Hans Christian Andersen at the British Library

Hans Christian Andersen at the British Library
Originally uploaded by Niveau.

There's a wild analytic exchange going on at Spymac.com about a piece of the Eiffel Tower that was nabbed by a visitor to the site.

Joseph: I tore off a chunk of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Granted it's not a big chunk. It contains a layer of rust metal, and 3 layers of paint. It is half the size of a penny. There is also another smaller chunk.

Can you think of a more romantic gift? Something as unique as this?
Get a real piece of the Eiffel Tower! Cool, eh?

PS. I have no way to confirm authenticity but if you bring it to an expert, etc. I guarantee it will check out.

While this recourse to 'authenticity' shouldn't surprise any of us living in the developed world, I find it odd that it is accompanied by a reference to romance. Would it be quite as easy to use an inauthentic object for romantic ends? Another forum denizen held similar concerns:

I see your point, but it's the authenticity that counts over beauty. Case in point, there are very rare coins that are basically just round planchets of dirty metal worth millions of dollars. It' supply and demand. This piece of the Eiffel Tower is extremely rare, therefore it should be very valuable, (assuming there is demand in the first place. If no one wants to own a piece of the Eiffel Tower, then this piece is worthless).

The question is, is there demand?

But what if those 'authentic' coins are the beautiful objects? I mean, look at the state of modern art! At long last trash can now be elevated to the level of the sublime, i.e. Warhol, Duchamp, etc.

And yet wouldn't this mean that a beautiful but inauthentic object isn't beautiful enough... And at the same time that an authentic object is in possession of a minimum of difference from other things that mystically elevates it to a greater price?

This is precisely what Marx called the 'magical universe of commodities'. And it comes back to bite us in the behind today because we can consume consumption itself! Just think of all those DVD extras that show 'the making of' the film. The DVD movie herein gives us access not to some 'authentic scene', some Romantic 'genesis' of the movie, but rather we are confronted with the mystery of how the Whole (Gestalt) is greater than the sum of the parts. When we watch a movie, we watch a movie. When we watch a 'making of film x' are we watching a movie, or are we more precisely watching the watching of the inauthentic, contrived creation of the movie?!

Chemical tests may well verify the metal type and so forth, but when we get down to it having the mention of pieces of the Eiffel Tower here on Spymac can mean that those 'bits' have taken on a life of their own leeching the designation of authenticity from us not because we want to prove them authentic (or not) but because we cannot not prove either way if we intend to say anything about them at all.