Authenticity

As Lindsey and I were discussing the two quotes that we had from the book, we talked a bit about distance, and its relevance to authenticity. Our point was that the further something is from the original, measured by reproduction, yields less authenticity. A good example would be art, so lets use the Mona Lisa. The original Mona Lisa is authentic. And professionally painted interpretations and copies can also be authentic in their own right, but in respect to the regional they loose some authenticity. When you move into prints and posters, the only authenticity that these pieces have is what they represent (an idea that was once original and is authentic), however they in themselves are not authentic. The further away that you move through reproduction from the original, the less and less authenticity any piece can claim. You can get an authentic printed baseball with a print of Babe Ruth’s signature and it may be called authentic, but it only gets that title due to the signature. No other part of the ball, in fact no part of the ball is authentic, it just has a connection to something that IS authentic.

Another thing that I found interesting about our discussion in class what when we talked about antiques, and I think that this plays in really well with this idea of distance. Just because something is antique doesn’t mean that it’s original, it just normally means that it’s old. This does however, generally yield a greater amount of authenticity to things that are antiques. An antique is simply a word that we use to describe things that are old, or timeless, but is often interchanged with original as the same thing.