Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Land, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part two in our series on the concept of authenticity.
Speaker 3: If you haven't heard part one yet, you probably want
Speaker 3: to go back and check that one out first. But
Speaker 3: in brief last time, we explored a lot of the
Speaker 3: different overlapping cultural understandings of authenticity, and we also looked
Speaker 3: at a psychology paper that tested how well people were
Speaker 3: able to assess authenticity in others, and the conclusion was that,
Speaker 3: at least within the scenario tested, which was classroom interactions,
Speaker 3: we are not nearly as good as we think we
Speaker 3: are at judging whether other people are really being themselves
Speaker 3: or whether they are really being authentic. Now, maybe that
Speaker 3: finding wouldn't be reproduced in other scenario or using other
Speaker 3: measures of authenticity, because, if you recall from last time,
Speaker 3: the measure in that study was comparing other evaluations of
Speaker 3: authenticity with self evaluation. So you have people say themselves like,
Speaker 3: do you feel like you can be yourself around people?
Speaker 3: Do your actions reflect your inner thoughts and feelings? Things
Speaker 3: like that and then have other people judge that same person,
Speaker 3: you know, how authentic do you think they're being. But
Speaker 3: if it's generally true that we're worse at detecting authenticity
Speaker 3: than we think we are, that has profound implications on
Speaker 3: everyday life, because we make implicit and explicit judgments about
Speaker 3: authenticity all the time, and we use these judgments to
Speaker 3: manage our relationships, to decide who we like and who
Speaker 3: we trust. But also those judgments are they're sort of
Speaker 3: conceptually contagious throughout the mind, and we end up using
Speaker 3: assessments of authenticity not just for people, but to determine
Speaker 3: our feelings about inanimate objects and our feelings in domains
Speaker 3: outside of personal relationships. And one of the big examples
Speaker 3: that comes to mind for me is the domain of
Speaker 3: art and esthetics. We promised last time we'd be getting
Speaker 3: artsy fartsy today, so here we.
Speaker 2: Are, and you know, we might throw in a few
Speaker 2: references to less artsy creations, some of the things we've
Speaker 2: talked about on Weird House Cinema before, for example, But yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about authenticity in the arts.
Speaker 3: I guess some of this will come down to where
Speaker 3: you draw the line between art and entertainment, or if
Speaker 3: you draw a line at all. But one area in
Speaker 3: which I think people often seem especially concerned with authenticity
Speaker 3: in artistic expression is music. There's actually a book chapter
Speaker 3: about psychological studies of authenticity from two thousand and six
Speaker 3: that I've been reading through. This was a chapter by
Speaker 3: professors Michael H. Kernis and Brian M. Goldman, and I
Speaker 3: actually am only mentioning it because it uses an epigraph
Speaker 3: that really struck me. It's a quote from the singer
Speaker 3: songwriter Leonard Cohen, and the lyric goes, if by chance
Speaker 3: I wake at night and I ask you who I am? Oh,
Speaker 3: take me to the slaughterhouse and I will wait there
Speaker 3: with the lamb. So this is a lyric from the
Speaker 3: Leonard Cohen song Stories of the Street, which is a
Speaker 3: track on his nineteen sixty seven album Songs of Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 3: Now I think the authors selected it as an epigraph
Speaker 3: for this chapter because it invokes the idea of personal authenticity.
Speaker 3: There's that line, if by chance I wake at night
Speaker 3: and I ask you who I am? It implies a
Speaker 3: crisis of authenticity, wondering who am I? Who is the
Speaker 3: real me? And the second half is the resolution of
Speaker 3: that conditional If take me to the slaughter house and
Speaker 3: I will wait there with the lamb. I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what that means, and I would resist saying that
Speaker 3: it decodes to a sentiment that can be plainly expressed, because,
Speaker 3: like a lot of good poetry, it sort of seems
Speaker 3: to express an idea or a feeling that is real
Speaker 3: but is difficult to say directly. Whatever it means. It
Speaker 3: maybe suggests something about vulnerability, maybe something about the desire
Speaker 3: to protect or to be protected, and whatever it means,
Speaker 3: I found it really striking. So I was interested in
Speaker 3: this quote because it's it's a song lyric that not
Speaker 3: only concerns authenticity with the line about I ask you
Speaker 3: who I am, but in my personal opinion, it illustrates
Speaker 3: the quality of authenticity and music and rob you might
Speaker 3: feel differently, you the listener might feel differently. If so,
Speaker 3: that's fine. We all have our unique responses to art.
Speaker 3: But whatever authenticity means in lyrics and musical performance, it
Speaker 3: feels present to me here. And I think at least
Speaker 3: part of what authenticity means in music and lyrics is
Speaker 3: that it feels like the words and the melody express
Speaker 3: a real genuine feeling in artist, and that these words
Speaker 3: are not carelessly selected, but instead are are carefully meaningfully
Speaker 3: picked because they are the words that best point to
Speaker 3: that sort of dark, ambiguous, inexpressible feeling underneath.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and am and lamb rhyme with each other. And
Speaker 2: that's that's undeniable master at work here.
Speaker 3: I mean, actually, I think there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 3: stuff one could get into about how structural constraints like
Speaker 3: meter and rhyme interact with with the expression of ideas.
Speaker 3: Like if they sort of like force you to choose
Speaker 3: different words, then you might otherwise, and yet those words
Speaker 3: must in order for the poem or the song to
Speaker 3: be good still be true. What does that do to
Speaker 3: the way your mind works?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I like it. You know, it works better
Speaker 2: that we're using the lamb instead of some other animal
Speaker 2: that you might take to a slaughterhouse, because the lamb
Speaker 2: also brings in its own symbolism and its own language.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I like it. I like the line. I'm
Speaker 2: not familiar with the song all that much, but I
Speaker 2: like the lyric.
Speaker 3: I think I've read that it was Cohen talking about
Speaker 3: an experience where he went by himself to Cuba, and
Speaker 3: at some point I think he says that he was
Speaker 3: like at the embassy, and they send somebody to talk
Speaker 3: to him, and they say that his mother is worried
Speaker 3: about him or something. Anyway, So I mentioned that because
Speaker 3: to me, this does illustrate that quality of authenticity and music.
Speaker 3: And by contrast, I don't want to single out any
Speaker 3: particular song or artists to like hate on as the
Speaker 3: Encyclopedia entry for fake, but I think we can all
Speaker 3: probably think of a piece of music we've heard and
Speaker 3: found to have a quality of apparent insincerity which makes
Speaker 3: the work unpleasant and uninteresting to us. Fill in with
Speaker 3: your own examples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll get into some examples, not of like outright
Speaker 2: like fakery or anything here in a bit, But I
Speaker 2: think that some of the most interesting examples are examples
Speaker 2: that are kind of in that middle ground where either
Speaker 2: it is divided people about the artist's potential sincerity and authenticity,
Speaker 2: or it has been something that you know that won
Speaker 2: individually and subjectively wrestles with like do I like this,
Speaker 2: Do I believe this artist? Other people seem to believe them,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure I do, And so.
Speaker 3: Forth, yeah, yeah, Well that's interesting that you know audiences
Speaker 3: can be divided in that way, because I mean, it's
Speaker 3: a truism that everybody has their own subjective reaction to art.
Speaker 3: But I think you can also see some very stark
Speaker 3: trends in the way people relate, especially to authenticity and music,
Speaker 3: because I would say for some of us, the relationship
Speaker 3: between musical expression and authenticity maybe only enters the mind
Speaker 3: every now and then, maybe when we hear something we
Speaker 3: find especially moving and sincere seeming or especially false. But
Speaker 3: for other people, it's like a clear, ever present, front
Speaker 3: of mind element of our taste in music, maybe even
Speaker 3: the single most important factor. And I'm curious, like what
Speaker 3: makes that difference and in the people for whom it
Speaker 3: is front of mind in their esthetics.
Speaker 2: Why Speaking of Leonard Cohen, your inclusion of this quote
Speaker 2: kind of send me down a rabbit hole of reading
Speaker 2: some other tidbits from interviews with Leonard Cohen and sort
Speaker 2: of refreshing myself about his career. But I ran across
Speaker 2: this one quote from an Alan Twigg interview with Cohen,
Speaker 2: and I want to read it here. Cohen says, quote,
Speaker 2: the question is who am I? So we invent a
Speaker 2: self a personality, We sustain it, we create rules for it.
