Video: Faking the Facts

In a time when some basic facts of the world are being questioned by politically or religiously motivated groups, it is troubling when people add to the confusion by producing fake documentaries to bolster a false premise. Yep, read that again…
I may get into the whole ‘were the moon landings faked’ debate at a later point, but for the time being I’d like to direct your attention to Opération lune/Dark Side of the Moon (a 2002 French ‘mockumentary’ available on YouTube under the title ‘Moon Landing A Fake or Fact’).
While pointing out the unreliability of all media and encouraging people to think for themselves are all laudable aims, there is a danger that a fake documentary like this can only give succour to those who believe that the moon landings were indeed faked.
Although it gets sillier as it goes on and ends with a series of ‘blooper’ moments from some of the faked interviews (you’ll be surprised at some of the people who participated), Dark Side of the Moon is chillingly convincing at the beginning.
Alert viewers may spot ‘witnesses’ called David Bowman and Jack Torrance (characters from Kubrick movies 2001 and The Shining, not to mention 'Ambrose Chapel' from Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956) who supposedly helped Stanley Kubrick falsify the moon landings on the sets of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That’s amusing, but the YouTube comments alone show that many who have viewed this film simply perceive it as ‘truth’.
UK TV broadcast Alternative 3 (about a political conspiracy to establish a settlement on Mars) in the 1970s and Peter Jackson made Forgotten Silver (about a long-lost New Zealand film director and his work). Both were fake documentaries about things that didn’t exist, and they were clever ideas.
However, there is a danger in producing a too-clever, too-convincing documentary/mockumentary about something where there is a real active cohort who are trying to undermine the truth. That’s only helping ‘the enemy’ to undermine reality.