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