Mario de Marco’s keyword at the recent launch of the draft tourism policy for 2012-6 was “authenticity”. He said, among other things, that the industry should aim to offer “an authentic experience in every area”, that the owners of “neglected city palazzi” should consider converting their properties into boutique hotels, and that “the focus was on authenticity in anything from Maltese food to hotels” (as reported by The Times).

Authenticity must be one of the most troublesome words I can think of- Mark-Anthony Falzon

Curiously enough the word doesn’t figure terribly much in the document itself. Authenticity is mentioned twice in an impeccably-written 112 pages and one wonders whether the author/s tried their studied best to avoid it.

As well they might, for the word must be one of the most troublesome I can think of. It becomes even more of a pain when it finds its way into official cultural blueprints, as it may do in this case (though the policy as it stands is still a draft document for public consultation).

The easy bit is that I can imagine what de Marco meant. I reckon he had in mind‘Maltese nights’ with belly dancers, staged battles in which ‘Turks’ and ‘knights’ (the latter more Walter Scott than De Valette) cross plastic swords, Hameau de la Reine-style ‘farmhouses’ in Gozo, and such insufferable junk. Come to think of it it’s much easier to spot the fake than the authentic.

Still, no harm in trying. I actually find it mildly entertaining to spend time on the tourist route to authentic Maltese culture. At least four questions come to mind.

First, is authenticity at all accessible to short-term visitors? Take food. Kusksu bil-ful is a dish most would accept as Maltese through-and-through, whatever that means. One might suggest therefore that a tourist who ate it would be sampling authenticMaltese cuisine.

Not necessarily. That’s because one of the things that makes kusksu bil-ful so particular is the seasonality of the broad bean (the key ingredient). It could plausibly be argued that, uprooted from the anticipations of season, kusksu bil-ful loses its authenticity. No matter when tourists are offered the dish, they’re simply not part of those long-term rhythms.

Second, how good are we likely to be at steering authenticity clear of a staid conservatism? That the two are in principle distinct is shown by, say, Richard England’s Manikata chapel. The building was innovative for its time but drew on forms and textures that one might describe as self-consciously authentic.

But that was a one-off, and in any case many people dislike it precisely for being ‘stramba’ (‘strange’ – meaning ‘not built according to the standard conservative model of a Maltese church’).

Third, does it make sense at all to speak of a bespoke authenticity for a tourist market? Surely the whole point of ‘real’ culture is that it should be organic and spontaneous, made for local consumption but sampled by tourists as-it-happens?

Then again, where would that leave festa with its long list of elements that are neither organic nor spontaneous? And what about certain events in Switzerland that started life as 19th-century tourist traps but ended up being authentically enjoyed by real locals?

Fourth, how much time does it take for culture to become really and truly traditional? The Ħamrun chocolate and Mġarr strawberry festivals are singled out as such by the draft policy but they’re really of very recent and contrived manufacture. So are they a matter of selling an authentic product in an inauthentic setting?

Readers will have gathered that the more questions one asks along these lines, the sillier it gets. It turns out a frustrating and pointless exercise to be a tourist in search of authenticity, unless you can also find space in your luggage for a healthy chunk of humour.

Which comes in especially handy in this case. For there is another, altogether more sinister and dangerous, side to authenticity.

Wagner’s Meistersinger has often been cited – and abused, notoriously – as a paragon. The plot falls into place when Beckmesser, the alien character who many critics believe represents Jewish culture, is booted out of the song contest and Hans Sachs comes on stage to praise the genuine article being ‘die heilige deutsche Kunst’ (‘holy German art’). ‘A tale of cultural exclusion set to wondrous music’ is how one might sum up the opera.

De Marco is no Hans Sachs and I don’t expect for a minute that there was anything sinister on his mind. But the upshot is hard to avoid: When things are classified as ‘authentic’ or ‘fake’, what follows is usually the exclusion of the latter.

There are insidious class implications too. The question of who gets to decide what’s authentic, why and how, is really one of class and power. De Marco’s talk of “neglected city palazzo” being turned into boutique hotels rather gives the game away here.

I suppose a different way to go would be boutique hotels with bathroom tile and gold aluminium-themed façades. Many more Maltese people live behind those than in neglected city palazzi, so presumably they’re more authentic. Or maybe not. Like I said, it’s all about class and who gets to decide really.

Which brings me to my main point. Perhaps the saving grace of tourism is precisely that it pokes fun at all that. The Maltese belly dancers, the farmhouses in Gozo, and the one-off kusksu bil-ful could be seen as acts in a parody of Wagnerian proportions.

Think of them as blowing a loud collective raspberry at authenticity, even as they claim to be it. Tourism can be playfully authentic, so to say.

I suspect there was more to De Marco’s speech than what was reported in The Times. Such a pity that newspapers don’t do twinkles in the eye.

mafalzon@hotmail.com