Speaker 2: When you stop asking those questions in those moments of grace.
Speaker 2: As soon as the question is not asked and the
Speaker 2: dilemma is dissolved or abandoned, then the true self or
Speaker 2: absolute self rushes in. That's our real nourishment.
Speaker 3: That's interesting in that it connects to what you were
Speaker 3: saying in the last episode about the more you sort
Speaker 3: of examine your own authenticity, the harder it can be
Speaker 3: to let it flow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 2: if I'm questioning the authenticity of a work of music
Speaker 2: or a film or whatever kind of art I'm engaging with,
Speaker 2: like I'm probably not that engaged with the art, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm caught up in a bunch of other nonsense about
Speaker 2: the art, and I'm certainly not experiencing it in the
Speaker 2: way that the artist probably intended me to do, unless,
Speaker 2: of course, that is the artist's intent, that they are
Speaker 2: challenging authenticity or something with that effect.
Speaker 3: That's a really good point. It's like, when we do
Speaker 3: really get into evaluating whether something is authentic or not,
Speaker 3: it does make you have to like step back from
Speaker 3: the experience of it. I assume a desire for perceived
Speaker 3: authenticity in the expression of musical artists is to some
Speaker 3: degree always present. But I was thinking about how it
Speaker 3: seemed especially important to me when I was a teenager, Like,
Speaker 3: when I was a teenager, the worst thing a musical
Speaker 3: artist could be was fake, contrived pandering. What did this
Speaker 3: mean to me? I don't know exactly. I mean, I
Speaker 3: could think of specific artists like very I don't know,
Speaker 3: like very commercial rock bands or something that I would
Speaker 3: think of as very fake and seemingly and sincere. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know. I don't know on what basis I was
Speaker 3: deciding that, But I don't feel the same urge to
Speaker 3: like seek raw authenticity and root out fakeness and music
Speaker 3: that I once did, though obviously I still don't like
Speaker 3: feeling like an artist is treating me with contempt. But like,
Speaker 3: why is it that, as I think, maybe I'm not
Speaker 3: a loane in this, Like, why is it that as
Speaker 3: a teenager you're especially tuned into this meta media quality
Speaker 3: of authenticity as opposed to more just sort of like
Speaker 3: in the work or in the song qualities of a
Speaker 3: piece of art.
Speaker 2: That's interesting and I think we might get into some
Speaker 2: of that in a bit, because it makes me think
Speaker 2: of like the hyper social aspects of the teenager brain,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, that we've touched on before on the show. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I suppose it's kind of a weird area to get
Speaker 2: into because, you know, thinking again about artists at particular
Speaker 2: times in their careers where they seem to divide their audience.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how two different musical artists can take on
Speaker 2: a persona to be received in wildly and it can
Speaker 2: be received in wildly different ways. And the way they're
Speaker 2: received for these persona personas or changes in their style
Speaker 2: may also differ over time. So I think one of
Speaker 2: the like the main examples that comes to mind is
Speaker 2: the whole And this is not something certainly I was
Speaker 2: not around to experience this in real time, but you
Speaker 2: read about it and hear about it in retrospectives. But
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan going electric in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 3: People allegedly shouting Judas at him. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that really happened, but that's what I recall reading about it. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: he had recorded like acoustic folk albums and then it
Speaker 3: suddenly was playing with an electric guitar in a full band,
Speaker 3: and some people didn't like that. They saw that not
Speaker 3: just as a change in style that well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: artists go through different kind of periods. It was like
Speaker 3: that was a betrayal. He was no longer what I
Speaker 3: signed up for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it can feel kind of silly looking
Speaker 2: back on it, because from our point of view, like
Speaker 2: we know everything that came after that shift, like you know,
Speaker 2: put out a lot of great material, great albums, and
Speaker 2: other changes in style and explorations of different styles and ideas.
Speaker 2: But he remained Bob Dylan throughout all of it. And
Speaker 2: you know, some of it is maybe not everybody's favorite,
Speaker 2: but some of it's pretty great.
Speaker 3: I certainly think so.
Speaker 2: Now of course that in that example, you have like
Speaker 2: a shift in sound that I think would largely be reflected.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like he would he would okay,
Speaker 2: he would say, all right, after one album, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: put the guitar away. But you do have other artists
Speaker 2: who have kind of like a single album that seems
Speaker 2: to be an outlier. It seems to be like an
Speaker 2: exploration of something different than is maybe not well received
Speaker 2: by fans. And I think one example that came to
Speaker 2: mind on this front is Neil Young's nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: album Trance.
Speaker 3: This was actually within a stretch of Neil Young albums
Speaker 3: where he was like changing genre every album. So during
Speaker 3: this period, you know, Neil Young, he had sort of
Speaker 3: he had worked in folk, he had worked also in
Speaker 3: heavy electric rock. He'd done both. But he in the
Speaker 3: eighties he released a country album, a blues album with
Speaker 3: like Horns, a rockabilly album called Everybody's Rockin', and then
Speaker 3: this I'm not necessarily saying them in the correct order,
Speaker 3: but then also this electronic album, which is probably the
Speaker 3: weirdest of all of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has he uses a robotic voice on some
Speaker 2: of these tracks, and I've read that this was not
Speaker 2: well received at the time by some fans, but I
Speaker 2: don't know. I like some of the roboty songs on
Speaker 2: this particular album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to be in the right mindset to
Speaker 3: receive it, especially with songs like computer Cowboy. But but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there's stuff to appreciate there.
Speaker 2: Now a couple of examples that I want to bring up.
Speaker 2: These are ones that definitely occurred during my teenage years,
Speaker 2: so you know, getting into that idea of being like
Speaker 2: hypersensitive to perceived inauthenticity. So one that comes to mind
Speaker 2: is David Bowie exploring a more experimental industrial sound on
Speaker 2: his album Outside in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: So were there people who were like that, there is
Speaker 3: a real David Bowie and this is not it. It is my.
Speaker 2: Understanding that, like at the time, some of the older
Speaker 2: David Bowie fans were not crazy about it, and their
Speaker 2: line of thought was like, well, I don't want to
Speaker 2: go see him in a concert if he's going to
Speaker 2: be doing this MTV material, you know, It's like I
Speaker 2: want to hear the hits, you know, which I guess
Speaker 2: is always the case with artists putting out new material
Speaker 2: and trying new things. But yeah, this was more of
Speaker 2: an industrial sound. It was like I think right after
Speaker 2: this album, he ends up touring with Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker 2: So at the time, I like, I bought the album
Speaker 2: like I did as the television commanded me, and I liked,
Speaker 2: And I guess I still I don't really listen to
Speaker 2: this album anymore, but I remember it having some tracks
Speaker 2: that I dug. But at the same time, like some
Speaker 2: of that dialogue was in my head about I wasn't
Speaker 2: thinking of it in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity or
Speaker 2: fakery even or even really getting deep into like David
Speaker 2: Bowie's personas, but it was. But on some level I
Speaker 2: was wondering, like, is this is this something he's doing
Speaker 2: just to remain popular or is this his heart? You know,
Speaker 2: is his Is he legitimately exploring new sounds and trying
Speaker 2: new things? And I think it's it's my understanding now
Speaker 2: it is the latter. Like he he is an artist
Speaker 2: that was continually reinventing himself and trying new things and
Speaker 2: this was just a phase of that. And you know,
Speaker 2: he stuck with this sound for I think another album
Speaker 2: and then he tried other things.
