Austin Mitchell
Language Arts – Per 2
Transformations
Outline
The Emperor’s New Clothes: from the perspective of the Swindlers as Scientists performing an experiment to determine the intelligence of the Emperor by seeing how gullible he is. The outcome of experiment is that the Emperor is indeed of low intelligence and very gullible but due to his authority can influence those around him to be stupid also. The style of the story will be a journal of one of the swindlers/scientists.
Daily Journal of Dr. Uri Ideyot :
Our experiment on the Emperor to determine intelligence and gullibility
Day One:
After our successful experiment on determining the influence of pre-conceived ideas of what you are expecting to see versus the visual reality (aka the “Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma Wolf experiment) my partner, Dr. Ivan More Smaterdanu , and I set out to determine the effect of inbreeding on intelligence in royalty.
Our experiment focused on seeing how easily the Emperor was duped into believing something that was obviously not true. The premise of the ruse was to pass ourselves off as weavers who knew how to weave the “most beautiful fabrics imaginable”. The impossibility factor was to tell the Emperor that these clothes would appear to be invisible to anyone who “was not fit for the office he held, or who was impossibly dull”, thus appealing to the arrogance and inflated sense of self that all royalty obviously possess. (Not to mention how much royalty likes to dress up).
We set out to see how far we could take this experiment and how much money we could receive from the Emperor should he buy this preposterous idea. As a control, we had approached an elected Mayor of a nearby town with this same proposition, and he immediately had us “escorted” out of the town by his guards.
On day one of the experiment we approached the Emperor and proposed the making of these extraordinary garments, and he promptly ordered us to begin weaving. We were paid a large sum of money in advance for weaving this magic cloth and were given a room in the palace and 2 looms to work on. In addition to the money, we had asked for a large quantity of the finest silk and gold thread for the project (My partner and I had agreed in advance that these monetary gains would be used for future “scientific experiments! For example, I personally want to study the effects on adrenaline level when driving a brand new Ferrari).
Day Two:
After a lovely dinner, entertainment, and overall evening at the palace we were anxious to resume the experiment. We pretended to weave on the looms with invisible thread. We had stored the actual silk and gold thread safely out of sight in our travel bags. In the late morning we were visited by the Minister of the land. We asked why the Emperor himself had not come to check on our progress and were told that he was busy with affairs of state. (My personal guess at his absence was that he stupidly believed in the magical qualities of the cloth and was worried that he himself would not be able to see it. However his fears are outside of the scope of this experiment). We were concerned that the Minister, being a seemingly intelligent individual, would see that there was no cloth and end our experiment (I’m going to miss staying at the castle).
The Minister stood back horrified. We could tell by his expression that he didn’t see anything. In the name of science, we asked him to step closer to the loom and give us his opinion on the pattern of the cloth. To our surprise he said “Oh, it is beautiful – quite charming” and “Such a pattern and such colors! I will certainly tell the Emperor that the stuff pleases me very much.” At first we were puzzled on why the Minister lied to us. This could be due to the fact that he was scared to admit himself unfit for his post or that he was a dullard. (Judging by his reaction he is either dull, scared to lose his job, or truly an idiot himself) I made a note to conduct further experiments on the sociological impact of the idiocy of royalty and its influence on how underlings perform their jobs….very interesting.
To study the gullibility aspect of this experiment, we demanded more money and gold silk to continue our project. Holding true to the pattern set the day before, the Emperor gladly handed us what we demanded. (Wow…where does he get all of this loot? I’d hate to see what the tax rate is in this land!)
Day Three:
On a side note, these are the softest mattresses I’ve ever slept on! It felt like I was sleeping on a cloud. And the palace maids even left us chocolates on our pillow. I could get used to this.
On this day, early in the morning, another official came by to check on our progress. We explained to him all of the different patterns that we were weaving. Like the Minister the day before, he also praised the beauty of the non-existent cloth. (I’m beginning to see a pattern here).
Shortly after he left, the Emperor himself, accompanied by the two previous advisors, came to see the magic cloth. Finally we could get some firsthand data on his intelligence. (Let’s see how stupid this guy really is). As the two advisors pointed out the beauty of the imaginary cloth, you could see the look of mild disbelief on his face turn to shock. But, like his men before him, he commented on how beautiful the cloth was saying “Oh it’s beautiful! It has my highest approval”. Soon the officials were advising the Emperor to wear a suit made of this cloth on the day of the Great Procession, which luckily was tomorrow (Lucky since we had to be back in Moscow by the weekend).
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s parade. What a hoot!
Day Four:
Last night we stayed up all night pretending to fashion the magic cloth into a suit for the Emperor. (Science is a lot of hard work! At least the staff provided us with live music, gourmet food and coffee upon demand all night).
The Emperor’s entire court exclaimed how beautiful his suit was when we presented it to him. Unfortunately, in order to maintain the ruse, we had to help him put on the imaginary suit. This required that he remove all of his real clothing first. (Gag! This dude needs to go on a diet. I’ve seen skinnier legs on an elephant when we were in India during the re-creation of the Mowgli experiment which determined that a pack of wolves could not raise a child but would instead devour it).
When the parade began, even the train carriers pretended to carry the imaginary cloth. All of the people attending the parade exclaimed how beautiful his suit was. (This could be a sign of mass hallucination. The water did taste a little funny. ) Suddenly, a child (aka little brat) in the audience yelled “But he has nothing on!” This truthful insight slowly spread throughout the audience who soon all picked up the chant of “He’s got nothing on!” This proves to us that non-inbreed people will eventually learn the truth. But overall, this is a land of gullible and scared dopes.
The Emperor and his court continued with the procession as if nothing unusual was happening. Our conclusion is that inbreeding leads to lesser intelligence and increased gullibility. One side effect of this is that people within the sphere of influence of the royal dopes will follow them without question. (I’ll be glad to get away from these fools and back to mother Russia and our intelligent, and smoking hot leader, Catherine the Great).
So before the parade ended, and the mob found out that we had taken most of the royal wealth and gold thread, we packed up and hit the road. On our way home we discussed our next experiment which deals with both the length at which a society will go to rid themselves of a rodent infestation and the negative effect on your children of not paying your debt. We are calling this the “Pied Piper Experiment”. Science rocks!
Day Five:
The story that came out in the Emperor’s Press today that we were swindlers and cheated the land out of most it’s wealth and gold thread and silk supply is completely wrong. They didn’t even mention our scientific backgrounds or the purpose of our experiment. These muck-raking journalists are just too stupid to understand science!
Quotes taken from “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Anderson