Authenticity, Part 2

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the topic of authenticity. What is it? Why do we place such value on it? They discuss authenticity in terms of psychology, art, music, religion and more… (part 2 of 3) 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Land, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
part two in our series on the concept of authenticity.
If you haven't heard part one yet, you probably want
to go back and check that one out first. But
in brief last time, we explored a lot of the
different overlapping cultural understandings of authenticity, and we also looked

(00:35):
at a psychology paper that tested how well people were
able to assess authenticity in others, and the conclusion was that,
at least within the scenario tested, which was classroom interactions,
we are not nearly as good as we think we
are at judging whether other people are really being themselves
or whether they are really being authentic. Now, maybe that

(00:57):
finding wouldn't be reproduced in other scenario or using other
measures of authenticity, because, if you recall from last time,
the measure in that study was comparing other evaluations of
authenticity with self evaluation. So you have people say themselves like,
do you feel like you can be yourself around people?
Do your actions reflect your inner thoughts and feelings? Things

(01:18):
like that and then have other people judge that same person,
you know, how authentic do you think they're being. But
if it's generally true that we're worse at detecting authenticity
than we think we are, that has profound implications on
everyday life, because we make implicit and explicit judgments about
authenticity all the time, and we use these judgments to

(01:40):
manage our relationships, to decide who we like and who
we trust. But also those judgments are they're sort of
conceptually contagious throughout the mind, and we end up using
assessments of authenticity not just for people, but to determine
our feelings about inanimate objects and our feelings in domains

(02:01):
outside of personal relationships. And one of the big examples
that comes to mind for me is the domain of
art and esthetics. We promised last time we'd be getting
artsy fartsy today, so here we.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Are, and you know, we might throw in a few
references to less artsy creations, some of the things we've
talked about on Weird House Cinema before, for example, But yeah,
we're going to be talking about authenticity in the arts.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I guess some of this will come down to where
you draw the line between art and entertainment, or if
you draw a line at all. But one area in
which I think people often seem especially concerned with authenticity
in artistic expression is music. There's actually a book chapter

(02:46):
about psychological studies of authenticity from two thousand and six
that I've been reading through. This was a chapter by
professors Michael H. Kernis and Brian M. Goldman, and I
actually am only mentioning it because it uses an epigraph
that really struck me. It's a quote from the singer
songwriter Leonard Cohen, and the lyric goes, if by chance

(03:09):
I wake at night and I ask you who I am? Oh,
take me to the slaughterhouse and I will wait there
with the lamb. So this is a lyric from the
Leonard Cohen song Stories of the Street, which is a
track on his nineteen sixty seven album Songs of Leonard Cohen.
Now I think the authors selected it as an epigraph

(03:29):
for this chapter because it invokes the idea of personal authenticity.
There's that line, if by chance I wake at night
and I ask you who I am? It implies a
crisis of authenticity, wondering who am I? Who is the
real me? And the second half is the resolution of
that conditional If take me to the slaughter house and

(03:49):
I will wait there with the lamb. I don't know
exactly what that means, and I would resist saying that
it decodes to a sentiment that can be plainly expressed, because,
like a lot of good poetry, it sort of seems
to express an idea or a feeling that is real
but is difficult to say directly. Whatever it means. It

(04:10):
maybe suggests something about vulnerability, maybe something about the desire
to protect or to be protected, and whatever it means,
I found it really striking. So I was interested in
this quote because it's it's a song lyric that not
only concerns authenticity with the line about I ask you
who I am, but in my personal opinion, it illustrates

(04:31):
the quality of authenticity and music and rob you might
feel differently, you the listener might feel differently. If so,
that's fine. We all have our unique responses to art.
But whatever authenticity means in lyrics and musical performance, it
feels present to me here. And I think at least
part of what authenticity means in music and lyrics is

(04:54):
that it feels like the words and the melody express
a real genuine feeling in artist, and that these words
are not carelessly selected, but instead are are carefully meaningfully
picked because they are the words that best point to
that sort of dark, ambiguous, inexpressible feeling underneath.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, and am and lamb rhyme with each other. And
that's that's undeniable master at work here.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
I mean, actually, I think there's a lot of interesting
stuff one could get into about how structural constraints like
meter and rhyme interact with with the expression of ideas.
Like if they sort of like force you to choose
different words, then you might otherwise, and yet those words
must in order for the poem or the song to
be good still be true. What does that do to

(05:42):
the way your mind works?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah? Yeah, I like it. You know, it works better
that we're using the lamb instead of some other animal
that you might take to a slaughterhouse, because the lamb
also brings in its own symbolism and its own language.
So yeah, I like it. I like the line. I'm
not familiar with the song all that much, but I
like the lyric.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
I think I've read that it was Cohen talking about
an experience where he went by himself to Cuba, and
at some point I think he says that he was
like at the embassy, and they send somebody to talk
to him, and they say that his mother is worried
about him or something. Anyway, So I mentioned that because
to me, this does illustrate that quality of authenticity and music.

(06:27):
And by contrast, I don't want to single out any
particular song or artists to like hate on as the
Encyclopedia entry for fake, but I think we can all
probably think of a piece of music we've heard and
found to have a quality of apparent insincerity which makes
the work unpleasant and uninteresting to us. Fill in with

(06:48):
your own examples.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, I'll get into some examples, not of like outright
like fakery or anything here in a bit, But I
think that some of the most interesting examples are examples
that are kind of in that middle ground where either
it is divided people about the artist's potential sincerity and authenticity,

(07:09):
or it has been something that you know that won
individually and subjectively wrestles with like do I like this,
Do I believe this artist? Other people seem to believe them,
but I'm not sure I do, And so.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Forth, yeah, yeah, Well that's interesting that you know audiences
can be divided in that way, because I mean, it's
a truism that everybody has their own subjective reaction to art.
But I think you can also see some very stark
trends in the way people relate, especially to authenticity and music,
because I would say for some of us, the relationship

(07:45):
between musical expression and authenticity maybe only enters the mind
every now and then, maybe when we hear something we
find especially moving and sincere seeming or especially false. But
for other people, it's like a clear, ever present, front
of mind element of our taste in music, maybe even

(08:05):
the single most important factor. And I'm curious, like what
makes that difference and in the people for whom it
is front of mind in their esthetics.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Why Speaking of Leonard Cohen, your inclusion of this quote
kind of send me down a rabbit hole of reading
some other tidbits from interviews with Leonard Cohen and sort
of refreshing myself about his career. But I ran across
this one quote from an Alan Twigg interview with Cohen,
and I want to read it here. Cohen says, quote,

