Peter York: against authenticity

Oprah’s on for it. A great swath of marketing people are on for it. And “human potential” development types are on for it, too. What they’re on for is “authenticity”, a word and concept fashionable in everything from emotions to materials. Think of politicians who “tell it like it is” (our Nigel), celebrity confessionals, bare-brick lofts and bushy beards in Shoreditch, or “artisan” foods. I have found it’s a word you tend to hear from people who have something to sell.

I’m dead against authenticity, immediately suspicious of the word and its intentions. It is a word that reminds me of the fast one about to be pulled, the value about to be added, the tosh about to be talked, the microconnoisseur at your elbow.

Now that the public has lost faith in politicians, banks and the press, the mass of PRs, ad execs, lobbyists and researchers have been casting about for reassuring ways to represent their clients. They have seized on a language derived from the worst kind of therapy; a language that dwells on being true to your emotions, to yourself, but doesn’t demand much more. Authenticity is the key word in this language, because it implies truthfulness with no uncomfortable requirement for facts. So the Tea Party, for instance, can claim to be more “real” – Michele Bachmann famously said “people like me because I’m authentic” – than pointy-headed eastern liberals, even though the party is backed by secretive billionaires. Populist movements always claim authenticity.

Be true to yourself: it’s a quasi-religious incantation – and tends to be about the individual “journey” (another favourite word in Oprah-land), rather than anything collective. Authenticity doesn’t do collective. The authenticity merchants always say that “society” has set impossible standards for us to follow: if you could only get back to your true self, everything in your life would click into place. No boring Occupy movements or keynote legislation are required.

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They will be standing there with their props – typically, a flip chart with a lot of important-looking word clusters, a vase of lurid flowers, a Buddha head, or an Indian fretwork screen – but they won’t be saying anything with real-world traction; it’s usually head-bangingly content-free.

Now, here’s the uncomfortable bit: educated, thoughtful, middle-class people – Guardian readers – are every bit as susceptible to the authenticity sell as American rednecks. That’s why, for instance, thoughtful middle-class types have usually called it wrong in their musical choices over the last half century – looking for authentic meanings instead of a Big Sound. When the black bluesman Leadbelly was toured around by his sponsor, John A Lomax, for an audience of white liberals between the wars, he was made to wear prison stripes and stick to miserabilist heritage blues. What he really wanted to do was wear a nice suit and perform hotel jazz.

Just imagine the lives led in those 1720s houses in Spitalfields, so assiduously, so authentically restored. How authentic do you keep it? Do you want back the world of public executions and outside loos?

Authenticity has a cohort of semantic fellow-travellers – such as “spontaneity”, which is engaging enough in small doses, in dogs and children, but tiresome and selfish in any stretch from adults. As Steven Poole has pointed out, if you push spontaneity to its logical limits you end up with a sociopath.

Or take “vibrant”, increasingly an estate-agent spin for noisy areas with a certain kind of cultural consumption. The idea is Montmartre 1910, the reality is property development.

Or “passionate”, that favourite word of corporate speechwriters who have been told to make their robotic CEOs look interesting. “Passionate” is a key word for job applicants who are seeking lugubrious endeavours (as in “I’m passionate about serving coffee”).

And then there’s “creative”, which often shares a stage with “authentic”, because creative people, being so thoroughly blessed, are expected to be in touch with their real selves, whereas what they’re really in touch with is Urban Career Opportunities around the Silicon Roundabout.

My modest hope is that when you hear anyone using any or all of these words – I recently heard a robo-CEO use the lot, at the launch of a pricey building – you pause and ask yourself whether the speaker is not in fact offering anything real at all, but a re-badged Thatcher’s Child chancer trying to make a fast buck.

Peter York is co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. His new book, Authenticity is a Con, is published by Biteback (RRP £10). To buy it for £8, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846