Showing posts with label Irony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irony. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Why So Serious?
Feign outrage! Set phasers to "troll"! Clothe your indignation in inanity! A Pitchfork feature has prompted online controversy and lively debate! (Vomits in overreactive excitement)
Actually, for once the conversation isn't about how hard a certain review pandered, or trainspotting the number of Bon Iver headlines in a single week, or if the Vampire Weekend cover girl is "tappable." Barthel and Abebe are using the Top Videos of the 1990s countdown as a cultural weathervane, examining the balance of sincerity-VS-irony. While any discussion of irony/"irony" will be, to a certain extent, frustrating and inconclusive, Abebe's made the valuable point that Aught-style irony is fundamentally different from '90s irony.
The distinction is fundamentally the same as that which separates two styles of post-modernism: retro-necro pastiche and hauntology (which respectively resemble '00s and '90s irony). Both employ a knowing referentiality, and thus are formally similar, yet they express very different relationships to the contemporary mainstream: the former revels in artifice and built-in obsolescence, mischievously celebrating a culture whose facades are its substance; the latter mourns the same condition, pining for alternate paths not taken and now impossible. The latter understands the emptiness behind the facade is not an erasure of taboos, not some fissure into a realm of anarchic hedonia - it is existential abjection.
Now, to rephrase in slightly more useful terms... Aught-style irony is (was?) all about arrow-straight citation, expressing uncynical affection and even reverence for its references. A commentary-free pop-cultural patchwork of purely aesthetic concerns. Abebe offers Weezer's "Buddy Holly" video as an early specimen, though I'd say this "pointless, morbid game of references and sarcasm that never actually says anything" was first fully articulated on Odelay! by Beck.*
However, '90s irony was born of disgust at the flattening-out of culture, at the commodification of fringe elements, and at the realization that so many of our memories & developmental milestones were cooked up by some Madison avenue huckster. When Nirvana appeared with natty suits & blinky innocence for the "In Bloom" video, of course they were having a dig at the geeky politesse of rock's infancy. But more importantly, they were saying, "Okay, we're on Geffen, we're on MTV, we've been swallowed by the monoculture. We might as well be the fucking Dave Clark Five with a fuzzbox."
Which is where slack comes in. Were it not for that sloppy scoffing not-giving-a-shit, '90s irony would be nothing but more mawkish referentiality. But these artists had come from an audience that was too savvy to fall for Bill Bernbach's thimblerig and were well aware that any conventional success meant assimilation. Resistance was futile, but at least they could demonstrate an awareness of their own appropriation instead of appearing as guileless rubes (or worse, brass ring-snatching apostates). Slack signified that these artists neither cared for nor sought mainstream approval. The Malkmusian smirk was the last, best defense against total co-option.
This indifference against the machine is the earnestness that Abebe sees underlying '90s irony, "irony to communicate completely earnest things, that the audience would receive completely in earnest." The problem - that is, the transposition of '90s irony into '00s irony - is that the mainstream absorbed the medium without the message. It became a cheap trick to pile up pop-cultural detritus while completely ignoring the gestures of subcultural revolt. Perhaps the resurgent sincerity of the past decade was in reaction to the mainstreaming of snarky pastiche - and yet, if audiences are now attuned to endlessly floating signifiers taken with shakers of salt, this would result in more distance and less earnestness than in the '90s. Sincerity cannot survive as such if it's perceived ironically, and consequently it's become a simple affectation, mere aesthetic, just another branding tactic - like lo-fi or slack.** I accept Abebe's point that "you’d have to be a lot more committal to front Fischerspooner than to front a grunge band!" But to call electroclash "almost tragically sincere" begs the question: sincere about what? Fischerspooner et al. (and indeed many of today's most "earnest" acts) didn't offer sincerity, they performed "sincerity" - a gestural sincerity, an aestheticization of sincerity. Again, this only serves to underscore the subtextual vacuity of today's culture.
Remember the Lollapalooza-spoofing episode of The Simpsons?
(*) - In film, the blame falls squarely at the feet of Tarantino.
(**) - No matter how ratty your hair or anemic your stated ambition, you ain't slacking if you have a booking agent before your first tour.
