Keeping It Real

Cultural representations can be holistically and authentically real at times I believe. It all depends on the eye of the observer and their viewpoint on the culture. For example in the first reading in class, Nacirema, points very clearly to the fact that our own culture could seem very odd, irrational, and ritualistic to an outsider. But aren't we all outsiders to everyone else? Don't we see ourselves as "normal" and everyone else as "abnormal"? I think it is human nature more than ethnocentrism. My daily rituals would seem very irrational to another man of my age in different circumstances. That's where the saying comes from that you don't really know a person until you walk a mile in their shoes.

In the film, Keeping It Real, we see people paying to have real experiences outside of what is considered the norm. Perhaps, as more of our everyday reality is experienced through media representations, giving us the impression of being surrounded by artificiality, many have developed a vague sense of dissatisfaction, a feeling that we're not fully experiencing all that life has to offer. The idealized representations of "authenticity" being promoted or pursued are shown to be inherently inauthentic or at least illusory. The "experience economy" inevitably finds itself marketing the false and inauthentic as somehow "realer" than the real. So Keeping It Real asks in the end, is the disappointing truth that authenticity has become just one more marketing clichÐ"©, a clichÐ"© that supersedes the reality?

One example that stuck out to me from the movie was the people taking tours with the Ð''homeless' man. He takes them around the city and has them eat tulips to show that sometimes they have to eat anything to survive. Then a few scenes later we see that this Ð''homeless' man lives in his own apartment and sleeps in a comfortable bed every night. The man isn't even homeless anymore so the