Two fascinating deconstructions of our collective obsession with “authenticity” appeared this past week, both of them confirming its status as cultural little ‘l’ law numero uno (for the moment). It’s interesting for a number of reasons, and not just because Mr. Artfully Inauthentic himself, David Bowie, released his first new album in 10 years on Tuesday.
For example, while the exact shape of things like Success and Beauty may always be changing, at least we all tacitly agree that those things exist. Authenticity, on the other hand, is a phantom. Not only does its pursuit preclude its attainment a la Humility, but the more you drill down, the more it reveals itself to be almost entirely theoretical.
That is, either everything (that exists) is authentic, or nothing is. There’s no clear line. Which means the commandment of Thou Shalt Be Authentic is not just impossible or cruel, it’s nonsensical. Of course, that hasn’t stopped us from pursuing it with all our strength and persecuting those who don’t. (Vulnerability, which is what most of us probably mean when we use the A word, is another matter entirely).
Exhibit A here is what the always insightful Heather Havrilesky refers to as “Oscar night’s Lawrence/Hathaway carnival ride of attraction/revulsion” in her column for The Vulture, “Why Jennifer Lawrence and Mila Kunis Are Beloved.” Havrilesky is right to suggest, in relation to Lena Dunham, that authenticity doesn’t stand alone–it’s more like an extra (and extra ephemeral) hurdle for those women who’ve already cleared the other, more basic ones of beauty, smarts and talent.
As we’re fond of saying, and as the article makes painfully clear, this is not a race anyone can win–we either need a substitute runner/ringer, or the whole track needs to be demolished, or both. You might say this is the double-bind of the law at its most, er, authentic:
[Mila] Kunis’s behavior — like Lawrence’s, Garner’s (before Affleck), and Aniston’s (before her 172nd Oprah appearance) — is far too confident and natural to be an act. Rest assured, though, it’s about to become one… Apparently by pushing the envelope on this carefree tomboy schtick, Kunis and Lawrence have unlocked some secret chamber of veneration.
Even so, there’s something very specific, and very dramatic, about this everygirl/diva study in contrasts — as embodied by The vocal negative reaction to Hathaway and her ilk… suggests a sea change in the way we encounter celebrity. We may have reached the outer limits of our patience with the kind of self-involvement that rises from a life in the spotlight. There are just too many ways to be famous, or at least to draw an audience — from blogging to posting clips on YouTube to tweeting something pithy during the Super Bowl — for most of us to want to see a star treating the world’s attention as something that they’d been destined to bask in since birth.
[Lena] Dunham rarely comes off as anything but earnest and funny and self-deprecating, the same party tricks demonstrated by Kunis and Lawrence. So why all the hate? Apparently it’s not enough for a woman to be smart and likable and humble. Audiences presumably don’t crave Dunham as their best friend because they already have a best friend just like Dunham. They want an upgrade. The key is to act just like average humans, but not to look remotely like them.
These days, not only are there more artifacts and pieces of evidence than could ever be examined by a jury of one’s peers, but the latest offending or uplifting opinion piece or tweet or YouTube snippet travels across the globe at the speed of light. If any single aspect of your personality or public image — your attitude, your fashion sense, your taste in men, your sense of humor — fails to impress, watch out. You must be gorgeous but humble, smart but self-mocking, talented but awestruck by others with talent, young but wise beyond your years, perfect but anxious to admit your flaws to the world. And you’d better do it every second of every day…
Eventually, of course, commenters and tweeps and the celebrity press will lament that Lawrence and Kunis have gotten too big for their britches, or that Dunham has “gone mainstream” by toning up, and Hathaway will be painted as some kind of downtrodden underdog, causing the masses to rise up in her defense and forget her trespasses against them. Fame giveth, and fame taketh away — now faster than ever. We demand beauty and smarts and talent with not even a trace of pride or vanity. We demand the impossible.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Ezruu1oeQ&w=540]
Sigh… I guess there’s some comfort to be found in the fact that authenticity is just the latest in a long line of ostensibly good things we’ve co-opted for purposes of justification. The winds will shift soon enough. In the meantime, that Kunis interview really is refreshing.
Elsewhere, Steven Poole took up the same topic a bit more broadly in a terrific essay for The New Statesman, “Why Are We So Obsessed With the Pursuit of Authenticity?”, looking at the roots of the obsession, how it has been commercialized, and how ultimately self-defeating and -deceiving the whole thing is for both performer and consumer.