(08:37):
the question is who am I? So we invent a
self a personality, We sustain it, we create rules for it.
When you stop asking those questions in those moments of grace.
As soon as the question is not asked and the
dilemma is dissolved or abandoned, then the true self or
absolute self rushes in. That's our real nourishment.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
That's interesting in that it connects to what you were
saying in the last episode about the more you sort
of examine your own authenticity, the harder it can be
to let it flow.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know. Yeah, I feel like
if I'm questioning the authenticity of a work of music
or a film or whatever kind of art I'm engaging with,
like I'm probably not that engaged with the art, you know. Yeah,
I'm caught up in a bunch of other nonsense about
the art, and I'm certainly not experiencing it in the
way that the artist probably intended me to do, unless,

(09:27):
of course, that is the artist's intent, that they are
challenging authenticity or something with that effect.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's a really good point. It's like, when we do
really get into evaluating whether something is authentic or not,
it does make you have to like step back from
the experience of it. I assume a desire for perceived
authenticity in the expression of musical artists is to some
degree always present. But I was thinking about how it

(09:53):
seemed especially important to me when I was a teenager, Like,
when I was a teenager, the worst thing a musical
artist could be was fake, contrived pandering. What did this
mean to me? I don't know exactly. I mean, I
could think of specific artists like very I don't know,
like very commercial rock bands or something that I would

(10:14):
think of as very fake and seemingly and sincere. Uh,
you know. I don't know on what basis I was
deciding that, But I don't feel the same urge to
like seek raw authenticity and root out fakeness and music
that I once did, though obviously I still don't like
feeling like an artist is treating me with contempt. But like,

(10:35):
why is it that, as I think, maybe I'm not
a loane in this, Like, why is it that as
a teenager you're especially tuned into this meta media quality
of authenticity as opposed to more just sort of like
in the work or in the song qualities of a
piece of art.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
That's interesting and I think we might get into some
of that in a bit, because it makes me think
of like the hyper social aspects of the teenager brain,
you know, yeah, that we've touched on before on the show. Yeah,
I suppose it's kind of a weird area to get
into because, you know, thinking again about artists at particular
times in their careers where they seem to divide their audience.

(11:13):
It's interesting how two different musical artists can take on
a persona to be received in wildly and it can
be received in wildly different ways. And the way they're
received for these persona personas or changes in their style
may also differ over time. So I think one of
the like the main examples that comes to mind is
the whole And this is not something certainly I was

(11:34):
not around to experience this in real time, but you
read about it and hear about it in retrospectives. But
Bob Dylan going electric in nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
People allegedly shouting Judas at him. I don't know if
that really happened, but that's what I recall reading about it. So, yeah,
he had recorded like acoustic folk albums and then it
suddenly was playing with an electric guitar in a full band,
and some people didn't like that. They saw that not
just as a change in style that well, yeah, you know,
artists go through different kind of periods. It was like

(12:03):
that was a betrayal. He was no longer what I
signed up for.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, and it's it can feel kind of silly looking
back on it, because from our point of view, like
we know everything that came after that shift, like you know,
put out a lot of great material, great albums, and
other changes in style and explorations of different styles and ideas.
But he remained Bob Dylan throughout all of it. And
you know, some of it is maybe not everybody's favorite,

(12:29):
but some of it's pretty great.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
I certainly think so.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Now of course that in that example, you have like
a shift in sound that I think would largely be reflected.
You know, it's not like he would he would okay,
he would say, all right, after one album, I'm gonna
put the guitar away. But you do have other artists
who have kind of like a single album that seems
to be an outlier. It seems to be like an
exploration of something different than is maybe not well received

(12:54):
by fans. And I think one example that came to
mind on this front is Neil Young's nineteen eighty three
album Trance.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
This was actually within a stretch of Neil Young albums
where he was like changing genre every album. So during
this period, you know, Neil Young, he had sort of
he had worked in folk, he had worked also in
heavy electric rock. He'd done both. But he in the
eighties he released a country album, a blues album with

(13:22):
like Horns, a rockabilly album called Everybody's Rockin', and then
this I'm not necessarily saying them in the correct order,
but then also this electronic album, which is probably the
weirdest of all of them.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, he has he uses a robotic voice on some
of these tracks, and I've read that this was not
well received at the time by some fans, but I
don't know. I like some of the roboty songs on
this particular album.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, you have to be in the right mindset to
receive it, especially with songs like computer Cowboy. But but yeah,
I think there's stuff to appreciate there.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Now a couple of examples that I want to bring up.
These are ones that definitely occurred during my teenage years,
so you know, getting into that idea of being like
hypersensitive to perceived inauthenticity. So one that comes to mind
is David Bowie exploring a more experimental industrial sound on
his album Outside in nineteen ninety five.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
So were there people who were like that, there is
a real David Bowie and this is not it. It is my.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Understanding that, like at the time, some of the older
David Bowie fans were not crazy about it, and their
line of thought was like, well, I don't want to
go see him in a concert if he's going to
be doing this MTV material, you know, It's like I
want to hear the hits, you know, which I guess
is always the case with artists putting out new material
and trying new things. But yeah, this was more of

(14:50):
an industrial sound. It was like I think right after
this album, he ends up touring with Nine Inch Nails.
So at the time, I like, I bought the album
like I did as the television commanded me, and I liked,
And I guess I still I don't really listen to
this album anymore, but I remember it having some tracks
that I dug. But at the same time, like some

(15:13):
of that dialogue was in my head about I wasn't
thinking of it in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity or
fakery even or even really getting deep into like David
Bowie's personas, but it was. But on some level I
was wondering, like, is this is this something he's doing
just to remain popular or is this his heart? You know,

(15:33):
is his Is he legitimately exploring new sounds and trying
new things? And I think it's it's my understanding now
it is the latter. Like he he is an artist
that was continually reinventing himself and trying new things and
this was just a phase of that. And you know,
he stuck with this sound for I think another album
and then he tried other things.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
That is interesting. So I have no real familiarity with
Bowie's nineties output, so I don't really know anything about this,
but yeah, that an artist as a chameleon like as
as David Bowie. And you know, with all this history
of playing these different explicitly different characters, you know, with
different with names named characters, uh, and engaging in these

