Media
The genuine article. In our ironic, consumer-driven society, is there any such thing as authenticity? No, writes Charlotte Raven. Exploited by advertisers selling everything from organic chocolate to Agas, the desire for a return to "reality" has become simply another lifestyle fad
Published 04 August 2003
Authenticity: brands, fakes, spin and the lust for real life
David Boyle Flamingo, 315pp, £12.99
Everywhere I've been this summer, I've met people whose professed aim in life is to find a way out of the conceptual crisis created by "postmodernism". The most engaging of these was a left-wing commentator who buttonholed me at a party in his Islington garden about the need for a "return to truth". Less appealing were the speakers at an Institute of Ideas conference, who referred to "the relativists" as if they were a group of terrorists intent on destroying meaning with a cache of deadly inverted commas. No names were mentioned, but the audience was told to look out for intellectual activity that uses poetics and play to demonstrate ideas that resist reconstitution into "proper arguments".
I wanted to get up at that point and confess my sympathies, but didn't dare for fear of being held accountable for the decline in educational standards, the degradation of politics into spin and the lack of moral instruction in Grand Theft Auto. It's a sad fact, but no one with even a passing knowledge of cultural theory is safe in a society where their views are misrepresented by people who insist, against all the evidence, that postmodernism was a movement, like communism, rather than a critical practice. The big mistake they make is to presume that the postmodernists were in favour of postmodernism. No one who has read Jean Baudrillard would call him a fan of hyperreality or any of the other phenomena he describes. Blaming him for theme parks and GM foods is a little like blaming Jon Snow for street crime.
I long to read a book about the current cultural predicament that doesn't fall into this trap. Sadly, Authenticity isn't it. David Boyle believes that the postmodernists, in league with the proponents of virtual reality, have been lobbying frantically for a world where "meaningful communication [is] practically impossible" and "everything from history to physics is relative and everything gives rise at best to a world-weary smirk". This infernal plan might have succeeded were it not for the destruction of the World Trade Center and the millisecond shift in focus that Boyle, rather sweetly, mistakes for a revolution in consciousness. "There was suddenly a collective concentration on what was really important."
We all know what happened next. Celebrity magazines shut down, Wall Street brokers went on strike demanding the right to spend more quality time with their families, internet porn empires crumbled as users rediscovered the joys of real sex. At least, that's what was meant to happen. If it didn't, then it's only a matter of time before western culture wakes up to what Boyle calls the New Realist agenda. According to his predictions, "the demand for authenticity", currently expressed as a preference for organic chocolate, will evolve from a lifestyle fad into a global political movement that will define "what comes after the demise of postmodernism".
These bold claims are embedded within an analysis which shows quite clearly that what you get when you ask for "authenticity" is very seldom a route map to an alternative reality. More often than not, the demand will be downgraded to the status of a simple consumer goal. The desire for "something genuine" is well understood by advertisers who make their livings telling us how we can resist conformity by buying an off-road vehicle or an iPod music player. If you say no to their blandishments and try to locate yourself outside the image economy, they'll put you down as a savvier-than-thou consumer who needs to be told "real" stories about Colombian coffee-growers whose villages have benefited from your decision to buy Brand X.
Having recorded these phenomena, Boyle then undermines his credibility by suggesting that an unsullied, hype-free version of authenticity - "real real" as opposed to "fake real" - is available to those with the will and drive to seek it out. His "inner directed" New Realists escape the postmodern malaise by shopping locally and reading library copies of books that deal with "eternal universal forms". The richer ones like vintage clothes, Waterford Crystal, Morgan cars and, God spare us, Agas. It seems incredible, at this stage in human development, that one would have to enter into an argument over what's unreal about an Aga. I can't let it go, so I must ask Boyle to consider the motivations of 90 per cent of the iconic range's market. Do they want a decent cooker or are they interested in investing in a design classic that says "home" more effectively than a Smeg because of its association with an imagined bucolic past? If they say it's the former, they are lying. Agas are fetish objects that are helpful in this context because they reveal how any "demand for authenticity" is doomed to repeat the problem it hopes to defeat.
When you ask for "authenticity" rather than a cooker or a coat, you are asking for a quality that actual things don't have. Authenticity is a value that is added during the marketing process. It doesn't inhere in a pair of jeans any more than sophistication inheres in a bottle of perfume. This means that the "genuine article" is always, in some sense, a fake. A hat that tries to appear authentic is no less of a poseur than the consumer who is looking for something more than a weatherproof piece of cloth. To assert, as Boyle might try to, that one type of headwear is more "real" than the next is to validate the fiction under which the hat travels if it wants to get on in society. By this definition, the demand for authenticity is a demand for delusion.
Boyle is a Liberal Democrat, so it's no surprise to discover that he is less interested in changing the way things are than he is in altering the way they look. He quotes a study of blue-collar workers which revealed, to his great surprise, that the reason they were feeling miserable had nothing to do with "juggling roles" or their "complex high-pressure lives". They were pissed off because they "regarded themselves as wasting their lives on meaningless, pointless work". What they longed for wasn't shorter hours, but the chance to do "work for the common good". Rather than consider what this means, Boyle proposes a solution that would reconcile them to their destinies. His "authenticity agenda" for business is a series of guidelines for chief executives who want to make their workers and customers feel as if they are valued as individuals by an organisation that cares more about their humanity and creativity than it does about the bottom line. "Most people can't bear to devote their lives to companies whose only purpose is to make a profit. They need a higher purpose." A failure to recognise this could lead the disgruntled workers to vent their frustration by joining "the revolt against globalisation".
It is quite a shock when this mild-looking book comes clean about its intentions to use authenticity as a tool for repression. By giving workers the belief that they are in control, Boyle hopes to silence their legitimate desire for power. Like the fictional creator of The Truman Show, he wants to fashion a pasteboard version of a kinder world where neighbours still look out for each other and the food on the table is provided by local suppliers. The purpose of this is to convince the workers that what they have taken for reality is a con-trick perpetrated by the postmodernists. In Boyle's parallel universe, their feelings of futility are shouted down until they are ready to be turned into pasteboard people who work 60-hour weeks for bosses devoted to their personal growth.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
