Inauthentic Authenticity

[mokie]

From Indie Won. Now What? [Broken Pencil]

Authenticity has become dominated by persona (or worse, personal brand), serving to disguise or deflect a person's motives. At this juncture, indie needs to provide a better window into its soul -- and like every useful window, it must be transparent. ... The problem, of course, is that authenticity is much sexier (and safer) than transparency. 'Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic,' explained indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch in a 2004 article for MovieMaker magazine. 'Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.' Transparency has no place in this equation because it involves footnotes and citations and other unsexy tools of attribution. Ripping someone off, meanwhile, requires nothing but swagger.

David Shields, in his recent book Reality Hunger, is equally obsessed with artistic bona fides. He admits that he is 'desperate for authenticity and in love with artifice' and that 'we're clinging to anything that seems 'real' or organic or authentic. We want rougher sounds, rougher images, raw footage, uncensored by high technology and the powers that be.' Curiously enough Shields, like Jarmusch, endorses thievery, admitting that 'most of the passages in this book are taken from other sources.'

Meanwhile, in February of this year, it was revealed that Helene Hegemann, a 17-year-old German novelist, had also taken Jarmusch's advice and plagiarized (or borrowed, or remixed, or repurposed) a blogger named Airen in her book Axolotl Roadkill. 'There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,' Hegemann said in her defense, taking inspiration from Shields and nearly plagiarizing Jarmusch in the process.

The author goes on to point out the irony of carefully constructed and inauthentic authenticity, as part of the article's theme--that the indie hipsters need to embrace the inauthenticity of their authenticity to make it authentic instead of pretending it's authentic. Or something.

But I wish, oh how I wish, we had followed that tangent above: that hipsters and the indie movement have conflated authenticity, that which is genuine, "of undisputed origin or authorship," true and trustworthy and legitimate, with theft. The claim that there is no originality is a cover for an unwillingness to pursue originality in favor of rehashing the past with tongue in cheek, an excuse to sneer when you are caught stealing someone else's work--caught, because the plagiarist doesn't state upfront that she's ripped off a handful of bloggers and authors.

It's nothing to do with originality or authenticity, or the relative unsexiness of footnotes. The braggadocio of the embarrassed asshole caught in the act may be the hallmark of the hipster but it did not originate with him, and "Fuck you, I meant to do that anyway" is older than spit.

So, the author says, their authenticity now thoroughly inauthentic in that it can be bought and sold to market a car, indie has 'won'--a strange reversal of values, given that previous generations would have decried this as 'selling out' or having been co-opted by corporate interests, and a tragic undermining of the legitimacy of that movement/aesthetic. Except, that's right, their legitimacy isn't, their authenticity isn't, it's all been a snarky sham and if the suits are going to make a buck off of it (isn't marketing the ultimate example of inauthentic authenticity?), the hipsters might as well pose for the cameras.

And now that they've won, what's next? Transparency. Footnotes. Show your sources, show your work, because honesty and integrity are the new indie.