Why we’re ‘living in the golden age of the doppelganger’

It’s been the year of the lookalike – but the lure of ‘second selves’ has reached the folklore of Irish ‘fetch’ and Scandinavian ‘filja’, as well as the writings of Edgar Allen Poe and Sigmund Freud. Let’s go back.

In March, a Kate Moss-like figure with cat-like eyes, blonde hair and high cheekbones walked the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week. But it wasn’t Kate Moss. There was confusion online. “Isn’t it just Kate Moss?” ran the typical comment. People often said the incredulous words, “That’s Kate Moss.” To some smart people, the way she walked suggested it was someone other than the famous British supermodel – in fact, it was Denis Onona, a Moss look-alike from Lancashire.

High fashion seems to be sparking the trend. Later that year, a wave of copycat contests opened up. First, there was a moment when people who admired Timothée Chalamet gathered in Washington Square Park in New York. Then Dubliners flocked to him and claimed they looked like Paul Mescal. Next up is a Harry Styles look-alike contest, followed by Dev Patel, then The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White, Zayn Malik, Zendaya and more, with more contests in December It is scheduled to be held inside.

While this recent uproar feels very old-fashioned and has affected the entire world, each going wildly viral, copycat competition is not a modern innovation. Charlie Chaplin once placed third in a contest to find his likeness in the 1920s. As his son Charlie Chaplin Jr. wrote in his book “My Father, Charlie Chaplin”: “My father always thought it was one of the funniest jokes imaginable.” chaplin himself reportedly denied the truth of the story. Further proof is that Dolly Parton entered her house. Reminiscing in her memoir She said, “There was hardly any applause, but I was laughing to death inside.”

This year has been the busiest year for the lookalike for as long as Andy Harmer can remember. Harmer, a David Beckham lookalike, runs a lookalike agency and has published more than 3,000 people who each share the celebrity essence, from Isambard Kingdom Brunel to Rihanna to Ariana Grande. I am doing it. Onona, who resembles Moss, is one of the jewels in his agency’s crown.

But while look-alike contests have been the most widely held this year, and examples of doubling have made headlines, they’re not the only ones to shine a spotlight on the doppelganger theme. From movies to television to literature, doppelgangers inhabit the ether.

“There is no question that we are living in a new golden age of doppelgangers,” said American studies professor Adam Golub, who is writing a book about doppelgangers in American culture. They have waxed and waned in popular culture, but “they are definitely coming back with a vengeance,” he told the BBC.

In June, Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein won the inaugural Women’s Nonfiction Award for her next work. Doppelganger: Journey into the Mirror WorldIn this film, we immerse ourselves in the shady world of controversial author Naomi Wolf, a woman who was chronically mistaken online. The film is a sequel to Deborah Levy’s post-pandemic novel in which the protagonist travels the world encountering her doppelgänger. “She was me and I was her. She was probably a little more me than I was,” she wrote. august blue.

So what actually is a doppelganger? “It’s easy to think of a doppelgänger as a non-biological second self,” Golub says. “It’s a double personality that has nothing to do with you,” says Alia Soliman, lecturer in cultural studies and author of the book modern doppelganger: A vision of change in literature, visual culture and new media, he tells the BBC. “This term was coined by Jean Paul Richter.”

Cultures old and new have explored themes of identity, death, and the coexistence of good and evil through the idea of ​​doppelgangers. it is the subject of art, René Magritte’s surrealist paintings Pre-Raphaelite figures such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose 1860-1864 painting How They Met, depicted lovers meeting their alter egos in the woods. Ta.

Early literary forms include Adelbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemiel (1813), Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson (1839), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846), Robert Soliman says, referring to works such as Louis Stevenson’s “The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll.” and the doppelgänger Mr. Hyde (1886), who “takes the form of” a ghostly self, or a shadowy reflection that torments the first self. ” In almost all early literature, she says, “there is a destruction of the original and the second self.”

