<<<  <<  -- 8 --  Gordon Rumson    'IT'S ALL LIP-SYNCHED'

But how could you tell? If someone stands before you and says 'I will do X', 'I think Y', are you sure it's him speaking? Or is he just a mask? Perhaps that's why politicians lie with such ease, they know it's not their own opinion they voice, so it's not really a lie. An actor who plays Hamlet one night and a porn movie the next is not a fraud (see the film Jesus of Montreal). By distant analogy, a politician who reads a speech written by another can disassociate himself from the content quite easily and feel no inner struggle over any lies that might result.

Once we are into the realm of 'who says what, and do they actually know what they are saying, did they actually think those thoughts, create and compile those ideas into a meaningful whole?', we enter the world of lip-synching at the highest level. The actor is the creative ideal. Not someone who actually has something to say, but someone who speaks what others have created.

We do not know who is an actor. We do not know who is the mouthpiece. We have no way of knowing how connected the words are with the individual. This is true schizophonia. Unlike Ashlee Simpson, no technical glitch will reveal the fact on air. So unless someone makes a mistake, we are none the wiser. A scientist may publish an article proving chemical X doesn't cause cancer, though the tests prove the opposite. He was paid by the company and he's just acting his part.

Musicians can sing, poets can recite, politicians can speak and unless we are very close to the process, we will never know what we are getting. Our deep unease in this modern electronic culture may be caused in a small way by this radical disconnection.

Then that's the point darling: 'It's all lip-synched'. It has been for a long time. Ashlee should get an apology. She did nothing unusual.

After-thought:

Socrates answered the question of the relationship of truth and expression in Plato's Apology, when he turned down the assistance of a Sophist speech writer to prepare his own defense on the charges of corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates preferred to follow his own inner beliefs and assumed, that if they were true, the truth would give beauty to his words. But, as is the way with the world, he was wrong, he was sentenced to death and yet another lawyer must have shaken his head knowing he could've gotten the philosopher off. All Socrates needed was a good ghost-writer. But then Plato wrote the Apology, not Socrates. Lip-synching goes way, way back ...