Poisson d’Avril : F for Fish

Canular, un (noun, masc. sing.) : A hoax.

The origins of the April Fish may be traced to the 1564 Edict of Roussillon, when the French King Charles IX decided to move the official start of the year from its then-current April beginning to the now-familiar January début. Apparently April already had too much going for it  (Spring, for example), whereas January was languishing along with November as one of those months that sits on its own in the corner moping over a cervoise. The king's subjects, however, not sharing the Royal concern for January's morale, continued to exchange New Year's gifts as before, possibly in mockery of the new edict or perhaps simply as an expression of the innate French gift for argument. At any rate, what was once a real New Year's offering now became a mock gift.


Why a Fish?

Experts appear divided between multiple theories involving Christian symbolism (the ichthys), Christian interdictions (Lent), the pagan zodiac (Pisces) and secular fishing laws. What is more certain is that since at least the early Renaissance, gifts of fake fish were exchanged on the first of April, a tradition that continued at least into the turn of the last century, as seen below.

Wish Fishes

Although French literature on the subject generally asserts that April 1st as universal hoax day is a fête of French origin (the motif of fish having been generally exchanged for fools during export, probably something to do with pre-Schengen tariffs), an alternate explanation (and one that would take into account pre-1564 sightings) is that, like the wheel and TV talent shows, the Fishy Fool’s Day was an invention with multiple authors and a possible common ancestor, in this case Greco-Roman. The jury however, is still out, and having ordered a very nice Saint-Émilion with the meal, may be some time.

Perhaps the most successful example of a canular in the Anglophone world is still the 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, in which our pre-Apollo Program and rather more credulous Earth is invaded by Martians. Performed by a radio theatre troupe as a series of news reports with a then unheard-of level of dramatic realism, the program panicked the East Coast of the United States into hiding under the Midwest and launched (after an admirably earnest pantomime of contrition) the film career of a young Orson Welles. Oddly enough, Welles’s final completed film, some 35 years later, would also be a canular of sorts: a fake documentary about forgery, shot and produced in collusion with French documentarian François Reichenbach. 

And, as coda, this fish story comes full circle (ou bien, hexagone) by adding yet another French documentarian, William Karel, to the mix with his 2002 film Opération Lune*: A sort of F for Fake 2.0 in which political pashas such as Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld appear to confirm that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was a hoax directed by ...Stanley Kubrick. 

Allez ! Send your own Fish Wishes via Colombes Philatelie.



* Opération Lune recommendation grâce à filmmaker & editor Claudio Hughes.

 The War of the Worlds, F for Fake and Opération Lune are available from Amazon.