Shapeshifting The Social Network
Does anyone else get the feeling that the strange case of Adam Wheeler, the kid who faked his way through Harvard, is far from over?
Of course, all stories about impostors in the halls of power have built-in appeal. They've got intrigue, secret ambition, and suspense, but when I saw this latest photo of Wheeler from his sentencing hearing a week or two ago ...
... I realized his story had something more — a real-life shape-shifter in its starring role. A human chameleon worthy of a part in the next X-Men.
His complete transformation from schlemiel to superman and back has been impressive. And I'm just talking about the physical transformation. When the story first blew up part of the undeniable appeal was Wheeler himself, the handsome but menacing recluse, a manic bodybuilder known to down a dozen bananas in a single sitting, who first appeared in court looking like this...
...and whose extraordinarily hot mugshot made for great masturbation fodder ...
There was an intriguing vacuity here, in the mugshot...
... that showed the shape-shifter in an unguarded moment. Accustomed to carefully studying the expectations of those he wished to please and building his identity from the inside out in seclusion over time, he obviously didn't know what or whom to be here — it had all happened too fast for him to read the expectations of those around him.
Like Jake Horner in John Barth's exquisite (and mostly forgotten) existential tale, The End of the Road
, he is empty here. Just take a minute to stare into those baby blues. No one is home. Dude's an empty vessel. And like Jake Horner, he got in over his head. Luckily nobody really got hurt.
Still, the story intrigues on account of its implications — not for Harvard, whose admission practices have long been shrouded in idiocy — but for our very assumptions about personality itself, for evidence of a culture in which shape-shifting is a supreme virtue, at least in some settings.
Politics seems an interesting and unexpected exclusion. Our politicians are celebrated for their inflexibility, and this, too, has a physical element ...
The dude could easily be a cardboard cut-out.
But we love entertainers who can change their shape — literally — and we thrill at their extreme makeovers. And we live in a pop culture perennially fascinated with shape-shifting creatures like vampires and werewolves.
In the "real world" or journalism, we've been through this sort of thing before — think plagiarists like Stephen Glass and Jason Blair (check out the two clips I've linked to to see how quickly this tale went from melodrama to farce) — and we tend to minimize the mimic's power by attributing it to a personality disorder, when in fact, it is an adaptation.
So when I saw the latest incarnation of "Adam Wheeler"...
The Prince and the Pauper.
... that showed the shape-shifter in an unguarded moment. Accustomed to carefully studying the expectations of those he wished to please and building his identity from the inside out in seclusion over time, he obviously didn't know what or whom to be here — it had all happened too fast for him to read the expectations of those around him.
Like Jake Horner in John Barth's exquisite (and mostly forgotten) existential tale, The End of the Road
, he is empty here. Just take a minute to stare into those baby blues. No one is home. Dude's an empty vessel. And like Jake Horner, he got in over his head. Luckily nobody really got hurt.Still, the story intrigues on account of its implications — not for Harvard, whose admission practices have long been shrouded in idiocy — but for our very assumptions about personality itself, for evidence of a culture in which shape-shifting is a supreme virtue, at least in some settings.
Politics seems an interesting and unexpected exclusion. Our politicians are celebrated for their inflexibility, and this, too, has a physical element ...
The dude could easily be a cardboard cut-out.
But we love entertainers who can change their shape — literally — and we thrill at their extreme makeovers. And we live in a pop culture perennially fascinated with shape-shifting creatures like vampires and werewolves.
In the "real world" or journalism, we've been through this sort of thing before — think plagiarists like Stephen Glass and Jason Blair (check out the two clips I've linked to to see how quickly this tale went from melodrama to farce) — and we tend to minimize the mimic's power by attributing it to a personality disorder, when in fact, it is an adaptation.
So when I saw the latest incarnation of "Adam Wheeler"...
The Prince and the Pauper.
... a cartoon version of impotence and contrition to rival the cartoon version of a Harvard Man that had landed him in his predicament to begin with, I thought, "here's trouble" all over again. For whom, who can say, aside from Adam Wheeler?
And it's not only the intentionally ill-fitting suit and the bad haircut (which shows his parents' renewed influence and his forced compliance with their expectations), but the lilting posture and retracted chin, the dark submission under the prostrate brow. He not only reflects the expectations of others here, he embodies them to an astonishing degree. He is not only contrite — he has become the very embodiment of contrition.
Which makes you wonder if somehow such a miraculous, if slightly cartoonish, capacity for reading, albeit crudely, the expectations of others and reflecting them back, however mawkishly, could be harnessed for good.
Or at least for entertainment.
If we could just convince Wheeler to get back to the gym, beef up again, and do a video for firstauditions.com. I've got the perfect title: Cumma Cumma Cumma Chameleon!
And it's not only the intentionally ill-fitting suit and the bad haircut (which shows his parents' renewed influence and his forced compliance with their expectations), but the lilting posture and retracted chin, the dark submission under the prostrate brow. He not only reflects the expectations of others here, he embodies them to an astonishing degree. He is not only contrite — he has become the very embodiment of contrition.
Which makes you wonder if somehow such a miraculous, if slightly cartoonish, capacity for reading, albeit crudely, the expectations of others and reflecting them back, however mawkishly, could be harnessed for good.
Or at least for entertainment.
If we could just convince Wheeler to get back to the gym, beef up again, and do a video for firstauditions.com. I've got the perfect title: Cumma Cumma Cumma Chameleon!
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