Actually, for once the conversation isn't about how hard a certain review pandered, or trainspotting the number of Bon Iver headlines in a single week, or if the Vampire Weekend cover girl is "tappable." Barthel and Abebe are using the Top Videos of the 1990s countdown as a cultural weathervane, examining the balance of sincerity-VS-irony. While any discussion of irony/"irony" will be, to a certain extent, frustrating and inconclusive, Abebe's made the valuable point that Aught-style irony is fundamentally different from '90s irony.
The distinction is fundamentally the same as that which separates two styles of post-modernism: retro-necro pastiche and hauntology (which respectively resemble '00s and '90s irony). Both employ a knowing referentiality, and thus are formally similar, yet they express very different relationships to the contemporary mainstream: the former revels in artifice and built-in obsolescence, mischievously celebrating a culture whose facades are its substance; the latter mourns the same condition, pining for alternate paths not taken and now impossible. The latter understands the emptiness behind the facade is not an erasure of taboos, not some fissure into a realm of anarchic hedonia - it is existential abjection.Now, to rephrase in slightly more useful terms... Aught-style irony is (was?) all about arrow-straight citation, expressing uncynical affection and even reverence for its references. A commentary-free pop-cultural patchwork of purely aesthetic concerns. Abebe offers Weezer's "Buddy Holly" video as an early specimen, though I'd say this "pointless, morbid game of references and sarcasm that never actually says anything" was first fully articulated on Odelay! by Beck.*
However, '90s irony was born of disgust at the flattening-out of culture, at the commodification of fringe elements, and at the realization that so many of our memories & developmental milestones were cooked up by some Madison avenue huckster. When Nirvana appeared with natty suits & blinky innocence for the "In Bloom" video, of course they were having a dig at the geeky politesse of rock's infancy. But more importantly, they were saying, "Okay, we're on Geffen, we're on MTV, we've been swallowed by the monoculture. We might as well be the fucking Dave Clark Five with a fuzzbox."
Which is where slack comes in. Were it not for that sloppy scoffing not-giving-a-shit, '90s irony would be nothing but more mawkish referentiality. But these artists had come from an audience that was too savvy to fall for Bill Bernbach's thimblerig and were well aware that any conventional success meant assimilation. Resistance was futile, but at least they could demonstrate an awareness of their own appropriation instead of appearing as guileless rubes (or worse, brass ring-snatching apostates). Slack signified that these artists neither cared for nor sought mainstream approval. The Malkmusian smirk was the last, best defense against total co-option.This indifference against the machine is the earnestness that Abebe sees underlying '90s irony, "irony to communicate completely earnest things, that the audience would receive completely in earnest." The problem - that is, the transposition of '90s irony into '00s irony - is that the mainstream absorbed the medium without the message. It became a cheap trick to pile up pop-cultural detritus while completely ignoring the gestures of subcultural revolt. Perhaps the resurgent sincerity of the past decade was in reaction to the mainstreaming of snarky pastiche - and yet, if audiences are now attuned to endlessly floating signifiers taken with shakers of salt, this would result in more distance and less earnestness than in the '90s. Sincerity cannot survive as such if it's perceived ironically, and consequently it's become a simple affectation, mere aesthetic, just another branding tactic - like lo-fi or slack.** I accept Abebe's point that "you’d have to be a lot more committal to front Fischerspooner than to front a grunge band!" But to call electroclash "almost tragically sincere" begs the question: sincere about what? Fischerspooner et al. (and indeed many of today's most "earnest" acts) didn't offer sincerity, they performed "sincerity" - a gestural sincerity, an aestheticization of sincerity. Again, this only serves to underscore the subtextual vacuity of today's culture.
Remember the Lollapalooza-spoofing episode of The Simpsons?
Gen-Xer 1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.Finally, Abebe is rightfully wary of remembering the '90s as a ten-year sneer: "They seemed, as a young person, strikingly earnest and optimistic, especially around Earth Day." Political causes of every possible persuasion - from global warming to AIDS awareness - sprouting like dandelions in the wake of "PC" fatuity. And of course, this was the decade that gave us emo, "conscious" hip-hop, and the testosterone-soaked confessionals of nü-metal.
