More than forty-five years ago, Umberto Eco, the famed Italian novelist and semiotician, published Travels in Hyperreality, a collection of essays investigating America’s obsession with fabrications and the faking of reality. Eco considers a wide range of specimens—from holograms, wax museums, restored homes, and fabricated art all the way up the food chain to Disneyland. He claims that what sets these objects at a distance from other forms of pop art is their “hyperreality,” a trait “we can identify . . . through two typical slogans. . . . The first, widely used by Coca-Cola but also frequent as a hyperbolic formula in everyday speech, is ‘the real thing’; the second, found in print and heard on TV, is ‘more’—in the sense of ‘extra.’ ” In his essays, Eco is not interested in the “snobbery” of high art that generally seeks to hide the seams of its production. On the contrary, he examines those phenomena that call attention to their own artificiality—“instances where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake; where the boundaries between game and illusion are blurred.” Because they make no claim of authenticity, hyperreal simulations are therefore not bound to realistic expectations, and they call into question whether the real thing matters in the first place.
To be sure, Eco’s purpose was not to suggest an appreciation for fakery; rather, he expresses a fascination for it, if not a warning for hyperreality’s dangerous potential. Not surprisingly, considering the exponential growth in technology since Travels was published, the American appetite for hyperreality has only increased. In the 1990s, the casino construction boom in Las Vegas inspired the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable to lament that “surrogate experience and synthetic settings have become the preferred American way of life.” After all, what else could explain the popularity of such megahotels as New York–New York, The Venetian, and Paris Las Vegas? Likewise, art critics Kristin G. Congdon and Doug Blandy, reacting to Las Vegas and other surrogate environments, have claimed that “living in place is no longer associated with common sense conceptions of reality.” Congdon and Bradley go on to explain that we are inclined toward a world “where the real is fake and the fake is real.” By today’s standards, these statements might seem obvious, or even quaint, but they are perhaps less than they should be. The continual creep of fakery into modern society should be cause for great concern. There are few facets of our lives—political, social, or financial—that are free from the threat of it.
One modern antidote to all this fakery has been the popular notion of tradition. Of course, definitions and concepts of tradition can be fluid and complicated; for simplicity’s sake, however, I refer to it here by its most conventional meaning—the passing down of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. Traditions are often used to authenticate membership in a group: a fraternity’s secret handshake or the sidelocks of Hasidic Jews. Other, more ritualistic traditions confer value on an action or a decision: spiking the football after a touchdown or tapping a sword on a candidate’s shoulders to bestow knighthood. Although tradition can be a useful tonic against fakery, the purpose of some traditions eventually becomes outmoded, even if the traditions themselves continue. For example, British knights are no longer needed for their battle skills on a horse, and yet Rod Stewart was dubbed Sir Rod with a sword just two years ago. Does this make Rod Stewart a lesser knight? In terms of what it meant to be a knight during the Middle Ages, almost certainly. But how should we value the title bestowed on him by Prince William? Shortly before Travels was published, Eric Hobsbawm coined the term invented tradition to mean “a set of practices . . . of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” In other words, one way in which old-fashioned ways of thinking become ingrained is through a repetition of symbolic gestures that preserve their value. For those that accept this process in Western society, then in terms of tradition Rod Stewart is simply a knight among knights.
Suppose for a moment, however, that the British monarchy has been suddenly abolished. Would it be possible to perform a knighting ceremony with a surrogate prince? Perhaps a lawyer or a banker? If so, how would it affect the value of the title? In other words, what are the implications of tradition without the power of authenticity? Is it only the faking of a tradition? The British monarchy still exists though, which is lucky for Rod Stewart, so this example doesn’t allow for a useful analysis. Fortunately, there is another, far more familiar tradition that began to lose its relevance only decades ago—the wedding celebration. Or more specifically, the decline of the Catholic wedding tradition in Argentina, where a group of young Argentinians is attempting to ensure it continues.
