Alex was a bouncer when he changed his mind about who he was. Or maybe he wasn’t a bouncer. Maybe he was only pretending.
In the year 2000, “reality TV” still sounded to most people like an oxymoron, a bizarre new genre that was half entertainment and half psychological warfare, where neither audience nor participants were quite sure which of them were the combatants.
The show Alex appeared on, Faking It, had a simple set-up: each week a participant with an archetypical identity would be tasked with learning a skill that jarred with that identity. The participant had four weeks to perfect that skill before being sent to a real event where they would have to pass undetected by experts asked to spot the imposter.
Elbow-patched Alex arrived on the programme as the toffee-nosed eldest son of an upper-class British family. He was 20 years old and as Oxbridge as it’s possible to imagine. If you took Bertrand Russell, bound him in leather and made him smoke a cigar made entirely of armchairs you’d still be several punt rides short. We meet him for the first time at his family’s country home, where he shows us around the grounds and introduces us to Roger, who is a horse.
Alex’s task on Faking It was to pass as a bouncer at one of London’s busiest nightclubs in the middle of Euro 2000. He is 5ft 6in and slight, with a body that kept a respectful distance from any image of athleticism. His clipped private-school consonants and eager-to-please eyes are obvious artefacts of a life spent very far from rowdy pubs. Alex is not deterred; he packs his clothes, says goodbye to his boyfriend Clinton, bids adieu to Roger, and sets out to fake it.
To help him act the part, he is provided with three advisers – kickboxing champion Tony, former police officer and security expert Charlie and voice coach William – and sent to live for a month with Tony on the 15th floor of a council block. Alex has never been to London before and as his taxi drives towards Tony’s flat, he stares out the window with his eyes and mouth open. “My God, look at this place. Laundrette – oh my God, there’s a – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a laundrette… There’s a mattress! There is a mattress, on the pavement… I’m going to get beaten, the absolute shit out of me, in this tie. And this jacket. Oh. My. God.”
How do you change your mind about who you really are? Presumably you start with a view about what your “true” self is and then go on to repudiate that view. But even that first step turns out to be remarkably difficult, because you have to work out what a “true” self could be. When Alex arrived on Faking It he thought he knew what his sense of “me-ness” looked like. It was marching him towards a future life in a big country house, going to horse trials, hunting and shooting. But as you’ve probably guessed, that isn’t how it worked out. Something about Faking It changed Alex’s mind about what his “true” self was really like.
How is that possible? What rational cogs are turning for people when they change their minds about who they are? Are beliefs about ourselves even the kind of thing we can be rational about, when we’re the ones who make those beliefs true? I had to ask Alex directly.
I found him in Australia, where he now lives. It’s been nearly 20 years since the programme first broadcast. His vowels have been hammered flat by years in Australia and he is not as affably eager to please. In some way I think I’d expected to know him, having seen him on TV, but when he says he’s changed he isn’t lying.
“Did going on the show really change your understanding of who you were?” I ask.
“Yes. Completely,” says Alex. ‘“After the show – or, after that experience, I don’t really look at it as a show any more – four or five weeks after I got back home to Oxford I left the UK and came to Australia. I literally dropped everything. I arrived in Australia with a backpack and not much else.”
Before that moment, Alex’s life had followed a predictable pattern. “And then the show was this sort of great chasm that broke that in my mind, and I went, ‘Hang on! I don’t have to do all those things any more. I don’t have to be someone’s son, or brother, or grandson, I can actually be… me.’ I wasn’t going on any mission of self-finding, because I didn’t realise I was lost.”
What is going on in this kind of mind-change? Is our sense of who we are a belief just like any other? More pressingly, how do we do it? Is it the kind of thing we can be persuaded into? What does it mean to have a belief about your true self? What even is a true self?
by Eleanor Gordon-Smith, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Michelle Thompson
In the year 2000, “reality TV” still sounded to most people like an oxymoron, a bizarre new genre that was half entertainment and half psychological warfare, where neither audience nor participants were quite sure which of them were the combatants.
The show Alex appeared on, Faking It, had a simple set-up: each week a participant with an archetypical identity would be tasked with learning a skill that jarred with that identity. The participant had four weeks to perfect that skill before being sent to a real event where they would have to pass undetected by experts asked to spot the imposter.Elbow-patched Alex arrived on the programme as the toffee-nosed eldest son of an upper-class British family. He was 20 years old and as Oxbridge as it’s possible to imagine. If you took Bertrand Russell, bound him in leather and made him smoke a cigar made entirely of armchairs you’d still be several punt rides short. We meet him for the first time at his family’s country home, where he shows us around the grounds and introduces us to Roger, who is a horse.
Alex’s task on Faking It was to pass as a bouncer at one of London’s busiest nightclubs in the middle of Euro 2000. He is 5ft 6in and slight, with a body that kept a respectful distance from any image of athleticism. His clipped private-school consonants and eager-to-please eyes are obvious artefacts of a life spent very far from rowdy pubs. Alex is not deterred; he packs his clothes, says goodbye to his boyfriend Clinton, bids adieu to Roger, and sets out to fake it.
To help him act the part, he is provided with three advisers – kickboxing champion Tony, former police officer and security expert Charlie and voice coach William – and sent to live for a month with Tony on the 15th floor of a council block. Alex has never been to London before and as his taxi drives towards Tony’s flat, he stares out the window with his eyes and mouth open. “My God, look at this place. Laundrette – oh my God, there’s a – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a laundrette… There’s a mattress! There is a mattress, on the pavement… I’m going to get beaten, the absolute shit out of me, in this tie. And this jacket. Oh. My. God.”
How do you change your mind about who you really are? Presumably you start with a view about what your “true” self is and then go on to repudiate that view. But even that first step turns out to be remarkably difficult, because you have to work out what a “true” self could be. When Alex arrived on Faking It he thought he knew what his sense of “me-ness” looked like. It was marching him towards a future life in a big country house, going to horse trials, hunting and shooting. But as you’ve probably guessed, that isn’t how it worked out. Something about Faking It changed Alex’s mind about what his “true” self was really like.
How is that possible? What rational cogs are turning for people when they change their minds about who they are? Are beliefs about ourselves even the kind of thing we can be rational about, when we’re the ones who make those beliefs true? I had to ask Alex directly.
I found him in Australia, where he now lives. It’s been nearly 20 years since the programme first broadcast. His vowels have been hammered flat by years in Australia and he is not as affably eager to please. In some way I think I’d expected to know him, having seen him on TV, but when he says he’s changed he isn’t lying.
“Did going on the show really change your understanding of who you were?” I ask.
“Yes. Completely,” says Alex. ‘“After the show – or, after that experience, I don’t really look at it as a show any more – four or five weeks after I got back home to Oxford I left the UK and came to Australia. I literally dropped everything. I arrived in Australia with a backpack and not much else.”
Before that moment, Alex’s life had followed a predictable pattern. “And then the show was this sort of great chasm that broke that in my mind, and I went, ‘Hang on! I don’t have to do all those things any more. I don’t have to be someone’s son, or brother, or grandson, I can actually be… me.’ I wasn’t going on any mission of self-finding, because I didn’t realise I was lost.”
What is going on in this kind of mind-change? Is our sense of who we are a belief just like any other? More pressingly, how do we do it? Is it the kind of thing we can be persuaded into? What does it mean to have a belief about your true self? What even is a true self?
by Eleanor Gordon-Smith, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Michelle Thompson