Gen-Xer 2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Gen-Xer 1: I don't even know anymore.
(*) - In film, the blame falls squarely at the feet of Tarantino.(**) - No matter how ratty your hair or anemic your stated ambition, you ain't slacking if you have a booking agent before your first tour.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Trigger Warning
Shakesville is upset about the T-shirt below, on sale through the Onion merch site.
The T-shirt's misadventure, according to SKE, is that "If you have to explain your point, you have failed to make it." Does this make me some kind of intuitive genius that I don't need the shirt explained to find it funny - and still manage to find it funny?
SKE cracks derisive about the T-shirt ad, down to the tagline "*Prostitute Not Included", with what must be one of the most meta phrases ever committed to a webpage:
What is it about laughter that immediately unsettles people? Why is the very hallmark of humanity so often blighted by the preceding tag "inappropriate"? And if jokes about Catholic priests being sexually predatory scum are understood by everyone except the most verklempt malcontents to be not at the expense of their victims, then why not this T-shirt?
I understand that Shakesville is a "safe space" with a clear policy about appropriate targets for disapprobation. The defining criterion for sanction from mockery is to be among those who are victims of both circumstance and real-world discrimination - homosexuals, minorities, and ergo most certainly victims of sex-trafficking. But then shouldn't stupid people & citizens of the American south also be exempt from ridicule? Surely no one chooses to be stupid (a universal & relative affliction anyway), and there are doubtlessly hundreds of denizens of the Deep South who'd really rather not be there but haven't the means to escape to most sympathetic environs. (Need I raise the spectre of Katrina's victims again?)
There is a loophole at Shakesville that allows "jokes about 'off-limits' subjects... by drawing on irony," which I'd have thought would give the Onion a pass. Oh, wait - the fine print:
The T-shirt's misadventure, according to SKE, is that "If you have to explain your point, you have failed to make it." Does this make me some kind of intuitive genius that I don't need the shirt explained to find it funny - and still manage to find it funny?SKE cracks derisive about the T-shirt ad, down to the tagline "*Prostitute Not Included", with what must be one of the most meta phrases ever committed to a webpage:
Must be "ironic".Yes. Yes it is ironic. That's what bloody satire is: irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity. If every parody or mordant laceration of irrationality required some accompanying literal explanation, then it wouldn't be satire. If human communication were limited to straightforward conveyances of information to be received & digested at face value, what a joyless, antipoetic back-and-forth of dull, dry platitudes life would be, robbed of any antidote to lessen the sting of disappointment, tragedy, rage, or inequity.
What is it about laughter that immediately unsettles people? Why is the very hallmark of humanity so often blighted by the preceding tag "inappropriate"? And if jokes about Catholic priests being sexually predatory scum are understood by everyone except the most verklempt malcontents to be not at the expense of their victims, then why not this T-shirt?
I understand that Shakesville is a "safe space" with a clear policy about appropriate targets for disapprobation. The defining criterion for sanction from mockery is to be among those who are victims of both circumstance and real-world discrimination - homosexuals, minorities, and ergo most certainly victims of sex-trafficking. But then shouldn't stupid people & citizens of the American south also be exempt from ridicule? Surely no one chooses to be stupid (a universal & relative affliction anyway), and there are doubtlessly hundreds of denizens of the Deep South who'd really rather not be there but haven't the means to escape to most sympathetic environs. (Need I raise the spectre of Katrina's victims again?)There is a loophole at Shakesville that allows "jokes about 'off-limits' subjects... by drawing on irony," which I'd have thought would give the Onion a pass. Oh, wait - the fine print:
Invoking “off-limits” subjects is only problematic when it’s unclear at whom we’re laughing—and if we’re laughing at a woman just because she’s a woman, it’s not funny. (Offensive and uninspired to boot.)Well, alright then. At least it's clear that irony is allowable only at the base level of, say, anti-abortionists blowing up clinics. Uninspired to boot, indeed. To resurrect one of my favourite Christopher Hitchens quotes:
When a precious and irreplaceable word like 'irony' has become a lazy synonym for 'anomie,' there is scant room for originality.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Make Your Own Kind of Music
Ah ha well... as the yuletide finally rolled out, that glorious maritime weather barricaded me indoors. So I've been slogging around online, ingesting way more year-end ruminations than can possibly be healthy, let alone lead to a coherent understanding of the preceding twelve months. Which, by the way, has fuckin' flown by, though in media res felt unaccountably protracted thanks to the 24-hour news cycle's epistemological equivalent of Chinese water torture.