(16:14):
different styles, that there would it's he would hit some
point that people would say, Okay, now this one is
not for real, that's fake. Yeah, and that that would
have to suggest something about like the broader the way
that that genre or what he's doing in it is
received in the broader marketplace, like what the marketplace thought
about industrial music or something.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah. Yeah, Because another example that comes to mind, and
this is not a major moment in music history or anything,
but it's the one that stood out to me because
again I was a teenager at the time, and that
was that the band Danzig suddenly went industrial in nineteen
ninety six as well, So that's what a year after
outside and that one I remember as being a lot
more jarring, and certainly, looking back on it like it is,

(16:58):
it is a is a rather darch departure from the
previous material and seems like maybe it's a little less authentic.
I don't know. I'm sure Danzig fans will disagree or
agree on this. I have no point of reference here,
but you know, this kind of thing keeps happening, like
the most recent one, and I am not super well

(17:20):
informed on all the ins and outs of this story,
but you know, it made huge headlines that Beyonce was
going to put out a country album, and it seems
like that probably stirred up some of the same discussions,
like Beyonce do a country album? Can someone who has
not done country music albums before do a country album?
Of course they can. We just ran across some other

(17:40):
examples of people doing the same thing. But yeah, anytime
an artist shifts and tries something new, takes on a
new persona, etc. It raises these questions.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
I don't really know anything about this example either, except
I saw some kind of headline about her maybe claiming
that it was not actually a country album.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
I don't know, yeah, but you know, artists engage in
the sort of shift all the time. And it also
it reminds me a bit of our discussion about recipes
in the past. You know, whatever we now think of
as the standard recipe was at some point a shift.
And likewise, I mean, speaking of industrial music, one of
the big industrial mainstays out there has has has always

(18:19):
been Ministry. Ministry started out as a synthpop group. If
you go back to their first album, it is it's
very I mean, I'm you know, you can still you
can still feel the Ministry in the album, but it's
a different sound entirely. And that was just you know,
part of this particular group's evolution, and you know, it

(18:39):
doesn't mean it's inauthentic, it's just where they were at
that point in time. But I get I guess in general,
I'm willing to give most artists the benefit of the
doubt on these shifts and changes, though I'm sure there
are some examples that are that are maybe a little
more heavily slanted in the direction of inauthenticity. But you know,
it's not as fun to discuss those and throw a

(19:01):
lot of criticism at bands and performers for trying new things. However,
there was that one Garth Brooks album, as I remember,
where he took on a different persona and did non
country music Chris Gaines, Chris Gaines. Yeah, this was not
well received, as I recall, was it not? I don't
think it was. I don't think he came back to
the persona either. But again, this is an area that

(19:23):
I know even less about. So Garth brook fans, you know,
write in I guess and we'll we can just we
can hash this out.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
How surprised are people going to be when they find
out that Garth Brooks is actually also one of the
guys in slip Knot?

Speaker 2 (19:35):
That's right? They have nas son you'd never know.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
But I wanted to briefly come back to the question
of why it is that music might feel like, of
all the genres of art out there, why music would
be especially subject to authenticity concern and is like, why,
you know, teenagers are really concerned about whether this singer
singer songwriter is authentic as opposed to I don't know,

(20:08):
you know, like painters or something. And I obviously there
could be a lot of explanations here, but I kind
of wonder if it has to do with the fact
that music is the art form most likely to be
experienced in an involuntary way. So, for example, you will rarely,
if ever, be forced to look at a painting or

(20:31):
watch a film. There you know, there might be social
pressure to go see a movie with your friends that
you're not really interested in, or something like that some
weird circumstance, but generally you can look at what you want,
and if you don't like what you're looking at, you can,
like you know, direct your attention elsewhere or even shut
your eyes, unless you have the aid of some kind
of technology like you know, headphones or something, which are

(20:51):
not appropriate to use in many say social or work scenarios.
You cannot practically shut your ears off to music the
way that you can shut your eyes or avert your
eyes from a painting. And if music is audible in
the place where you are, you're gonna hear it. Technically,
I guess this would be true of any sound based
art form because of the nature of our bodies. But

(21:14):
generally that's going to mean music. So music is like
especially difficult to tune out if we don't like it,
And I wonder if that makes us especially sensitive to
what we would think of as artistic deficiencies in it.
And then on top of that, a lot of music
has a linguistic element, unlike a lot of other art forms.

(21:37):
Because there are words in most popular music, there is
increased opportunity to scrutinize what a song is saying and
evaluate it for sincerity or truth.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah. Yeah, though again, just because the song is annoying
doesn't mean it's not authentic, righty, Like, I am not
a huge you know, no judgment if you're a fan
of this song, but you know the the smash Mouth song.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
What is the smash Done All Star?

Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean the All Star that that song. I'm not
a fan but I do get it earwormed in my
head every now and then, and it's it's annoying. But
I don't think I would argue that that band was
being inauthentic in crafting and performing this track, But I
just it was certainly not my thing. I think another

(22:25):
thing about to keep in mind about all this, too
is we have to we have to bear in mind
media consumption. So like when I think back on the
music that I was exposed to in high school, like
most of it was MTV related content, and it's because
the TV was always on and MTV was one of
the channels that you could you would frequently go to,

(22:48):
and like, not watching the TV just did not feel
like an option. It was just, you know, it was
like the weather, it was like the ocean. You just
you engaged with it. It was just part of your environment.
And I think it is like that to varying degrees
for a lot of folks today. I mean, there are
people who still consume television like that, or even if
you're not watching television, perhaps you're consuming various advertisements in

(23:09):
the same way. So some of these songs or elements,
certainly there there have been more than a few commercials
that have the air of inauthenticity about them, and you
may be exposed to those over and over again.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Okay, Rob, I think it is time we must bring
Orson Wells into the picture.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
That's right, Yeah, getting even more into this idea of
of fakeness, of inauthicity to the point where it is
an outright fake, which is not something we've really been
leveling at any of these artists we've discussed here, because
you know, this is more of a you could if
you were feeling particularly harsh, you might say, oh, well,
this this change, this was fake. This album was fake.

