AudioShocker

Rather than writing this up as a comment to my most recent Culturology post, I think it’ll be easier if I just put this up as an addendum to the first. First of all, I have to admit that I wrote out the prior post in one fell swoop Monday afternoon, and only ran a spell check on it, rather than re-reading the thing to make sure it made any sense (coming off the Thanksgiving holiday, I was once again running late on getting the thing posted, so rather dashed off my commentary). So, having now re-read the thing, and the initial batch of comments, let me restate here what I think the main points that I was (am still) trying to make are:

1) In the context of this particular discussion, I am using the word “culture” in a way that is virtually synonymous with “entertainment.” That is, I’m not trying to speak towards any trends that are broader than the middle-class Western point of view from which I’m writing. Essentially, culture (or entertainment) is a solution to the problem of leisure, i.e. the solution to the problem of boredom. I think this is actually pretty clear in the opening paragraphs of Culturology 010; I was just spelling out the kind of art that I tend to prefer to the variety of pop culture that is viable for ironic enjoyment.

2) I think Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is a good example of what we’re talking about when we talk about ironic enjoyment. There, they take old movies—this assumes that the original sci-fi movies being commented upon were essentially sincere in their motives—and then recontextualize them with their wry dissection. It’s oftentimes quite hilarious, and generally successful, I think. And it’s the model, more or less, for one of the main aspects of what we’ve been discussing as ironic enjoyment; basically smart, witty people make fun of dopey artifacts.

3) Ironic enjoyment is too easy. This kind of externally generated irony hinges on the fact that there are other readers (in the broad sense of reading which would include listening, viewing, etc.) that don’t get what you’re getting. So I’m not really concerning myself with the, shall I call them, the masses. If everyone got the joke of laughing at the ridiculousness of, say, Face/Off, then it wouldn’t be any fun to get that joke; there must, first of all, be an audience for any given movie or music group or whatever else that likes it uncritically. But, as soon as you’re smart, critical, or realize that something is amiss; ironicizing that viewing experience is an easy move; you’ve mostly got to crack jokes as you go along with viewing-as-normal. It’s as easy as making fun of someone in an incisive way and then saying “Just Kidding!” It’s too easy because it’s reactive, rather than being generative.

4) This brought me to the next point, about the current popularity of sincere indie-culture, or at least the music wing of it, anyway. Which I don’t think needs further clarification. It’s still off the mark because it lacks the kind of self-awareness that I see as critical for well-considered culture to succeed; instead, post-ironic sincerity just gives otherwise ironic people a reprieve from thinking about things. A lot of hardcore and punk suffers from this as well, and emo too (emo ends up even further down the spectrum of terribleness from hipster culture since they lack any kind of self-awareness (I’m not sure if Reggie and the Full Effect counts in this or not)).

5) So I guess where I lost everyone was on this notion of reading things as being “good for good reasons.” Basically, what I see as a better stance as a consumer of culture than a heavily ironicized stance is to be able to float from one genre or another, or from one demographic to another, or from “high” art to “pop” art, and be able to maintain a kind of heuristic that determines whether a given artifact is successful (enjoyable) or not, on its own terms. This includes both the things which succeed on their own terms, sincerely (say, for instance, Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony) and things that only become interesting when read ironically (say, Commando). It also notices things that don’t work, sincerely (say, Donnie Darko or American Beauty), and also things that should never, ever, been appreciated ironically (e.g. VH-1).

6) Movies like what Nick was pointing out in his comments, that seem to straddle the line between purely enjoyable or ironically enjoyable, or that can go both ways, I think, are successful most of the time because they were produced with some amount of awareness towards that possibility. Verhoeven, given his filmic output—I’m thinking mostly of Total Recall, Robo Cop, and Starship Troopers—is surely one of the masters of this.

7) I don’t think “irony is dead,” and I think the conversation about it in such terms is generally futile and ill-informed.

8) Ironic enjoyment is “smart.” I agree with characterizing it was active rather than passive, but moreso, I think it’s reactive, rather than passive, and rather than something being actively ironic, like, say, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

9) I think it’s important to main distinctions between the “good” and the “bad” (and, yes, the “ugly” too, I suppose), no matter how difficult that may seem to be in the contemporary context of cultural relativism and reader-response theory. Taste, I admit, is generally subjective, but I do think there’s an element of objectivity—generated, again, by an awareness of context/intent/etc.—in determining whether something is good or not, on its own terms. I would imagine that the people that think that irony is dead also think that criticism is dead too. But, seeing as popular culture tends towards the easiest possible route to success; namely, formula and cliché, there will always be a need for criticism of those formulas. And if the critics want to go ahead and get some laughs out of ironicizing the trash that’s fine, but their energy, I think, is better spent in generating artifacts of their own.