Not here to wax chronological, though. The eminent Simon Reynolds did the legwork of aggregating a cross-section of lists (cheers!) that betrayed both an ever-more-frayed fringe and a grudging congestion around the middlebrow. This certainly echoes my own concerns about continued subcultural splintering: on the one hand, there will be innumerable bands with, like, two dedicated (and viciously proprietary) fans; on the other, the only bands that garner even lukewarm widespread support will be charmingly uninventive. The hope is that, as the B(ands)P(er)I(nch) of the landscape increases, previous loners & drifters will eventually cluster into larger alliances - like stray hairs tangling into dust bunnies, or a handful of galactic neighbours ballooning into superclusters.
But for all the stylistic dissemination and cred-leveling that the internet affords, the musical world has not become an aesthetically omnivorous, polyglot utopia. Certainly, there are more artists than ever experimenting with sounds not native to their respective locales, and genre-specific supremacy is now boderline sociopathic as opposed to the norm. But at the same time, many year-end lists revealed a retreat to a kind of nation-based cultural essentialism - a sonic self-stereotyping. Best Of lists by Brits looked British when stood alongside, say, a typically solipsistic Yankee list or a counterproductively modest Canuck list. Music critics, professional and amateur, were painting comically unflattering self-portraits in the broad, typecast-tinted brushstrokes of hackneyed political cartoons.
So, in what might as well be "Explaining Us to Each Other, Part 2", let's examine how various countries are presenting themselves via critical & cultural consensus...
England (as seen from street level)
Yooouh'll NEEEEEH-VAAAAH waaalk uh-loooone... (smashes bottle over own head)
England (as seen from the ivory tower)
Grey, morose, melancholy dripping from our upturned nose, saddled by history in a way that arouses a misplaced pride, and routinely confusing "irony" with "anomie" - bloody right we're English!
Germany
We're basically the same as the *ahem* nobler classes of England, though unencumbered by something so base as a sense of humour...
...except on the occasions when we remember we have no aesthetic emergency brake, nor ironic safety net. We know not what we do, for our sense of guilt has been directed elsewhere.
Japan
We will bludgeon your every natural human impulse with gaudy trashionista glitz and five-year-old-on-amphetamine spaziness (with just a dash of uncomfortably unkosher sexuality) until you've been smelted into a goddamn robot. Have a nice day!
The United States of America
Yeah, 911 is a joke, and so is Rodney King, bitch. Grinding my considerable virtues into vice, 'cuz muthafucka, I'm ill, not sick. Wait, what the fuck is going on?
Canada
Hey there! I'm not just some anonymously boring dude in a winter coat: I'm a critically-lauded career musician who nevertheless comes fifth behind a bunch of Americans in year-end polls in my own country and is totally unheard of beyond our borders. Would you like fries with that?
Not here to wax chronological, though. The eminent Simon Reynolds did the legwork of aggregating a cross-section of lists (cheers!) that betrayed both an ever-more-frayed fringe and a grudging congestion around the middlebrow. This certainly echoes my own concerns about continued subcultural splintering: on the one hand, there will be innumerable bands with, like, two dedicated (and viciously proprietary) fans; on the other, the only bands that garner even lukewarm widespread support will be charmingly uninventive. The hope is that, as the B(ands)P(er)I(nch) of the landscape increases, previous loners & drifters will eventually cluster into larger alliances - like stray hairs tangling into dust bunnies, or a handful of galactic neighbours ballooning into superclusters.
But for all the stylistic dissemination and cred-leveling that the internet affords, the musical world has not become an aesthetically omnivorous, polyglot utopia. Certainly, there are more artists than ever experimenting with sounds not native to their respective locales, and genre-specific supremacy is now boderline sociopathic as opposed to the norm. But at the same time, many year-end lists revealed a retreat to a kind of nation-based cultural essentialism - a sonic self-stereotyping. Best Of lists by Brits looked British when stood alongside, say, a typically solipsistic Yankee list or a counterproductively modest Canuck list. Music critics, professional and amateur, were painting comically unflattering self-portraits in the broad, typecast-tinted brushstrokes of hackneyed political cartoons.
