Heroes for our fraudulent times

Television’s current incarnation of the super-man doesn’t fly or repel bullets, can’t lift a car with one hand or live forever; he doesn’t even (with sincere apologies to the return of Jack Bauer) regularly take out entire platoons of bad guys with a single handgun.

Instead he possesses the talent that many of us increasingly believe to be the Holy Grail of heroics: He can tell when someone is lying.

From “House” (Fox) to “The Mentalist” (CBS) by way of “Psych” (USA), now culminating in Fox’s new “Lie to Me,” the leitmotif of modern drama is that everyone lies. Not just the historically honesty-challenged criminals and politicians, but medical patients, spouses, colleagues and friends. They lie for all sorts of reasons -- for personal gain, of course, but also out of shame and fear and boredom.

But because this is drama, and cynicism will take you only so far on American television, there are now those walking among us who can dismantle even the most intricate deceit. Whether it’s Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) piecing together the truth from a series of apparently unrelated symptoms and unusual word choices, or former faux-psychic Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) finding truth in the inventory of a bookcase, we now have a growing number of sharp-shooters in the war on deception. (In fact, “Heroes” made it an official superpower when the ability to tell when someone is lying was added to the already formidable list of abilities for Zachary Quinto’s Sylar.)

“Lie to Me” takes it one step further. Its protagonist, Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth), is a professional lie detector, able to (at least in the first episode) intuit the site of an impending bomb threat from the facial expressions of an untalkative skinhead. (Kids, don’t try this at home.) Life is tough for Lightman; his skills are so honed that merely walking through a crowd is, for him, immersion in the duplicitous nature of humankind.

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A dystopia of dishonesty

After the Internet, television remains the speediest and most highly invested consultant to and of the zeitgeist. So if the skills of our pop culture heroes tell us what we desire and what we fear most, then Americans are having a crisis of veracity.

And why not? Every time we open the paper or turn on the news, some lie or other is being exposed. There were no weapons of mass destruction, there is no zero-down mortgage, the boom was really a bubble, the brilliant financier a con man. Memoirs turn out to be fiction, reality shows are scripted; heck, you can’t even trust an Oprah-approved Holocaust love story these days. The Internet makes things even more confusing. It’s easier to find people and information but harder to tell what’s real: That 13-year-old chat-room buddy is really a 48-year-old sexual predator or your classmate’s bitter, vindictive mother.

The United States has never been a guarded nation; unlike the older and more jaded peoples -- the French, say -- we have prided ourselves on an unquestioning acceptance of reinvention; in America, you can be whoever you want to be. The American dream is to rise above outside definitions, to create your own future and, to a certain extent, your own identity, no questions asked.

In the past, we’ve even found crooks and con men endearing, at least when they’re played by Redford and Newman. Butch and Sundance, Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker were ultimate little guys, preying upon, at least the social narrative went, the self-satisfied rich. And that fondness isn’t dead, as new shows such as “Leverage” prove.

But more and more, average Americans find themselves beset by fraudulence, doubting their own instincts. Wouldn’t it be great if you could sort out the liars from the truth-tellers just by a handshake (cold hands? racing pulse?) or a significant tic in body language. I’m sure those who handed over their life savings to Bernard Madoff would have benefited from “Lie to Me’s” revelation that most honest people aren’t big on eye contact. It’s the liar who often has the direct gaze, to make sure you’re believing his or her lies.

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All we seek is the truth

Since its creation, art of all genres has sought the larger truth: What is the nature of love or God? The human obligation toward others? The meaning of life? Now, it seems, we’ll be happy if we can figure out why that man in line seems so antsy or if our daughter is using drugs.

The growing success of soothsayer television comes from its ability to expose our growing sense of vulnerability in a way that is both entertaining -- there remains nothing so satisfying as seeing a liar exposed -- and somewhat reassuring.

Liars are not invulnerable to detection. The signs are obvious after they’ve been pointed out, in the angle of the body or the curl of the lip, in a frayed cuff or a craving for cake. Look around you, at the pictures on the wall and the CDs on the floor, at the book-marked websites and the contents of the digital camera. The truth isn’t “out there,” it’s right in front of you. And here’s the hero to show you where.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com