ELIZABETH HOLMES: NOT SO MUCH ALICE IN WONDERLAND AS CHESHIRE CAT

Last night, I took in the documentary, You Can See Everything about disgraced Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes. She scammed hundreds of millions from wealthy investors, and surrounded herself with a phalanx of the world's most powerful men to lend legitimacy to her lie that her revolutionary blood-testing company could be a functional, financially rewarding enterprise. 

Her stated intentions were noble: affordable, achingly accurate tests that put the power back into the hands of patients, who could get answers as to their health issues with a simple drop of blood taken from their finger, then analyzed in her magic box. 

Were this fiction, and not real-life, a good editor would say it relies too much on the motifs of the magician. Holmes shamelessly used these props and her skillset as a mentalist and made those who supported her feel like heroes, coming to the aid of sick people who get cheated by the system that fleeces them.

I write as someone who spent a huge sum on a blood test recently that piped out my red stuff only to tell me I'm anaemic. Had I met Holmes in the early days of her start-up, I'd have backed her. She looks like the all-American girl, with her frizzy mad-cap hair that is styled to make her seem the genius inventor, like the nuclear physicist in Back to the Future.  

I feel she wanted us to believe her to be a savant, uninterested in money, but this is the opposite of who she really is; an illusionist who is madly mercenary. 

Throughout the entire film, Holmes looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She has beautiful Alice-in-Wonderland eyes, and her shtick is that dreams and fairytales can come true. Plus the film is set mostly in her beech house, facing  the lapping marine-blue waters of the Pacific. Scary scenes of Holmes lying so convincingly she is disturbingly plausible are interlaced with those of the calming waves.

Yes, the filmmaker, Nathan Fielder and us viewers are really at sea. A technique employed by Fielder was to have as much close-ups of Holmes's unblinking, azure eyes, and for the viewer to feel pulled into her vortex.

I went to the cinema with my friend, SMH, who like me has hazel eyes, and we both said we felt we'd been drawn into the strong, downward suction of the whirlpool of Holmes's blue eyes. 

I had rings of blue swirling before my eyes for hours after watching, You Can See Everything. Holmes had no say in her eye color, and this is no slur on people with blue eyes; rather it is my comment on how Holmes used her Dodger blue eyes to manipulate, and used them to create an illusion of safety when trusting her is anything but safe. Real lives were destroyed by her callous scheme, including Doctor Ian Gibbons who had a nervous breakdown and later committed suicide when he realized he'd been fooled by Holmes.

I like to think that - now - I'd not be conned by one like Holmes; it happened to me before and let's pray might have inoculated me against people like her. Well, I hope so. Many years ago, when I was working in a bustling international city and doing pro-life work for a charity that helped women in crisis pregnancy, I was befriended and love-bombed by someone who could have been Holmes's long-lost twin sister. 

Let's call her "Alice" as a nod to Lewis Carroll's character. Alice was pretty, could make people think she was the most honest person who ever lived, and was extremely keen to be as close as possible to me, even though she never asked questions about my day or my mood, instead she was very fascinated by the financial and practical help that pro-life organizations give to unmarried pregnant women. 

I had a bad gut feeling for her, but some people around me at the time encouraged the relationship. Also, I was impressed by her amazing ability to read the darkest motives of some people who were as manipulative as her, and she kept a steady distance from them. 

Once, she got her hooks into me, she became extremely promiscuous, engaging in all sorts of risky sex with the worst men, and I suspected she was deliberately trying to get pregnant and then force me to give the help she knew I gave others. She was taking varieties of drugs and had no conscience about how this might harm a growing baby. Thank the Lord, no baby came. 

After she attempted to coerce me into taking blame for her promiscuity (my prayers for her weren't working) and then lied about me to others that I was an uncaring, cold dog, when she knew I wouldn't blurt her secrets as a way of defending myself; I cut ties with her. I had realized she wasn't so much guileless Alice as Cheshire Cat.  This, too, is the painful lesson for everyone who got hurt by Holmes.

The first image is from the 1951 Disney film, Alice in Wonderland, and is in the public domain, as is the illustration of the Cheshire Cat which was executed by John Tenniel.