Unbelievable

My husband stumbled across a documentary on Netflix a few weeks ago. The Wreck of the Unbelievable detailed the discovery of an ancient shipwreck off the coast of East Africa. Among the items recovered were several statues encrusted with barnacles, coral, and other sea life. The one that caught my attention was a monumental six-headed dragon squaring off to battle an equally large warrior.

I love ruins and relics, so this drew me right in. The film went on to detail conflicts among the crew, the danger of storms at sea, and even African villagers saying how curious they were about what those foreigners were doing out there on their ship.

However, a part of my brain was whispering doubts. Items under water since the 1st Century shouldn’t be so clean. And didn’t that one look sort of like Mickey Mouse? So I went to do a little research. I found out my eyes were wrong while my brain got it right.

The Wreck of the Unbelievable was actually a mockumentary created to build excitement around an exhibition by the British artist Damien Hirst. The “treasures” recovered from the “wreck” were contemporary art, sea life and all. That includes the six-headed dragon and warrior sculptures. It all appeared in a Venetian museum in 2017. You can read arts coverage here.

Now, I have no special grudge against Hirst for creating a mockumentary. As a writer, I spend a certain amount of time trying to build excitement around my own books. Still, this is something of a cautionary tale. I’m glad I did that follow-up on the film I saw. Otherwise, I could have passed off fiction as fact just like any rube who saw a side show at the circus.

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