Spanish colonization of Argentina began in the early 1500s and ended only two hundred years ago. As a result, much of Argentine culture and religion has been heavily influenced by European customs. This is especially true of weddings, where Catholic ceremonies, although usually brief, still cling to longtime traditions: the bride wears “something blue” beneath her wedding dress, the grandmother of the bride passes down her wedding ring on the day of the service. What is less European, however, is the reception that follows. Wedding parties often extend into the small hours of the morning, with hundreds of guests forming conga lines to the thrum of DJ music, swilling glasses of Fernet and cola, and pausing only to visit the parrilla to stuff themselves with barbecued meat. The bacchanalian atmosphere of Argentine wedding receptions has inspired at least one online survival guide to advise would-be guests to “have a siesta—a big one” because “stamina is key.”
Despite the popularity of these events, however, Argentina has experienced a dramatic decrease in the rate of marriage. Although 92 percent of the country identifies as Roman Catholic, the number of weddings involving a priest has declined from roughly 155,000 in 1990 to 60,000 in 2011. There is little need to dwell on the reasons for the decline, which should sound familiar to Americans. Less than 20 percent of Catholics in Argentina faithfully practice. In response to the dearth of religious faith, there has been an attendant rise in the popularity of civil unions, which have the added benefit of being much cheaper than a traditional wedding. What the decline in traditional weddings means for young Argentinians is that there are fewer occasions to perform the ritual of the wedding ceremony and celebration—to break out their wedding attire and form a conga line. The threat of losing this tradition motivated a group of young entrepreneurs to take action. As Gastón Gennai recalls,
We were five bachelors talking about the fact we’d only get to go to a wedding together if we had girlfriends in common. That’s when we had the idea of organizing a mock event, complete with a script. We rented a space—imagine the owner’s face when he found out no one was actually tying the knot—and around three hundred people came to that first Falsa Boda.
Falsa Boda, literally “fake wedding,” is a touring event put on by the production company Trineo Creativo, headquartered in La Plata, a suburb of Buenos Aires. At each event, usually held at an upscale hotel, hired actors play the roles of bride, groom, witness, and priest. During a staged ceremony, vows and rings are exchanged, and the guests consume all the trappings of a real wedding—many for the first time—for a ticket price between $35 and $50, around the cost of a typical wedding gift. The experience seems to pay off for those looking to party with friends without the singles atmosphere of a dance club. A guest at an event in Mendoza explained how “the atmosphere of a wedding party is different, more familiar. . . . It’s cuter, more sincere. In short: I like to dance, but not in clubs.” Of course, there is also the spectacle of the ceremony. According to the same guest, the element of a wedding offers “a different emotional charge—you go with another spirit and arranged in another way.”
The mixing of social expectations—revelry for a fiesta and reverence for a stage—was not a happy accident. Indeed, Gennai and the other original organizers of Falsa Boda were aware of what they were doing, or at least they promoted it that way. According to Gennai, “Everyone who comes to Falsa Boda has a part: besides being a party, it’s also theater.” Joaquín Alterman, another of the founders, has stated that “this type of event is like a hybrid” and that the production is “a mix between a play and a party.” To be sure, these insights from Alterman and Gennai might have been more about differentiating their product than about Falsa Boda’s slippery relation to concepts of performance. Nevertheless, their observations are worth examining. Both men suggest that the wedding experience they offer is dependent on an interactive mixture of performers and spectators that approaches the intimacy of a “real” wedding. Although Gennai’s description of the first Falsa Boda indicates that this might have once been the case, subsequent productions reveal a move away from this modus operandi. As I hope to demonstrate, the kind of interaction between performers and guests of Falsa Boda begins to shift as the organizers move away from traditional depictions of a wedding ceremony toward productions that would support Eco’s vision of a Western society eager for “more than the real thing.”
