Keeping
It Real
by Sunny Bergman
First Run/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, New
York, 2004
DVD/video, 51 mins., col.
Sale (Video/DVD): $348; rental (video):
$75
Distributors website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
In this documentary Sunny Bergman purports
to examine "the development of an
experience economy, in which
companies offer authentic
experiences, a chance to witness or even
participate in real-life adventures."
She also "examines this increasing
demand for authenticity, while
at the same time trying to fathom the
meaning of the concept itself, both
in her own life in that of so many
others". (box jacket; my italics)
Three stories are loosely mixed in this
film. A hilarious story about a company
selling visits to Amsterdam, guided by
a make-belief homeless person; the media
success of a sailor and world adventurer
who pretends to shoot only real life action
while every scene is carefully set and
directed to make it look real or "authentic"
and the story of a Dutch yuppie who quits
her jobin advertising, of
courseto make a solo tour
of the world in a small sailing boat and
who returns soon enough after the first
disappointments. In between these stories
are a few reflections on what is supposed
to be the "experience economy", a badly
coined phrase for the fact that some people
are willing to pay for staged out-of-the-ordinary
experiences, and others are willing to
take their money and fool the gullible.
Of course, marketers are to blame. It
is they who are the vultures capitalizing
on the need of so many people who have
become bored of their own lives. Far from
giving a thorough anthropological or philosophical
analysis of this boredom among a sizeable
portion of affluent western consumers,
Bergman only registers these phenomena
and adds her own message: "beware
of these false prophets! Don't let yourself
be misled by the sellers of authenticity
because it is fake".
Surely, even fake experiences are experiences
in their own right, and every role-player,
actor, child or psychotic will testify
to the reality of the imagined. So where
is the problem? Or should we ban the reading
of novels that are powerful enough to
make us cry; should we pronounce a fatwah
over films where we identify with the
hero, with the spinster or bachelor who
finds love at last or with the man who
survives against all odds?
In limiting herself to a statement about
the ethics of the marketing of staged
experiences, Bergman has missed an opportunity
to criticize and understand this trade
and the paradoxical need for excitement
without risk that underlies it. Perhaps
she only wanted to come to grips with
her own private "adventure"casually
documented in this film as wellwhen
she had a relationship with an African
man and found out that she didn't care
for the man himself but only for the authenticity
she believed he would bring into her life.
(Of course the guy doesn't see the point
of wanting to be "authentic" when most
of his life has been a struggle to survive.)
So the movie appears to have been a public
confession and its raison d'être
is to find redemption for the sin of loving
a person for the wrong reasons, or at
least, for the supposedly wrong reasons.
Redemption, as Jerry Springer knows, is
the one thing we get from the anonymous
masses when god is beyond our reach.