Sunday, April 1, 2007
All Tomorrow's Parties: Authenticity or Authentic Fakes?
An interesting topic in Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties is the value or worthlessness of authentic objects. Nothing in this world is different from what is next to it, making the best available more important that originality. I believe that this concept is evident in how we look at computers today. All computers are generally the same whether one looks at their structural properties or their software. Originality no longer has anything to do with how valuable they are; the only thing that makes one more desirable than the other is how good (functional) they are. In All Tomorrow’s Parties Fontaine worships originals while Carson is infatuated with fakes that look identical to the original. I believe that Fontaine displays an older attitude style which idealizes originals because of their rarity. Today scarcity makes something much more valuable, but Gibson displays that in the future he sees, people will no longer value things for their originality. Chevette described Carson as caring “deeply about this absolutely authentic fake stuff” (171). It’s likely that this “authentic fake stuff” is very widely dispersed and therefore is not valuable because of its scarcity/originality.
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2 comments:
This attitude can be argued to exist today. "no-name" brands are always developing new ways to mimic authentic items, and they are finding consumers for their product. Thus making the original less valuable...
Your post made me think whether these "authentic fakes" or similacras are beneficial or not to society. The first example that came to mind was children's toys. For girls, there is the classic Barbie doll. At first sight they seem pretty harmless seeing that they are just toys. However in the last decade some have blamed Barbie's perfection as the cause of many self-image issues in women. With her more than ideal body proportions, which could not exist in a living human being, and her fancy pink dream house, many young girls grow up with this imagine ingrained in their minds as they play harmlessly with their toys. For boys there is the G.I Joe action figures. Again a seemingly harmless toy that is modeled after some real life G.I Joe sometime in the past, he has the muscles and tough attitude that give young boys their first impression of what men in society are suppose to be. Both these toys are mass produced copies of some nonexistant original and although they seem harmless, their soubtle effects begin to take action, causing some unexpected pshycological backlash in todays men and women.
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