"The authenticity hoax"

[icecold]

pretty provocative new book, the review is here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304168004575178831348022238.html

I must admit it resonated, somewhat, with me --> practical justifications of the quest for authenticity only go so far.
Are we romanticizing the golden era far beyond a reasonable nostalgia?

 

[Paisley]

I read that. The "Stuff white people like" blog is better.

 

[icecold]

I read that. The "Stuff white people like" blog is better.

ha, this blog is brilliant - it instantly instilled some much needed humility!!!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some good points there. Around here during the Era most people bought their food at the IGA, the A&P, or the First National -- they wouldn't touch that dirty stuff from the farm stands. Cans were *sanitary,* and sanitary meant *healthy.*

The whole concept of navel-gazing about cultural authenticity is something that would have been utterly incomprehensible to most people sixty or seventy years ago. They had far more pressing concerns, and if a time traveler were to go back and praise them for their "authentic way of life," they'd be trundled off to the bughouse in short order.

 

[Fletch]

Seems to me like that puts you in a potentially untenable position. My grands (b. 1900s, in their 70s in the 1970s) wore every kind of Dacron and doubleknit they could get their hands on. Is that more "authentic" than "authenticity"???

 

[tonyb]

Haven't read the guy's book, doubt I ever will. Judging from the review, though, it appears his thinking may be as utopian as those he takes to task.

All "progress" isn't for the better. Still, it's good to be reminded that the good old days weren't so idyllic as certain nostalgic types apparently believe. My grandparents, too, where enthusiastic about "wash and wear" clothing and every other modern convenience their budgets allowed. They bought the latest model cars and harvest gold kitchen appliances. And a motor home? Hell, who wouldn't want one of those?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Seems to me like that puts you in a potentially untenable position. My grands (b. 1900s, in their 70s in the 1970s) wore every kind of Dacron and doubleknit they could get their hands on. Is that more "authentic" than "authenticity"???

As I said before, the whole idea of fussing and fretting about "authenticity" is an unfortunate preoccupation of modern, post-sixties identity culture -- it's exactly the sort of obsessive, whiny self-absorption that would have earned you a slap upside the head in the Era. "Quit goldbrickin' an' get to work!"

Your Dacroned grandparents and my frozen-in-1945 grandparents would have had no interest in such a subject, because the whole question was completely irrelevant to their lives. I think, from what I gather from the review, that all the author is suggesting that it's become far too relevant to the lives of a certain class of people today. *SLAP* Quit goldbrickin' an' get to work!

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Sounds like an interesting book. Kind of funny, you see all these kids today that buy pants that have been pre-blasted and have pre-made holes in them--I buy my all my jeans stiff and blue--they wear out fast enough without being pre-wrecked. I think people today want to be able to buy greatness, a place, a past, without working to make their own.

/\ /\ Never liked "Stuff White People Like". I think it's reverse racism, even if it is written by a white person. We are not the only culture by any means that is obsessed with the past. I always get the feeling when I read it that I can't be proud of my culture but others can be of theirs... possibly unjustly, but that's the way it feels.

 

[Yeps]

/\ /\ Never liked "Stuff White People Like". I think it's reverse racism, even if it is written by a white person.

Please tell me that you only said "reverse racism" as a joke. The term is an utter contradiction. Racism is racism, no matter what race it is against.

By the way, I am not a fan of SWPL either, although it has spawned some funny spin offs which I like more, such as Stuff Christians Like, and Stuff Hipsters Hate.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Actually, I agree with you Yeps. It should probably just be called what it is. What do Hipsters hate?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've always found SWPL to be more along the lines of Stuff A Certain Type of Upper Middle Class College Educated Suburban White People Like. Which is utterly irrelevant to me in every possible way, so I don't worry about it. I do, however, know quite a few people who it describes to a T.

 

[Yeps]

What do Hipsters hate?

First and foremost, hipsters hate other hipsters and being called hipsters.

 

[Paisley]

If the book review is any indication, the book lumps love of the past with trying to buy status via organic foods and such. If that were the case, the Amish would be the hippest people around.

