A Nude Horse Is A Rude Horse
Hello, friends! My ambitions to post regularly in my blog got a little bit lost in the flux of pandemic life. It doesn’t help that my many draft entries cover huge projects and are basically massive, half-written essays. So I’m trying a new strategy: start small.
Today I’m featuring a professional prankster who I recently discovered and I’m completely head-over-heels for, Alan Abel.
Abel (1924 – 2018) was an American hoaxer, writer, and mockumentary filmmaker who spent his lifetime Abel spent a lifetime creating elaborate satirical hoaxes that were taken seriously by the media.
His most famous hoax was his Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, SINA, and I basically haven’t stopped laughing since I discovered it.
SINA used the language and rhetoric of conservative moralists for the ostensible aim of clothing "indecent" naked animals, including domestic pets, barnyard animals, and large wildlife. The society and its aims were then largely presented in the public arena on news and talk shows from 1959 through 1963. They handed out thousands of flyers and booklets, and even staged protests.
One of many news articles that took the group seriously!
The cover of a SINA pamphlet.
A SINA protest. With participants who may not have been in on the joke!
Despite being an absurd premise, thanks to its appropriation of conservative rhetoric and resulting coverage on reputable news sources it was taken seriously! Even after it was exposed as a hoax! To quote Abel:
“I had no interest in actually putting shorts on horses, or mumus on cows. S.I.N.A. was a satirical riff on censorship: it mocked the moral maniacs who were banning films, books, records, and plays during that time period.”
Abel spent a lifetime creating satirical hoaxes that were taken seriously by the media, including a couple other favourites of mine:
His “School for Beggars”, a commentary on the rise of unemployment and homelessness in the U.S, which was featured on numerous television talk shows between the years of 1975 and 1988, despite being exposed several times
At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Abel introduced a campaign to ban all breastfeeding because "it is an incestuous relationship between mother and baby that manifests an oral addiction leading youngsters to smoke, drink, and even becoming antisocial." Again, this is absolutely absurd! Yet a shocking number of people genuinely supported this initiative. After about 200 interviews over two years, Abel confessed the hoax. But to this day people still fall for it. I was watching the below youtube clip of a news interview Abel did in support of the campaign and about half the comments realized it was a hoax and the other half were outraged. Better to see outrage than support, I guess…
What a career!
The icing on Abel’s cake were the people who came out of the woodwork in support of his causes despite their absurd premises. It revealed the necessity to have critical cultural conversations about the subjects Abel addressed. I see so much of his work in other public pranksters I admire like Improv Everywhere and the Yes Men. Maybe I’ll write posts about them some time.