So, in what might as well be "Explaining Us to Each Other, Part 2", let's examine how various countries are presenting themselves via critical & cultural consensus...
England (as seen from street level)
Yooouh'll NEEEEEH-VAAAAH waaalk uh-loooone... (smashes bottle over own head)
England (as seen from the ivory tower)
Grey, morose, melancholy dripping from our upturned nose, saddled by history in a way that arouses a misplaced pride, and routinely confusing "irony" with "anomie" - bloody right we're English!
Germany
We're basically the same as the *ahem* nobler classes of England, though unencumbered by something so base as a sense of humour...
...except on the occasions when we remember we have no aesthetic emergency brake, nor ironic safety net. We know not what we do, for our sense of guilt has been directed elsewhere.Japan
We will bludgeon your every natural human impulse with gaudy trashionista glitz and five-year-old-on-amphetamine spaziness (with just a dash of uncomfortably unkosher sexuality) until you've been smelted into a goddamn robot. Have a nice day!The United States of America
Yeah, 911 is a joke, and so is Rodney King, bitch. Grinding my considerable virtues into vice, 'cuz muthafucka, I'm ill, not sick. Wait, what the fuck is going on?Canada
Hey there! I'm not just some anonymously boring dude in a winter coat: I'm a critically-lauded career musician who nevertheless comes fifth behind a bunch of Americans in year-end polls in my own country and is totally unheard of beyond our borders. Would you like fries with that?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Catholicism: Now with double the damnation!
Emperor Palpatine's got a brand new bag!Evidently, someone in the Vatican watched Dogma and got spooked that the Church is perceived as "a passe, archaic institution; obtuse... even hokey." Which isn't an unfounded fear: possibly the only thing more outdated than Roman Catholicism is intellectual property & copyright law.
Well, he may have that patina of organic decay for which Lon Chaney needed makeup, but who says Pope Benedict XIV ain't a baller & shot-caller, a dynamo of papal decrees? Just in time for Easter, the Vatican has found a way to induce extra guilt that Jesus died for YOU, motherfucker: seven fresh categories of deadly sin! That's right, folks, seven brand-new, cutting-edge classes of one-way tickets to the Inferno. A Vatican spokesman explained that, “While sin used to concern mostly the individual, today it has mainly a social resonance... due to the phenomenon of globalization.” The new official list of the Fourteen Deadly Sins is as follows:
Old & BustedPerhaps this is my soulless, heathen frivolity talking, but I'm actually kind of excited about this new list, because based on this criteria, everyone is going to Hell. At least there's an admirable kind of consistency to this level of vindictive judgement that would doom itself as direly as anyone else. Think I'm kidding? Well, let's take a look at who might fit into the Church's newly-renovated Rogue's Gallery:
1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Greed
4. Sloth
5. Wrath
6. Envy
7. Pride
New Hotness
8. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control
9. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
10. Drug abuse
11. Polluting the environment
12. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
13. Excessive wealth
14. Creating poverty
Bioethical violations
If not your mother, then your sister, your girlfriend, your wife... at any rate, a lot (hopefully MOST) of the women you know & love.Morally Dubious Experiments
Yeah, bet the fundies never thought Saint Ron would've gotten behind stem cell research. (This is to say nothing of everything else the festering meatsack did to merit a permenant vacation to Hades.)Drug Abuse
Dude, Hell is going to rock so hard if this who's gonna be there... well, except that last guy.Polluting the Environment
Widening the Wealth Gap
Boo-yah!Excessive Wealth
Double boo-yah!Creating Poverty
She had it coming.And on that note... happy easter, everybody.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Wood Anniversary
So... there's a succinct and straightforward question I want to ask, specifically of those who thought the invasion was morally justified, strategically sound, in anyone's best interests, would pay for itself, etc.
...How's that working out for ya?
...How's that working out for ya?
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