Falsa Boda is not the world’s first production of a fake wedding. In the 1980s the comedy troupe Artificial Intelligence created an audience-interactive play called Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding. The play was immensely popular and toured worldwide over three decades, eventually spawning a spinoff featuring a lesbian couple. However, the current fake wedding phenomenon in Argentina is different for two significant reasons. First, the point of inspiration for the Tony n’ Tina productions, in contrast to Falsa Boda, occurred in the theater. Nancy Cassaro and Marc Nassar came up with the idea for the play while attending drama school at Hofstra University, and according to Cassaro, the play was an attempt to “satirize the real world.” Second, the characters in Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding (over-the-top versions of New York Italians), the play’s script, and, in large part, the mise-en-scène remained consistent from production to production. In fact, Artificial Intelligence eventually published an acting edition of the play for use in the amateur market. In the case of Falsa Boda, what began as an effort to salvage the Argentinian wedding tradition quickly evolved into a performance fit for a Las Vegas casino.
Trineo Creativo began uploading videos of Falsa Boda after its fourth production in Mendoza in December 2014. Although the audio from the event has been overlaid with theme music, the video includes scenes from before and during the ceremony, which takes place in an enormous and dimly lit canopy tent. Judging from the venue and mise-en-scène, it is clear that the organizers were attempting to closely mimic an authentic Argentinian wedding. The ceiling of the tent slopes dramatically upward, recalling the architecture of a traditional church. Before the ceremony begins, a flower girl enters, spreading rose petals over the red carpet leading to the altar, where the priest waits solemnly behind a pair of candelabras and a thick Bible. As the bride and groom walk down the aisle, dressed in full regalia, a wedding photographer kneels before them to capture the moment. Images of a rapt crowd are interspersed throughout the video, with many of the guests capturing the scene with their cell phones. As the ceremony unfolds, there is a bit of drama—the bride becomes upset and flees the altar right before saying “I do.” However, the guests are treated to a happy conclusion when the witnesses decide spontaneously to tie the knot.
Nine months later, a similar—if more rustic—event was staged in Neuquén. Here the ceremony takes place on the wooden floor of a ballroom, and the wedding band’s equipment peeks out from behind a curtain. This time the posted video includes audio from the event, allowing viewers to gauge the reaction of the guests. During this production, the groom is late, and the bride paces before the altar as she tries to explain his absence to the priest. The guests can be heard murmuring to each other, and the din of their voices makes it difficult to hear the bride. When the groom finally appears, there are a few whoops from the guests, but the dramatic moment seems to go largely unappreciated. Despite a clear effort by Trineo Creativo to stage a wedding that seems real, the inattention of the guests indicates that they are not interested in the faux drama preceding the ceremony. Or perhaps having arrived with expectations of a traditional wedding, they are merely confused. When the priest begins the ceremony, there is a shushing from the guests, and the noise dies down. At least part of the crowd is attentive, although they are perhaps not as rapt as the edited video from Mendoza had implied. When the noise starts up again, more shushing occurs, but the talking never goes away completely.
It is likely that Trineo Creativo noticed the disinterested guests and decided to adjust. This is evident when Falsa Boda returns to Mendoza two months later. The most obvious upgrade is the addition of a small stage. As the bride and groom approach the priest (standing behind a much smaller table), they must climb several stairs, literally placing them on an altar above the guests. The priest still presides before a Bible, but a pole structure has been added; it is draped in chiffon and lit from below with floodlights. The effect is something like a proscenium. These theatrical elements must have altered expectations for the ceremony. The separation created by the stage, proscenium, and lighting likely made those in attendance feel less like guests immersed in the gravity of a traditional wedding, and more like an audience, ready to be entertained. If that weren’t enough, the performers on stage are using handheld microphones, further distancing the event from authenticity and making the actors more akin to pop stars. Not surprisingly, the change in the audience’s response is pronounced. According to a guest, “When the bride arrived, everyone was crazy, pulling out their phones and snapping pictures like she was a Hollywood star.” Alterman explains that “in the ceremony there is always a backstory, and people get very involved, take sides.” As the ceremony begins, there is no shushing, although the priest’s amplified voice easily carries over the din of the crowd. However, as the bride begins to show signs of distress, the crowd noise intensifies. Finally, the bride turns from the altar and gazes directly at the crowd, as if appealing to them for a reaction. Her gesture prompts whistling and several catcalls, and the crowd continues to egg her on until she finally bolts from the stage to a chorus of cheers.