Speaker 3: That is interesting. So I have no real familiarity with
Speaker 3: Bowie's nineties output, so I don't really know anything about this,
Speaker 3: but yeah, that an artist as a chameleon like as
Speaker 3: as David Bowie. And you know, with all this history
Speaker 3: of playing these different explicitly different characters, you know, with
Speaker 3: different with names named characters, uh, and engaging in these
Speaker 3: different styles, that there would it's he would hit some
Speaker 3: point that people would say, Okay, now this one is
Speaker 3: not for real, that's fake. Yeah, and that that would
Speaker 3: have to suggest something about like the broader the way
Speaker 3: that that genre or what he's doing in it is
Speaker 3: received in the broader marketplace, like what the marketplace thought
Speaker 3: about industrial music or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Because another example that comes to mind, and
Speaker 2: this is not a major moment in music history or anything,
Speaker 2: but it's the one that stood out to me because
Speaker 2: again I was a teenager at the time, and that
Speaker 2: was that the band Danzig suddenly went industrial in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six as well, So that's what a year after
Speaker 2: outside and that one I remember as being a lot
Speaker 2: more jarring, and certainly, looking back on it like it is,
Speaker 2: it is a is a rather darch departure from the
Speaker 2: previous material and seems like maybe it's a little less authentic.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm sure Danzig fans will disagree or
Speaker 2: agree on this. I have no point of reference here,
Speaker 2: but you know, this kind of thing keeps happening, like
Speaker 2: the most recent one, and I am not super well
Speaker 2: informed on all the ins and outs of this story,
Speaker 2: but you know, it made huge headlines that Beyonce was
Speaker 2: going to put out a country album, and it seems
Speaker 2: like that probably stirred up some of the same discussions,
Speaker 2: like Beyonce do a country album? Can someone who has
Speaker 2: not done country music albums before do a country album?
Speaker 2: Of course they can. We just ran across some other
Speaker 2: examples of people doing the same thing. But yeah, anytime
Speaker 2: an artist shifts and tries something new, takes on a
Speaker 2: new persona, etc. It raises these questions.
Speaker 3: I don't really know anything about this example either, except
Speaker 3: I saw some kind of headline about her maybe claiming
Speaker 3: that it was not actually a country album.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, but you know, artists engage in
Speaker 2: the sort of shift all the time. And it also
Speaker 2: it reminds me a bit of our discussion about recipes
Speaker 2: in the past. You know, whatever we now think of
Speaker 2: as the standard recipe was at some point a shift.
Speaker 2: And likewise, I mean, speaking of industrial music, one of
Speaker 2: the big industrial mainstays out there has has has always
Speaker 2: been Ministry. Ministry started out as a synthpop group. If
Speaker 2: you go back to their first album, it is it's
Speaker 2: very I mean, I'm you know, you can still you
Speaker 2: can still feel the Ministry in the album, but it's
Speaker 2: a different sound entirely. And that was just you know,
Speaker 2: part of this particular group's evolution, and you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's inauthentic, it's just where they were at
Speaker 2: that point in time. But I get I guess in general,
Speaker 2: I'm willing to give most artists the benefit of the
Speaker 2: doubt on these shifts and changes, though I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are some examples that are that are maybe a little
Speaker 2: more heavily slanted in the direction of inauthenticity. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's not as fun to discuss those and throw a
Speaker 2: lot of criticism at bands and performers for trying new things. However,
Speaker 2: there was that one Garth Brooks album, as I remember,
Speaker 2: where he took on a different persona and did non
Speaker 2: country music Chris Gaines, Chris Gaines. Yeah, this was not
Speaker 2: well received, as I recall, was it not? I don't
Speaker 2: think it was. I don't think he came back to
Speaker 2: the persona either. But again, this is an area that
Speaker 2: I know even less about. So Garth brook fans, you know,
Speaker 2: write in I guess and we'll we can just we
Speaker 2: can hash this out.
Speaker 3: How surprised are people going to be when they find
Speaker 3: out that Garth Brooks is actually also one of the
Speaker 3: guys in slip Knot?
Speaker 2: That's right? They have nas son you'd never know.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to briefly come back to the question
Speaker 3: of why it is that music might feel like, of
Speaker 3: all the genres of art out there, why music would
Speaker 3: be especially subject to authenticity concern and is like, why,
Speaker 3: you know, teenagers are really concerned about whether this singer
Speaker 3: singer songwriter is authentic as opposed to I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know, like painters or something. And I obviously there
Speaker 3: could be a lot of explanations here, but I kind
Speaker 3: of wonder if it has to do with the fact
Speaker 3: that music is the art form most likely to be
Speaker 3: experienced in an involuntary way. So, for example, you will rarely,
Speaker 3: if ever, be forced to look at a painting or
Speaker 3: watch a film. There you know, there might be social
Speaker 3: pressure to go see a movie with your friends that
Speaker 3: you're not really interested in, or something like that some
Speaker 3: weird circumstance, but generally you can look at what you want,
Speaker 3: and if you don't like what you're looking at, you can,
Speaker 3: like you know, direct your attention elsewhere or even shut
Speaker 3: your eyes, unless you have the aid of some kind
Speaker 3: of technology like you know, headphones or something, which are
Speaker 3: not appropriate to use in many say social or work scenarios.
Speaker 3: You cannot practically shut your ears off to music the
Speaker 3: way that you can shut your eyes or avert your
Speaker 3: eyes from a painting. And if music is audible in
Speaker 3: the place where you are, you're gonna hear it. Technically,
Speaker 3: I guess this would be true of any sound based
Speaker 3: art form because of the nature of our bodies. But
Speaker 3: generally that's going to mean music. So music is like
Speaker 3: especially difficult to tune out if we don't like it,
Speaker 3: And I wonder if that makes us especially sensitive to
Speaker 3: what we would think of as artistic deficiencies in it.
Speaker 3: And then on top of that, a lot of music
Speaker 3: has a linguistic element, unlike a lot of other art forms.
Speaker 3: Because there are words in most popular music, there is
Speaker 3: increased opportunity to scrutinize what a song is saying and
Speaker 3: evaluate it for sincerity or truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, though again, just because the song is annoying
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's not authentic, righty, Like, I am not
Speaker 2: a huge you know, no judgment if you're a fan
Speaker 2: of this song, but you know the the smash Mouth song.
Speaker 3: What is the smash Done All Star?
Speaker 2: I mean the All Star that that song. I'm not
Speaker 2: a fan but I do get it earwormed in my
Speaker 2: head every now and then, and it's it's annoying. But
Speaker 2: I don't think I would argue that that band was
Speaker 2: being inauthentic in crafting and performing this track, But I
Speaker 2: just it was certainly not my thing. I think another
Speaker 2: thing about to keep in mind about all this, too
Speaker 2: is we have to we have to bear in mind
Speaker 2: media consumption. So like when I think back on the
Speaker 2: music that I was exposed to in high school, like
Speaker 2: most of it was MTV related content, and it's because
Speaker 2: the TV was always on and MTV was one of
Speaker 2: the channels that you could you would frequently go to,
Speaker 2: and like, not watching the TV just did not feel
Speaker 2: like an option. It was just, you know, it was
Speaker 2: like the weather, it was like the ocean. You just
Speaker 2: you engaged with it. It was just part of your environment.
Speaker 2: And I think it is like that to varying degrees
Speaker 2: for a lot of folks today. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: people who still consume television like that, or even if
Speaker 2: you're not watching television, perhaps you're consuming various advertisements in
Speaker 2: the same way. So some of these songs or elements,
Speaker 2: certainly there there have been more than a few commercials
Speaker 2: that have the air of inauthenticity about them, and you
Speaker 2: may be exposed to those over and over again.
Speaker 3: Okay, Rob, I think it is time we must bring
Speaker 3: Orson Wells into the picture.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, getting even more into this idea of
Speaker 2: of fakeness, of inauthicity to the point where it is
Speaker 2: an outright fake, which is not something we've really been
Speaker 2: leveling at any of these artists we've discussed here, because
Speaker 2: you know, this is more of a you could if
Speaker 2: you were feeling particularly harsh, you might say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this this change, this was fake. This album was fake.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't wasn't really fake. It was an actual fraud.
Speaker 2: But yeah, what we're going to talk about next does
Speaker 2: get into that territory. So, knowing that we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about authenticity in preparation for these episodes, I
Speaker 2: decided to finally check out Orson Wells nineteen seventy three
Speaker 2: film f for Fake, a film that is sometimes described
Speaker 2: as a docudrama, other times a film essay, And I
Speaker 2: guess I feel like maybe film essay is a little
Speaker 2: more appropriate. It is because it's not just like a
Speaker 2: straight up documentary.
Speaker 3: No, I would say film essay is perfect because it
Speaker 3: is a combination performance and a meditation on themes with
Speaker 3: the aid of visuals and sound, and also a documenting
Speaker 3: of certain real life characters and events.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also kind of like being cornered by
Speaker 2: Orson Wells, probably like in a bar or a restaurant,
Speaker 2: and he's just talking at you for a long time,
Speaker 2: and it's it's and it's remarkable, and he's very charismatic,
Speaker 2: and you are glad that you have been cornered by
Speaker 2: such an interesting man.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ah, the French known to do magic tricks, and
Speaker 3: he shows you some.
