” and “nonfiction” aren’t absolute, and a lot of stories blend bits of the two together. The measure of how true something is is called verity. Verity comes from the Latin stem ver, which means “truth,” and is used to describe how true all sorts of things are.

Like ice cream, for example.

What is the truest form ice cream could take—the Platonic ideal? The most authentic ice cream would follow the traditional recipes from when the confection was first made: cream, sugar, fruits, and occasionally eggs for structure are put in a metal bucket, which itself is put in a larger cask with layers of ice and rock salt, and then the ingredients are churned by hand until they mix and freeze.

Now let’s do the same process, but with milk instead of cream. Still ice cream? Yes, but it’s not in its truest form. And if we use artificial flavors and sweeteners instead of fruit and sugar? And replace the hand churning with machines? Despite taking some liberties and swapping in liquid corn concentrate and beaver butt juice, it’s still technically ice cream.*

*Castoreum is a yellowish liquid that is secreted by a beaver’s castor sac, which is found just above their anal gland and cloaca. Castoreum mixes with beaver urine as a way that beaver’s mark their territory, and, due to a beaver’s diet of plants and flowers, smells more woody and floral than the urine of most creatures. This led castoreum to be used for perfume and vanilla, strawberry, and raspberry flavorings in throughout the twentieth century. While castoreum has largely been replaced by artificial syrups made from petroleum, some high-end ice creams boasting “natural flavors” still use beaver-derived castoreum in their recipes. Aren’t you glad you read the footnotes?

Okay, what about gelato, AKA Italian ice cream? It’s made of cream (or milk), sugar, and flavors just like ice cream. It’s churned until it freezes like ice cream. However, it is not legally ice cream according to the US government. The USDA says that ice cream must have at least 10% butterfat, and gelato typically sits around 7%. Sorry, not ice cream…

…Although, it is more like ice cream than custard, which needs both cream and milk and a whole lot of eggs—plus, it has to be baked before it is cooled, which is not how ice cream is made at all. Frozen custard is still closer to ice cream than frozen yogurt, which needs to be aged and fermented before going though flavoring and churning, and frozen yogurt is more like ice cream than sorbet, which doesn’t use any dairy at all.

So is sorbet the most “fictional” version of ice cream. Nope, because at least it’s still a frozen treat. The most fictional ice cream you can find is in the images and videos used to advertise ice cream. The problem with making ice cream look really good on camera is that it requires bright lights, and bright lights melt ice cream. Thus, when not using computer effects to make a purely digital creation, food photographers (yes, that’s a real job) swap out real ice cream for perfectly scooped mashed potatoes dyed the same color as the ice cream with a little glaze of liquid soap to make it shine like the real thing.

Just like the above ice cream example, the veracity of writing can be put on a spectrum from 100% true to 100% untrue—and most writing lives in the middle

NEAR ABSOLUTE VERITY: Reference and pure journalism

A translation is the rewriting of a text as accurately as possible into a different language. While this seems like a straightforward process, there is actually a lot of artistry that goes into translation, as some words have no equal in another language. Cuban-American author Achy Obejas perhaps put this best in her novel Days of Awe when discussing the protagonist's translator father:

HIGH VERITY: Biography and literary journalism

A pastiche is a text that imitates the style of another text or artist. All the elements of style, from tone to diction, mirror a previous work. This is different from other adaptations, as it is not about reusing plot elements but reusing style—it's as if the same author sat down to write a different story. The text stands independently on its own but can be understood more deeply when the reader knows what style is being imitated. Here is a pastiche of The Simpsons couch gag done in the style of Academy Award-nominated animator Sylvain Chomet. Notice the characters and relationships are the same while the style is completely different.

QUESTIONABLE VERITY: Autobiography and memoir

A transformative adaptation takes the original story but makes sweeping changes: the text is rewritten with slightly different characters, setting, and style but stays true to the themes, story, and purpose of the original work. For example, Pride and Prejudice has film adaptations that stick exactly to the source material, and it has film adaptations such as the Lizzie Bennett Diaries (which set the story in a modern tech firm) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which, obviously, add zombies to the story). Most modern adaptations are transformative, for even turning a play into a musical alters the pacing of the story and which characters are important.

Here is a Simpsonian version of The Planet of the Apes adapted into a campy musical.

PARTIAL VERITY: Historical fiction and roman à clef

A parody is an adaptation that makes fun of or comments on another text, artist, style, or real world person or event. A parody is always intended to mock a text, and a reader must know the original to understand the parody, as the parody duplicates events or characters from the original, but to an absurd degree. Sometimes a parody is also an homage, when the author honors something they love by ridiculing it. Parodies, as a form of adaptation, stick to the original characters or events but twist them to an absurd degree. The Simpsons are well known for their parodies, usually featured in their "Treehouse of Horror" series. Parodies done include King Kong, Strangers on a Train, The Odyssey, and, as in this example, The Shining.

Note that parodies are not satires: a satire uses humor to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices. Satire has an underlying message, while a parody is only done for fun. The Simpsons as a whole is a satire of the American "nuclear family" idealized in the 1950s and 1960s. Homer and Marge Simpsons have 2.5 children, live in the suburbs, go to church on Sundays, and participate in the middle class lifestyle in a variety of ways, but the show's use of humor and exaggeration reveals the dysfunction at the heart of this American Dream. For instance, when Homer is trying to impress and befriend a coworker who dislikes him, Homer reveals that his success comes more from luck and happenstance rather than hard work and is undeserved--the speech by Frank Grimes is a sharp criticism that gets to the heart of The Simpsons as a satire.

LOW VERITY: Grounded fiction

NO VERITY: Mythopedia

FAKING VERITY: Epistolary writing

VERISIMILITUDE: How to make fiction feel real

The Simpsons Episodes Referenced
"Bart's Friend Falls in Love" The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 3, episode 23. 20th Century Fox, 1992.
"Diggs." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 25, episode 12. 20th Century Fox, 2014.
"A Fish Called Selma." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 7, episode 19. 20th Century Fox, 1996.
"Homer's Enemy." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 8, episode 23. 20th Century Fox, 1997.
"In Marge We Trust." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 8, episode 22. 20th Century Fox, 1997.
"So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 4, episode 18. 20th Century Fox, 1993.
"The Springfield Connection." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 6, episode 23. 20th Century Fox, 1995.
"Treehouse of Horror." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 2, episode 3. 20th Century Fox, 1990.
"Treehouse of Horror V." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 6, episode 5. 20th Century Fox, 1994.
"The Way We Was." The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, season 2, episode 12. 20th Century Fox, 1991.

VERITY