Artifice

[da]

I really like the word artifice. Not only the word, but qualities behind it- cleverness, craftiness, subtle deception. My fascination with Almodóvar is at least in part a fascination with his statements on artifice.

I think I first decided this while reading Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling, some years back. This book shows the next 75 years' science being adopted by mass culture, such as mass-market "tincture sets" to make home-brew concoctions that are partly food, partly drug, partly art. Life is mostly recreational, in this world which has solved the problems of disease and overpopulation. But the cost is an elderly majority who have dispossessed the young. The main characters are a roving collective of young people, devoted to creating artifice and art, instead of subscribing to the mass-media-consumption culture. It's partly about hacking culture, one of those topics Bruce Sterling treats pretty well. It's also about taking what one needs, when society is unwilling to share.

To be honest, the book didn't come anywhere near "changing my life"; but it pointed me at a particular quality of the arts, and possibly of culture, that makes me happy. It's really hard to describe (and I've been sitting on writing this entry for... quite some time).

So, what does artifice mean to me? It's not "art," which is broader but includes much of what I mean. It's not lying, specifically; but it's telling truth through lies. It's the cleverest storytelling. It's "cool"'s egghead next-door neighbour. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. It's Almodóvar for certain. It's The Yes Men. And it's a pile of other things, which may or may not be important.

What say you?

Comments

[dpolicar]

Oo. Evocative question.

The strongest-by-far association I have to the word is making oneself up to look younger and more attractive. No idea why, but there it is.

Which is itself tied up in a whole mess of stuff about social acceptance and avoiding rejection and so forth.

All of which makes it a mildly twitch-inducing word for me. To be told I'm engaging in it would feel like an accusation or an insult, and actually a somewhat hurtful one -- although I think, reading your post somewhat objectively, that you might well describe much of what I do with my time and energy as artifice and you wouldn't mean it as an insult at all.

Life is mostly recreational, in this world which has solved the problems of disease and overpopulation.

If you've never read Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, I recommend borrowing it. It's not actually a particularly good book, but it's a quick read and a creditable stab at a long-and-thin sample of psychological and social issues surrounding the transition into this sort of "post-scarcity" world.

(It also has among the most evocative SF first few paragraphs I've ever read, although it fails to live up to them.)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

No idea why, but there it is.

That sort of makes sense as you explained it; I don't identify much at all with the coiture side of artifice, but I expect that world to take up a lot of peoples' perception of it.

All of which makes it a mildly twitch-inducing word for me.

Hm, your response seems to me to be mostly as possible practitioner of artifice.

It may not be clear from what I wrote, but for me, many of the positive associations are from appreciation as an observer, such as literature, film, and theatre...

I have similar twitchiness about personally engaging in artifice. Perhaps tied with respect for those who can "pull it off," such as in theatre.

(Side curiosity; whether it's significant here that I don't practice theatre, certainly not in front of the curtain, and you do).

I have thought about, and should think more about, artifice as survival-tactic, such as for the queer-identified, the side of personally engaging in artifice that I've been most familiar with. Artifice is definitely tied to "camp" but I didn't have enough oomph to tackle that in the original post. Or, even, yet.

[dpolicar]

Hm, your response seems to me to be mostly as possible practitioner of artifice.

(nods) yes, definitely. And you were entirely clear about your context, it's just my reaction was strong enough to fire off independent of context.

I suspect what's going on here is that I carry around some variation of the "artifice"="dishonest"="bad" structure, and feel some form of associated guilt/shome over participating in it, and therefore feel somewhat defensive when it comes up. Not in any showstopping way or anything, but still. (And yes, practicing theatre no doubt plays a role... "thou shalt not commit theatre on the innocent!")

There is, of course, a lot to be said both about "artifice != dishonest" and "dishonest != bad". There's also a sidepath having to do with value judgments surrounding "artificial," especially with regards to food.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

It's not actually a particularly good book, but it's a quick read

...I started reading Down and Out on a plane, and never got around to finishing it. (What can I say, it was a short flight!). Perhaps I should give one of the freebie audio versions a shot.

The first few paragraphs did draw me in, for sure.

[dpolicar]

You aren't especially missing anything... it sets up a few somewhat interesting scenarios but doesn't resolve them in a deeply satisfying way.

In fact, that's mostly what I got from the book, was a feeling for how difficult it is to tell a story set in a truly post-scarcity world, how strongly rooted our storytelling conventions are in issues of scarcity and competition.