(23:47):
But it wasn't wasn't really fake. It was an actual fraud.
But yeah, what we're going to talk about next does
get into that territory. So, knowing that we're going to
be talking about authenticity in preparation for these episodes, I
decided to finally check out Orson Wells nineteen seventy three
film f for Fake, a film that is sometimes described

(24:08):
as a docudrama, other times a film essay, And I
guess I feel like maybe film essay is a little
more appropriate. It is because it's not just like a
straight up documentary.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
No, I would say film essay is perfect because it
is a combination performance and a meditation on themes with
the aid of visuals and sound, and also a documenting
of certain real life characters and events.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, and it's also kind of like being cornered by
Orson Wells, probably like in a bar or a restaurant,
and he's just talking at you for a long time,
and it's it's and it's remarkable, and he's very charismatic,
and you are glad that you have been cornered by
such an interesting man.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah. Ah, the French known to do magic tricks, and
he shows you some.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
I was looking up a little bit about how this
film was received, and Roger Ebert in his review described
it as a film spun out of next to nothing,
and he included this quote, Orson Wells can make better
movies than most directors with one hand tied behind his back.
His problem, of course, is that for thirty five years
the hand has remained tied.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
I don't know if I'm not as enough as an
expert on Wells's film of his filmography to really comment
on that, but esteem for this particular film has grown
quite a bit since its initial release, where I think
it was kind of polarizing. Some people thought it was brilliant,
others thought it was incomprehensible. Ebert gave it three stars
in seventy seven.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
It's been a long time since I've seen it, but
I remember quite liking it. My friend Ben showed it
to me years and years ago, and yeah, I was
my attention was wrapped.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah. So, in short, it's a Wells hosted essentially, we'll say,
documentary just for ease of conversation here about famed and
art forger Elmir de Lori, which cites and features interviews
with a man who wrote a book about Elmir, Clifford Irving,
a man who, in turn, after his interview segments were

(26:12):
shot for this documentary, but prior to the completion of
the film, turned out to have allegedly written a hoax
biography of Howard Hughes.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
This was a hoax autobiography, right, like.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
It was Yeslay's autobiography.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yes, claiming to be by Howard Hughes.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, based on his his handwriting and so forth. You know,
a huge, huge scandal. So these are the initial two
fingers of the cat's cradle that Wells constructs from here
on out. In this in this film on fakery, on authenticity,
and he also freely injects his own story into all
of the citing early exaggerations of his own credentials that

(26:49):
allowed him to rise to the top in show business,
I think, he adds, and I've been plummeting ever since.
He also brings up the nineteen thirty eight War of
the World old radio fiasco, which, of course, you know,
apparently convinced a fair number of people that it was
actually happening. And he goes on to indulge in some
overt forgery in at least the last portion of the film,

(27:12):
and then points out the forgery and invites us all
to think about it.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
So sort of like we've been doing in this series,
he invites you to think about what is authenticity? We
use this concept, but do we understand what it means?
What is real? And what is fake? And why do
we care?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah? Like, what's the difference between a masterpiece and a
masterful fake? Is almost any story indeed some kind of
a lie, a lie in Picasso's words, as sided by Wells,
Here is something that makes us realize the truth? Is
that true? That is a dependable statement? Can an authentic artist,

(27:48):
create a fake, can a hoax? Or create where I
suppose recreate a masterpiece? You know, there are a lot
of ins and outs to this when you start swirling
it around in you're negrony that was his favorite tree
by the way. Oh yeah, so these are these are
not really questions meant to be conclusively answered, And indeed,
I think we'll find that it all depends very largely

(28:10):
on the context of an individual example. So, for instance,
what sort of lie is is a given story based
upon Is it based on a malicious lie, a hateful lie,
a well meaning lie, a mere exaggeration or dramatization. There's
so much room for variation here, and you still encounter
various examples in just sort of like popular discourse about

(28:31):
about individuals, about performances, about you know, performance works, where
someone will say was this authentic? Is this was part
of this made up? And so forth.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
I think the difference between fiction and a lie is
the knowing consent of the audience in advance, and in
most cases it's interesting that this is established through entirely
meta textual means, Like you can have a printed novel
in which no part of the text makes clear that
the events described did not actually happen, and yet somehow

(29:05):
we all still know. It's like from surrounding clues in
the culture, like what section of the bookstore or library
you'd find the book in, how other people talk about
the book, how it's advertised, and so forth. Meanwhile, if
you read something that you understand to be a true
account of events that happened in reality, say an autobiography
of Howard Hughes or something, and then you discover that

(29:28):
the events described are fictional, or that the author is
not who they claim to be, I think most of
us would feel very frustrated and betrayed by this, unless,
that is, we know in advance that we're going to
be told lies. And here I think back to an
example that's come up on the podcast a number of
times in the past year or so. I'm very interested

(29:49):
in the autobiography of the sixteenth century Italian sculptor Benvenudo Cellini.
We've told a number of stories about him. We talked
about him in the eisode about Diamonds, where we were
talking about his claims that someone tried to poison him
with a diamond in his food. And so, you know, Chillini,

(30:10):
like he writes this autobiography, which purports to be the
true story of his life, and yet I am certain
that it contains lots of exaggerations and even outright lies,
and yet I'm still interested in reading it. And I
think it's that. I think it's that I'm okay with that,
because I already know that we don't want to find

(30:32):
out after reading something that what we read isn't true.
We'd like to know beforehand, Like going into a lie
knowing in advance feels like a whimsical adventure. But finding
out you've been told a lie after you believed it
makes you feel like a fool.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah. Absolutely, And and of course, over the course of time,
something that is a fraud, that is fooling people, it
can't eventually find new life after the fact of someone's like,
we know this is not a fraud now, and now
perhaps we can appreciate it as a work of fiction.
But that transition is not guaranteed and certainly doesn't occur

(31:10):
every time. But in this discussion of like, the difference
between fiction and lies, between fantasy and lies reminds me
of our discussions in the Weird House episode on the
movie The Never Ending Story based on Michael DA's novel,
and in the novel especially indicates into the idea of
the denizens of Fantasia or Fantastica, being creatures of pure

(31:35):
fantasy that have been dreamed into existence by humans. But
if they travel through then nothing, they are not destroyed.
They are reborn in our world, but they are reborn
as lies. So that is the way he sort of
imagined the relationship between lies and fantasy, between lies and
fiction is that the lie is kind of the same energy,

(31:57):
but it is twisted into this form that does not
give us hope, does not give us escape. It takes
this cruel form that is a part of the overtly
unimaginative and cruel mundane world. In citing a book like
The Neverending Store, of course, we're also admitting that, yeah,
that we're dealing with highly subjective territory here. Now, one