Speaker 2: I was looking up a little bit about how this
Speaker 2: film was received, and Roger Ebert in his review described
Speaker 2: it as a film spun out of next to nothing,
Speaker 2: and he included this quote, Orson Wells can make better
Speaker 2: movies than most directors with one hand tied behind his back.
Speaker 2: His problem, of course, is that for thirty five years
Speaker 2: the hand has remained tied.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm not as enough as an
Speaker 2: expert on Wells's film of his filmography to really comment
Speaker 2: on that, but esteem for this particular film has grown
Speaker 2: quite a bit since its initial release, where I think
Speaker 2: it was kind of polarizing. Some people thought it was brilliant,
Speaker 2: others thought it was incomprehensible. Ebert gave it three stars
Speaker 2: in seventy seven.
Speaker 3: It's been a long time since I've seen it, but
Speaker 3: I remember quite liking it. My friend Ben showed it
Speaker 3: to me years and years ago, and yeah, I was
Speaker 3: my attention was wrapped.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, in short, it's a Wells hosted essentially, we'll say,
Speaker 2: documentary just for ease of conversation here about famed and
Speaker 2: art forger Elmir de Lori, which cites and features interviews
Speaker 2: with a man who wrote a book about Elmir, Clifford Irving,
Speaker 2: a man who, in turn, after his interview segments were
Speaker 2: shot for this documentary, but prior to the completion of
Speaker 2: the film, turned out to have allegedly written a hoax
Speaker 2: biography of Howard Hughes.
Speaker 3: This was a hoax autobiography, right, like.
Speaker 2: It was Yeslay's autobiography.
Speaker 3: Yes, claiming to be by Howard Hughes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, based on his his handwriting and so forth. You know,
Speaker 2: a huge, huge scandal. So these are the initial two
Speaker 2: fingers of the cat's cradle that Wells constructs from here
Speaker 2: on out. In this in this film on fakery, on authenticity,
Speaker 2: and he also freely injects his own story into all
Speaker 2: of the citing early exaggerations of his own credentials that
Speaker 2: allowed him to rise to the top in show business,
Speaker 2: I think, he adds, and I've been plummeting ever since.
Speaker 2: He also brings up the nineteen thirty eight War of
Speaker 2: the World old radio fiasco, which, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: apparently convinced a fair number of people that it was
Speaker 2: actually happening. And he goes on to indulge in some
Speaker 2: overt forgery in at least the last portion of the film,
Speaker 2: and then points out the forgery and invites us all
Speaker 2: to think about it.
Speaker 3: So sort of like we've been doing in this series,
Speaker 3: he invites you to think about what is authenticity? We
Speaker 3: use this concept, but do we understand what it means?
Speaker 3: What is real? And what is fake? And why do
Speaker 3: we care?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Like, what's the difference between a masterpiece and a
Speaker 2: masterful fake? Is almost any story indeed some kind of
Speaker 2: a lie, a lie in Picasso's words, as sided by Wells,
Speaker 2: Here is something that makes us realize the truth? Is
Speaker 2: that true? That is a dependable statement? Can an authentic artist,
Speaker 2: create a fake, can a hoax? Or create where I
Speaker 2: suppose recreate a masterpiece? You know, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of ins and outs to this when you start swirling
Speaker 2: it around in you're negrony that was his favorite tree
Speaker 2: by the way. Oh yeah, so these are these are
Speaker 2: not really questions meant to be conclusively answered, And indeed,
Speaker 2: I think we'll find that it all depends very largely
Speaker 2: on the context of an individual example. So, for instance,
Speaker 2: what sort of lie is is a given story based
Speaker 2: upon Is it based on a malicious lie, a hateful lie,
Speaker 2: a well meaning lie, a mere exaggeration or dramatization. There's
Speaker 2: so much room for variation here, and you still encounter
Speaker 2: various examples in just sort of like popular discourse about
Speaker 2: about individuals, about performances, about you know, performance works, where
Speaker 2: someone will say was this authentic? Is this was part
Speaker 2: of this made up? And so forth.
Speaker 3: I think the difference between fiction and a lie is
Speaker 3: the knowing consent of the audience in advance, and in
Speaker 3: most cases it's interesting that this is established through entirely
Speaker 3: meta textual means, Like you can have a printed novel
Speaker 3: in which no part of the text makes clear that
Speaker 3: the events described did not actually happen, and yet somehow
Speaker 3: we all still know. It's like from surrounding clues in
Speaker 3: the culture, like what section of the bookstore or library
Speaker 3: you'd find the book in, how other people talk about
Speaker 3: the book, how it's advertised, and so forth. Meanwhile, if
Speaker 3: you read something that you understand to be a true
Speaker 3: account of events that happened in reality, say an autobiography
Speaker 3: of Howard Hughes or something, and then you discover that
Speaker 3: the events described are fictional, or that the author is
Speaker 3: not who they claim to be, I think most of
Speaker 3: us would feel very frustrated and betrayed by this, unless,
Speaker 3: that is, we know in advance that we're going to
Speaker 3: be told lies. And here I think back to an
Speaker 3: example that's come up on the podcast a number of
Speaker 3: times in the past year or so. I'm very interested
Speaker 3: in the autobiography of the sixteenth century Italian sculptor Benvenudo Cellini.
Speaker 3: We've told a number of stories about him. We talked
Speaker 3: about him in the eisode about Diamonds, where we were
Speaker 3: talking about his claims that someone tried to poison him
Speaker 3: with a diamond in his food. And so, you know, Chillini,
Speaker 3: like he writes this autobiography, which purports to be the
Speaker 3: true story of his life, and yet I am certain
Speaker 3: that it contains lots of exaggerations and even outright lies,
Speaker 3: and yet I'm still interested in reading it. And I
Speaker 3: think it's that. I think it's that I'm okay with that,
Speaker 3: because I already know that we don't want to find
Speaker 3: out after reading something that what we read isn't true.
Speaker 3: We'd like to know beforehand, Like going into a lie
Speaker 3: knowing in advance feels like a whimsical adventure. But finding
Speaker 3: out you've been told a lie after you believed it
Speaker 3: makes you feel like a fool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And and of course, over the course of time,
Speaker 2: something that is a fraud, that is fooling people, it
Speaker 2: can't eventually find new life after the fact of someone's like,
Speaker 2: we know this is not a fraud now, and now
Speaker 2: perhaps we can appreciate it as a work of fiction.
Speaker 2: But that transition is not guaranteed and certainly doesn't occur
Speaker 2: every time. But in this discussion of like, the difference
Speaker 2: between fiction and lies, between fantasy and lies reminds me
Speaker 2: of our discussions in the Weird House episode on the
Speaker 2: movie The Never Ending Story based on Michael DA's novel,
Speaker 2: and in the novel especially indicates into the idea of
Speaker 2: the denizens of Fantasia or Fantastica, being creatures of pure
Speaker 2: fantasy that have been dreamed into existence by humans. But
Speaker 2: if they travel through then nothing, they are not destroyed.
Speaker 2: They are reborn in our world, but they are reborn
Speaker 2: as lies. So that is the way he sort of
Speaker 2: imagined the relationship between lies and fantasy, between lies and
Speaker 2: fiction is that the lie is kind of the same energy,
Speaker 2: but it is twisted into this form that does not
Speaker 2: give us hope, does not give us escape. It takes
Speaker 2: this cruel form that is a part of the overtly
Speaker 2: unimaginative and cruel mundane world. In citing a book like
Speaker 2: The Neverending Store, of course, we're also admitting that, yeah,
Speaker 2: that we're dealing with highly subjective territory here. Now, one
Speaker 2: point that is hit upon in f for Fake is
Speaker 2: that between the masterful fraud and the masterpiece, it's a
Speaker 2: belief in authenticity that makes all the difference monetarily, certainly,
Speaker 2: and Wells dwells on this somewhat, but also in terms
Speaker 2: of esteem that is given to a particular art work
Speaker 2: authenticity can therefore be this kind of illusion. It's only
Speaker 2: as real as our belief in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, A belief in the power of authenticity in a
Speaker 3: work of art is kind of like belief in the
Speaker 3: value of money, Like it is very real if people
Speaker 3: believe in it, and thus, like a whole culture can
Speaker 3: function on top of it. But if people don't believe
Speaker 3: money is valuable, then it ceases being useful. And I
Speaker 3: think you could say that the same is true in
Speaker 3: some ways about qualities of art.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And that's one of the reasons it can
Speaker 2: be so hurtful and it can be so disappointing to
Speaker 2: find out that something that you were invested in, that
Speaker 2: you found beautiful, that you had this reaction too, is
Speaker 2: in fact not one hundred percent of what you thought
Speaker 2: it was. And there are variations on that theme, you know,
Speaker 2: throughout our appreciation of all sorts of works of art
Speaker 2: and music and so forth. Yeah, now, speaking of this,
Speaker 2: there are it is worth knowing there are no worthy
Speaker 2: cases of works and art collections that turned out to
Speaker 2: be fakes. These still pop up. But there's also the reverse.