Further embellishments occur in subsequent productions. In La Plata in April 2017, projection screens were installed. Prior to the ceremony, guests are treated to video messages from Falsa Boda fans supporting the bride and groom. The stage has also grown taller by a couple of steps, and the altar is fronted by an enormous and fully illuminated Falsa Boda logo. Just before the groom’s entrance, a baritone-voiced announcement is made over the PA system while the opening music from 2001: A Space Odyssey plays ominously in the background. The announcer welcomes the guests and tells them to prepare for Falsa Boda.
Four months later, again in La Plata, the 2001 score is used again, but when the music ends, the baritone voice counts down (in English, no less), “Four . . . three . . . two . . . one.” An air-raid siren goes off, announcing the arrival not of the bride and groom but of a breakdancing extra. One wonders what became of the flower girl. A troupe of dancers then takes over the stage/altar and performs a highly choreographed routine to the thrum of electronic music. After the routine is completed, the bride and groom are finally rushed down the aisle to an up-tempo dance version of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” a song commonly played at the end of the service, not at the beginning, perhaps giving the guests a sense that the ceremony is over before it has had a chance to start. The effect on the guests is clear. When the priest announces the names of the bride and groom, he pauses dramatically to allow the crowd to voice their approval, not unlike a ring announcer at a boxing match. The crowd is eager to oblige the priest’s cue, and the bride and groom turn to receive the cheers.
In one of the most recent events in Buenos Aires, staged in October 2017, the transformation away from Falsa Boda’s more authentic productions reaches its apex. The stage has been raised even higher, so high, in fact, that the stairs leading up to the altar require a metal railing. A giant projection screen—a jumbotron—is now located behind the altar, showing a kaleidoscope-like display of digital images as the dancers perform their pre-ceremony routine. The bride and groom are again rushed to the stage, where the ceremony takes place at the altar, but now the ceremony is also broadcast to the audience via the jumbotron, complete with close-ups of the bride and groom as they react to the drama they portray. The scene that is enacted is striking if only for how it recalls Eco’s sense of hyperreality: the real thing, but more. The real thing, but extra.
The bride in this production is Lorena, and the groom is Nicolas. The witnesses are Victoria and Federico, who are also boyfriend and girlfriend. During the ceremony, both Lorena and Nicolas break away from the altar to perform short soliloquies to the audience. Both express their love for each other and their desire to get married; however, neither wants to be with just the other person for the rest of his or her life. During Lorena’s aside, an idea strikes her. She tells the priest that the four of them should all marry each other. The priest, incredulous, asks, “Like swingers?” Victoria and Federico intervene, explaining that it would be a marriage entre los cuatro (between the four). The four of them attempt to convince the priest, providing several reasons for why a group wedding would be best. The final point, delivered by Lorena, is that the marriage would be por siempre (forever). The priest, apparently satisfied, agrees and continues with a modified ceremony. However, he pauses before the final vows and instructs the audience to voice any objections before he proceeds. Victoria wags her finger toward the audience, a warning to keep all objections silent—a playful take on an old tradition. The reaction from the crowd is mixed; although most seem supportive, there is some jeering and whistling. Victoria and Federico make dismissive gestures, waving away the crowd’s apprehensions, and the unconcerned priest completes the ceremony with the extra wedding couple. If any in attendance had lingering doubts about whether they were participating as guests or being entertained as an audience, this production should have laid them to rest.
