Kent williams <kent@avalon.net> wrote:
quoted 11 lines I don't know how many David Foster Wallace readers there are out >there,
>I don't know how many David Foster Wallace readers there are out >there,
>but he wrote an essay on Toxic Irony, and how permeated our culture is with
>that attitude. Advertising, always at the forefront >of any poisonous
>aspect of pop culture, led the way with ads like Joe >Isuzu. The seek to
>ingratiate by appealing to the tendency to take >nothing at face value.
>The casualty of this trend is any credible >semblance of sincerity.
>
>The way TJ exploits cliche samples on "My Red Hot Car" just drips >of
>smirking irony. His twisted take on R&B and drum and bass >convention
>really work best with listeners who are in on the joke, >who hear his track
>overlaid with every hardcore and jungle track from >the past ten years.
This is remarkably similar to Simon Reynolds' take on Jenk's work as a
whole-- i.e. that the supposed "avant garde" offered up by TJ and multiple
other artists is just an elaborate sneering pisstake on "actual" dancefloor
innovations.
I actually agree with what you say about MRHC, except that the problem isn't
actually irony. DFW's article, throughout, dangerously conflated the
concepts of irony and sarcasm, which should be distinguished with a little
more care. Irony generally involves wholehearted belief or commitment even
as one recognizes the absurdity, contingency, or stupidity of that belief or
commitment. Some of the video uses of irony (i.e. distanced recognition of
absurdity / exposure of hypocrisy through pointed juxtapositions) end up
being closer to post-Enlightenment cynicism, which is where DFW places his
middle ground, although he loses it with his examples of snide "everything
is fake and we all know it, wink, wink" advertising examples. The
*self-congratulatory* Smirk shouldn't enter into the equation with the
concept of irony. The reason why the new TJ is so reprehensible (even if it
is kind of fun in a really baby-fresh way) is that it's nothing but the
*sarcastic* sneer of a twelve-year-old savant. Sarcasm being the form of
elevating oneself above a subject matter by simply uttering it with a
disapproving tone that implies, without offering any viable alternative,
that everyone who believes in it is 'toopid. That is: [irony] - [belief or
commitment] = [simple sneer] = [sarcasm]. Cynically making commercial sounds
while smirking at the gullibility of your audience for liking it is the very
definition of selling out. 'N Sync do it. The Backstreet Boys do it. Britney
isn't quite that sophisticated, which makes her kind of lovable. Well, now
Squarepusher is doing it.
Tom, we never knew ye.
M.
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at
http://explorer.msn.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org