Speaker 2: There are works previously judged to be fakes, but then
Speaker 2: upon closer scrutiny or you know, new information or someone
Speaker 2: else takes a look at them, they turn out to
Speaker 2: be authentic. So it's interesting how, at least at times
Speaker 2: this can go back and forth.
Speaker 3: Was this the case with da Vinci's Lady with Ermine?
Speaker 3: Feel like I was reading about that not too long ago,
Speaker 3: that or at least for a while, there were questions
Speaker 3: about who had really painted it or was it a
Speaker 3: true da Vinci? But I think now it is largely
Speaker 3: thought to be.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure because I wasn't reading about that particular
Speaker 2: painting in in reference to this, but there there have
Speaker 2: been various works like that have had this story where
Speaker 2: it's dismissed as a fake, might be a very good fake,
Speaker 2: but then we come back and we realized that that
Speaker 2: it's not the case. And then it's also worth noting
Speaker 2: that I think in different artistic traditions there just there's
Speaker 2: a different relationship with copying master works from the past,
Speaker 2: you know, to the extent that they may be copied
Speaker 2: as especially as a learning method for you, for artists
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Well, that actually connects to something that I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about today with respect to authenticity in art. I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about a famous essay in the history
Speaker 3: of art criticism by the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin
Speaker 3: called the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Speaker 3: This was published in nineteen thirty five, and the core
Speaker 3: claim of Benjamin's argument in this essay is that what
Speaker 3: he calls mechanical reproduction, meaning techniques such as lithography, photography,
Speaker 3: and film, have fundamentally changed the way art functions within
Speaker 3: culture and changed what art means to us. And this
Speaker 3: essay brings in a lot of different ideas, including religious
Speaker 3: ideas and political ones. Walter Benjamin was a Jewish German
Speaker 3: writing this at the time of the early years of
Speaker 3: the Third Reich, and he was concerned with ways that
Speaker 3: technology could change, how art would be used for propaganda
Speaker 3: and mass manipulation and all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get less into the political implications here,
Speaker 3: so I can't cover everything in this essay, but I
Speaker 3: did want to focus on his ideas related to authenticity.
Speaker 3: So Benjamin talks about how like you were mentioning a
Speaker 3: minute ago, rob art has always been in principle reproducible
Speaker 3: to some extent A work of art made by a person,
Speaker 3: such as a painting or a sculpture, or a performance
Speaker 3: of a song or a dance, can always be imitated
Speaker 3: and copied to some extent by another person. But a
Speaker 3: copy made by mere imitation is never exact. It can
Speaker 3: only strive to be similar by degree, and it is
Speaker 3: difficult and laborious to reproduce. But a big part of
Speaker 3: the training of artists in centuries past used to be
Speaker 3: just trying to reproduce other works of art by artists
Speaker 3: who came before. And one thing I would add is
Speaker 3: that I think a lot of creative people even today
Speaker 3: discover their own original creative genius first by trying to
Speaker 3: copy things, trying to copy things when they're young, and
Speaker 3: in the laborious process of making manual copies of somebody
Speaker 3: else's work of art, because they can't make a perfect copy,
Speaker 3: they end up diverging from from the original out of
Speaker 3: necessity because they can't do it, And then in this
Speaker 3: divergence start expressing their own unique style, which then develops
Speaker 3: into what that person will use when creating original works
Speaker 3: of their own.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And we see this throughout history. Sometimes in
Speaker 2: like rigorous art training in different cultures, but even today,
Speaker 2: like there's the sort of the various examples of this,
Speaker 2: some more current, but some also going back several decades,
Speaker 2: where what begins as an exercise in fan fiction becomes
Speaker 2: either the either the work in and of itself or
Speaker 2: sort of the ideas that spring out of that work
Speaker 2: become a new creation, something that is wholly original to
Speaker 2: a given author or you know, creator of some sort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So, I think imitation is not something that
Speaker 3: you know, should be should be shown within art. It's
Speaker 3: like a necessary part of the development of artistic styles
Speaker 3: and has been, you know, all throughout history. But one
Speaker 3: of the things is that while we've always been able
Speaker 3: to imitate other people's performances and artworks over the centuries,
Speaker 3: gradually higher fidelity techniques for mechanically reproducing works of art
Speaker 3: have come online. So you might originally have things like
Speaker 3: the crude ability to stamp coins in the ancient world,
Speaker 3: you could reproduce a crude design over and over on coins.
Speaker 3: Later you get woodcut printing, lithography, and finally, in the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century, the photograph in the motion picture and early
Speaker 3: in this essay, though this wasn't quite yet true at
Speaker 3: the time, Benjamin quotes the French poet Paul Valerie making
Speaker 3: a striking prediction about the future of image and sound
Speaker 3: reproduction technology. So Valerie says in translation, just as water,
Speaker 3: gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far
Speaker 3: off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort,
Speaker 3: so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images
Speaker 3: which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of
Speaker 3: the hand, hardly more than a sign whoa wow, whoa
Speaker 3: reading that made me sit back because obviously that is
Speaker 3: the world we live in now. I mean, it's we
Speaker 3: don't stop to appreciate it often. But how historically strange
Speaker 3: it is that we can we can summon a photograph
Speaker 3: of almost anything that has been photographed, just by making
Speaker 3: a few gestures with the hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is crazy, like to the point where it
Speaker 2: feels like we are being deprived of something when we
Speaker 2: can't summon such an image, when there is an image
Speaker 2: that is or or you know, artwork that is lost.
Speaker 2: I feel this way just talking about films, like so
Speaker 2: much in the cinematic canon is available to us now
Speaker 2: and in many case is it has been remastered, has
Speaker 2: been made widely available digitally or otherwise. And yet there
Speaker 2: are plenty of exceptions to this, films that haven't been restored,
Speaker 2: that aren't as widely available, or in some cases, films
Speaker 2: that have been lost. And there's something that just kind
Speaker 2: of crazy about that, you know, given how much is
Speaker 2: out there and how much, we have to realize that
Speaker 2: there are works that are just gone to history and
Speaker 2: we'll never be able to bring them back.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So obviously this gets us really thinking about, you know,
Speaker 3: the preservation of art and our access to it and
Speaker 3: what it means when we're not able to see something
Speaker 3: we want. But also it I think should make us
Speaker 3: think about how this kind of access and this kind
Speaker 3: of relationship to images of art, and this would include
Speaker 3: all forms of art. I mean, we're talking especially about
Speaker 3: visual art, but this would include you know, recordings of
Speaker 3: musical performances, recordings of plays, and other types of physical performancesculpture's,
Speaker 3: imagery of sculptures, films. Of course, we should think about
Speaker 3: how this kind of media technologically mediated access to these
Speaker 3: works of art changes the way we experience them and
Speaker 3: what they mean to us. So in this essay, Benjamin
Speaker 3: argues that when we interact with a mechanically reproduced copy
Speaker 3: of a work of art, for example, a photographic print
Speaker 3: of a painting, just so you can imagine something specific
Speaker 3: in your mind, Let's say the Anatomy Lesson by Rembrandt.
