Not the Real Thing--But That's Okay, Right?

It never ceases to amaze me how Americans are willing to accept substitutes. In everything from imitation whipped cream (Cool Whip) to an artificial Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.

The trend has been going on for over 100 years. Nylon, the first true synthetic fiber, was made in 1935 and was promoted as a substitute for silk, particularly in women's stockings. (Another man-made fiber, rayon, was earlier but it's not considered a true synthetic fiber because it is made ultimately from natural materials.) Another early faux product was Formica, which can be made to look like wood, marble, etc. And we have "stone-look" this, "wood-look" this, and "fur-look" that. I happened to see plans for a quite upscale apartment or condo building built near St. Louis. It has these nice stone balustrades on the exterior. Except the "stone" is plastic.

I was touring the Dalmatian Coast, the Mediterranean coast of countries such as Croatia and Slovenia that were once parts of Yugoslavia. The program included a visit to what I might call a farmstead, where the owners were operating a little business for the sake of tourists, serving them salad, prosciutto, and wine, and demonstrating how olive oil was formerly made (with a donkey pulling the olive press). I could point out this was phony insofar as the olive oil that you and I buy in a bottle, in a store, isn't made using donkey power. But maybe that was not so totally bogus: that was the method once used, and it may even still be used in some places in the world to make small batches of olive oil.

But now my point: One of the other tourists said, for the benefit of anyone and everyone within earshot, "You can go to Disneyland, you can go to Vegas—but this is the real thing!" I found that a striking thing to say, and it's stuck in my mind. Why go to Disneyland or Vegas at all, and see phony castles or phony Eiffel Towers? I personally have no desire to do so.

It bothers me when children are fed substitutes and inaccurate representations. I heard just a little snatch of a mother talking on TV about something she took her kids to: "You go through this door and you're in a Wild West town." Presumably some incarnation of some inaccurate stereotype of a "wild west town."

We don't care very much about feeding our children only accurate stuff. Children are given pictures of a "train" which has a steam engine. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, for many years, illustrated the word airplane with an old biplane, like from World War I! After being out of date for decades, that was finally corrected.

Just imagine if warning labels were required that said something like "Warning: Not the real thing," or "Not an accurate representation." We'd see them everywhere.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein