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Bittersweet: The Search for the Authentic Self, Part II

© Regina Sewell

It’s ironic, given all the acting we are forced to do as we go about our daily lives, that acting for stage or camera is one of the few places where it’s safe to show one’s authentic self. This is why Anna Deavere Smith, in Talk To Me, argues that acting is more real than real life. Acting, she says, entails searching for the authentic. The difference is that in real life we are pretending. Acting, in contrast, demands that one pretends to pretend.

It is this pretending to pretend, this merely putting a costume on one’s true self, one’s true emotions, that makes acting incredibly risky. Authenticity is risky. Putting the self out there for others to reject, squash or possibly accept is risky.

We live in a culture that downplays emotional risk and celebrates physical risk. We tune in by the millions to watch people on “Survivor” eat bugs. The media has pegged these shows “reality TV.” The idea is that we, the public, will get to see real people doing “real” things with their masks pulled off. And sure, we catch glimpses of that reality, glimpses of someone showing some sort of spontaneous emotion, but the rest of the time we see the same lack of authenticity, the same acting, posing and subterfuge that we engage in and encounter in our daily lives. But on “reality TV” this lack of authenticity is amplified by: 1) participants knowing that they are on camera; and 2) participants competing against each other to keep from being the one who gets voted off the show. What these “reality TV” shows do show us are how the values and rules of social organizations pressure us to not be authentic, to not be real.

We also spend billions each year to watch men, and sometimes women, blow each other to bits with a vast array of weapons. Somehow Hollywood has almost convinced us that technological effects creating spectacular explosions or virtual bloodbaths is authentic. But what they’re really doing is lying and trying to cover up the lie with fancy toys. And it’s obvious that they are lying because they give too many details, too much information. This is the most obvious signal of a lie – too much information, the need to “prove” the truth. And of course, most of these murders happen as if they are everyday occasions, as if blowing a person’s brains out is as insignificant as buying a pack of gum.

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