Authenticity and the Hyperreality

Lloyd's Building, designed by Richard RogersI quite like MacCannell’s argument that tourism is the modern day religious pilgrimage. It makes perfect sense: One feels discontent in current location. One wants to feel a sense of importance. One seeks salvation. One ventures to places of importance where others have found salvation. Why else have the first places everyone visits when traveling around Europe been churches? Reading MacCannell’s analysis, I found myself thinking a lot about Jean Baudrillard’s writing about hyperreality and the simulacra. MacCannell writes, “Social structure itself is involved in the construction of mystifications that support social reality…Just having a back region generates the belief that there is something more than meets the eye; even where no secrets are actually kept, back regions are still the places where it is popularly believed the secrets are” (591). The trouble is not just that we assume that there exists something greater than what we see in front of us; we need to understand that this region from which the secrets are revealed can also be merely another social construction contrived by someone who wants you to see his or her place in a certain way. Lloyd’s building on Lime Street, constructed by Richard Rogers (the same firm that collaborated with Renzo Piano on the Pompidou center), literally illustrates this idea. While the building is designed to be inside out, with all the inner workings manifested on the exterior of the building, we still cannot penetrate the inside. We never get to take part in the business that goes on inside, but instead must sightsee the opaque walls from the surrounding pavement. I think we get caught in stage three of the front to back regional movement. Most of us say we are searching for the authentic experience, but at the same time we are also inherently scared of what’s different. Thus, we are quite comfortable once we come across the staged back regions, that is, those places that appear to be authentic and demonstrative of the native lifestyle yet are still prepared and arranged to appeal to the outsider. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we have found the authentic, but much harder to break through. This act of reaching the stage six seems to be the only “solution” that MacCannell, or the other writers he quotes, does not seem to address. He mentions that we have to penetrate the society, but how does one actually do this without falling into another stage three trap? My best friend, a Jewish, vegetarian, post-modern dancer from Los Angeles has ventured by herself to Senegal for the semester. Since arriving, she has become an active member of a Muslim family, has been force-fed fish eyeballs, and has passed a dead person on the sidewalk on her way to school. That is an authentic experience. I, on the other hand, can go to the theatre, shop in the Camden stables, buy food from the Borough market, and go look at art at the Saatchi Gallery. While I know that these are activities more authentic than walking around and snapping a picture of Big Ben, I feel as if even these activities are no less touristy than others simply because I do not do them with Londoners. I do not mean to compare or talk down the authenticity of my own experiences or that of others, but I cannot help but question whether there is any such thing as an authentic experience when we live in an age where tourism is just as much, if not more, a significant component of the city fabric as the native lifestyle is.