on telling lies
It’s a tangled web we weave when we lie, not least because it changes our personality.
When someone asks how you are, do you say you’re fine when you’re feeling wretched? Have you ever assured your host that dinner was delicious, when it made you feel sick? If you’re given a present you hate, might you tell the giver it’s what you always wanted?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re a liar. Ok, you’ll say these are just ‘white lies’, strategic untruths to spare your questioner embarrassment - in protecting the other person, you’re being almost gracious. But lies that are white sit on a spectrum with those that are black, with an area between that is grey: what about when you arrive late for work blaming the transport, instead of admitting you couldn’t get out of bed? Lies become blacker the more you try to protect yourself rather than the person you’re deceiving.
Now, while all lies are false, not all falsities are lies. You can believe sincerely in something quite wrong, as did the entire world before 1543, for example, when Copernicus pointed out the earth revolved round the sun. It’s not that, before then, people were lying when they averred the earth lay at the centre, no - they were, in all honesty, expressing a falsehood. But things get blacker still when you both know something to be false, and you you try to convince yourself of it - you imagine the bus really had broken down, and picture the frustration when you had to get off and start walking.
In this, lying parallels acting. There is the Olivier school and there is the Method. The former says a plausible imitation doesn’t require you to get inside your character’s head, whereas the Method demands you become the person you’re portraying, and in preparing for Raging Bull, Robert De Niro, its foremost exponent, trained like a real contender. Olivier was just lying to the audience, De Niro was lying to himself.
The lesson is that unless you’re a professional actor, lying can be perilous. Not just because of the tangled web you’ll weave when you start to deceive other people, but because, if you believe your own lies, you, like a Method actor, risk losing your sense of self.
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