In Freud’s 1917 essay “The Uncanny” (a seminal work in the doppelgänger canon), this double is “the uncanny,” which Freud defined as “belonging to all that is frightening, to everything that arouses fear and creeping terror. ” explains.

Therefore, the doppelgänger was terrifying. “It’s trying to take away your identity,” Golub says. This theme is explored in JC Doler’s debut film. The Fetchwas nominated in the Dark Matters feature category at the recent Austin Film Festival. Such is the case with Coralie Farguito’s Substance, in which a middle-aged Hollywood actress played by Demi Moore watches as a young clone played by Margaret Qualley lives out her old life. And this theme can be seen most clearly in the popular science fiction trope of body snatching. “You could be replaced by an alien doppelganger, a robot doppelganger, or some kind of supernatural being, an evil twin from another dimension,” Gawler says. “Generally speaking, the stories we tell about doppelgangers don’t welcome our lookalikes.”

According to Soliman, things changed in the late 20th century, and depictions of the two men “changed significantly in form, content, and message.” If we turn our attention to today, this Kagemusha is viewed differently. Consider Chalamet showing up to take selfies with contestants in his own look-alike contest. What Soliman calls “the new Kagemusha” is far from malicious or slanderous. In this new double we see “a depiction of the encounter between self and double that changes structure and significance and conveys a message of salvation.” The young clones of The Substance are more of an annoyance than a terrifying foe. And lookalike contests are a little bit of good old fun, quaint, and wholesome. There is absurdity and humor when you see similar people.

In this new situation, it is no wonder that people are actively searching for their doppelgangers through a wealth of specially designed apps. Or maybe one of the hottest doppelganger projects these days? Canadian artist François Brunel’s photography project, Inspired by his resemblance to Rowan Atkinson’s TV and film character Mr. Bean, he found hundreds of lookalikes and created a body of work that conveys a message of hope and togetherness. I did. “We’re rethinking our relationship with our doppelgangers,” Golb says. “We’re writing happier endings to stories, where you find and bond with unknown twins, or win a celebrity look-alike contest.”

Experts have ideas about what is causing this paradigm shift. Reflecting on the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1993, Soliman said, “It was replaced by a series of new technology-induced stereotypes, one of which was the search for our digital doppelgangers.” states. With the advent of the Internet, that search has never been easier.

“The opportunities and complexities arising from visual and virtual innovations in social media are impacting a culture of dual selves,” says Soliman. “The self has much easier access to its alter ego.”

“Why aren’t we scared of these things that somehow represent what we should be suppressing?” Golub asks, remembering his original doppelgänger. That’s because in the digital age, we’re all used to having dual, and sometimes multiple, identities, including our physical selves, our online selves, and different voices across various social media platforms, he said. is thinking. He says we’re “looking to this kind of playfulness, this fun, this doppelganger fandom” as a way to get through that. “Perhaps as a way to make us whole again…rather than trying to steal your identity or take anything away from you, we’re actually trying to take a selfie with you and improve your life.” It’s about finding the version of yourself that you might just want.”

Doppelgänger is about connecting with offline communities. “Social media kind of forces us all into our own weird bubbles, creating the idea that someone just like us is living their life differently. [is a] It’s a really heartwarming idea,” Anoushka Gross, a psychoanalyst who was repeatedly mistaken for an actor on the British TV series Hollyoaks, told the BBC. He said this may be especially true for young people, and perhaps especially those fragmented by a wide range of online identities. And these meetings seemed to be held in the spirit of a wholesome country fair, with lo-fi posters inviting people to attend. Participants will receive a minimum prize money.

At the other extreme of the doppelganger phenomenon is the specter of deepfakes on the digital horizon. In other words, they are fake Kagemusha that trick us into thinking they are the original. But that won’t last long. “AI will disrupt many things in our lives,” Golub says. This moment of cozy playfulness around your doppelganger may prove to be short-lived. [deep fakery] “I think you should enjoy it while it lasts,” he added.