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“Art” is whatever you can get away with.
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You’re “simple” recounting a take up language that belie strong sensibilities of what is authentic, what is realistic, and what is the norm in film.
I am trying to understand better those assumptions that underlie many of your declarations and maybe to get you to reflect on those things.
If it’s any comfort, I’m not looking to you to be an expert since I know based on those articulations and impressions that you’re not one, nor even an amateur. It just so happens that this discussion veers strongly into my field so i get curious.
Maybe Steve secretly knows the oeuvre of Stan Brakhage and is referencing Window Water Baby Moving? 
Trying to make my way through those declarations is too much like marking now so I’ll have to step out.
Funny though how some people use words like authenticity and realistic, declaring them inherently meaningful, and yet can’t explain them and how they manifest in concrete ways. Or recognise how context and practices (as well as materials) force change in what constitutes understandings and definitions of these terms.
This tends to lead me to reflect on the values specific terms or their definitions and the benefits (often about authority) some derive from their use.
I’m amused also by Steve’s Pollock response to Brakhage comment. Medium specificity, people— especially when film carries a mimetic quality not inherently available to the other plastic arts. (And darn, I’ve probably just let loose a discussion of the digital v analogue when it comes to authenticity and realism). Oy. Ok. I need to step out.
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I have no idea why you are linking me to realism as I have explained via the examples of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko.
And I have explained that the dictionary definition of authentic is what I go by. If you want a concrete example of authenticity in food, then there are many examples in Sichuan cuisine. Making Sichuan Chicken with dark meat chicken on the bone cut up into small pieces and lots of dried peppers and dry-fried with no vegetables added is an example. But if I get a Chinese-American version with boneless white meat chicken with vegetables added and no peppers in a gloppy, non-spicy sauce, then that is inauthentic.
Representational Art (as opposed to Presentational) has a mimetic quality in any medium.
Nowadays, color is the norm in film. If we are talking fiction, then plot is too.
From the movie Passing Strange: “Representational Art is just an ego stroke, you know,” Not that I agree with that completely, but it does make me smile.
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Isn’t it easier to just use the word “traditional” and sidestep many of these issues?
ETA: David Chang has some feelings about “authenticity.”
“What makes “Ugly Delicious” compelling, ultimately, is Chang’s commitment to rejecting purity and piety within food culture. “I view authenticity like a totalitarian state,” Chang declares, in the show’s first episode, adding, “It’s not that I hate authenticity, it’s that I hate that people want this singular thing that is authentic.” In food culture, particularly American food culture, the concept of authenticity is wielded like a hammer: This pizza, made with San Marzano tomatoes and mozzarella di bufala and a yeast-risen dough, blistered in an ultra-hot wood-fired oven for less than a minute, is authentic; that pizza, ordered on the Domino’s Pizza Now™ mobile app, dressed with toppings that arrive at a franchise location pre-sliced in a vacuum-sealed bag, passed through an industrial conveyor-belt oven, is not. The problem with such rigid categorizations, according to “Ugly Delicious,” is, for one thing, creative stagnation. Chang, after all, made his career on an exuberant disregard for convention. His restaurants—with their Japanese names, Taiwanese pork buns, Korean rice cakes, Continental flourishes, and intellectual-bro Americana twists—remix and subvert everything from ancient culinary traditions to standard restaurant-service expectations.”
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Perfect 
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Yup. Traditional makes more sense.
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Since authentic has only three syllables and traditional is four, I say it is easier to use authentic.
The definition arguments would be roughly the same.
In terms of David Chang’s musings, he can claim that creativity is being stagnated, but the availability of all manner of pizza/flatbread with an unlimited variation on ingredients and execution belies his thought.
I will also point out that the author is blithely unaware that there are many people that would have issue with his use of the word creativity.
Practically speaking, I have never heard anyone ask for a recommendation for traditional Sichuan food. If they say authentic, I know what they are talking about, and I will not start an argument.
Good has only one syllable. I’ll go with that.
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I love it!
Though I prefer to surround myself with great food.
This seems to me to be a deliberate misreading. IF one sticks to the highly RIGID definition of pizza he gives (San Marzano tomatoes, mozz di bufala, etc), then yeah, you are limited. Anything departing from that formula is ‘inauthentic’. So if you want Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple, or a gluten-free cauliflower crust or any of the unlimited variation you cite, you are messing with it’s ‘authenticity’. When does something cease to be a pizza and become a flatbread?
“Authentic” means something, sure. But attempting to label food as ‘authentic’ regarding its origins, makeup, preparation, etc. is, largely, an exercise in futility. Even ‘traditional’ is more useful, since ‘tradition’ implies something actually done in the past. There will be a record of it. Whether something is ‘traditional’ or not has a much clearer answer than whether something is ‘authentic’. And even so, it’s still has VERY fuzzy edges as a concept. Is it ‘traditional’ Sichuan if you don’t make it in a wok? Can you use modern gas stoves or must you adhere to tradition and use only charcoal fires or open flames? How far back does ‘tradition’ go? Does the practice of the last 50 years replace the practice from 50 years prior to that? Should we only stick to Thomas Jefferson’s macaroni and cheese recipe (which he copied from the French) here in America, since that’s the oldest, therefore ‘most traditional’?
This whole thread has degenerated into you arguing semantic differences and pointing to a definition that can be every bit as soft bordered and grey-area’d as the word they define.
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It really is quite simple. In practice, sometimes folks ask me for a recommendation for authentic Sichuan food. I respond with specific dishes that I would order at restaurants I frequent. I have taken people to these places and the end result is happiness. No semantics involved. If you ask me for a definition, then the one in the dictionary is good enough for me.
No need for grand elaboration… or philosophizing about the provenance of tomatoes, the new world, variation between north and south Sichuan or a whole host of topics. See? The word does exist and it can be tremendously useful.
Again, your use of quotation marks is pejorative. If you call the Pope, A Man of “Faith” it certainly takes some of the shine off it, don’t you think? Or… I went to the Museum of Modern “Art.” Even if we can debate about the term, debate about the right to using the term at all is leading to argument for the sake of it. So by all means argue what is authentic, but the word has meaning and it’s in the dictionary.
Just like so many others.
In terms of having soft borders, sure. I never said the word had hard, rigid ones.
If everything is always great doesn’t it end up becoming average?
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Good point. And in fact even great food can lead to wanting a variety. I combat that by searching out for a wide variety of great foods. Sometimes I will post about that search which sometimes leads to disappointments.
Otherwise, I don’t post about merely good food that is cheap and plentiful everywhere you go, like at many franchises/chains.
And this is where you lost me: I don’t consider chain/franchise food to be good by any personal measure. Perhaps your great is my good 
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Steve from DC:
I know what they are talking about, and I will not start an argument.
Really? You seem to start an argument about everything.
Are you ChatGPT?
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“No he doesn’t.”
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Well, there is always a possible discussion about what is the true meaning of the word “is.” Don’t we need to know what is means before we can use a predicate adjective such as authentic? Please understand that I am not using quotation marks to make a pejorative statement about the word is. It’s a useful word, as long as we all agree on what it means.
Let’s go to Bill Clinton for that:
““It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.””
But before we can determine the authenticity or meaning of the word is, don’t we first need to discuss the epistemology of how we know anything? What is the meaning of language? What was the original language and did it exist when no one could hear trees crashing in the forest? What does language mean? Do we agree it’s a social construct that we use to communicate? And, does Hungry Onion or the Internet really exist, or is all of this happening in a pocket dimension? Are we all even here, wherever here might be, or is this a figment of our individual and collective imagination(s)?
And to think I thought Hungry Onion was about food.
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