It is tempting to wonder why the organizers of Falsa Boda chose to move their productions so drastically away from authenticity, though in terms of ticket sales, it is hard to argue with the results. The number of fake weddings they have produced per year has increased from just three in 2014 to nine in each of the following three years. At two of these more recent productions—in La Plata and in Mar del Plata—attendance approached seven hundred people. One might argue that the ceremony simply became an afterthought for the guests, but that would not explain the thousands of views the ceremonies have received on Facebook Live. For one thing, we might question the idea of a fixed authenticity. Christopher Balme, a theater and performance scholar, has posited that “performance . . . by definition, creates alteration through repetition.” To perform a wedding ceremony today, after all, is certainly different from what guests experienced during the wedding at Cana. The changes over time have been too subtle to notice, resulting in an illusion of continuity.
Perhaps one reason for the quick evolution of Falsa Boda is because its simulated experience is undeniably hyperreal. The organizers never promoted their product as an actual wedding and therefore were not constricted by the expectations of tradition. As it happens, this is an attractive feature for many people. Eco describes an audience’s encounter with hyperreal simulations as universally pleasing and averse to criticism: “for the cultivated visitor, [there is] the skillfulness of the reconstruction; for the ingenuous visitor, the violence of the information—there is something for everybody so why complain?”
Humanity’s tendency toward the simulated experience has been a notion explored by other scholars. Hillel Schwartz, a cultural historian, points out that the ability to replicate is what makes us, literally, human. According to Schwartz, “The most perplexing moral dilemmas of this era are dilemmas posed by our skill at the creation of likenesses of ourselves, our world, our times.” Congdon and Blandy note Schwartz’s “affinity for our capacity to immerse ourselves in, and enjoy . . . surrogate environments and synthetic experiences.” Our coziness with simulation, however, is often met with skepticism by critics, who see it as a gateway to a world of total illusion. Eco, for instance, in his analysis of Disneyland, discovers that it “not only produces illusion, but—in confessing it—stimulates the desire for it.” This is the lure of fictional worlds, or what Eco calls Possible Worlds. He continues:
When, in the space of twenty-four hours, you go . . . from the fake New Orleans of Disneyland to the real one, and from the wild river of Adventureland to a trip on the Mississippi, where the captain of the paddle-wheel steamer says it is possible to see alligators on the banks of the river, and then you don’t see any, you risk feeling homesick for Disneyland, where the wild animals don’t have to be coaxed.
Although the essays in Travels focus on American tourist sites, Eco’s anecdote about the “real” New Orleans can help us understand how a fake wedding phenomenon could further erode how much Argentinians value real weddings and, as a result, marriage. Guests at a Falsa Boda event don’t just witness a couple taking their wedding vows—they are guaranteed much more. The bride and groom are attractive and charismatic, and they enact scenes that seem plucked straight from a telenovela. The guests dress in wedding attire, but with extra flair since there is no risk of offending that conservative uncle. As one of the organizers put it, “Our guests get all of the fun of a wedding party with none of the commitment.” With no relatives and the freedom to role-play, there are also more social opportunities. “It’s easier to meet someone at a fake wedding,” said one guest. “I’d walk up and introduce myself as a cousin of the groom, and the girls immediately fell into their role. It’s like a game everyone joins in.” And since it’s all spectacularly fake, there’s no drama that can go too far. According to one of the organizers, the brides of Falsa Boda endure constant wooing from male guests at every event, especially after the ceremony. In this Disneyland version of a wedding, there are alligators lining every step of the aisle. If one imagines a young Argentinian who attends a fake wedding one week and a real wedding the next, it is easy to see how she might become “homesick” for Falsa Boda, especially if she has never been to a real wedding. According to Huxtable, “For those without memory, nostalgia fills the void. For those without reference points, novelties are enough.”
