MIMESIS
AMERICA LOVES CAMO
by Steve Piccolo
Mimesis, in its various meanings of imitation, camouflage and emulation, is often construed as negative, in spite of its many useful and even positive aspects. Perhaps the key lies in bending it to virtuous and not merely virtual ends. Music, for example, has long relied on a cyclical real-virtual-real swap. While copying or imitation is condemned in the arts in general, in popular music it can function as an engine of evolution. Just to take a couple of cases: so-called “drum and bass” came along in the 1990s as a result of progress in electronic programming, and was based on what seemed like drumming patterns that would be impossible to play on a live, physical drum set. Human drummers, however, began to study the patterns and learned to replicate them with traditional instruments. They pushed the envelope and stimulated electronic musicians to take the software to new extremes. The same sort of virtuous circle happened with automatic vocal tuning devices. Autotune programs correct singers’ pitch. At first they were concealed as embarrassing substitutes for lack of vocal skills. But some producers began to display and exaggerate these techniques, triggering a whole new vocal aesthetic and prompting human singers to learn to imitate the software, though perhaps unwittingly. You may not like the new sound, but you have to admit that some kind of innovation is taking place.
Nevertheless, in the art world mimesis is often scorned as plagiarism. Art students are no longer instructed to make copies of masterpieces, or to learn how to imitate various styles from the past. Mimesis is even accused of inhibiting or destroying creativity, that purported virtue whose name has been so widely abused in recent decades, in spite of Enzo Mari’s energetic rejection of its elevation to the status of spiritual necessity. The hypothetical slogans below make reference to the current situation in the United States, which I realize is topping the list of the many things that scare me about the world right now, although many other nations or peoples could been substituted for “America” in these phrases.
America loves competition, rivalry, which is exactly the pitfall seen by Plato in mimesis as a technique of art and poetry, and even in the “mimetic theory” of Rene Girard. The theatrical enactment of violent and often negative emulation, cloaked in the guise of “entertainment” (see televised wrestling, for example), shamelessly shifts the focus away from real problems and onto fictional narratives.
America loves repetition, a necessary ingredient for the creation of patterns, but also for the instigation of convictions and belief systems that are otherwise lacking in any foundation in facts, in reality. The power of imitative replication, reiteration, repetition has been greatly multiplied by the use of personal devices. But at the same time, mimetic repetition is the system that makes life possible. “Life is botched self-replication [DNA, ed]. It stems from a single command: copy this, again and again and again. Crucially, that copying is not wholly accurate.” (Richard Powers, “The Seventh Event”).
America loves camouflage, especially as a fashion accessory for rural militias, gun-crazy hunters and dangerously ignorant MAGA morons. It should be noted that the most effective camouflage is not necessarily realistic. It is an imitation of a perceived sensation, not of an actual real-world visual experience.
America loves imitation, as a country where the majority seems often to prefer imitative foods, for example, over their “natural” models. To the point of favoring the ersatz over the genuine in many cases. This cult of the “artificially natural” also extends to the shapes of faces and bodies, both in doctored images (AI, deepfake, photoshop, etc.) and doctored physiognomies (make-up, plastic surgery and so on).
America loves emulation, a term now seen in a somewhat positive light, although its original meaning referred (again) to rivalry and envy.Actors are totally familiar with one of the most intriguing and vivid processes triggered by mimesis. The vocal and behavioral imitation of laughter or weeping has a way of instigating real and nearly uncontrollable feelings of hilarity or grief.
Perhaps to appreciate mimesis we have to consider what the world would be like without it. Without mimesis, it would be impossible for humankind to take part in the linked dynamics of empathy, sympathy, pathos, tragedy and comedy. In practice, an entire spectrum of emotional existence. Exemplified by the evocative power of the song of the sirens.