I was in a play once. I was exactly my son’s age. It was a version of 12 Angry Men only we called it 12 Angry People to include girls. I was Juror #10, the bigot who rails against “those people.” It was mysterious why I was cast considering I was new to the school and stuttered. Somehow I channeled Archie Bunker enough to pass as fluent and angry. But my speech was never that effortless again. I had a tiny part in the next play, Our Town, and botched it. I could not coherently give directions to the local cemetery no matter how much I practiced. I was saved from the shepherd’s crook only because I was playing an old woman; I suspect they thought the stammer was method. But it marked the end of my career as a stage actress, and until recently, the end of my interest in live theater.

I love to watch movies. I will read all day long. But plays and musicals make me anxious. Especially when performed by amateurs. Too many things can go wrong. Forgotten lines, cracked notes, fallen backdrops, mistakes made in public, in front of an audience. All the possibilities of human error tucked inside a box, framed like a grade school diorama come to life. I anticipate the stutter stalking every word. I feel the tension that the actors must be feeling. I can’t relax because I worry for them. My vicarious leap is not for the characters but for the mortals behind the roles.

So I am nervous even when my son is not. He is his father’s son. My husband was an actor from childhood, quite accomplished in high school and college. He still performs but for this production he is behind the scenes, one of the adults in charge. The two of them have been dedicated to this project for months, hours and hours spent in rehearsal. The play is an ambitious musical with difficult arrangements and complex themes. My son is Abel of “Cain and Abel” fame. Hence the gory end that he wants to keep shrouded. He predicts that I will have an epic reaction. After all, what mother wouldn’t?

But this would assume I could let go of the curtains and the kids, that I could stop wringing my hands for my actor son in order to feel grief for Eve’s son. I would have to suspend belief in the same way I do when I try and see a 3D picture locked in a series of dots and circles. My eyes must focus differently, not on the literal, but on the emotional echo.

* * *

I am home from the musical. My son was indeed hit over the head with a rock, repeatedly, though from my angle I saw the three inches of space between his head and the prop. I plainly saw that he wasn’t hurt. Perhaps my mind would not let me believe that he could be hurt.

Although my son remained my son, there were moments when the edges of the stage did recede. I did find myself responding to a few of the performers as people within a relevant narrative outside my pragmatic world. I could let out a breath and sit back. There is something dangerous about live theater. A risk of failure eliminated by the multiple takes of film or the delete button on the computer. But when the peril looming behind a step or line does not manifest, when it all works, it is more real, more distinct than anything on page or screen. Human beings sharing a primal ritual, pretending, not pretending; finding something true in them selves that resonates true in their assumed role. I caught glimpses tonight of what my husband has always touted. I shed my role as separate, as audience, as skeptic, as neurotic and truly participated in the story.

Then, the minute Abel walked on stage, the magic flickered and my hands clenched around my program. I slipped back into mom, fretting, chewing the inside of my mouth like empathic scenery.

Young Method Actor: I’m working on a scene right now where I have to be overcome with sadness, but I’m having trouble getting in touch with my sorrow.

Old Ham: You say you want to do sorrow? For sorrow, I just let my mouth gape open, lower my head and shoulders, and maybe pretend to wipe a tear from my eye. Maybe shake my head slowly from side to side. That’s sorrow.

YMA: Well I don’t know about that, but tell me about anger. Sometimes it’s a challenge for me as an actor — I’m not really an angry person.

OH: Anger? If you gotta do anger, you just make fists with your hands, clench your jaw muscles so your face turns red, and deliver your lines in a really loud whisper. That’ll give ‘em anger.

YMA (taken aback): But you’re just talking about faking sorrow or anger. What about sincerity?

OH: Ah, sincerity! Sincerity’s the most important thing. If you can do sincerity, you’ve got it made.*

(1) Authenticity is not what you think it is
Sadly ignorant of Lionel Trilling, I’ll attempt to differentiate sincerity and authenticity. Sincerity is being honest about what’s inside you, about the thoughts and feelings that you have access to. If you feel sad, you let it show. If you love someone, you tell them you love them. You avoid praising someone you think is a hack.

