Spoofing Porn: Feast of the fools

Yesterday was the Day of the Holy Innocents, so named because of the order by King Herod to slaughter all children in Bethlehem under the age of two in the hope that the cull might include the newborn king of the Jews that the Three Wise Men were looking for, Herod having sent them in the direction of Bethlehem with the request to let him know when they found this new king. But of course, the Three Wise Men bumped into an angel who recommended that they kept mum, which they did, while mum herself was busy swaddling the baby king and stashing him away in an ox stall - as you do.

It is highly unlikely that this slaughter occurred, but Matthew knew a thing or two about anti-Roman propaganda and about portraying Herod as an infanticidal lunatic (which, in any event, he was). Had there been a "Bethlehem Times" back then, a front-page story on 28 December announcing the slaughter of the innocents would probably have been taken at its face value. But little might the readers have known that they could have been victims of a hoax story. 28 December, abbreviated to the Day of the Innocents, is the day when people innocently fall victim to pranks, and it is a day which has pagan roots.

The Holy Land might not have had its day of the fools, but Spain has had it for an awfully long time. It is said to date from the Middle Ages, though as it has a pagan background, it is quite possible that this "fiesta de los locos" is considerably older. As with many a pagan carry-on, it involved healthy doses of debauchery. Anything went. The church, none too impressed by this old-time behaviour in a vaguely Magalluf style, decided to graft the fiesta of the fools onto the Day of the Innocents, believing that memories of the alleged infanticide would calm everyone down.

Whether they did all calm down isn't a matter of record, though at some point in time they must have done and so gradually the Day of the Innocents became less eccentric and less extreme. It became what it now is - a day for the prankster akin to April Fools' Day.

The British media love April fools. The most celebrated spoof was that of 1 April 1977 when "The Guardian" produced its travel supplement for the tropical island republic of San Serriffe, a joke that the British press has spent the last thirty-seven years trying to emulate. The San Serriffe joke was only possible because back then it was just about plausible that there was a tropical island republic no one had heard of. The spoof has, therefore, to have an element of believability. In my own small way, I once did an April fool about drilling for oil in the bay of Alcúdia. The exploration company was called Tonto S.A. (which was the giveaway), but this was at a time before there was any talk of oil prospecting in Balearic waters. It was, as things have turned out, somewhat prophetic. When I wrote a story about the Chinese buying Cala San Vicente, "The Bulletin" put a note in the next issue which pointed out that it had been an April fool.

Believability is crucial, and this brings me to the front page of Sunday's "Ultima Hora". The Spanish media have typically not gone in for spoofs on the Day of the Innocents, but occasionally they do. Or do they? "An increase in homemade porn videos set in Mallorca detected." The story said that the emergency services had received complaints over the summer about couples and groups having sex in coastal areas and that the majority of homemade porn videos going on the internet with "Mallorca" in the title were German. "Inocentada!", laughed social media - "jajaja" - though it wasn't a story which played for the laughs, except to suggest that Portals was a place where residents had been complaining of "scandalous sexual activities". (Well, I found it funny that Portals should have been singled out.)

It was a story which was believable. In fact, it was too believable. I can recall a few years ago there having been reports in the local press (not on the Day of the Innocents) about porn films being shot (by Germans) in quiet parts of the island's coast. There is, furthermore, anecdotal evidence of professional porn-making if not the homemade variety, though I daresay that there are anecdotes regarding this as well.

Very believable it was and very much in keeping with the pagan tradition of the feast of the fools when debauchery was the order of the day. I'd like to think the paper had that in mind, though I suspect not, while I'm also rather inclined to think that the spoof had been a double bluff and was true all along. It was simply too believable.