A Response to: Jargons of Authenticity by Paul Arthur

People crave ‘authenticity.’ A film is often much more appealing if understood as being based on a true story or of being a documentary, which is understood as being truth within itself. But the created structure and subsequent execution of the entertainment style between both documentary and narrative is not actually so divided as to create polar opposites as some might think when viewing one in relation to the other.

The construction of actuality, or the representation that can be defined as authenticity, is not so easy to come by and it’s existence is even questionable within the realm of the film world.

Nanook of the North is a film that claimed it’s status as one of privileged vantage point. It posed as an insiders look into the life of the Eskimo. But just as sets are constructed for the stage and for the studio locations of the narrative world, Nanook consists of a number of false sets that allow for better camera angles. The film also has staged actions, scripted elements. So while it may have attempted the most realistic of portrayals, it still exists as a portrayal, and it’s level of genuine authenticity can easily be called into question.

The necessity of entering the real into an environment with structural limitations, such as that of the film world, may in and of itself be the destruction of any authentic depiction of reality. Because, while reality itself has some intrinsic structure by which it functions, human beings are so intimately intertwined within this structure, it’s representation within a human created ‘reality’ necessarily denotes a level a falsity and a view of the supposed actuality through a subjective eye.