It’s probably as thorough and amusing a takedown of authenticity-as-virtue as anyone could put together, ending as it does on an ominous note of self-validation and the will to power. If only understanding the double-/triple-/quadruple-bind here were enough to free us from it:
…our present predicament: there is no way out of simulation. What we get in an “authentic” cultural product is still a simulacrum, but one that insists even more loudly that its laminated, wood-effect veneer is the real thing. Authenticity is now yet another brand value to be baked into the commodity, and customers are happy to take this spectral performance of a presumed virtue as the truth.
Even Marks & Spencer’s men’s underwear is branded “authentic”, posing the nice question of what an inauthentic pair of boxer shorts or trunks would look like.
If you type the words “authenticity” and “authentic” into Google’s Ngram Viewer, which plots graphs of the use of words in books over a given period, you will find that there has been a strong uptick in usage since the early 1990s. It might be no coincidence that this parallels the rise to ubiquity of digital creative technologies. Perhaps people become more worried about art’s authenticity once they understand that modern technology makes everything liquid and endlessly revisable.
More disturbingly, the unexamined hunger for authentic culture can rapidly turn into a witch-hunt. After Beyoncé sang “The Star- Spangled Banner” at Barack Obama’s inauguration, the story got started that she had been lip-syncing. But in several videos available you can clearly hear two Beyoncés: there is a pre-recorded vocal, plus a Beyoncé who is, perfectly obviously, singing live. One would like here to diagnose a mob-like rage for authenticity which fastened on a sacrificial victim with no regard for the justice of its accusations.
So, too persuasive a performance of authenticity will be taken as a sign of inauthenticity. The authenticity-obsessed want something to be real, but they’re on a hair trigger to cry foul if it seems too real to be true… So the authentophiles can no longer reliably perceive what they claim to value; indeed, they risk destroying it. (Why bother doing something for real if no one will believe you did?)…
As a side-note, I watched the new Beyonce documentary on HBO last week, Life Is But A Dream, and the authenticity factor was there in spades, and mainly in a good/non-distracting way. She talks about her faith and her marriage, for example, in very gut-level terms, which she didn’t have to do (to say nothing of her miscarriage).
That said, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that both my wife and I wondered aloud if the whole no make-up thing was the publicist’s idea. So inculcated we are in this topic.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL2PicT9Kng&w=600]
COMMENTS
13 responses to “Understanding Authenticity and The Lawrence-Hathaway Carnival Ride of Attraction/Revulsion”
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This raises the same kind of problem that my logic professor raised when he said “The most important thing to remember is that there are no absolutes.” One wonders, is that absolutely true? If we can’t be authentic about our inauthenticity, is that authentic or inauthentic? If we are to walk in the light as He is in the light, does that include our inauthenticity? Isn’t our pretense the very thing keeping us from true confession with one another? The only thing we have to cling to is Christ and Him crucified. We certainly can’t depend on how well we confess or walk in the light. Who said, even our tears need to be washed in Jesus’ blood.
Another thing this made me think of – you know how people sometimes preach or pray or speak with their “ministry” voice? We always tend to make fun of it because it is inauthentic. But is our normal “night-with-the-guys” voice really authentic in the the context of public worship? What is the right voice? Maybe that is an honest voice in that circumstance. I doubt if the elders and cherubim and such around the throne say “Holy Holy Holy” in an “authentic” joky welcoming everyday guy voice. I bet there is some majesty and pageantry going on there.
I agree that the pretense of authenticy and it’s continual performance in our lives is in itself inauthentic and unobtainable – a phantom as you say. But that doens’t neccesarily render the search, or desire, for an authentic self in our lives invaluable or trite, particularly if we are searching for that authenticity in our relationship with Christ. I find myself thinking back to Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved and the premise that our “core truth” should be understanding ourselves as both being, and becoming, the Beloved of God – each individual first-born heirs to the kingdom – each unique and foreknown and foreloved by God before the beginning of time. If that is what we are searching for and deeply desiring to express, then perhaps there is an authenticity that isn’t so inauthentic after all . . .
I believe that Masahiro Mori would have called the too-persuasive exhibition of authenticity, “The Uncanny Valley”.
That being said, I remember when this whole “authenticity” thing started up back in the 90’s, and towards the end of my college career, I started to realize that maybe it’s not a bad thing that we’re not all that authentic. If we were truly authentic, none of us would have any friends. We would have long since offended them all.