Authenticity is something else, something that wasn’t possible as a concept until Freud and his fellow hermeneuticists of suspicion came along and convinced us that we don’t have access to all of our own inner life. The processes of human development and acculturation to modern society necessarily involve hiding parts of our psyches from our conscious minds. Authenticity is speaking and acting not according to the inner self that you have access to — since that part of your inner self might be distorted by cultural encrustations — but according to some true inner self, the part that’s free of the lies and distortions necessitated by modern life.

Sincerity is an old-fashioned virtue, then. I think I love you, I say I love you: I’m sincere. Authenticity is sincerity updated, complicated. I think I love you, I say I love you, but it turns out I am merely yearning for an absent parental figure, and when I realize that I leave you, take a lot of drugs, have an epiphany in a sweat lodge, write a memoir, and go on Oprah: I’m authentic.

It is possible to be sincere about complicated inner states, but authenticity is always in the direction of simplifying. In fact, what counts as authenticity depends very much on how the “hidden inner” is constructed. The “known inner” (in Freudian terms the superego and the Id) is civilized and artificial in the way one must be to function socially; it is bound by social class, geography, and history. The hidden inner, on the other hand, is envisioned as something more primitive. It is natural rather than artificial; free rather than determined; universal rather than particular.

Of course, the categories associated with authenticity — natural, free, and universal comprise a partial list — are themselves culturally bound. And that cultural specificity is a way to start unraveling the construction of authenticity. Sort some things quickly into categories of authentic and inauthentic, without worrying about why you’re sorting them that way: blue jeans vs. tailored tuxedo trousers; the Stones vs. Lawrence Welk; a hike in the mountains vs. a drive around town.

Now reflect on that sorting. Does it really make any sense at all? What we have is an aesthetic of authenticity. The authentic, the hidden inner, is characterized by a set of qualities that we valorize, by a particular fiction about human nature. (I suspect this fiction arose from the Romantic project and was processed through bourgeois dissatisfaction with capitalism’s concurrent boringness and uncertainty, but I don’t have a full account to offer here.)

While it often makes sense to talk about a “hidden inner,” the characterization of this part of the self as untouched by artifice is complete bunk. It makes no sense to say, “Well, this is what I would think or feel or do if only I hadn’t been born when I was, into a particular family, nation, religious community, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, and so on.” Those “accidents” of birth and of life are what make you who you are — both the known and the hidden parts of you. The myth of authenticity requires that there be something untouched by the given, but there is not.

(This isn’t to claim that there isn’t some sort of biological component of human nature. I for one think there almost certainly is such a thing. But we don’t know nearly enough about humanity to characterize the biological component of our natures except in very trivial, boring ways — like our daily caloric requirements, that sort of thing. We certainly can’t say anything robust enough about our biological nature to flesh out any notion of authenticity.)

In the comment thread to Lisa’s post last week, there was some discussion about whether Obama was actually authentic or merely seemed authentic. My contention is that all there is to actually being authentic is seeming authentic. There is nothing to authenticity beyond the tropes of authenticity.

(2) You wouldn’t know real authenticity anyway
But I suspect many people in the audience will not buy my hastily sketched argument in the previous section. Fair enough. If you won’t agree with me that there is no such thing as authenticity other than the illusion of authenticity, I would like to convince you that you wouldn’t be able to recognize this authenticity in politicians even if it existed. In fact, you can’t even recognize sincerity in politicians. So you should stop trying.

I offer an anecdote told by Arthur Miller in a lecture he gave in 2001 about acting and politics. Its form is remarkably like the joke I told above, although the punchline makes an epistemological point rather than a metaphysical one.

