The New Sincerity

Jesse Thorn the host of The Sound of Young America has proposed something called the "New Sincerity." This is the best description of where we are post-irony.

What a blatant acknowledgement of the nature of what coolness was. Hedonism at its finest, but can our love of the "awesome" really save us?

He mentions Evel Knievel, but I can't help but to think of every love interest in every shitty indie movie.* These girls are always quirky with an acidic tongues, ever-changing hair color, anxiety disorders, and families who just don't get them. They listen to music that "will change your life" and get you to run around nude at the abandoned amusement park in their home town. In short, she will make you live la vida loca, only with moody guitar music replacing the Latin beats.

Needless to say, I love them all.

How could I not? In every movie that these girls are in they take a square loser, who lives a fairly bland life popping Xanax and staring blankly into the future, and turn his life into a happy-go-lucky time in which he probably still has his old job (or one just as bland), but now he gets to go home and unapologetically enjoyed Mac&Cheese with weenies cut up into it while watching a DVD of his favorite bad movie from his childhood (Top Gun) before he has what must be mind-blowing sex.

The only person who can't enjoy this girl is Rob of High Fidelity, who sees cool as fatalism. But he has a point. You may be able to have simultaneous orgasms with someone, but you will always describe her as a "pain-in-the-arse." Four "bonks" are really more than enough with this type of girl. This is not hidden from any of the boys who fall for them. There are always lies, too much drinking, the realities of mental illness, and the practicalities of living. So why is it that they always go back to them?

The New Sincerity is why. We used to do things (like them or not) because we had to, but that is the root of irony. Irony is a reaction to the necessary. NS is an action of excess and love. Irony saw a 2-d world and caused us to become even flatter. Now, thanks to that irony we now live in a rich world filled options to go beyond the 2-d world of yesteryear. NS rejects this for the iconic though. NS sees an icon and takes it as fun at face-value. NS wants to praise the icon and make it real.

This totally defeats everything that irony was made for. NS causes us to celebrate only a piece of our life. A piece that is pretty fun, but ignores anything else. Rob has a point again. You can't ignore everything else, at least not all the time. You can make your top 5 songs about fruit with your friends to kill time, but that doesn't give you a fulfilling life.

At least the sex is good though...


*I thank HannahMo for pointing this pattern out to me. It has caused me much enlightenment.