My own way of making peace with modern life is to ignore a lot of it.

 

[Yeps]

If that were the case, the Amish would be the hippest people around.

The Amish grow their own food, have cool hats, great beards... Yep. I would say that they are pretty darn hip.

 

[Paisley]

And more power to them. If some people just want to eat organic food, wear certain clothes and "look for meaning" (weren't people doing these things in ancient times?) I don't see where the harm is and why a book had to be written about it.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

And more power to them. If some people just want to eat organic food, wear certain clothes and "look for meaning" (weren't people doing these things in ancient times?) I don't see where the harm is and why a book had to be written about it.

I think if we were to look at ancient civilizations we would even see some of the same nostalgia cycles that we see in our own age. Take the Western World after the fall of the Roman Empire--it developed an obsession for classic Latin, architecture, and sculpture--some of which even effects our culture strongly today.

 

[LizzieMaine]

See, I'm not really getting the "nostalgia from the past" thing at all, at least from the review. What he seems to be criticizing is the notion that in the past everyone was "authentic," and that's something to be striven for today. I don't think his use of "nostalgia" there has anything at all to do with tastes in clothing or music or architecture or even appreciation of a specific era, such as is common here. What he's criticising is the current upper-middle-class idealization of some blurry undefined point in the past as a time when everyone lived off the land and didn't eat Cheetos for breakfast. This rings just a wee bit phony, of course, coming from the same generation that made Captain Crunch and the Trix Rabbit household fixtures.

If you like organic food or natural fibres or gourmet beer or whatever, enjoy them because you *like* them, not because you think consuming them would make you more "authentic" than the Cheeto-eating, Bud-swilling philisitine down the street. Otherwise, you're just consuming a product with a higher price tag and a fancier label for the silliest possible reason.

 

[tonyb]

I gotta wonder if the objection is actually to the "superior" tone.

The difficulty always seems to be in objecting to such a tone without adopting it oneself. For my own sake, and for the sake of those who are stuck dealing with me, I try (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to recognize that dynamic and not contribute to it.

 

[Paisley]

From the Booklist editorial at Amazon.com:

We live, Potter argues, in a world dominated by the prepackaged and the artificial, the fraudulent and the fake. Growing out of this increasingly bleak cultural landscape is a movement centered on the notion of authenticity: the honest, the natural, the real. That’s all fine and good, Potter says, except for one thing: we don’t have a clue what we mean by authenticity, and even if we did, we wouldn’t know how to find it. That is, the quest for authenticity is a hoax—there is no such thing. Authenticity is an exclusionist notion, defined, by what it isn’t, not by what it is, and, for the most part, so-called authentic lifestyles are just as artificial and contrived as the rest of modern culture.​

From the Publishers Weekly review at Amazon:

Potter champions a mitigation of modernity's negative, alienating effects rather than a rejection of modernity, and his characterizations of antimodernists can be dismissive to the point of oversimplifying a large and varied spectrum of dissent from the status quo.​

What I interpret from this and the review in the WSJ are that if a person doesn't want things like boxed food and a TV in every room (to make up some examples), they're doing so in an effort to be superior. I'm sure that's true for some, but others simply have different tastes, or have given these matters some research and a lot of thought and concluded that certain products of modern life are best avoided.

 

[reetpleat]

I don't know. It may be that life got better and better in a lot of way, but also lost a lot and maybe now has reached a point where people are really starting to suffer from modern life.

Certainly, this is not new. metropolis, the movie made a comment on modern urban life. People have always spoken of the good old days. The Twilight zone had several episodes about how idylic life in the 30s was.

And many older people, while embracing double knit, refuse to bother with internet, etc and keep living simply.

Further, while grocery superstores were sanitary and nice and easy, I think many people from back in the day would become patrons of produce sellers and butchers. In many major cities, people still like their green grocers over grocery superstores. As do many immigrants.

I think there is real value to be had. If I could get the same quality of produce, meat etc from the local grocery i wouldn't mind. But if i want high quality products, i prefer the small vendors etc. or I just go to the whole Foods