Speaker 3: I in fact copied and pasted an image of this
Speaker 3: painting into our outline here, So let that marinate, given
Speaker 3: what we're talking about. But so when we access, say
Speaker 3: a photographic print of a painting like this, we may
Speaker 3: be deceived into thinking that we are looking at the painting,
Speaker 3: but we're not. Even though, but by some measures, you
Speaker 3: could argue that the photograph is a quote perfect reproduction,
Speaker 3: not subject to like the little variations and deficiencies that
Speaker 3: would emerge if a skilled forger tried to paint a
Speaker 3: copy of it by hand. There are still differences. First
Speaker 3: of all, though we think of photographic reproduction as perfect,
Speaker 3: there are things that can't really be captured very well
Speaker 3: in a photo, such as the three dimensionality of some paintings,
Speaker 3: Like some paintings really kind of come off the canvas,
Speaker 3: and you know, the texture of the brushstrokes and the
Speaker 3: pile up of the painting and stuff can cast little
Speaker 3: shadows and so forth. So there's that, there's how the
Speaker 3: painting interacts with light in the room, how it changes
Speaker 3: over time, etc. However, even if we had a machine
Speaker 3: to make three dimensionally chemically exact physical copies of painting,
Speaker 3: Benjamin says, there would still be a difference, because he writes, quote,
Speaker 3: even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art
Speaker 3: is lacking in one element, its presence in time and space,
Speaker 3: it's unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
Speaker 3: This unique existence of the work of art determined the
Speaker 3: history to which it was subject throughout the time of
Speaker 3: its existence. This includes the changes which it may have
Speaker 3: suffered in physical condition over the years, as well as
Speaker 3: the various changes in its ownership. So, by virtue of
Speaker 3: the fact that a physical work of art, the original
Speaker 3: is a single object, it has a history associated with it.
Speaker 3: That is not true of the history of the copies.
Speaker 3: Now we might well think, well, when I look at
Speaker 3: a painting, I don't really care if it's the physically
Speaker 3: original copy. I don't really care whether the painter's hands
Speaker 3: touched it. I don't care who owned this physical artifact
Speaker 3: or where it was kept at what time. That's not
Speaker 3: interesting information to me. And maybe you don't care about that.
Speaker 3: That's something maybe I don't think about all that often
Speaker 3: when I google an image of a painting. But it's
Speaker 3: possible that the fact that we don't care about those
Speaker 3: things is a result of existing in a world where
Speaker 3: our response to art has been conditioned by ubiquitous mechanical reproduction.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting to compare these experiences of encountering art
Speaker 2: in person and seeing it online and so forth. Like
Speaker 2: I can think of examples from my form my on
Speaker 2: my own part, they went both ways. Like, for instance,
Speaker 2: I first saw the paintings of Irving Norman in person,
Speaker 2: and I was really captivated by just like they're they're huge,
Speaker 2: and like it's a in you're you're there, You're in
Speaker 2: this work's presence, and you just kind of feel like
Speaker 2: you're falling into it and you get to sort of
Speaker 2: walk back and forth checking out little details of it.
Speaker 2: And like that's one of the great experiences of seeing
Speaker 2: a work of art in person, is you get to
Speaker 2: have that prolonged multisensory experience with the piece. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you know you shouldn't touch it, don't
Speaker 2: go and lick it or anything, but still like they're
Speaker 2: there are various things going on, like even things not
Speaker 2: directly tied to the painting, like just hearing, like the
Speaker 2: uh you know, the echoes in the museum and so forth.
Speaker 2: And yet there are other works like I had long
Speaker 2: been a fan of this particular work by Arnold Buchlan,
Speaker 2: Isle of the Dead. There are various versions of this
Speaker 2: that he painted. Is very iconic painting that is often
Speaker 2: referenced in film of this strange dark island that is
Speaker 2: not like the symbolism is is harder to piece apart
Speaker 2: like it does it's not just an island. It looks
Speaker 2: like a skull, but it is very captivating and does
Speaker 2: seem to have this grim darkness to it. And yet
Speaker 2: when I saw one of these versions that had been
Speaker 2: painted by the artist in person at the met years back,
Speaker 2: I was initially disappointed because you know, this didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: have a lot to do with the painting itself, but
Speaker 2: like you know, the lighting in the room for some reason,
Speaker 2: it was It's very dark work just in terms of
Speaker 2: just like the black pigment, and the light was catching
Speaker 2: it in a weird way. And I think like there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people moving through that space at the time,
Speaker 2: so I didn't like feel like it was in its
Speaker 2: presence and so forth. So there are all these different
Speaker 2: factors that can influence the way that we encounter a
Speaker 2: piece online versus in person. Though at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, like when you encounter it online, how much
Speaker 2: time are we really giving that work before we click
Speaker 2: on to the next thing, Whereas if you're in the
Speaker 2: room with it, unless you're just speeding through the museum,
Speaker 2: you've got to give it some time. You've got to
Speaker 2: like breathe with it for a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's true, and it's absolutely right
Speaker 3: what you're saying that, like, just little variations in the
Speaker 3: physical experience in the room of seeing an artwork can
Speaker 3: change the way you relate to it. But you know,
Speaker 3: there's another way that I think the mechanical reproduction has
Speaker 3: affected your relationship to these works of art, which is
Speaker 3: that you had seen them before you saw them.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, So the pure impact of Isildah Dead
Speaker 2: was lost on me because I knew exactly what to expect,
Speaker 2: and I was looking for all of these things, and
Speaker 2: I had an experience already in mind, and clearly that
Speaker 2: wasn't the artists intent. That we would go into it
Speaker 2: having seen the image before, before we saw him.
Speaker 3: So here's where we get to the idea of authenticity
Speaker 3: as a concept in art. For Walter Benjamin, a work
Speaker 3: of art possesses an authenticity that is related to its
Speaker 3: physical uniqueness and history as an object or I guess
Speaker 3: also as a performance. So an original painting or sculpture,
Speaker 3: or a certain performance of a piece of music or
Speaker 3: a play are all physically unique objects or situations, and
Speaker 3: in their original form, they have this authenticity that cannot
Speaker 3: be reproduced, that is, their original uniqueness in form. By
Speaker 3: mass producing a photographic or filmed copy of a work
Speaker 3: of art or performance, the technical reproduction is stripped of
Speaker 3: that physical and situational authenticity and then propagated in this
Speaker 3: copied format. And the sum of the qualities that are
Speaker 3: lost when a work of art is mechanically reproduced in
Speaker 3: this way is what Benjamin refers to as the aura
Speaker 3: of the original the aa U r A. The aura
Speaker 3: is all of this stuff about the physically unique original
Speaker 3: that does not get carried over in mechanical copies. So
Speaker 3: one commonly cited example of how the aura affects the
Speaker 3: experience of art is by a change in the location
Speaker 3: of the experience. Benjamin writes, quote the cathedral leaves its
Speaker 3: locale to be received in the studio of a lover
Speaker 3: of art. The cooral production performed in an auditorium or
Speaker 3: in the open air, resounds in the drawing room. And
Speaker 3: you know, this makes me think of something with regard
Speaker 3: to movies. Actually, even though cinema is kind of different,
Speaker 3: because cinema is an art form explicitly designed with canical
Speaker 3: reproduction in mind. You know, you know when you make
Speaker 3: a movie that there are going to be print copies
Speaker 3: of it that will be taken all over and shown
Speaker 3: in theaters all over the land. Nevertheless, I can recall
Speaker 3: interviews I've watched and read with multiple different film directors
Speaker 3: expressing a common sentiment, sentiment which is heartfelt anguish at
Speaker 3: the idea of somebody watching one of their movies on
Speaker 3: a phone. Changing the venue and format of viewing fundamentally
Speaker 3: alters what the director meant for the audience to experience.
Speaker 3: So if you made a movie thinking people would be
Speaker 3: seeing it in a movie theater, and then they're watching
Speaker 3: it on a phone, it may be a faithful reproduction,
Speaker 3: pretty high fidelity visuals and sound of the film you made,
Speaker 3: but it's not what you had in mind. It's a
Speaker 3: different thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A number of directors have said this
Speaker 2: in recent years, and and you also hear fans say this.
Speaker 2: I mean I've said this as well, Like I come
Speaker 2: back from seeing Dune Part two and I say, this
Speaker 2: is a movie you need to see on the big screen.
Speaker 2: Now do I think it should only be seen on
Speaker 2: the big screen. No, I'm going to watch it on
Speaker 2: a smaller screen at some point. That's probably gonna be
Speaker 2: my second viewing. I might even watch parts of it
Speaker 2: on a phone. And that's my choice, you know. So
Speaker 2: I think we sometimes it can get a little overblown
Speaker 2: and folks can get a little carried away with it.