I recall again a story once told me by my old friend, the late Robert Lewis, director of a number of beautiful Broadway productions, including the original “Finian’s Rainbow.” Starting out as an actor in the late Thirties, Bobby had been the assistant and dresser of Jacob Ben Ami, a star in Europe and in New York as well. Ben Ami, an extraordinary actor, was playing in a Yiddish play but despite the language and the location of the theatre far from Times Square on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of its scenes had turned it into a substantial hit with English-speaking audiences. Experiencing that scene had become the in-thing to do in New York. People who had never dreamed of seeing a Yiddish play travelled downtown to watch this one scene, and then left. In it Ben Ami stood at the edge of the stage staring into space, and with tremendous tension, brought a revolver to his head. Seconds passed, whole minutes, some in the audience shut their eyes or turned away certain the shot was coming at any instant. Ben Ami clenched his jaws, sweat broke out on his face, his eyes seemed about to pop out of his head, his hands trembled as he strove to will himself to suicide; more moments passed, people in the audience were gasping for breath and making strange asphyxiated noises; finally, standing on his toes now as though to leap into the unknown, Ben Ami dropped the gun and cried out, “Ich kann es nicht!” I can’t do it! Night after night he brought the house down; Ben Ami had somehow literally compelled the audience to suspend its disbelief and to imagine his brains splattered all over the stage.

Lewis, aspiring young actor that he was, begged Ben Ami to tell him the secret of how he had created this emotional reality, but the actor kept putting him off, saying he would only tell him after the final performance. “It’s better for people not to know,” he said, “or it’ll spoil the show.”

Then at last the final performance came and at its end Ben Ami sat in his dressing room with the young Lewis.

“You promised to tell me,” Lewis said.

“All right, I’ll tell you. My problem with this scene,” Ben Ami explained, “was that I personally could never blow my brains out, I am just not suicidal, and I can’t imagine ending my life. So I could never really know how that man was feeling and I could never play such a person authentically. For weeks I went around trying to think of some parallel in my own life that I could draw on. What situation could I be in where first of all I am standing up, I am alone, I am looking straight ahead, and something I feel I must do is making me absolutely terrified, and finally that whatever it is I can’t do it?”

“Yes,” Lewis said, hungry for this great actor’s cue to greatness. “And what is that?”

“Well,” Ben Ami said, “I finally realized that the one thing I hate worse than anything is washing in cold water. So what I’m really doing with that gun to my head is, I’m trying to get myself to step into an ice cold shower.”

Miller goes on to apply the story to politics. Most politicians seem fake most of the time. But take the very best politicians, the ones who seem real, sincere, authentic. It may be that they’re just old hams, faking sincerity and authenticity with a specific set of vocal and facial mannerisms. But it may be that they’re as good as Ben Ami and employing some kind of Method or Stanislavski skills. Maybe they really are passionate when they deliver their stump speeches. But it’s impossible for us to tell what they are passionate about. The manifestation of an emotion does not necessarily reveal the true content of that emotion.

I honestly don’t see how you can get past this problem to claim that you know a particular politician is really authentic or even sincere. Consider that these men and women are masters of performance. They have consultants who rehearse with them every gesture, every line, before a major speech or debate. Or, if they don’t have such consultants, it is because they themselves are natural stars. (Consultants did not tell Cary Grant how to be Cary Grant; he figured the role out for himself.)

Consider how well presidential candidates have adapted whatever pre-political, everyday personas they might have had to the media in which they work as candidates: speeches in front of crowds; speeches, debates, and interviews in front of television cameras. Arthur Miller again:

The lense magnifies everything; the slight lift of an eyelid and you look like you’re glaring. If there is a single most basic requirement for success on television it is minimalization; to be convincing before the camera is that whatever you are doing do it less and emit cool. In other words — act. In contrast, speakers facing hundreds of people without a microphone and in the open air, must inevitably have been broader in gesture and even more emphatic in speech than in life.

If you watch video of Obama or Clinton or McCain giving a stump speech at a rally, you’ll notice how different their delivery is from when they give a televised speech or an interview with Tim Russert. These people are aware of the media in which they work. And if you think you are good enough to see past their training and skills into the “real” candidate, you’re fooling yourself.

You might object that I am talking here about candidates who at least seem genuine, that we can at least rule out candidates who seem fake as actually fake (authentic in their fakery). But I don’t think we can even do that. Seeming real in front of a huge crowd or in front of a camera is not a skill that many people have, and really connecting with an audience under such circumstances is a rare skill indeed. If you’ve ever watched a video of yourself or someone you know personally, you know what I mean. Regular people seem stiff, uncomfortable, even fake on camera. I would suspect that some number of the more sincere (not to say authentic) politicians also come across badly on camera; those of us who see them only on television then conclude they are insincere and fake.

