The Emperor's New Clothes: a hilarious story with depressing truths

You can thank yours truly for the beautiful work of art above.

'The Emperor's New Clothes' is a hilarious story.

Written by Hans Christian Andersen [1] and published in the year of 7 April 1837 alongside his other "less famous tale" (cough cough) 'The Little Mermaid', the story is a political satire that has somehow managed to stay relevant for 180 years.

Of course it has lost some of its historical context over the years, seeing as how the Danish monarch's role has been reduced significantly to one which is essentially ceremonial.

The story is about an Emperor who was very fond of clothes and had a different suit for each hour of the day.

One day, two con-men, appeared before the Emperor mentioning that they knew how to make fabric of the most beautiful colours and elaborate patterns that remained invisible to everyone who was unfit for the office he held, or who was extraordinarily simple in character (read: stupid).

The Emperor obviously could not see the "clothes" and neither could his ministers but because of their ego and pride, this resulted in some funny descriptions by the author of how the characters help bring life to the lie by the con-men, both of whom ended up running away successfully with their silk and gold.

From putting on the "clothes" and checking them out in the mirror to "wearing them" in a procession through the streets of his capital in the "awe and admiration" of his people, the story brings the reader to the extreme end of absurdity.

An important moment in the story is when a child innocently proclaims that the Emperor was wearing nothing at all.

This leads to the townsfolk to whisper amongst themselves before finally crying out in unison that the Emperor was in fact walking around in his birthday suit.

The punchline?

The Emperor realised he was naked in public but because it was already too late, he decided to continue walking proudly with his noblemen with the cries of the townsfolk falling on deaf ears.

The truth in its absurdity

Like most good jokes, there's some truth to the story.

Society falling prey to a herd-like mentality regardless of how absurd or incorrect the direction the herd is heading towards is nothing new especially where their interest appears to be at stake if they don't follow.

For some, this interest is one of ego, mainly involving a fear of looking stupid or less cultured.

A good and hilarious example of this taking place is when an American student left his glasses on the floor of an art gallery.

Granted that we don't really know the extent of this prank's success, a more serious and recent example of the bandwagon effect was the whole Oxford Circus station fiasco where people felt that their safety was under threat.

I guess the obvious decision in that situation when faced with uncertainty is to run but ironically it was people's panic that caused more injuries instead (a stampede occurred).

'The Emperor's New Clothes' presents the herd mentality in the form of the public's silence upon seeing the Emperor in his new "clothes" in fear of being deemed unfit for office or stupid.

I find it interesting that the story presents two extremes to the reader.

The first is that the punishment for speaking out against authority is a minor one (being deemed unfit for office or stupid) and the second is that the truth that ought to be pointed out (Emperor being naked) is very obvious.

What's interesting is that although it was much easier in the light of these two extremes for someone to voice out the truth, everyone played along for the sake of their own self interest, with the exception of the child.

Imagine instead how difficult it would be to voice out in a society where the repercussions are much more severe and the truth isn't that obvious?

Hint: It's pretty difficult.

That's pretty depressing, right? Well, with the rise of social media, perhaps not.

Just because something is difficult, it doesn't mean that people will keep quiet in the face of what they perceive to be injustice. The freedom and speed at which information is shared has increased tremendously and it has become difficult for states to retain and control the dissemination of information.

As seen in the story, sometimes all it takes is one child to get the ball rolling.

Malaysia's a pretty good case study. Don't believe me? Here's a picture of one of the con-men that swindled the Emperor:

a LOW blow.

I'm not go to dive too deep into the whole 1MDB scandal.

The point we need to know today is that Malaysians certainly didn't shut up when news of the scandal first broke out. In true typical Malaysian fashion, if one sees an authoritative figure in all their bare glory, they would probably take their phones out and start snapping.

This is in spite of various attempts to silence them.

While certain parties insist that the truth may perhaps be skewed when it comes to the scandal, here are the facts that all parties have to agree upon:

Websites were blocked. News publications suspended. People fired. Others got a promotion.

Some of us came out of retirement.

The people responded and amongst the ways they did were with the Bersih 4.0 rally.

Thousands of Malaysians turn up on the streets of KL flooding the streets with yellow for two days in the spirit of free and fair elections and clean governance ending the rally on the night prior to our National Day (Yes, East Malaysians I understand your frustrations with 31 August but let's focus)

And then... nothing much happened.

We have had a few more rallies since then and there were some developments but here we are at the end of 2017 with our Prime Minister getting ready for the next election with a confident smile on his face.

You see the depressing truth about 'The Emperor's New Clothes' is not that it is difficult for society to speak up courageously on a matter that they perceive to be unjust.

It is that even if they do, the Emperor continues to march on proudly.