Land of Dorian Gray

One thinks of the story of a mother walking with her child. A stranger exclaims, “What a lovely girl!” The mother replies, “That’s nothing, you should see her picture!” Perhaps said child would become Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted CEO of Theranos for having defrauded investors to the tune of some seven hundred million dollars. That’s nothing. You should see her picture.

The irony presented in the recent quasi documentary “You Can See Everything” is that everything you can see seems little more than a curated invention. Judge for yourself whether or not her attempted rehabilitation in the movie is simply an attempt to further perpetuate a fraud.

What comes to mind is a book last read in that High School english class, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s novel about a portrait of the extraordinarily beautiful young and pure Dorian Gray who enters into a Faustian bargain wherein he would remain in such a youthful state while the portrait would age in his place.

What follows is Dorian’s moral decline over 18 years in debauched excess that leaves him unblemish while the hidden portrait grows hideous, recording every sin. In the end, Dorian stabs the portrait in an attempt to destroy his conscience as his servants find a loathsome old man on the floor beside the painting, now restored to its original beauty.

Here we have the past persona of Holmes as the visionary and domineering Theranos founder – complete with black turtlenecks, deep voice, and red lipstick – promising to revolutionize healthcare only to morph into that post-conviction persona as an innocent and fragile mom. At one point in the film she says about herself “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.” Exactly, raising questions about truth, media manipulation, and identity masking.

One need not have watched the film to ponder whether it’s a kind of litmus test of the degree to which we might be taken in by appearances over reality. Even the inquisitor, who brilliantly asks all the right questions, seems on the verge of seduction by her deceit. Have you ever told a lie in your life, he asks, even a white lie? Not that I can think of is the reply of this convicted felon.

Honestly now, how might you have been taken in by another’s double life with an outward appearance that masks a "disingenuous" soul. Tougher now, when might such a double life have been your own?

Widening the aperture, we might probe the prognosis of a society that is characterized by interactions among curated avatars. Dorian’s hidden, decaying portrait has a modern analogue: the curated social media profile, the story of who they want to be rather than who they are. Behold the filters that switch the real, lined face and the smoothed “instagram face” of curated perfection.

Harmless enough but the novel’s deeper question – if no one can see our mistakes, do they still matter? – is now literal.

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