Authenticity - Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life

BOOK REVIEW Authenticity - Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life Author: David Boyle Publisher: Harper Perennial ISBN: 0-00-717964-2 Reviewed by Claudette Vaughan

Is consumerism a cancer that's destroying the boundaries of good taste and authenticity?  This is a book about what's real and what's not. 

From surreal Japanese theme parks to contrived 'reality' TV programming, from chemically enhanced fast foods to the increasingly accepted view that anything local and real is hopelessly old fashioned or economically impractical or both.  The author, David Boyle, takes us on a journey that we are unlikely to forget.

Writers of this re-emergent genre (anti mass consumerism) often make trenchant points on capitalism and consumer ease and Boyle's book is no exception. It's great modern philosophy accompanying a concerned growing 'peoples''movement that's gaining pace by insisting upon a return to the natural.

And what is this propensity for people who are partial to mistake fake for real?  Can some people be so hungry for the authenticity of a brand name, for example, that they seem particularly vulnerable to mental takeover?  Do humans really have such a tenuous hold on reality that they deny the reality of 'unreality?"

Take branding for example: IBM beams their logo onto clouds way above San Francisco with a laser but Pepsi Cola goes one better and is planning to project their logo onto the moon.  Sydney schoolboy David Bentley rents his head to advertisers while the Nike logo is the most popular item people asked for in tattoo parlours across America today. Ah! The meaninglessness of it all!

But is this only harmless distraction?

Animal rights people have been saying for years that animal liberation is human liberation. None truer a word spoken when we hear that more than 15,000 will gather this Saturday to compete in such events as bobbing for pigs feet, the mud-pit belly flop and toilet seat horseshoes. Live entertainment is by, who else, but the Armpit Orchestra.

Hell is, indeed, other people. (Jean Paul Sartre)

Can it get any worse?  Coca-Cola identifies thirty-two 'possible beverage occasions' in an average day and plans to dominate them all. Some critics of the anti-consumerism movement don't like the growing resistance to all that they espouse. They've been known to radiate the same indignation as children whose hedonism can't cope with the fact that Santa is not real.

When 'natural' is spoken about here, we're not talking about a nostalgic hankering for a by-gone era that smacks of obsessive puritanism. The question needs to be asked: Are people really so dim they cannot perceive the unreality inherent in marketing, promotion and design?

 And where did this all start?

 So-called First World countries instigated the first flirtation and subsequent contamination with consumerism.  What started out as a trivial and transient infatuation has now become a fully-fledged out-of-control Frankenstein's monster.

This is seen in the meteoric acquisitions of huge dollar fortunes by Western entrepreneurs, the seemingly limitless outreach of sexuality as propounded in the flourishing pornography establishment of the West, and in the politics of no higher authority than the demands of each human self.

The ferociousness of the commodity circulation in the Society of the 'Spectacle' means that the masses live in constant distraction always open to political manipulation. Is there is a life deeper than a supply of dishwashers, VCRs, bank accounts, luxury foods, convenience foods, plentiful necessities and 2 or 3 cars in the driveway per family?

 Reality 'peephole' TV is another case in point. Is 'Reality' television real or fake?  Geez, now that's a hard one! Reality TV claims to meet the needs of people for authentic television but Boyle asks: Is watching real  people interact in real  situations any more authentic than the scripted nature of so much else on television?

It's a good point. When Reality TV isn't being banal, which is most of the time, there is something so anti-humanistic, pro-robotic about it all. The whole situation seems contrived, contrived, contrived.  When life imitates Reality Shows then we know we are in big trouble as a culture. Boyle is apt to inject some of his own reality in when he points out that "the world of television production has never been known for its commitment to authenticity."

 Too true.

There's something amiss about values when it comes to consumerism. After 9/11 happened George W. Bush enjoined Americans to keep on spending: "We can't let the terrorists stop us from shopping." Will shopping solve the woes of America? If only it really were that simple George.

Perhaps we could have understood it better if he had said "We can't let the terrorists stop us from loving, or fighting for our rights, or congregating or well, anything. But shopping!!! That gives a new meaning to the words 'retail therapy'.

It has been said before that a culture creates the kind of people it needs. Real relationships and real food. People weren't asking these questions about Fakedom thirty years ago. Virtual reality and genetic engineering weren't fast becoming the norm back then.

Fakedom too in the media where information is duplicated, treated, extended and circulated - whether it's the truth or not - but who is distinguishing between true knowledge or mere information?

David Boyle's book Authenticity leaves us on a positive (I won't say 'spin') note. Humans have passed the crossroads of making a choice between real or fake and Real has won the day.  We have become world-weary and that's not just a bad thing in a world fraught with life negating images and a 'keeping up with the Jones' mentality.

While consumerism is marketed as a personal palliative America leads the way in promoting youth culture, Paris Hilton and crass materialistic values as the answer to it all.  All is not lost however.  There is another movement making headway in the world at present. It's smaller and world-weary too.  These are the mature recipients of an inner truth that see things differently and can discriminate between real and fake. This smaller group won't accept there is any attraction in not believing in anything and they won't give up the struggle to have their voices heard.

George Orwell once said "The people will rebel once they awaken, but first they must awaken to rebel".

But when? But when?

Buy this book for an invigorating read. Explore the dark side to consumerism and what subliminal effects it has in the material world.

At the end of the book David Boyle provides his readers with 20 guidelines for coping with the New Age of Authenticity. I'll give you ten of them. You'll have to buy the book for the other ten.

1.       Put authenticity on your own corporate agenda

2.       Make it personal

3.       Maximise human contact

4.       Split up the organisation

5.       Be Yourself

6.       Be aware of contradictions

7.       Provide customers with a choice

8.       Create real places

9.       Provide people with space to be themselves

10.    Encourage social innovation.