Virtual Confusion: Time for a Reality Check

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: September 25, 1992

In the charming early Federico Fellini film "The White Sheik," a young bride named Wanda, who has arrived in Rome for her honeymoon, wanders off in search of her longtime idol, the White Sheik, the hero of one of those photographed comic strips so popular in Italy in the 1950's. Her head crammed with romantic illusions, Wanda cannot see -- not at first, anyway -- that her glamorous idol is really a fat, vulgar parody of Rudolph Valentino, a small-time actor and buffoon who carelessly lies about his life in order to seduce naive women like herself. She is offered a small part in the comic strip, dresses up as a harem girl, and earnestly plays out her role -- she, alone among the actors, mistakes the illusions of art for real life.

These days, Wanda's inability to distinguish between reality and fiction has become such a common malady that it often feels as though Pirandello were writing the news. Vice President Dan Quayle attacks Murphy Brown, the fictional anchorwoman played by Candice Bergen, for undermining traditional family values by deciding to become a single mother, and in this week's season premier of the show, Murphy Brown strikes back, having already elicited even further condemnations from Mr. Quayle.

President Bush speaks of wanting to see an America that looks a lot more "like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons," and in a subsequent episode of the popular television show, Bart Simpson retorts, "We're just like the Waltons. We're praying for the Depression to end, too."

Even Ross Perot, who mocked Mr. Quayle's remarks about Murphy Brown, has gone on the record as condemning the television character Doogie Howser for having sex with his girlfriend. ...


A version of this article appeared in print on September 25, 1992, on page C1 of the New York edition.

Photos: In Rene Magritte's "Condition Humaine" (1933), now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its Magritte show, a landscape painting merges with the reality glimpsed through an artist's window. (National Gallery of Art); Daniel J. Boorstin, author of the 1961 book "The Image." (Jerry Bauer/Random House) (pg.C31) Drawing: From cartoon to unlikely pin-up: Jessica Rabbit. (pg. C1)

In the print version, the article is continued on a second page, which was entitled, When Politicians Debate Fictional Characters, It's Time for a Reality Check.