WHEN STEVEN Spielberg's nephew told Paul VI High School in Northern Virginia he was interested in matriculating, they were delighted. The principal personally showed the freshman Jonathan Taylor Spielberg around, let him park his snazzy blue BMW coupe in his own spot and turned the other cheek when Spielberg didn't attend class for weeks at a time. Spielberg promptly sent his transcript from the Beverly Hills Private School for Actors. At Paul VI, he would hand out $10 to classmates, drop names like Tyra Banks, and began dating a sophomore.
On January 10, after weeks of unpaid tuition and mounting absences, Paul VI finally called DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg's production company, for the first time. They were informed that Spielberg has no nephews. In reality, the suave new freshman was 27-year-old Anoushirvan D. Fakhran, an Iranian immigrant who lives with his mother, attended George Mason University, and duped the entire Paul VI community into believing he was a celebrity for nearly four months. While the trick came as a scandalous shock, it was no surprise that someone finally exploited the American fascination with celebrities. In fact, we deserve this punishment for our blind acceptance of big names.
How could it have taken school officials so long to discover something so far-fetched? We are proud to live in an era of cynicism and doubt, an era when young people in particular have trouble believing anything they hear. Yet when a person parades around wearing expensive clothes, sipping coffee, and reading magazines at Borders, no one even thinks to question the fact he's a celebrity.
Americans are gullible, and they don't even stop to ask themselves basic questions about people who claim to be stars. Questions like, "Does this guy bear any resemblance to the real Spielberg?" or "Why would Steven Spielberg make his nephew attend school here in Northern Virginia?"
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In reality, there is no Beverly Hills School for Actors, and Fakhran was just a bored young man who thought it would be fun to live the life of a star. His obsession with Steven Spielberg and penchant for pedophilia, both indicated by photographs found in Fakhran's apartment, were obviously what set him off.
Yet one has to wonder if the quiet foreigner also had observed the pop star fascination that pervades American culture and realized the potential it has to offer. From squealing teenyboppers who wait outside MTV's Total Request Live for Carson Daly to the ability to wow people with the mention of a celebrity spotting or relationship, it's no secret that Americans love a superstar -- except to Americans themselves who are utterly devastated when their naiveté backfires in their faces. While Paul VI hides its head in the sand and scoffs at Fakhran, it's actually no surprise how long his little stunt worked.
What Fakhran did was not offensive -- instead it's just pointed proof about what America has come to today. We are so eager to have our 15 minutes of overrated fame that we stop at nothing to find it, to embrace it, and to nurture it. Fakhran was smart enough to find this hole in the American social framework and leap through it, showing not only how naive we are, but also demonstrating something about where our priorities lie.
Fakhran spent a lot of time perfecting his scheme -- forging documents, working at Bed, Bath and Beyond for the cash he'd hand out to classmates, and avoiding answering questions about his status for awhile. While one could attribute his success to his excellent background work, there is no doubt that Fakhran knew he was capitalizing on one of the most obvious things about Americans: We are suckers for a little fame.
It took Paul VI four months to call DreamWorks after Spielberg's poor attendance, and until then they had never even verified his records. They never asked for proof of his age, or references. There's no excuse for this, except that the name Steven Spielberg was dropped. And while this whole story was unfortunate -- especially to the disgusted and creeped-out young sophomore who had been dating Fakhran in high school -- it also has taught us an important lesson: Don't be so ready to believe in Hollywood stars. Because when they fall to the earth, they're just pieces of matter like everyone else.
(Diya Gullapalli's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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