Auth Imp

Someone at work was listening to the radio today. I could barely hear it but an ad mentioned that they had an “authentic impersonator” of Michael Jackson.

Ah, Baudrillard, you should have been there.

What would be the difference, one wonders, between an authentic impersonator and an inauthentic one? And what then if the inauthentic one were closer in manner and affect to the real person but the public image as with Elvis had skewed so much that the mimic who was a veritable doppelgänger came to be perceived as inferior and bearing no likeness? (Yes, I know the story about Hemingway entering the Hemingway lookalike contest and losing.)

Anyway, I don’t know how to tell an inauthentic impersonator from an authentic one, that’s certain.