Wheels within wheels within wheels... This is yet another excellent piece, John. Digging this low-internet high-octane writing vibe and how you’re leveraging it. I have sometimes used a mental model as a teaching device on topics like this where we take a nuanced complex spectrum and then gird it... For example here: Take an X and Y axis with earnestness at one pole of the X and Cynicism at one pole of the Y.... The use of two dimensions is arbitrary, but 3 is too hard to conceptualize... It’s a construct that allows a mapping of cultural artifacts using pretty much the same set of attributes, but shown on two axes, which is what allows tone and emphasis to pop out, rendering explicit some of the subtleties of dealing with irony that you are exploring here. One can map works of, say, “earnest cynicism” (Vidal?) and one can have very “unearnest uncynical” (Warhol?) work products... At any moment in a culture, all kinds of products are being created... but our tolerance, tastes, favor, exhaustion points us towards highlighting different parts of the grid. Your exploration of how those shifts take place is... neat. (Had to. But seriously: neat. Really.)
Just delightful storytelling in the tale recounted. It's both funny and clear and full of character and perspective. It reminds me of Laurence Sterne, though it's not really the same, but there's something going in both those things.
The tone there seems like a bit of the best-of-both worlds approach to irony, where it has a sense of irony, but also tells a thing directly. I have to admit I don't fully understand these as dedicated modes, or I understand what people are saying when they sing the praises of irony or earnestness, or condemn them, but I also think you want to build a mode of expression that layers ironical and earnest observations, which you probably have to build over time, reflecting, revising, going one way and the other and finding the balance. A lot of this stuff is just gonna be painfully bad if done too deliberately, like any kind of expression, really, if you try to force it it's no good.
Thinking about what Bradley's saying, too. One analogy, obviously a little rough because it's an analogy, is cooking. Good cooks balance different flavor groups. Maybe some people think food should be more savory, some think it should be more sweet or whatever. There are trends. It would be asinine to really believe that one is all that superior (I mean obviously savory is), or to describe a dish on account of how savory, how sweet, etc, as a total number.
Maybe that's not the right one, but like, I don't know, if it's a meaningful thing how loud a piece of music is, or how fast or something. Like I can't meaningfully say whether I prefer fast or slow music.
Ech. I can't articulate it. That's why you're the pro! Good article, great storytelling up top and a lot of thought provoking stuff later on.
I really enjoyed this. I wrote for a network tv show for a while and I often thought about Wallace’s essay. Network shows (esp dramas) are expected to be painfully earnest in their emotional components and pretty straightforward in their politics. (Cops only shoot bad guys, people mean what they say, very little subtext). Same with Marvel-type tentpoles. I assume “sincerety” translates better across demographics, which makes it easier to sell. You don’t have to already be in on the joke to want to see it. And what passes for irony in these shows/movies is usually pretty shallow w/r/t any critique of the world.
But I don’t think the antidote is more irony. The real world is already pretty horrifying and also pretty hilarious. I don’t need a melodrama about “social issues” or Alec Baldwin in a toupee to tell me that.
The answer is, of course, is to get Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson a network show ASAP so they can fix this body politic with absurdist whimsy.
Wheels within wheels within wheels... This is yet another excellent piece, John. Digging this low-internet high-octane writing vibe and how you’re leveraging it. I have sometimes used a mental model as a teaching device on topics like this where we take a nuanced complex spectrum and then gird it... For example here: Take an X and Y axis with earnestness at one pole of the X and Cynicism at one pole of the Y.... The use of two dimensions is arbitrary, but 3 is too hard to conceptualize... It’s a construct that allows a mapping of cultural artifacts using pretty much the same set of attributes, but shown on two axes, which is what allows tone and emphasis to pop out, rendering explicit some of the subtleties of dealing with irony that you are exploring here. One can map works of, say, “earnest cynicism” (Vidal?) and one can have very “unearnest uncynical” (Warhol?) work products... At any moment in a culture, all kinds of products are being created... but our tolerance, tastes, favor, exhaustion points us towards highlighting different parts of the grid. Your exploration of how those shifts take place is... neat. (Had to. But seriously: neat. Really.)
Good stuff
Just delightful storytelling in the tale recounted. It's both funny and clear and full of character and perspective. It reminds me of Laurence Sterne, though it's not really the same, but there's something going in both those things.
The tone there seems like a bit of the best-of-both worlds approach to irony, where it has a sense of irony, but also tells a thing directly. I have to admit I don't fully understand these as dedicated modes, or I understand what people are saying when they sing the praises of irony or earnestness, or condemn them, but I also think you want to build a mode of expression that layers ironical and earnest observations, which you probably have to build over time, reflecting, revising, going one way and the other and finding the balance. A lot of this stuff is just gonna be painfully bad if done too deliberately, like any kind of expression, really, if you try to force it it's no good.
Thinking about what Bradley's saying, too. One analogy, obviously a little rough because it's an analogy, is cooking. Good cooks balance different flavor groups. Maybe some people think food should be more savory, some think it should be more sweet or whatever. There are trends. It would be asinine to really believe that one is all that superior (I mean obviously savory is), or to describe a dish on account of how savory, how sweet, etc, as a total number.
Maybe that's not the right one, but like, I don't know, if it's a meaningful thing how loud a piece of music is, or how fast or something. Like I can't meaningfully say whether I prefer fast or slow music.
Ech. I can't articulate it. That's why you're the pro! Good article, great storytelling up top and a lot of thought provoking stuff later on.
I really enjoyed this. I wrote for a network tv show for a while and I often thought about Wallace’s essay. Network shows (esp dramas) are expected to be painfully earnest in their emotional components and pretty straightforward in their politics. (Cops only shoot bad guys, people mean what they say, very little subtext). Same with Marvel-type tentpoles. I assume “sincerety” translates better across demographics, which makes it easier to sell. You don’t have to already be in on the joke to want to see it. And what passes for irony in these shows/movies is usually pretty shallow w/r/t any critique of the world.
But I don’t think the antidote is more irony. The real world is already pretty horrifying and also pretty hilarious. I don’t need a melodrama about “social issues” or Alec Baldwin in a toupee to tell me that.
The answer is, of course, is to get Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson a network show ASAP so they can fix this body politic with absurdist whimsy.