The Truth is out There: Conspiracy as a Mindset in American High and Popular Culture

Abstract

The United States, clearly first postmodern nation, has been fascinated with idea of conspiracy as a fact of life both on private and public levels since conclusion of World War II, perhaps because of postmodern horrors of Holocaust. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1954) is, to best of my knowledge, world's first postmodern novel in English, and engages conspiracy at both levels. Since 1960s, every generation of Americans has grown up on conspiracy theories, many of them immortalized in Catch-22 and later continued in Michael Herr's real-life war journal, Dispatches-and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (a conspiracy of numbers?). Heller's novel seems to describe, in retrospect, atmosphere of American involvement in Vietnam War, something, of course, that had not yet occurred at time novel was written. Literature as prediction might be viewed as ultimate conspiracy. And manipulations of business presented in an amusing fashion in Catch-22 come back to haunt reader-and author-as prediction fulfilled in conspiracy of late capitalist war machine presented in Dispatches. In similar fashion, very plot of Pynchon's novel, focusing on Oedipa Maas's quest, seems to be one grand media conspiracy possibly assembled by demi-god persona of Pierce Inverarity, ultimate revealer of truth or untruth, depending upon his mood and Oedipa's interpretive abilities. The literature of conspiracy has continued to grow in 1980s and '90s, and is perhaps best exemplified by works of Paul Auster and William Gibson, former representative of high culture, with latter firmly entrenched among leaders of popular culture. Auster presents conspiracy of an absurd universe, plotting against individual either through malevolence or mindless evil of chance, a Kafka for '90s. Gibson, in his cyberpunk genre, engages conspiracy of technology that rules lives of those who live in a world always already five minutes into future.1 Despite many technological wonders of that world, blue jeans cost a few hundred dollars a pair, hotel bills are so expensive that they are presented by teams of lawyers, and new homeless take up residence within structure of abandoned city bridges. Society, quite literally, to paraphrase Emerson, is conspiring against every one of its members. The final vehicle of conspiracy we will mention here is perhaps America's most potent version, The X Files. It is from FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, after all, that we learn the truth is out there, even if it can never be revealed wholly or satisfactorily. Here we have three different types of conspiracy: first, old-- fashioned big brother conspiracy of government against citizen (however, this is perhaps not as old-- fashioned as it first appears, since in The X Files conspiracy is perpetuated by a shadow government whose members dress and act more like a late capitalist board of directors than a group of conspirators); second, a variation of first, whereby government suppresses knowledge that alien life is already present on earth; and finally, conspiracy of paranormal, often brought on by destructive potential of late capitalism, hence idea that paranormal of earlier times is nothing more than norm of today. I will discuss briefly various types of conspiracy I am able to identify, if a straightforward definition is too elusive, and present an example of their appearance in high and popular American culture from end of World War II until present. The problem with defining conspiracy arises because it is no longer adequate to talk about earlier modern version, where we have a plot that can be thwarted by ubiquitous hero or detective, or simple legal definition, which has two or more people planning secretly to break law. Although it may be beyond our ability to pin down conspiracy, each variation does share something with all others. …