Florida: The Most Authentic State
In today’s USA, commercialized fakeness is as real as it gets
When I was a Bob Dylan-obsessed college kid with a craving for anything “deep” or intellectual, I grew wary of my birth state of Florida. All those theme parks, golf course communities, and six-lane roads with a CVS and Walgreens at every stoplight — it felt so inauthentic. Florida’s built environment seemed an inch deep and a day-and-a-half old. The state bird, I was sure, was the plastic pink flamingo.
Now, after years in Guatemala and West Virginia, I’m back in Florida — in a lovely, heavily muralled town a bit northwest of Lake Okeechobee. This is cow country — and yes, snowbird country, too. I can walk from my house to dirt paths hacked through the pine-canopied hammock. Owls hoot through my windows at night, and a neighbor’s roosters crow in the morning. What’s here is beautiful, and indelibly real.
I’ve also created a “Florida reading list” — with Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! on top. Just fifty pages in, I’m well acquainted with the “Bigtree Tribe,” who are actually a white family pretending to be Indians as they run a gator-themed adventure park.
The Bigtree’s schtick is phony. Fake Indians! And yet, somehow, they seem refreshingly real, realer than much I’ve encountered in art and life. Their fakeness is kitschy — they present family “artifacts” (dresses, photos, etc) in their park’s museum. It’s also shameless. They admit to themselves, unabashedly, that they’re fake Indians. That’s who they are, authentically. They’re authentic fake Indians.
In this, the Bigtree Tribe represents much of modern Florida — from the fantasy realm of Disney to the preplanned neighborhoods with silly, faux-Spanish names. In Florida, the inauthentic is heralded as such — which, somehow, seems more authentic than the phony celebration of supposed authenticity. The fake countries of Epcot don’t pretend to be real. They exalt in their inauthenticity, in their status as venues for entertainment.
Growing up in New England, I encountered something different — something which called itself authenticity, but was actually its exact opposite. In New England towns, you’ll find endless relics of the distant past. Old ships adorn harbors. Cutesy “shoppes” decorate their windows with sextants, spyglasses, and other outdated wares. These towns somberly cosplay as their 17th-century selves, and claim the act as authenticity. But what’s authentic about a colonial downtown centered around a grist mill, when the residents buy their groceries from the supermarket by the highway? What’s real about a cute fishing village in which hardly anyone still fishes?
*Note: I’m not suggesting towns erase their histories — just that they don’t allow anachronisms to define their contemporary identities.
Today’s American culture, for better or for worse (almost certainly for worse), is built around entertainment and leisure. Our world is essentially Huxleyan, valuing amusement above all else, no matter how phony. Florida’s vibe shamelessly — and authentically — reflects that.
Exciting news: I’ve got two short story publications in the works! Updates soon…