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HOT TAKES ABOUT AUTHENTICITY IN CULTURAL EXPRESSIONAuthenticity begins with the stories old people have told you, and ends at the tips of your own skin.
In other words:
Authenticity is only ever lived experience.
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However:
"Authenticity" is not "truth", or "art".
From a bedrock of lived experience, with the details you've gleaned from the world around you, and the empathy you exercise in your heart-
The artful and truthful things you can make slip the confines of the earth.
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"Authenticity" is not "truth", or "art".
From a bedrock of lived experience, with the details you've gleaned from the world around you, and the empathy you exercise in your heart-
The artful and truthful things you can make slip the confines of the earth.
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Examples:
I, a cisgender male person, can *never* write an authentic trans story. But I *can* write one that approaches truth.
I, a person who has never breathed Jakartan air, can *never* write an authentic story set in Jakarta. But I *can* write one that approaches truth.
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I, a cisgender male person, can *never* write an authentic trans story. But I *can* write one that approaches truth.
I, a person who has never breathed Jakartan air, can *never* write an authentic story set in Jakarta. But I *can* write one that approaches truth.
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It's weird how this position makes me simultaneously more hardline and more permissive than every other position I usually see bandied about in the Discourse.
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But I think it does put me in simpatico with folks like @momatoes, whose thoughts here I agree with:
https://twitter.com/momatoes/status/1355509600997363719
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https://twitter.com/momatoes/status/1355509600997363719
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To the question: "How do we create 'authentic' stories reflecting specific cultures'?"
I'd ask a question in return: "Why do you want to create 'authentic' stories about specific cultures you do not feel are your own?"
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I'd ask a question in return: "Why do you want to create 'authentic' stories about specific cultures you do not feel are your own?"
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Now: I sympathise with the need to make things that feel true to specific peoples and places. It is the entirety of my work, after all.
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Paraphrasing what I said at a forum panel in #SessionZeroOnline :
For various socio-political reasons, as a Chinese person in Malaysia, I have never felt like the place I was born and live in belonged to me. I make art so I may actually belong to it.
My journey is return.
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For various socio-political reasons, as a Chinese person in Malaysia, I have never felt like the place I was born and live in belonged to me. I make art so I may actually belong to it.
My journey is return.
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However, if your answer to the question: "Why do you want to create 'authentic' stories about specific cultures you do not feel are your own?"
is: "So I can represent it."
Yeaaahhhh .... no.
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is: "So I can represent it."
Yeaaahhhh .... no.
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REPRESENTATION is the problem, to me. The whole way people talk about it makes my skin itch.
If authenticity ends where my lived experience does, I wouldn't feel comforting representing my own grandmother -let alone Malaysians generally.
Ditto SEAsia.
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If authenticity ends where my lived experience does, I wouldn't feel comforting representing my own grandmother -let alone Malaysians generally.
Ditto SEAsia.
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Folks who say they want to represent "the Asian experience" or whatever fill me with apprehension. I'm immediately sus ...
It's because the "representation" in culture feels, to me, intrinsically linked to commodification: you are representing something to outside buyers.
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It's because the "representation" in culture feels, to me, intrinsically linked to commodification: you are representing something to outside buyers.
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"I want to represent an authentic Asian experience!" <- the silent clause here is "to a Western audience."
I'm not saying don't do this. I, too, like USD. White people are still the most lucrative market for a lot of the things we make.
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I'm not saying don't do this. I, too, like USD. White people are still the most lucrative market for a lot of the things we make.
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But we should not pretend that "representation" of this sort helps the people being "represented" in any real way.
Some SEAsians feel represented by Disney's "Raya". But I think that's a function of "white corporations see us!" -paltry crumbs from a table that is not ours.
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Some SEAsians feel represented by Disney's "Raya". But I think that's a function of "white corporations see us!" -paltry crumbs from a table that is not ours.
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The opposite of authenticity is:
The foodie who rides into a small town, going: "Show me were the most authentic [insert local delicacy here] is! I don't want to go to where the tourists go! I need the single most authentic one! This one is not authentic enough!"
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The foodie who rides into a small town, going: "Show me were the most authentic [insert local delicacy here] is! I don't want to go to where the tourists go! I need the single most authentic one! This one is not authentic enough!"
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The opposite of authenticity is also:
The local guide who is selling authenticity, telling tourists "this is the real most authentic one."
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The local guide who is selling authenticity, telling tourists "this is the real most authentic one."
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Both are lies, scaffolds built to sell products.
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Authenticity is lived experience. Your bastard amalgam of an identity -the result of time and diaspora, of the millions human breaths that made you-
It is just as authentic as my bastard amalgam of an identity -the result of the gasps and sighs that made me.
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It is just as authentic as my bastard amalgam of an identity -the result of the gasps and sighs that made me.
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