Anyone can hang a version of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in their home or view it online. But seeing the original fulfills the desire for a pilgrimage.
What does it mean for a painting or a musical piece to be endlessly replicated and copied? Is a good reproduction of the Mona Lisa still a Mona Lisa? Is a march by John Phillips Sousa captured on old Victor acoustic recordings that he hated still a Sousa march? And what does it say about our sensibilities that a lot of people on the rim of the Grand Canyon seem to be preoccupied with a digital device rather than the glorious and unmediated view?
Budding critics and art scholars are usually required to take a look at Walter Benjamin’s seminal 1935 piece, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He addresses the question of how we should treat a copy of an original at a point in time when copies of everything are mostly what we know. Benjamin claims an original has an “aura” that a reproduction cannot match. And yet, as the recent BBC/Netflix series Fake or Fortune makes clear, it may require the precision of an electron microscope to tell the difference between a Renoir and a good fake. We see millions of paintings done in the style of French master. If we love the style, why not love them all, regardless of their pedigrees?
To say the least, our relationship with an original in its own place is peculiar and unstable. Anyone trying to actually see the Mona Lisa in Paris or Vincent van Gogh’s iconic Starry Night in New York is likely to experience the same kind of crowding that happens on a subway platform. The mob scenes in the galleries often block a clear view of a painting, mostly because of a forest of cameras held high to catch the moment. What brings these crowds out? Is the real thing that much better than a good print? Do the hordes expect some sort of transference-by-proximity?
It’s usually the case that a photo of a painting or a bootleg of a concert will be a degraded form of the original. But I suspect the expectation of seeing more in the original is usually not the point. A better explanation is fundamentally social: tied to being in the presence of a recognized icon, even when the actual experience is surely a long way from what the artist envisioned as an ideal viewing experience. Indeed, the fact that there are so many copies of a cultural artifact surely increases the impetus to find the original.
Being in the space of the original is what functions as a kind of secular pilgrimage.
My theory: as individuals, we occasionally need just one degree of separation rather than six. We need to be at the scene of what everyone else celebrates second hand. And we need to take home some evidence that we were there. Anyone can hang a version of the Mona Lisa in their home or view it online. But being in the space of the original is what functions as a kind of secular pilgrimage. Somehow our status as an occupant of the planet is formally affirmed. Our own Hajj can lay claim to the association factor that comes with being in the same place.
None of us are immune to this pull. Ask anyone what they have put on their personal ‘bucket list,’ and you are bound to hear about places that are crowded with people on their own pilgrimages. These might include throngs of tourists in Times Square, the daily homages paid to any number of pieces of art sitting in a city’s premier museum, or even a tour of the Warner Brothers back lot. We seek the aura that Benjamin suggests, even though the circumstances of our attendance usually end up sabotaging what is or was so sublime about the original.
Midwest Street, the Warner Brothers Back Lot
For example, in Burbank we can still visit outdoor sets used in the shows The Music Man, Gilmore Girls and La La Land. But with film, the fakes are actually the sets, which are used along with a number of photographic “cheats” to make them look authentic. With film, the real thing is what actually ends up on a screen out in Duluth or Denver.
Of course being ‘in the scene’ says little about understanding what makes a work a masterpiece. For that we need the practiced eye of a dedicated appreciator, and maybe a sense of the consciousness an artist originally experienced. All may be more easily captured away from the crowds and planted in front of a good facsimile. But of course this deprives us of the social act of visiting our own version of Mecca.
Selling things or promises is our common national heritage, usually featuring a mixture of shameless persuasion and outright ‘cons.’
Most cultural observers note that Americans these days are perhaps better at selling stuff than making it. It’s an understatement to note that we have a knack for marketing services and wares to each other. Our economy is largely propelled by consumption. And while we can still design elegant products like phones, cars and electronics, many if not most of their parts are made elsewhere. On the other hand, selling them is something we still do well, sometimes too well.
Even Americans with modest incomes are drowning in stuff. There’s a store and product for nearly every budget. One sign is the spread of the American idea of franchise stores, with familiar brands now in every corner of the world. Think of McDonalds or Marriott. Another sign is the common problem families face in finding places to store all of the things they have accumulated. In most neighborhoods garages originally built to hold cars are now used for storage. Especially in the West, the family car is usually relegated to the driveway.
Cultural historian Daniel Boorstin was among the first to offer a seminal account of the typical American “go getter” continually “on the make.” (The Americans: The Democratic Experience, 1973). Our common heritage is selling and buying medicines, household products and goods that promise happiness. CNBC’s popular reality show Shark Tank continues the trend and represents it in miniature. It features investors with cash whose hearts quicken when they hear a good sales ‘pitch’, often from strivers who have more optimism than judgement. Some may be natural entrepreneurs. But it’s equally likely that others are attracted to the idea of making a pitch as a pathway to celebrity. Everyone knows the story of actress Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Jade, who used her ill-gained admission to the University of Southern California not to become a serious student, but because of the ego-boost of being a social media “influencer” on campus. We can also look to the current President as an example the ultimate “man on the make.” Given recent evidence of massive business losses over the years, Donald Trump appears to have little talent for anything except selling his “brand.” In this sense, his ‘cons’ make him less of an outlier then we might think.
The pitch is the thing; the product, not so much.
Observing this long-running streak from the communication side makes it plain that little has changed since the days of P. T. Barnum, or the medicine shows that once toured the country. Today, many students beginning their college careers are still enamored with the apparatus of selling as represented by ad agencies, public relations firms, social media, electronic media and other ways to attract willing buyers. In my own institution the fields of marketing, sales and communication studies easily attract more students than fields like engineering or education. And while a professor of persuasion should delight in seeing communication as a subject of special interest, it’s apparent that this fascination often comes with less thought in what the content of a given message should be. The pitch is the thing; the product, not so much. And so the campus television studio remains high on the list of places for future communication students to visit. The excellent library can wait.
Consider another case. A recent New York Times article described the rising popularity of entrepreneurial summer camps around the country. Parents can now enroll their eight-year-olds for weeks of immersion in the business world. Highlights typically include stops at a “personal branding station,” in addition to the chance for these youngsters to make their own television commercials for products they will presumably think up later. If their fantasies eventually come true, they may design a campaign around some plastic thing they can pitch to the rest of us as a product “as seen on TV.” The American love affair with selling continues even in the pristine woods and away from our screens.