(32:21):
point that is hit upon in f for Fake is
that between the masterful fraud and the masterpiece, it's a
belief in authenticity that makes all the difference monetarily, certainly,
and Wells dwells on this somewhat, but also in terms
of esteem that is given to a particular art work
authenticity can therefore be this kind of illusion. It's only

(32:43):
as real as our belief in it.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, A belief in the power of authenticity in a
work of art is kind of like belief in the
value of money, Like it is very real if people
believe in it, and thus, like a whole culture can
function on top of it. But if people don't believe
money is valuable, then it ceases being useful. And I
think you could say that the same is true in
some ways about qualities of art.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, Yeah, And that's one of the reasons it can
be so hurtful and it can be so disappointing to
find out that something that you were invested in, that
you found beautiful, that you had this reaction too, is
in fact not one hundred percent of what you thought
it was. And there are variations on that theme, you know,
throughout our appreciation of all sorts of works of art

(33:30):
and music and so forth. Yeah, now, speaking of this,
there are it is worth knowing there are no worthy
cases of works and art collections that turned out to
be fakes. These still pop up. But there's also the reverse.
There are works previously judged to be fakes, but then
upon closer scrutiny or you know, new information or someone
else takes a look at them, they turn out to
be authentic. So it's interesting how, at least at times

(33:52):
this can go back and forth.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Was this the case with da Vinci's Lady with Ermine?
Feel like I was reading about that not too long ago,
that or at least for a while, there were questions
about who had really painted it or was it a
true da Vinci? But I think now it is largely
thought to be.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
I'm not sure because I wasn't reading about that particular
painting in in reference to this, but there there have
been various works like that have had this story where
it's dismissed as a fake, might be a very good fake,
but then we come back and we realized that that
it's not the case. And then it's also worth noting
that I think in different artistic traditions there just there's

(34:32):
a different relationship with copying master works from the past,
you know, to the extent that they may be copied
as especially as a learning method for you, for artists
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Well, that actually connects to something that I wanted to
talk about today with respect to authenticity in art. I
wanted to talk about a famous essay in the history
of art criticism by the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin
called the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

(35:06):
This was published in nineteen thirty five, and the core
claim of Benjamin's argument in this essay is that what
he calls mechanical reproduction, meaning techniques such as lithography, photography,
and film, have fundamentally changed the way art functions within
culture and changed what art means to us. And this

(35:28):
essay brings in a lot of different ideas, including religious
ideas and political ones. Walter Benjamin was a Jewish German
writing this at the time of the early years of
the Third Reich, and he was concerned with ways that
technology could change, how art would be used for propaganda
and mass manipulation and all kinds of stuff like that.

(35:50):
I'm going to get less into the political implications here,
so I can't cover everything in this essay, but I
did want to focus on his ideas related to authenticity.
So Benjamin talks about how like you were mentioning a
minute ago, rob art has always been in principle reproducible
to some extent A work of art made by a person,

(36:11):
such as a painting or a sculpture, or a performance
of a song or a dance, can always be imitated
and copied to some extent by another person. But a
copy made by mere imitation is never exact. It can
only strive to be similar by degree, and it is
difficult and laborious to reproduce. But a big part of

(36:33):
the training of artists in centuries past used to be
just trying to reproduce other works of art by artists
who came before. And one thing I would add is
that I think a lot of creative people even today
discover their own original creative genius first by trying to

(36:53):
copy things, trying to copy things when they're young, and
in the laborious process of making manual copies of somebody
else's work of art, because they can't make a perfect copy,
they end up diverging from from the original out of
necessity because they can't do it, And then in this
divergence start expressing their own unique style, which then develops

(37:17):
into what that person will use when creating original works
of their own.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah. Yeah, And we see this throughout history. Sometimes in
like rigorous art training in different cultures, but even today,
like there's the sort of the various examples of this,
some more current, but some also going back several decades,
where what begins as an exercise in fan fiction becomes
either the either the work in and of itself or

(37:43):
sort of the ideas that spring out of that work
become a new creation, something that is wholly original to
a given author or you know, creator of some sort.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, totally. So, I think imitation is not something that
you know, should be should be shown within art. It's
like a necessary part of the development of artistic styles
and has been, you know, all throughout history. But one
of the things is that while we've always been able
to imitate other people's performances and artworks over the centuries,

(38:15):
gradually higher fidelity techniques for mechanically reproducing works of art
have come online. So you might originally have things like
the crude ability to stamp coins in the ancient world,
you could reproduce a crude design over and over on coins.
Later you get woodcut printing, lithography, and finally, in the

(38:36):
nineteenth century, the photograph in the motion picture and early
in this essay, though this wasn't quite yet true at
the time, Benjamin quotes the French poet Paul Valerie making
a striking prediction about the future of image and sound
reproduction technology. So Valerie says in translation, just as water,

(38:58):
gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far
off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort,
so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images
which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of
the hand, hardly more than a sign whoa wow, whoa

(39:19):
reading that made me sit back because obviously that is
the world we live in now. I mean, it's we
don't stop to appreciate it often. But how historically strange
it is that we can we can summon a photograph
of almost anything that has been photographed, just by making
a few gestures with the hand.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, it is crazy, like to the point where it
feels like we are being deprived of something when we
can't summon such an image, when there is an image
that is or or you know, artwork that is lost.
I feel this way just talking about films, like so
much in the cinematic canon is available to us now

(39:59):
and in many case is it has been remastered, has
been made widely available digitally or otherwise. And yet there
are plenty of exceptions to this, films that haven't been restored,
that aren't as widely available, or in some cases, films
that have been lost. And there's something that just kind
of crazy about that, you know, given how much is
out there and how much, we have to realize that

(40:19):
there are works that are just gone to history and
we'll never be able to bring them back.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah. So obviously this gets us really thinking about, you know,
the preservation of art and our access to it and
what it means when we're not able to see something
we want. But also it I think should make us
think about how this kind of access and this kind
of relationship to images of art, and this would include

(40:48):
all forms of art. I mean, we're talking especially about
visual art, but this would include you know, recordings of
musical performances, recordings of plays, and other types of physical performancesculpture's,
imagery of sculptures, films. Of course, we should think about
how this kind of media technologically mediated access to these

(41:09):
works of art changes the way we experience them and
what they mean to us. So in this essay, Benjamin
argues that when we interact with a mechanically reproduced copy
of a work of art, for example, a photographic print
of a painting, just so you can imagine something specific
in your mind, Let's say the Anatomy Lesson by Rembrandt.