Speaker 2: But I do think, yeah, there. We've talked about this
Speaker 2: in reference to particular films on Weird House before, for instance,
Speaker 2: when we talked about Pirana Mandir, the the Indian horror movie,
Speaker 2: and we talked about like the intended not only the
Speaker 2: intended scope of the picture, but sort of like the
Speaker 2: intended viewing experience, that this was not something they didn't
Speaker 2: make this film thinking about, you know, two podcasters watching
Speaker 2: it by themselves in their individual households, you know, on
Speaker 2: their laptop around their TV. No, this is something lots
Speaker 2: of people were going to go to a movie theater
Speaker 2: to enjoy together, find different things to enjoy in the
Speaker 2: film depending on how old they were and so forth,
Speaker 2: and what their tastes were, and it was going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, like kind of a party, according to what
Speaker 2: I read about this film's original release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true that some films are
Speaker 3: made with a large viewing audience all gathered together and
Speaker 3: experiencing it at the same time in mind. But at
Speaker 3: least with the example of film, you could say that
Speaker 3: film is something that is made with the understanding initially
Speaker 3: that it's going to be it's going to be copied
Speaker 3: and viewed in different contexts and stuff. You know that
Speaker 3: the creators have to understand that will happen over time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You got to wonder with like some of these older
Speaker 3: works of art, like what the creator might have imagined
Speaker 3: or not even just what the creator imagined, just like
Speaker 3: whether it was in the creator's mind or not. The changes,
Speaker 3: the kind of unexpected changes that come in how people
Speaker 3: experience these works of art. So Benjamin says that as
Speaker 3: a result of the necessary stripping of aura and authenticity
Speaker 3: from a work of art in the process of mechanical reproduction.
Speaker 3: You know, it not only affects how that copy of
Speaker 3: the art is experienced directly, like changes our relationship to
Speaker 3: art in general. It changes how we see what art is.
Speaker 3: So a culture of mechanical reproduction sort of undermines the
Speaker 3: authority and spiritual power of a work of art by,
Speaker 3: in Benjamin's words, detaching it from tradition. And he develops
Speaker 3: this idea of art traditions as historically intertwined with religious traditions.
Speaker 3: For example, he talks about how a lot of art
Speaker 3: emerged in deep history from religious practices and ritual paintings
Speaker 3: and sculpture depicted the gods or legendary heroes or mythic encounters.
Speaker 3: Music was sung in worship of the gods, and in
Speaker 3: this tradition, religious art was thought to have a value
Speaker 3: that was in dependent of its value as an object
Speaker 3: to be perceived and admired by an audience. This traditional
Speaker 3: religious value of art is what he calls its cult value.
Speaker 3: And I'll read a quote from the essay here. Benjamin writes, quote,
Speaker 3: artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in
Speaker 3: a cult, one may assume that what mattered was their existence,
Speaker 3: not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the
Speaker 3: man of the Stone Age on the walls of his
Speaker 3: cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it
Speaker 3: to his fellow men, but in the main it was
Speaker 3: meant for the spirits. Today, the cult value would seem
Speaker 3: to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain
Speaker 3: statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in
Speaker 3: the cella. Certain madonnas remain covered nearly all year round.
Speaker 3: Certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator
Speaker 3: on the ground level. With the emancipation of the various
Speaker 3: art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition
Speaker 3: of their products. Now one little note here. In the
Speaker 3: specific example of cave art, I think we should be
Speaker 3: clear that we don't know exactly what its function was,
Speaker 3: and we should be careful about speculating too much there.
Speaker 3: But certainly with the later art forms he mentions like
Speaker 3: occurring within written history. You know the sculptures and the
Speaker 3: statues he cites, We know that lots of them were
Speaker 3: thought to be important because of their inherent existence and
Speaker 3: not just because people would look at them.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. I mean this also applies to
Speaker 2: various ancient, prehistoric examples of art that that, for the
Speaker 2: most part, are best viewed from an aerial vehicle.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's not necessarily that, it's not that people
Speaker 2: were going to view it. And again we get into
Speaker 2: the same problem of maybe not knowing exactly what the
Speaker 2: intent was or or how they imagined viewer of this piece,
Speaker 2: be it human or divine.
Speaker 3: You're talking about like the Nasca designs and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's excellent example the things that could not be viewed
Speaker 3: in their total form by a person at the time.
Speaker 2: But does that mean it had to have been aliens
Speaker 2: because that you had to have somebody flying overhead to
Speaker 2: see it. No, not necessarily.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think it means it had to be
Speaker 3: aliens at all. It probably means that there was some
Speaker 3: value of this work of art other than a person
Speaker 3: being able to see the whole thing at once. So
Speaker 3: considering this, Benjamin talks about how over time, artistic culture
Speaker 3: emerged that separated these works of art, these items from
Speaker 3: their cult value by removing them from their original context
Speaker 3: and putting them in museums and galleries and sending them
Speaker 3: traveling around the world and mobile exhibitions, or just by
Speaker 3: having people observe them in their original place but without
Speaker 3: the original ritual context. And this shift from what Benjamin
Speaker 3: calls cult value to exhibition value seems to the author
Speaker 3: here to decrease the power and authority of the art work.
Speaker 3: But it also creates a culture with a different idea
Speaker 3: of what art is for and what makes a piece
Speaker 3: of art valuable and important. And you might imagine all
Speaker 3: kinds of examples of how this would change the way
Speaker 3: people evaluate and relate to art when culture tells you
Speaker 3: that this is a thing you go to a museum
Speaker 3: and look at and appreciate as an expression of emotion
Speaker 3: and the display of technical artistic skill, rather than a
Speaker 3: thing that maybe lives in a temple and somehow depicts
Speaker 3: channels or honors a god or a divine idea, even
Speaker 3: if nobody's there to look at it. And so I
Speaker 3: think Benjamin's idea is that mechanical reproduction causes a sort
Speaker 3: of continuous along the spectrum a similar shift in the
Speaker 3: value of art. Even further away from the traditional cult
Speaker 3: value of art, which is somehow related to the authenticity
Speaker 3: of an artwork, according again to Benjamin's definition of authenticity
Speaker 3: being like the original uniqueness of the artwork, and divorces
Speaker 3: art further from its its history, its tradition of cult value,
Speaker 3: divorces it from the aura, and it causes a devaluation
Speaker 3: of the art itself and changes its meaning. It becomes
Speaker 3: something else, something more like a product. Now you could acknowledge,
Speaker 3: as I think Benjamin did, that there could be both
Speaker 3: good and bad consequences that arise from changing the meaning
Speaker 3: of art through mechanical reproduction. Just one thing that comes
Speaker 3: to my mind. I don't know that this is how
Speaker 3: it works, but I wonder if by increasing accessibility of
Speaker 3: art through mechanical reproduction and sort of if Benjamin's theory
Speaker 3: is correct, removing it from its traditional sort of power
Speaker 3: and cult value, maybe that helps also broaden one's appreciation
Speaker 3: for art it is from outside your own cultural or
Speaker 3: religious tradition. I'm not sure it works that way, but
Speaker 3: that's possible, so you can see good sides as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, not everybody can travel to see these
Speaker 2: various works in person, and therefore having some other type
Speaker 2: of experience with that work is ideal. I mean, it
Speaker 2: allows more people to experience it to some degree.
Speaker 3: Or in some cases, would allow anyone to experience it
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, though, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: have some questions, but I think I agree at least
Speaker 3: in part with what he's saying about, Like this culture
Speaker 3: that arises from the mass production of images of art
Speaker 3: works does in some way cause a devaluation of the
Speaker 3: power and authenticity of the original that you can imagine
Speaker 3: how you would experience and art work differently if you
Speaker 3: could not just summon on your phone a picture of
Speaker 3: the Mona Lisa or the Anatomy Lesson or whatever whenever
Speaker 3: you wanted to, or even before or that, see a
Speaker 3: picture of it in a book you know, or see
Speaker 3: a picture reproduced in a newspaper or whatever. I guess
Speaker 3: the irony is that I've never lived at a time
Speaker 3: when there was not mass mechanical reproduction of art in
Speaker 3: all its forms, So I can't really compare this world
Speaker 3: to the before times. I never lived in the before times,
Speaker 3: so I don't know, you know, I only know the
Speaker 3: world where you can buy prints of the Mona Lisa
Speaker 3: for five bucks.
