Authenticity

Reading old issues of TIME magazine seems to provide good fodder for blog posts. (Here's one from last month.) Yesterday I read two articles in the Dec 14 issue that made me think about the subject of authenticity. The first was a feature article on the new Star Wars movie by Lev Grossman. The title: “A New New Hope: How J. J. Abrams brought back Star Wars using puppets, greebles and yak hair.”

Grossman articulated something that had bothered me about the Star Wars prequels and the digitally remastered added scenes to the original trilogy. There was an authenticity in the originals, lacking in the massive CGI-enhancement of today’s blockbuster movies. Grossman writes that the original movies were “a new kind of illusion, one that felt real in a way that no fantasy or science-fiction movie ever had before.” But this “powerful illusion [has] proved to be an elusive one, difficult to reproduce.” The trick turns out to be a return to the original bag of tricks, including shooting on film, using physically built props while minimizing CGI, and filming in actual sets/locations instead of the now ubiquitous green screen as much as possible. Perhaps that’s why myself and many others have found BB-8 so endearing – an actual physical robot rather than a CGI-enhancement. (Jar Jar Binks gets ragged on multiple times in the article.)

An additional hypothesis for the ring of authenticity comes from how the actors interact with physical objects (and characters) instead of trying one’s best to imagine a CGI beast. Perhaps there are subtle unconscious movements in our behavior in a physical interaction compared to one that requires the virtual imagination. Special attention is also paid to the many objects littered throughout the Star Wars universe known as greebles, “the tiny functional-looking details and asymmetrical sticking-out bits that encrust most technological artifacts”. Grossman makes a very interesting observation: “When you’re watching Star Wars, you’re often looking at car and airplane parts, the guts of electronics, bits of applicnaces, fragments of the everyday world, but they’re so far removed from their familiar context that you don’t recognize them – except that on some level you do.” I’ve been reading about the rational unconscious in cognitive science, and the huge amount of information being processed subconsciously by System 1 (rather than the small amount by conscious System 2),* this may explain why it’s hard to put one’s finger on that feeling of authenticity. It’s hard to articulate what your unconscious recognizes and synthesizes.

In the Matrix movies, the CGI use of color and tone to mark the separate realms is used effectively, particularly when the characters are in the Matrix. (Avatar might be another example.) In older movies or television, a dream sequence might be marked by a certain fuzziness in the borders or outlines – mainly to signal to the viewer that a different realm was being crossed. Things are tougher in the fantasy world of magic, dragons and spells. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in my opinion, was a good balance of CGI and physical reality (with amazing detailed work from WETA). The Hobbit prequel trilogy, on the other hand, suffers from a little too much CGI. (There’s an interesting parallel to Star Wars, perhaps not to the same degree.) The Harry Potter movies also suffer from a little too much CGI, and don’t quite have the authentic feel. Perhaps it is only a matter of time, as CGI improves, that we will no longer be able to tell the difference. As our time spent interacting with and viewing electronic devices continues to increase, perhaps our System 1 will get “used to” the virtual world, so much so that the real world may start to feel drab and boring and old. That’s another important part about the Star Wars bag of tricks – making things look old, grimy, dirty and dusty.

The second article I read in the same issue of TIME was by Amy Cuddy, promoting her new book Presence. I haven’t read the book, but the gist of the article suggests “taking control of your body language [might] help you become happier and more successful”. Psychologists are always coming up with interesting experiments. The test was to compare how a “powerless” drawn-in or curled-up pose and a “powerful” posture might lead one to do better in a job interview. The results: “As expected, subjects who prepared for the interview with high-power poses – the more presence our job interviewees displayed – the better they were evaluated and more strongly they were recommended for hire by the judges.” But here’s the kicker. “We found in a related follow-up study: presence mattered to the judges because it signaled genuineness and believability; it told the judges that they could trust the person, that what they were observing was real. In short, manifest qualities of presence are taken as signs of authenticity.”

Given that I’d just been pondering the interview and hiring process in light of cognitive science, this throws another wrinkle into the mix. Does my System 1 as an interview unconsciously pick up on this seeming authenticity? Does it unconsciously provide a non-codeable halo effect? Would I be seeing someone in a better light because he or she performed some power poses beforehand that I am unaware of? My System 2 gets easily overwhelmed by System 1. Surely there are many more tricks that can be used in the interview process. Then there are the habits of mind to counter these tricks. Sounds like I should just learn how to use the Force (if only I had a decent midichlorian count) to employ Jedi mind tricks.

Maybe I should try some power poses right before class instead of being hunched over reviewing my notes. Would that increase my confidence in teaching? Would the students “think” I am a better, more authentic, teacher? (Maybe I should do an experiment.) It’s a good thing I’m very enthusiastic about chemistry in general and thermodynamics in particular, because there’s lots of it going on right now. We know from various studies (the cognitive scientists again!) that having enthusiasm for your subject matter makes a noticeable difference in student learning. They “catch” your enthusiasm, or at least are pleasantly amused (and therefore more favorably disposed to learning the material).

Like many other things in life, authenticity (“being yourself”) may not be as simple as it looks.

*Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is to blame for my use of this terminology.