A glance at the summer issue of "Hermenaut": The plague of "fake authenticity"
In his introduction to a special issue about "fake authenticity," Joshua Glenn, the journal's editor, asks: "Need an adjective to describe bars or restaurants with authentic themes ... or anything and everything re-enacted, authentically reproduced, and Disneyfied in general? Try: 'fake-authentic.'" He writes that "fake authenticity is that which is false, in the sense of 'counterfeited'." The "fake," he suggests, "is simply 'kitsch,' which can be transformed by the lovingly ironic person into 'camp.'"
However, the ubiquitous "'fake-authentic' is nothing but 'cheese.'" Mr. Glenn says that the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was the first to describe elements of fake authenticity, and that Theodor Adorno and Jean Baudrillard noted its pervasiveness in 20th-century culture. Most distressing today, Mr. Glenn suggests, are such cultural phenomena as the national chain of Southern-juke-joint-theme restaurants, House of Blues, in which "ersatz graffiti confronts you in the toilet; pretend tobacco stains dot the ceilings." That indulgence in "simulacra," he proposes, is so "over-the-top" that it actually "rubs our noses in the impossibility of ever discovering an authenticity which has not always already been commodified."
As bleak as all that sounds, Mr. Glenn suggests there may be a way out through artistic creation informed by irony -- not "hip, sarcastic glibness." Rather: "The authenticity-seeking ironist-artist knows that authenticity is not out there somewhere. It needs to be 'created,'" and he suggests, apparently not ironically, that the "antihero of authenticity" must be "unafraid of seeming insincere, or even fake." The article is not available on line, but information about the journal may be found on its World-Wide Web site at
http://www.birdhouse.org/words/hermenaut/
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Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 13:05:08 +0100
From: Peter Hipwell <petehip@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: (exotica) Hoffman
> From: <laura.taylor@us.pwcglobal.com>
>
> I bought a videocopy of the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still a
> fortnight ago. Anyone can tell me if Hermann's score (with Hoffman playing
> if I'm not mistaken) is available somewhere?
>
> Arjan
>
> 'Tis! On the VARASE SERABANDE label! And it's a mutha! There are also
> some Bernard Hermann suites he re-recorded later in the 7ts for DAY THE
> EARTH...can't remember which label...maybe Angel?
> Jane T. Fondle
>
It's on Decca (or London) Phase 4, "The Fantasy Film World of Bernard
Hermann"; also has material from "Journey To The Centre Of The Earth",
"The Seven Voyages of Sinbad", and "Farenheit 451".
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Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 09:57:46 -0400
From: <lousmith@pipeline.com>
Subject: (exotica) [obit]Johnny Byrne
LIVERPOOL, England (AP) -- Johnny Byrne, a guitarist who played with Ringo Starr in the pre-Beatles band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, died Wednesday after collapsing at home. He was 59.
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes was one of Liverpool's most popular bands in the years before Beatlemania, but unlike a host of other Merseyside bands, it never had a record on the British hit charts.
Byrne and Alan Caldwell, who took the stage name of Rory Storm, started playing together in 1957 in a skiffle band called The Raving Texans, which combined elements of jazz, blues, country and folk. The group became the Hurricanes in 1959.
With Starr on drums, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes played at the Kaiserkeller in Hamburg, Germany, in late 1960, getting star billing over The Beatles.
Starr joined The Beatles in 1962.
The Hurricanes continued performing until 1967. Caldwell died in 1972, and Byrne went to work as an ambulance driver the same year.
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Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 09:22:48 -0500
From: kingkini@tamboo.com
Subject: (exotica) Re: Re: house industries - tiki stuff
>I said, I don't see a real Tiki font.
what's a "real" tiki font?!
>I share this opinion
>with other Tiki experts.
what is a tiki expert?!
>BTW: I like your homepage as well!
>
thank you! coming from a tiki expert like yourself that is a nice compliment!!
(all in fun here, friends!)
i guess my taste for tikis (my expertise, if you will) is that of a
designer who enjoys the 1950's surburban IDEA of tiki more than the
actual anthropological origins of tiki. i think the House fonts
capture that perfectly - in fact they have based their many (if not
all) of the tiki fonts on vintage tiki/surf signage. had they not
called them "tiki" would you be more comfortable? i am not being
sarcastic, i am curious. maybe "vacation" fonts?
seriously, what would constitute a "real" tiki font to all you other