Speaker 2: I guess one thing that we might compare it to
Speaker 2: is various art installations and also these sort of attraction
Speaker 2: themed art exhibits that we find a lot of times
Speaker 2: these days, where there is something inherent to the art.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's on a scale that can't be captured in
Speaker 2: a photograph, or it is like an environment that you
Speaker 2: were engaging in, or it's just something as simple as
Speaker 2: a sculpture garden, you know, like, yes, you can see
Speaker 2: like it's not two dimensional, there's a three dimensional reality
Speaker 2: to it. There are multiple angles from which to consider
Speaker 2: it for you know, it is an experience in a
Speaker 2: way that I think everybody can wrap their heads around.
Speaker 2: And maybe the challenge there is to realize that that
Speaker 2: that all these other forms of like two dimensional visual art.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know, they're often there's often more than
Speaker 2: just those two dimensions to consider with with with the painting,
Speaker 2: but still, like even famous paintings are also the sort
Speaker 2: of an experience, like there is there is more going
Speaker 2: on there even if you're not like standing in its
Speaker 2: shadow or getting a selfie made with it, like there
Speaker 2: is still an experience to be had in its presence.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, though again we also have to wonder, like how
Speaker 3: the general culture of mechanical reproduction has affected even our
Speaker 3: ability to relate to physical originals now right.
Speaker 2: Right, because when we do go to those big art installations,
Speaker 2: if there're one, that is, if it's an if it's
Speaker 2: an installation that is marketed as hey, get yourself, you
Speaker 2: made this environment, then we're coming back right back around
Speaker 2: to turn it into a mass produced image, and mass
Speaker 2: produced and then personalized image that then goes into your
Speaker 2: social media fee.
Speaker 3: I should add finally that there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: other stuff this essay goes into about the role of
Speaker 3: art and mechanical reproduction of art and how that relates
Speaker 3: to politics and the role of art in manipulating mass
Speaker 3: opinion and revolution and things like that.
Speaker 2: All right, before we close out this episode, I do
Speaker 2: want to come back to something we're talking about earlier,
Speaker 2: about this question of why might it be the case
Speaker 2: that during one's formative years, during one's teenage years, this
Speaker 2: question of authenticity and art was more maybe seem more important,
Speaker 2: and brought off the idea that it might be connected
Speaker 2: to the highly social aspects of the teenage brain. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this because I was reading an interesting
Speaker 2: take on all of this from author Jason Tugau on
Speaker 2: Psychology Today, which tackles the subject of art forgery via neuroesthetics,
Speaker 2: which is a disc one that looks at the neural
Speaker 2: basis of how we perceive, contemplate, and even create works
Speaker 2: of art. So, in neuroesthetics, which is very much a
Speaker 2: young and continually evolving area of neurosciences, you know, because
Speaker 2: it depends on what we know and understand about the
Speaker 2: brain and neural networks and so forth, there's this idea
Speaker 2: that art engages the social brain, as viewing and considering
Speaker 2: artwork depends on some of the same networks involved in
Speaker 2: complex social behavior.
Speaker 3: Interesting, okay.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, focus consideration of a work of art engages a
Speaker 2: number of senses, invoking a pronounced consideration of space as
Speaker 2: well as societal, cultural, and individual context. So even if
Speaker 2: you and I think we can, if we really self analyze,
Speaker 2: we might realize this is the case. Even if we're
Speaker 2: at that museum and we're like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: stand in the presence of this art. You can't help
Speaker 2: but also take into account all these other things. There's
Speaker 2: a lot going on on some level you're going to
Speaker 2: be aware of how you look looking at this piece
Speaker 2: of art. You are going to be thinking about your
Speaker 2: own care, the culture from which the this art or
Speaker 2: artist emerged, and so forth.
Speaker 3: It is nearly maybe I reveal my own shallowness or
Speaker 3: something by saying this, but I think it is nearly
Speaker 3: impossible to experience a work of art without having involuntary
Speaker 3: thoughts while you're having the experience of what other people
Speaker 3: would think about it and considering your self in relation
Speaker 3: to these hypothetical other people whom you're imagining reacting to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And so in my experience off and have
Speaker 2: to sort of check back in and realize, like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: but stop thinking about that, let's just look at the
Speaker 2: art and so forth. But so, yeah, So there's a
Speaker 2: lot going on when we look at art. But to
Speaker 2: gal citing feeling of beauty, author Gabriel Starr says that
Speaker 2: the result, the ideal result here when we're viewing art
Speaker 2: is a feeling of harmony, a harmony that can be
Speaker 2: disrupted if we learn that the piece of art reviewing
Speaker 2: is not authentic, which is to say, you know, fake
Speaker 2: to some or another. And and this makes sense, this
Speaker 2: falls along with what we've been talking about, I think
Speaker 2: we can easily turn to various experiences of disruption in
Speaker 2: our association with any given work of art or creative project.
Speaker 2: You know, what happens when you find out a piece
Speaker 2: of work is to some degree inauthentic. What about when
Speaker 2: you find out that the creator to some degree is
Speaker 2: inauthentic or they are not what you thought they were.
Speaker 2: Your appreciation of a work may not depend one hundred
Speaker 2: percent on that idea that you had about its creator's
Speaker 2: authenticity or character, but a change is still likely to occur,
Speaker 2: and I think we can all think to examples of
Speaker 2: that in our own appreciation of the arts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a feeling of betrayal that comes when
Speaker 3: you find out something, You find out something you really
Speaker 3: don't like about the creator of a work of art
Speaker 3: that you do like. That is not present when you
Speaker 3: just find out something you don't like about a random
Speaker 3: public figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's it can be a struggle sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, and at times it can feel like if
Speaker 2: you enjoy a particular work of art or a film
Speaker 2: or music, you don't want to know too much about
Speaker 2: the person who created it, because the more you know,
Speaker 2: the more likely you are to find something that you
Speaker 2: disagree with or don't like and then could tarnish the
Speaker 2: work of art. But then the other side is there's
Speaker 2: also lots of stuff you can find out about an
Speaker 2: artist that enhances your experience of a given work. So
Speaker 2: it's it's often it often seems like it's worth diving into.
Speaker 2: You know, you may find something that enhances your understanding
Speaker 2: of art that is already enriching your life.
Speaker 3: Nevertheless, I think even if you're not thinking about the artist,
Speaker 3: I totally see what you were saying here about this
Speaker 3: source claiming that our experience of art is to a
Speaker 3: large degree engaging the social brain. That seems very true
Speaker 3: to me. That whether it's you know, that music, the
Speaker 3: band you like, you worry if they're the real deal
Speaker 3: or if they're fake, Or it's movies, or it's it's painting,
Speaker 3: I feel like it is it's inescapable that there's some
Speaker 3: part of engaging with the work of art that's kind
Speaker 3: of like meeting a person, or it's kind of like
Speaker 3: considering interactions between a social group. That that rings very
Speaker 3: true to me.
Speaker 2: All Right, well, we're gonna go ahead and cut it off.
Speaker 2: Right here. But obviously we'd love to hear from you
Speaker 2: out there, because I know that listeners inevitably have thoughts
Speaker 2: about all of this, about inauthenticity and authenticity and fakery
Speaker 2: in the in the in the various mediums, the various
Speaker 2: art forms that we've discussed here, or in you know,
Speaker 2: life in general. So write in we would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. Will throw out that email address here
Speaker 2: in a minute, but just a remind it. The Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays. On Mondays, we do listener mail on Fridays,
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. You can follow
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Speaker 2: we're probably there. Rate and review the show wherever you
Speaker 2: have the power to do so. That really helps us
Speaker 2: out and we appreciate it, and I believe that's it.
Speaker 2: What else do you have for us here, Joe.
Speaker 3: Nothing else except to say our regular audio producer JJ
Speaker 3: Posway is out this week, so huge thanks to our
Speaker 3: guest producer Paul decant. Thank you, Paul. Let's see if
Speaker 3: you have anything you'd like to get in touch with
Speaker 3: us with, if you'd like to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: a future episode, if you would like to send us
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, or if you'd
Speaker 3: just like to say hi. You can email us at
Speaker 3: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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