In his essay “Culture as Show Business,” Eco describes “disturbing events” in which throngs of counterculture types have begun taking over lectures and conferences in his native Italy. Eco notes that these “new masses . . . behave as if they were at a show. . . . They come partly for the collective occasion, or in other words . . . to be together.” He goes on to lament what has already happened in the United States, where he suggests “cultural showmanship” has transformed intellectual conferences into a “theatrical event,” a “cultural show organized like a singles bar.” The parallels between “culture shows” and fake weddings are obvious, although in lieu of high culture as theater, Falsa Boda puts tradition on the stage. Eco does not mince words about the implications of these types of events, stating that “if cultural performance is going to follow this road, then we have little to be content about. Not because the show is ‘cultural,’ but because it is a ‘show’ in the worst sense of the word: a false life depicted on the stage so that the witnesses . . . may have the illusion of living, through an intermediary.” At first blush, this assessment seems severe—that is, until one considers that guests of Falsa Boda are attending a fake wedding, posing as relatives of the bride, and posting videos of “themselves” on social media. However, perhaps this doesn’t give the guests enough credit for their awareness of their participation.
Condon and Blandy take a less pessimistic view in their critique of living with ubiquitous simulation. The authors contend that they “may not always agree with the personal and social motivations to which fakery has been attached,” but they do maintain a belief that “the impulse to replicate . . . is a part of who we are as a species and should be appreciated and critically understood and evaluated as such.” Within this appreciation, Congdon and Blandy place an emphasis on “discovering personal and communal authenticity” that might occur in a world filled with “contradictions, seductions, illusions, incongruence, and shape shiftiness.” In other words, they are interested in how authenticity can exist in a fake world. Their essay includes excerpts from an online forum of folklorists discussing the often ambiguous line between traditional and revival forms of cultural objects. Several posters point out that, given time and the correct context, it is possible for revivalist art to become traditional: “In other words, fakes . . . can become real.” While that may be true for objects of art and architecture, the question becomes whether it can be applied to a performative event.
Sharon Mazer’s fascinating essay “The Doggie Doggie World of Professional Wrestling” provides us with a guide. Mazer’s research centers on the bizarre world of professional wrestling in the late 1980s, which parallels Falsa Boda in some surprising ways. She argues that pro wrestling is a hybrid, “not accepted as a legitimate sport, nor . . . legitimate theatre, it intersects, exploits, and, finally, parodies both forms of entertainment.” And just like a production of a fake wedding, “each participant in the wrestling event has a role to perform,” including the spectators, who are the “privileged players to whom these participants . . . cater. Their response is essential to fulfill the performance objectives.” Throughout her essay, Mazer makes it clear that although professional wrestling is fake, there is a shared sense of community between the participants—one that can exist only within the cultural bubble of the ring: “By creating, sustaining, and then resolving the ‘friction’ between performers and spectators . . . the wrestling performance simultaneously incites and controls the release of everyday frustrations in a safe, socially sanctioned space.” In essence, fake wrestling can become real in the correct time and context. Whatever “real wrestling” is, or would be, is no longer necessary. In fact, the simulation of “real wresting” is preferred because it is somehow better. It is somehow more than real. It is hyperreal.
Admittedly, it would be difficult to argue that Falsa Boda, in its current iteration, shares the same sort of community that existed in professional wrestling when Mazer was gathering her research. For one thing, there does not seem to be the same level of fanaticism for fake weddings or a similar intense camaraderie between the performers. At least not yet. However, as marriage rates in Argentina continue to fall, fewer and fewer young adults will have experienced a real wedding. At the same time, as guests continue to demand more and more upgrades and extra attractions, Falsa Boda will continue to drift further and further away from the authentic original. One could imagine a future in which Falsa Boda no longer means “fake wedding.” A future in which Falsa Boda simply means Falsa Boda. Unlike professional wrestling, however, the transition to a “traditional” Falsa Boda has the potential to leave the real experience to die in its wake. Dr. Megdy Zawady, a psychoanalyst in Buenos Aires, already sees this trend, noting that “the majority of people no longer believe in eternal love or a commitment forever.” For Zawady, Falsa Boda exacerbates the problem, “making a fun parody out of something that used to be solemn, that of accepting a commitment for life. And I don’t think it just applies to Argentina.” On this last point, Zawady seems prescient—Falsa Boda has already made international plans. 
