Authenticity, Part Two
After spending Thanksgiving weekend in southwest Ohio, I've come up with a working definition of authenticity.
It came to me while we were in the car, driving back to Cleveland. I was grilling Jim about his thoughts on the subject.
"Are donuts authentic?" I asked, as we pulled into the Tim Horton's in Delaware.
"Yes," he said, probably thinking he was putting an end to the matter.
"What about Timbits?"
"No. Timbits are not authentic."
"What about eating Timbits in a rainy parking lot listening to a staticky rendition of 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels' on the radio? Is that an authentic experience?"
Anyway. Here's my definition:
Authenticity is the desire to pursue and/or recreate activities that would just be part of a normal day for people whom you perceive to be of a lower social order than yourself.
It's this last part that's the key. But authenticity is not just a more urbane, politically-correct way of saying "slumming it." It's also about the desire to recreate the experience of slumming it without having to be around all those "lowlifes," and at a real premium to boot.
(To be absolutely fair, I've never been to the Corner Alley, but it strikes me - no pun intended - as an example of this latter phenomenon.)
To illustrate, I ask you to consider the following scenarios:
Scenario A
I drive to Kroger's on Friday night to pick up a six-pack of Christmas Ale (which they did not have, of course, making me grumble irritably).
This is a normal, everyday experience for me, and as such, is NOT an authentic experience. It will never make a charming story, and if I did for some reason decide to tell my friends about the experience, they will accuse me (rightly) of wasting their time.
but
Scenario B
A Manhattan socialite who is (heavens!) stuck in mid-Ohio for Thanksgiving weekend drives to Kroger's to pick up a six-pack of Christmas Ale and is so charmed by the cornfed folks in hunting caps that she's not put off at all by the lack of holiday brew and buys a twelve-pack of Miller High Life (in cans!) to celebrate her solidarity with the common man.
This anecdote represents authenticity in all its glory, and may in fact end up in the kind of pretentious fiction written by people who smoke clove cigarettes and wear $25 vintage t-shirts.
What do you think? Am I on the right track here?
It came to me while we were in the car, driving back to Cleveland. I was grilling Jim about his thoughts on the subject.
"Are donuts authentic?" I asked, as we pulled into the Tim Horton's in Delaware.
"Yes," he said, probably thinking he was putting an end to the matter.
"What about Timbits?"
"No. Timbits are not authentic."
"What about eating Timbits in a rainy parking lot listening to a staticky rendition of 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels' on the radio? Is that an authentic experience?"
Anyway. Here's my definition:
Authenticity is the desire to pursue and/or recreate activities that would just be part of a normal day for people whom you perceive to be of a lower social order than yourself.
It's this last part that's the key. But authenticity is not just a more urbane, politically-correct way of saying "slumming it." It's also about the desire to recreate the experience of slumming it without having to be around all those "lowlifes," and at a real premium to boot.
(To be absolutely fair, I've never been to the Corner Alley, but it strikes me - no pun intended - as an example of this latter phenomenon.)
To illustrate, I ask you to consider the following scenarios:
Scenario A
I drive to Kroger's on Friday night to pick up a six-pack of Christmas Ale (which they did not have, of course, making me grumble irritably).
This is a normal, everyday experience for me, and as such, is NOT an authentic experience. It will never make a charming story, and if I did for some reason decide to tell my friends about the experience, they will accuse me (rightly) of wasting their time.
but
Scenario B
A Manhattan socialite who is (heavens!) stuck in mid-Ohio for Thanksgiving weekend drives to Kroger's to pick up a six-pack of Christmas Ale and is so charmed by the cornfed folks in hunting caps that she's not put off at all by the lack of holiday brew and buys a twelve-pack of Miller High Life (in cans!) to celebrate her solidarity with the common man.
This anecdote represents authenticity in all its glory, and may in fact end up in the kind of pretentious fiction written by people who smoke clove cigarettes and wear $25 vintage t-shirts.
What do you think? Am I on the right track here?
posted by Christine at 12:26 PM
5 Comments:
I absolutely love your phrase "the kind of pretentious fiction written by people who smoke clove cigarettes and wear $25 vintage t-shirts." Those people are so awful.
I've always tended to refer to those types and their faux-worshipping of lower class (or at least lower than their own perceived class standing) as the "irony" people, irony always in quotes. I like your concept/definition, but think I might stick with "irony" because I don't think there is any sincere affection on the part of the hipsters drinking mickeys or wearing bad/cheap clothes.
I also think there is another dimension of authenticity, one that exchanges time for the role class plays in the definition you so artfully and hilariously crafted. For example, the folks that travel to Amish country or attend civil war reenactments and praise or critique a place/event's level of authenticity. It sounds lame (the praising/criticizing, not necessarily the actual tourism), but it can also be cool, like at City Tavern in Philly where they brew beers from recipes found in the private papers of Washington and Jefferson. Of course, I could be missing the point (of your post and period tourism).
Hi CB-
The $25 vintage t-shirt thing really offends me (oh, they go much higher than $25, too...), about as much as Chief Wahoo offends me, and the idea of frat boys dressing up in blackface for Halloween. And the term "flyover state." I really hate that one.
(Although, I'd just be an asshole if I didn't disclose here that I smoked a significant amount of clove cigarettes when I was in college. But that was a long time ago....)
I am going to have to think about irony vs. authenticity. (Not this early, though, because the old brainbox might explode.)
Good point too about time...I had also been thinking that authenticity might extend to a previous time period of one's life (though that might cross over into nostalgia, another concept I find fascinating). Or to a social class that one had transcended. Like, the socialite returning to eat in the old hometown diner.
I can't remember which book talked about this a lot (it may have been "What's the Matter with Kansas"), but there's also a tendency for pundits (Joe Scarborough, for example) to talk about "Middle America" as the "real" America. I think there's a kernel of the authenticity phenomenon in there too - that for some reason, big cities are seen as less authentic by nature. But what's inauthentic about a Manhattan socialite dining in a trendy restaurant? (as long as it's not one that mimics the old hometown diner.)
Good point(s). I started thinking, too, about the movie Metropolitan. It seems that the only inauthentic person in that film is the lower class kid.
I agree wholeheartedly about the middle America dissing. Like there aren't sophisticated people outside California, Massachusetts, and New York. And like there aren't dipshits in those states.
Have I been confusing authentic with phony all along?
Liz - yes! I think authentic is starting to mean phony, like freedom is starting to mean not-free. You know, as in, "we're taking away your civil rights so we can protect freedom."
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