(41:33):
I in fact copied and pasted an image of this
painting into our outline here, So let that marinate, given
what we're talking about. But so when we access, say
a photographic print of a painting like this, we may
be deceived into thinking that we are looking at the painting,
but we're not. Even though, but by some measures, you

(41:56):
could argue that the photograph is a quote perfect reproduction,
not subject to like the little variations and deficiencies that
would emerge if a skilled forger tried to paint a
copy of it by hand. There are still differences. First
of all, though we think of photographic reproduction as perfect,
there are things that can't really be captured very well

(42:18):
in a photo, such as the three dimensionality of some paintings,
Like some paintings really kind of come off the canvas,
and you know, the texture of the brushstrokes and the
pile up of the painting and stuff can cast little
shadows and so forth. So there's that, there's how the
painting interacts with light in the room, how it changes
over time, etc. However, even if we had a machine

(42:41):
to make three dimensionally chemically exact physical copies of painting,
Benjamin says, there would still be a difference, because he writes, quote,
even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art
is lacking in one element, its presence in time and space,
it's unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

(43:03):
This unique existence of the work of art determined the
history to which it was subject throughout the time of
its existence. This includes the changes which it may have
suffered in physical condition over the years, as well as
the various changes in its ownership. So, by virtue of
the fact that a physical work of art, the original

(43:24):
is a single object, it has a history associated with it.
That is not true of the history of the copies.
Now we might well think, well, when I look at
a painting, I don't really care if it's the physically
original copy. I don't really care whether the painter's hands
touched it. I don't care who owned this physical artifact

(43:45):
or where it was kept at what time. That's not
interesting information to me. And maybe you don't care about that.
That's something maybe I don't think about all that often
when I google an image of a painting. But it's
possible that the fact that we don't care about those
things is a result of existing in a world where
our response to art has been conditioned by ubiquitous mechanical reproduction.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
And it's interesting to compare these experiences of encountering art
in person and seeing it online and so forth. Like
I can think of examples from my form my on
my own part, they went both ways. Like, for instance,
I first saw the paintings of Irving Norman in person,
and I was really captivated by just like they're they're huge,

(44:29):
and like it's a in you're you're there, You're in
this work's presence, and you just kind of feel like
you're falling into it and you get to sort of
walk back and forth checking out little details of it.
And like that's one of the great experiences of seeing
a work of art in person, is you get to
have that prolonged multisensory experience with the piece. I mean,
you know, maybe you know you shouldn't touch it, don't

(44:50):
go and lick it or anything, but still like they're
there are various things going on, like even things not
directly tied to the painting, like just hearing, like the
uh you know, the echoes in the museum and so forth.
And yet there are other works like I had long
been a fan of this particular work by Arnold Buchlan,
Isle of the Dead. There are various versions of this

(45:10):
that he painted. Is very iconic painting that is often
referenced in film of this strange dark island that is
not like the symbolism is is harder to piece apart
like it does it's not just an island. It looks
like a skull, but it is very captivating and does
seem to have this grim darkness to it. And yet

(45:31):
when I saw one of these versions that had been
painted by the artist in person at the met years back,
I was initially disappointed because you know, this didn't necessarily
have a lot to do with the painting itself, but
like you know, the lighting in the room for some reason,
it was It's very dark work just in terms of
just like the black pigment, and the light was catching

(45:53):
it in a weird way. And I think like there were
a lot of people moving through that space at the time,
so I didn't like feel like it was in its
presence and so forth. So there are all these different
factors that can influence the way that we encounter a
piece online versus in person. Though at the end of
the day, like when you encounter it online, how much

(46:14):
time are we really giving that work before we click
on to the next thing, Whereas if you're in the
room with it, unless you're just speeding through the museum,
you've got to give it some time. You've got to
like breathe with it for a little bit.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's true, and it's absolutely right
what you're saying that, like, just little variations in the
physical experience in the room of seeing an artwork can
change the way you relate to it. But you know,
there's another way that I think the mechanical reproduction has
affected your relationship to these works of art, which is
that you had seen them before you saw them.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
That's right. Yeah, So the pure impact of Isildah Dead
was lost on me because I knew exactly what to expect,
and I was looking for all of these things, and
I had an experience already in mind, and clearly that
wasn't the artists intent. That we would go into it
having seen the image before, before we saw him.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
So here's where we get to the idea of authenticity
as a concept in art. For Walter Benjamin, a work
of art possesses an authenticity that is related to its
physical uniqueness and history as an object or I guess
also as a performance. So an original painting or sculpture,

(47:34):
or a certain performance of a piece of music or
a play are all physically unique objects or situations, and
in their original form, they have this authenticity that cannot
be reproduced, that is, their original uniqueness in form. By
mass producing a photographic or filmed copy of a work

(47:55):
of art or performance, the technical reproduction is stripped of
that physical and situational authenticity and then propagated in this
copied format. And the sum of the qualities that are
lost when a work of art is mechanically reproduced in
this way is what Benjamin refers to as the aura

(48:17):
of the original the aa U r A. The aura
is all of this stuff about the physically unique original
that does not get carried over in mechanical copies. So
one commonly cited example of how the aura affects the
experience of art is by a change in the location
of the experience. Benjamin writes, quote the cathedral leaves its

(48:40):
locale to be received in the studio of a lover
of art. The cooral production performed in an auditorium or
in the open air, resounds in the drawing room. And
you know, this makes me think of something with regard
to movies. Actually, even though cinema is kind of different,
because cinema is an art form explicitly designed with canical
reproduction in mind. You know, you know when you make

(49:02):
a movie that there are going to be print copies
of it that will be taken all over and shown
in theaters all over the land. Nevertheless, I can recall
interviews I've watched and read with multiple different film directors
expressing a common sentiment, sentiment which is heartfelt anguish at
the idea of somebody watching one of their movies on

(49:24):
a phone. Changing the venue and format of viewing fundamentally
alters what the director meant for the audience to experience.
So if you made a movie thinking people would be
seeing it in a movie theater, and then they're watching
it on a phone, it may be a faithful reproduction,

(49:44):
pretty high fidelity visuals and sound of the film you made,
but it's not what you had in mind. It's a
different thing.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A number of directors have said this
in recent years, and and you also hear fans say this.
I mean I've said this as well, Like I come
back from seeing Dune Part two and I say, this
is a movie you need to see on the big screen.
Now do I think it should only be seen on
the big screen. No, I'm going to watch it on
a smaller screen at some point. That's probably gonna be