(3) It’s disappointing, but you shouldn’t fret about it
It’s fun to read about movie stars and imagine we know them and could be part of their lives. But we have a word for people who think they actually know the stars they merely read about in US Weekly: delusional. It’s the same with politicians. They come to us as actors, and many people make the same kind of decisions about voting as they do when picking their favorite stars. Never forget that our country (semi-)elected George W. Bush and also gave Patrick Dempsey a People’s Choice Award.

Now, plenty of movie stars are perfectly nice people. I once hung out for a couple of hours at the apartment of a quite famous and talented actor, and he was a gracious host and a normal guy in conversation. But I would have no way of knowing that if I hadn’t been hanging out with his stepsister that evening. And more importantly, whether he acted like a regular guy when he had a few people over to his apartment has pretty much nothing to do with his job, at which he is excellent.

Politicians have two jobs to do. One is to communicate. In doing this job, they are actors, pure and simple. They must make people feel a connection, but the connection is the same kind of connection you have with someone performing in a play or a movie. Reagan is a great example; Clinton was very good. But they all do it. The second job of a politician is the actual governing: having meetings with subordinates, gathering information, setting priorities, making decisions — working the levers of government.

I would much rather have a politician who did they second job well (i.e., according to my policy preferences) than the first. Actually, what I’d really like is a politician who was very good at the first task in the service of the second task. Reagan and FDR are great examples. Obama, hopefully, will be another. I really don’t take seriously his stuff about transcending politics and unifying the country. You can’t transcend politics within the political system (the transcending of politics is called revolution), and the country is deeply polarized in a way that no single politician can fix. But I’m perfectly willing to put up with Obama’s endless soundbites on these themes, because I think he’s telling people what they want to hear and getting himself into a position to effect some positive policy changes.

How do you know what a politician is going to do once in office, if you can’t be convinced of her sincerity? Well, you look at past performance, you look at the her platform, and you look at the coalition of interest groups that is getting her elected and what those groups are likely to demand. These factors are quite predictive. (Paul Krugman has been writing a bit in his column about how if you actually bothered to look at Bush’s published position statements in 2000, as he did, you wouldn’t have been surprised when “compassionate conservatism” turned out to be pie in the sky that was replaced by a hard-right, pro-business, crony capitalist agenda.) If you want to have any influence on a politician, you get together with a big group of people who have enough money or other type of power that the politician will owe you when you’ve helped get her elected. In politics, power is the most important thing.

*The punch line is also a quote that gets attributed to various people including Sam Goldwyn. In the quote version, as I’ve seen it, a single word is changed: “Sincerity’s the most important thing. If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.” In the acting practice of the old ham, there’s no difference between faking and doing; the Method, which posits a drastic divide between inner and outer that it then seeks to train the actor to overcome, disparages the category of dramatic fakery.

Mainstream media
“The job of a newspaper,” goes the old saying, “is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Newspapers used to be seen as protectors of the little guy, seekers of truth, pillars of the community. Now, the “mainstream media” is the punch line of jokes and the punching bag of pundits, bloggers, and Hollywood. But newspapers — the good ones — still perform an incredibly valuable function. As their revenues dwindle and their editorial staffs are chipped away, who will commit the resources to real investigative reporting, like this, this, this, this and this?
–Lisa Parrish

Passing Strange (book and lyrics by Stew; music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald; directed by Annie Dorsen; now playing at the Belasco Theatre)
Performer and songwriter Stew narrates this autobiographical coming-of-age rock musical by singing, declaiming, and playing guitar as his young alter ego alternately stumbles and struts through a South Central L.A. adolescence and sojourns in Amsterdam and Berlin. The show is almost as cliché-filled as usual Broadway fare but redeems itself with buoyant energy and a knowing, poignant confrontation between the self-involved fantasies of youth and the realities of adulthood. (“Your epiphanies will become fair-weather friends.”) The music is successful pop, rock, and blues with just enough showbiz to tell a story; issues of race and authenticity are dealt with deftly and lightly, including the best malapropism I’ve heard in a while: “I vant to die and be reincarcerated as a black man.”
–Dave Barber