The modern understanding of authenticity, theologically speaking, contradicts it’s Webster’s definition. Authenticity, if you’re going to take it as defined in the light of the Gospel, and not by it’s modern connotation, means being anything but kind, humble and good. In other words, we are authentically fallen, authentically prideful, and authentically selfish. We all know this at our core, and that’s why we’re running around looking for “authenticity” in other people. We’re not really looking for authenticity, we’re looking for the hope of perfection. If someone else could perfectly reflect humility within perfection, then there’s hope for us all. Of course, deep down we rejoice when those people finally fail to be anything less than graceful, because, after all, the Teacher can’t fail us all… right?
In other words, as Bono said, “We’re looking for the baby Jesus under the trash.”
Gregory House, M.D. is far more authentic than most pastors.
Great comments, all around. I definitely think there is something to what you’re saying, Caroline, about the authentic self. I have to believe there is such a thing. I only wonder if the search for it looks more like our infinite false selves dying and/or being stripped away than the true one emerging via effort or assertion.
David, your second paragraph reminds me of that incredible TS Eliot quote from the bird in Burnt Norton, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”
Jim, while it’s impossible (and probably not even advisable) to avoid having some kind of rhetorical style (and therefore something “put-on” in a public setting), still, ministry voices are the worst. I think we can all tell/sense if someone actually believes what they’re saying, or if it’s an act. Probably why preaching is so exhausting – the preacher has to get to a place where they actually mean what they’re saying. Otherwise it’s just words (and let me tell you, the feeling of alienation from oneself after having given such a “lecture” is nauseating). Probably what my father means when he says, in Breaking the 4th Wall, that the job of the preacher is to have a public nervous breakdown each week. As tempting as it may be, you can’t fake that. That isn’t to say that God doesn’t or can’t use “ministry voices” – just that it’s miracle that He does.
True all around. Everything I’m about to say is preaching to the choir, but I swear it is in my authentic voice!
The gospel allows us to throw in the towel on “being who I really am”. I have no idea and I’m not sure I want to know who I really am. I’m fine with leaving that to God. This is probably a part of the death and resurrection we experience in Christ. There are some things you simply can’t work out, and in preaching or teaching, you can’t be focused on having the right or most authentic persona. Here’s my persona: I’m dead. Very riveting!
I was a full-time professional children’s entertainer for about 12 years, and I did have a very calculated persona. It was exhausting, it really wore me out; I’ve never been so burned out. One of the best things about moving into software design and development was that I could hole up in a cube and have a sour mood and still get things done. In truth, without the propitiation at the center of our relationships, authenticity drives us into isolation because there is not just transparency, there is also conscience and judgment. Maintaining a persona is exhausting, yet authenticity is undoable. We can’t stop driving each other away and being offended at each other unless there is a forgiveness that our conscience is satisfied with.
That is probably why Jesus didn’t say “they will know you by your authenticity”, He said, “they will know you by your love.”
This is a really fascinating piece and great conversation!
It’s an interesting point, the thing about the Photoshop effect. I’d also point out that the late 80s/early 90s is when “marketing” became a thing; believe it or not, you couldn’t get a “college degree in marketing” much before that time. So maybe the hunger for the authentic is real and actually a sort of healthy rebellion – but then it, too, gets swallowed up by marketing.
Another fascinating question, to me, is: why do people all this time worrying about the “authenticity” of people they don’t actually know? Everybody used to gossip about their own circle of acquaintances; are those people just not considered interesting enough any longer?
(I mean, when people seek “authenticity,” it could be that they are simply trying to understand the world, and what things actually mean. I think people don’t have much of a program or system for that sort of thing any longer; religion once played the role of “explaining how the world works” – but its former system is maybe no longer intelligible, or needs to take new information into account and hasn’t caught up yet.
There’s all this “data” everywhere, but nothing that makes it coherent for many people. For instance: people don’t think much about things like “the virtues” – I didn’t know what these were until about 10 years ago, myself – and nobody outside of A.A., probably, can name “the 7 Deadly Sins” anymore. We know that people can’t name the 10 Commandments, let alone thinking about them in depth. Society doesn’t tend to hand down “the wisdom of the past” any longer; the past seems benighted in the current era, so people don’t tend to look at it much, either.
So people need some sort of overarching basis in truth for understanding the world and its people work. It makes sense that they are trying to strip away falsehood to get to what truth they can find – doesn’t it?)