(50:15):
my second viewing. I might even watch parts of it
on a phone. And that's my choice, you know. So
I think we sometimes it can get a little overblown
and folks can get a little carried away with it.
But I do think, yeah, there. We've talked about this
in reference to particular films on Weird House before, for instance,
when we talked about Pirana Mandir, the the Indian horror movie,

(50:40):
and we talked about like the intended not only the
intended scope of the picture, but sort of like the
intended viewing experience, that this was not something they didn't
make this film thinking about, you know, two podcasters watching
it by themselves in their individual households, you know, on
their laptop around their TV. No, this is something lots
of people were going to go to a movie theater

(51:01):
to enjoy together, find different things to enjoy in the
film depending on how old they were and so forth,
and what their tastes were, and it was going to be,
you know, like kind of a party, according to what
I read about this film's original release.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true that some films are
made with a large viewing audience all gathered together and
experiencing it at the same time in mind. But at
least with the example of film, you could say that
film is something that is made with the understanding initially
that it's going to be it's going to be copied
and viewed in different contexts and stuff. You know that

(51:36):
the creators have to understand that will happen over time.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
You know.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
You got to wonder with like some of these older
works of art, like what the creator might have imagined
or not even just what the creator imagined, just like
whether it was in the creator's mind or not. The changes,
the kind of unexpected changes that come in how people
experience these works of art. So Benjamin says that as
a result of the necessary stripping of aura and authenticity

(52:04):
from a work of art in the process of mechanical reproduction.
You know, it not only affects how that copy of
the art is experienced directly, like changes our relationship to
art in general. It changes how we see what art is.
So a culture of mechanical reproduction sort of undermines the

(52:25):
authority and spiritual power of a work of art by,
in Benjamin's words, detaching it from tradition. And he develops
this idea of art traditions as historically intertwined with religious traditions.
For example, he talks about how a lot of art
emerged in deep history from religious practices and ritual paintings

(52:47):
and sculpture depicted the gods or legendary heroes or mythic encounters.
Music was sung in worship of the gods, and in
this tradition, religious art was thought to have a value
that was in dependent of its value as an object
to be perceived and admired by an audience. This traditional

(53:07):
religious value of art is what he calls its cult value.
And I'll read a quote from the essay here. Benjamin writes, quote,
artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in
a cult, one may assume that what mattered was their existence,
not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the
man of the Stone Age on the walls of his

(53:28):
cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it
to his fellow men, but in the main it was
meant for the spirits. Today, the cult value would seem
to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain
statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in
the cella. Certain madonnas remain covered nearly all year round.

(53:50):
Certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator
on the ground level. With the emancipation of the various
art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition
of their products. Now one little note here. In the
specific example of cave art, I think we should be
clear that we don't know exactly what its function was,

(54:13):
and we should be careful about speculating too much there.
But certainly with the later art forms he mentions like
occurring within written history. You know the sculptures and the
statues he cites, We know that lots of them were
thought to be important because of their inherent existence and
not just because people would look at them.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
That's a great point. I mean this also applies to
various ancient, prehistoric examples of art that that, for the
most part, are best viewed from an aerial vehicle.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
You know.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Yeah, Like it's not necessarily that, it's not that people
were going to view it. And again we get into
the same problem of maybe not knowing exactly what the
intent was or or how they imagined viewer of this piece,
be it human or divine.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
You're talking about like the Nasca designs and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's excellent example the things that could not be viewed
in their total form by a person at the time.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
But does that mean it had to have been aliens
because that you had to have somebody flying overhead to
see it. No, not necessarily.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
No, I don't think it means it had to be
aliens at all. It probably means that there was some
value of this work of art other than a person
being able to see the whole thing at once. So
considering this, Benjamin talks about how over time, artistic culture
emerged that separated these works of art, these items from

(55:41):
their cult value by removing them from their original context
and putting them in museums and galleries and sending them
traveling around the world and mobile exhibitions, or just by
having people observe them in their original place but without
the original ritual context. And this shift from what Benjamin
calls cult value to exhibition value seems to the author

(56:05):
here to decrease the power and authority of the art work.
But it also creates a culture with a different idea
of what art is for and what makes a piece
of art valuable and important. And you might imagine all
kinds of examples of how this would change the way
people evaluate and relate to art when culture tells you

(56:26):
that this is a thing you go to a museum
and look at and appreciate as an expression of emotion
and the display of technical artistic skill, rather than a
thing that maybe lives in a temple and somehow depicts
channels or honors a god or a divine idea, even
if nobody's there to look at it. And so I
think Benjamin's idea is that mechanical reproduction causes a sort

(56:50):
of continuous along the spectrum a similar shift in the
value of art. Even further away from the traditional cult
value of art, which is somehow related to the authenticity
of an artwork, according again to Benjamin's definition of authenticity
being like the original uniqueness of the artwork, and divorces
art further from its its history, its tradition of cult value,

(57:15):
divorces it from the aura, and it causes a devaluation
of the art itself and changes its meaning. It becomes
something else, something more like a product. Now you could acknowledge,
as I think Benjamin did, that there could be both
good and bad consequences that arise from changing the meaning
of art through mechanical reproduction. Just one thing that comes

(57:39):
to my mind. I don't know that this is how
it works, but I wonder if by increasing accessibility of
art through mechanical reproduction and sort of if Benjamin's theory
is correct, removing it from its traditional sort of power
and cult value, maybe that helps also broaden one's appreciation
for art it is from outside your own cultural or

(58:02):
religious tradition. I'm not sure it works that way, but
that's possible, so you can see good sides as well.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Yeah, I mean, not everybody can travel to see these
various works in person, and therefore having some other type
of experience with that work is ideal. I mean, it
allows more people to experience it to some degree.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Or in some cases, would allow anyone to experience it
at all.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
But on the other hand, though, I don't know, I
have some questions, but I think I agree at least
in part with what he's saying about, Like this culture
that arises from the mass production of images of art
works does in some way cause a devaluation of the
power and authenticity of the original that you can imagine

(58:49):
how you would experience and art work differently if you
could not just summon on your phone a picture of
the Mona Lisa or the Anatomy Lesson or whatever whenever
you wanted to, or even before or that, see a
picture of it in a book you know, or see
a picture reproduced in a newspaper or whatever. I guess
the irony is that I've never lived at a time

(59:10):
when there was not mass mechanical reproduction of art in
all its forms, So I can't really compare this world
to the before times. I never lived in the before times,
so I don't know, you know, I only know the
world where you can buy prints of the Mona Lisa
for five bucks.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
I guess one thing that we might compare it to
is various art installations and also these sort of attraction
themed art exhibits that we find a lot of times
these days, where there is something inherent to the art.
Maybe it's on a scale that can't be captured in
a photograph, or it is like an environment that you

(59:49):
were engaging in, or it's just something as simple as
a sculpture garden, you know, like, yes, you can see
like it's not two dimensional, there's a three dimensional reality
to it. There are multiple angles from which to consider
it for you know, it is an experience in a
way that I think everybody can wrap their heads around.
And maybe the challenge there is to realize that that

(01:00:11):
that all these other forms of like two dimensional visual art.
Of course, you know, they're often there's often more than
just those two dimensions to consider with with with the painting,
but still, like even famous paintings are also the sort
of an experience, like there is there is more going
on there even if you're not like standing in its
shadow or getting a selfie made with it, like there

(01:00:32):
is still an experience to be had in its presence.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Absolutely, though again we also have to wonder, like how
the general culture of mechanical reproduction has affected even our
ability to relate to physical originals now right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Right, because when we do go to those big art installations,
if there're one, that is, if it's an if it's
an installation that is marketed as hey, get yourself, you
made this environment, then we're coming back right back around
to turn it into a mass produced image, and mass
produced and then personalized image that then goes into your
social media fee.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
I should add finally that there's a whole bunch of
other stuff this essay goes into about the role of
art and mechanical reproduction of art and how that relates
to politics and the role of art in manipulating mass
opinion and revolution and things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
All right, before we close out this episode, I do
want to come back to something we're talking about earlier,
about this question of why might it be the case
that during one's formative years, during one's teenage years, this
question of authenticity and art was more maybe seem more important,
and brought off the idea that it might be connected
to the highly social aspects of the teenage brain. I

(01:01:47):
was thinking about this because I was reading an interesting
take on all of this from author Jason Tugau on
Psychology Today, which tackles the subject of art forgery via neuroesthetics,
which is a disc one that looks at the neural
basis of how we perceive, contemplate, and even create works
of art. So, in neuroesthetics, which is very much a

(01:02:07):
young and continually evolving area of neurosciences, you know, because
it depends on what we know and understand about the
brain and neural networks and so forth, there's this idea
that art engages the social brain, as viewing and considering
artwork depends on some of the same networks involved in
complex social behavior.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
Interesting, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Furthermore, focus consideration of a work of art engages a
number of senses, invoking a pronounced consideration of space as
well as societal, cultural, and individual context. So even if
you and I think we can, if we really self analyze,
we might realize this is the case. Even if we're
at that museum and we're like, Okay, I'm going to
stand in the presence of this art. You can't help

(01:02:50):
but also take into account all these other things. There's
a lot going on on some level you're going to
be aware of how you look looking at this piece
of art. You are going to be thinking about your
own care, the culture from which the this art or
artist emerged, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
It is nearly maybe I reveal my own shallowness or
something by saying this, but I think it is nearly
impossible to experience a work of art without having involuntary
thoughts while you're having the experience of what other people
would think about it and considering your self in relation
to these hypothetical other people whom you're imagining reacting to it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah. Yeah, And so in my experience off and have
to sort of check back in and realize, like, no, no, no,
but stop thinking about that, let's just look at the
art and so forth. But so, yeah, So there's a
lot going on when we look at art. But to
gal citing feeling of beauty, author Gabriel Starr says that
the result, the ideal result here when we're viewing art

(01:03:50):
is a feeling of harmony, a harmony that can be
disrupted if we learn that the piece of art reviewing
is not authentic, which is to say, you know, fake
to some or another. And and this makes sense, this
falls along with what we've been talking about, I think
we can easily turn to various experiences of disruption in
our association with any given work of art or creative project.

(01:04:12):
You know, what happens when you find out a piece
of work is to some degree inauthentic. What about when
you find out that the creator to some degree is
inauthentic or they are not what you thought they were.
Your appreciation of a work may not depend one hundred
percent on that idea that you had about its creator's
authenticity or character, but a change is still likely to occur,

(01:04:35):
and I think we can all think to examples of
that in our own appreciation of the arts.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Yeah, there is a feeling of betrayal that comes when
you find out something, You find out something you really
don't like about the creator of a work of art
that you do like. That is not present when you
just find out something you don't like about a random
public figure.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's it can be a struggle sometimes,
you know, and at times it can feel like if
you enjoy a particular work of art or a film
or music, you don't want to know too much about
the person who created it, because the more you know,
the more likely you are to find something that you
disagree with or don't like and then could tarnish the

(01:05:19):
work of art. But then the other side is there's
also lots of stuff you can find out about an
artist that enhances your experience of a given work. So
it's it's often it often seems like it's worth diving into.
You know, you may find something that enhances your understanding
of art that is already enriching your life.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
Nevertheless, I think even if you're not thinking about the artist,
I totally see what you were saying here about this
source claiming that our experience of art is to a
large degree engaging the social brain. That seems very true
to me. That whether it's you know, that music, the

(01:06:02):
band you like, you worry if they're the real deal
or if they're fake, Or it's movies, or it's it's painting,
I feel like it is it's inescapable that there's some
part of engaging with the work of art that's kind
of like meeting a person, or it's kind of like
considering interactions between a social group. That that rings very

(01:06:22):
true to me.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
All Right, well, we're gonna go ahead and cut it off.
Right here. But obviously we'd love to hear from you
out there, because I know that listeners inevitably have thoughts
about all of this, about inauthenticity and authenticity and fakery
in the in the in the various mediums, the various
art forms that we've discussed here, or in you know,
life in general. So write in we would love to
hear from you. Will throw out that email address here

(01:06:46):
in a minute, but just a remind it. The Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode
on Wednesdays. On Mondays, we do listener mail on Fridays,
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. You can follow
us on social media where if you get your social media,
we're probably there. Rate and review the show wherever you

(01:07:06):
have the power to do so. That really helps us
out and we appreciate it, and I believe that's it.
What else do you have for us here, Joe.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
Nothing else except to say our regular audio producer JJ
Posway is out this week, so huge thanks to our
guest producer Paul decant. Thank you, Paul. Let's see if
you have anything you'd like to get in touch with
us with, if you'd like to suggest a topic for
a future episode, if you would like to send us
feedback on this episode or any other, or if you'd

(01:07:34):
just like to say hi. You can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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