quirk you
We’re drowning in quirk. It is the ruling sensibility of today’s Gen-X indie culture, defined territorially by the gentle ministrations of public radio’s This American Life; the strenuously odd (and now canceled) TV sitcom Arrested Development; the movies of Wes Anderson; Dave Eggers’s McSweeney’s Web site; the performance art, music, and writing of Miranda July; and the just-too-wacky-to-be-fully-believable memoirs of Augusten Burroughs.
It’s been 20 years of beneficent, wide-eyed gazing upon the oddities of our fellow man. David Byrne probably birthed contemporary quirk around 1985— halfway between his “Psycho Killer” beginnings with the Talking Heads and his move to global pop—when he sang the song “Stay Up Late”: “Cute, cute, little baby / Little pee-pee, little toes.” (As it happens, Byrne appeared on July’s recent book tour.) Jon Cryer’s “Duckie” Dale in Pretty in Pink came a year later, and quirk was on its way.
As an aesthetic principle, quirk is an embrace of the odd against the blandly mainstream. It features mannered ingenuousness, an embrace of small moments, narrative randomness, situationally amusing but not hilarious character juxtapositions (on HBO’s recent indie-cred comedy Flight of the Conchords, the titular folk-rock duo have one fan), and unexplainable but nonetheless charming character traits. Quirk takes not mattering very seriously.
Quirk is odd, but not too odd. That would take us all the way to weird, and there someone might get hurt. Napoleon Dynamite became a quirk classic by making heroes of Napoleon and Pedro, boy-men without qualities who team up against an alpha blonde to elect Mexican- immigrant Pedro class president at an Idaho high school. Napoleon seals the deal with a dance so transfixingly, transportingly wrong that it becomes a kind of deus ex machina. Pedro wins. (Indeed, inappropriate dancing is a big quirk trope, inasmuch as it provides a dramatic moment at which value systems can collide. See, for example, 7-year-old Olive’s unwittingly hypersexualized routine to Rick James’s “Super Freak” that brings the dysfunctional family together in last year’s Little Miss Sunshine. This itself called out to the unwittingly only-slightly-less-hypersexualized preteen dance troupe Sparkle Motion in the 2001 quirk-noir Donnie Darko, a movie in which Jake Gyllenhaal takes orders from a giant rabbit.)
good quirk vs bad quirk: listen Michael Hirschorn, contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and executive vice president of original programming and production at VH1, believes American pop culture has been oversaturated with [bad] quirk.
He's talking about twee.
we dont use that term here other than twee being just so stuff from some place else where they call it that. he suggested that quirk is a post 9/11 vapid indie thing. the bad quirky stuff that is. i think im down with this concept. the radio interview gets deeper into the subject than the article. quirky seems to need a benignly banal host kulture to react against but not topple. im throwing most new media art into it as well. (in the radio interview he only mentions his inclusion of recent art in passing. a notion worth expanding on as a follow up to slacker art.)
where does he suggest that its a post 9/11 pose? i like twee because it suggests a certain preciousness whereas quirky is merely idiosyncratic.
in the radio interview and actually draws a parallel to the post irony factor of 9/11. i like the word twee too, but find it too narrow. i believe he is identifying a huge 20 something "now" trope and twee is more "too too" and doesnt capture the vastness of vapid impotence. just as hippie was co-opted by madison avenue in september of 1967, now they own alt.
I've always considered the adjective 'quirky' applied to an art work, as a major insult.
With a few exceptions, most of the stuff that the author cites as genial quirky expression is stuff that I hate, so I can't really object to what he's saying.
The exception I make is for "Arrested Development" I thought it was brilliant satire, and some of the best crafted TV I've ever seen.
dave likes AD too. me notsomuch. we three are all probably better judges (than he) of what is and isnt junk culture. in addition, cites aside, i appreciate a good guilty pleasure from specific junk cultures of choice.
im not sure its all junk culture unless all pop culture is junk. he seems to be lamenting a certain ironic pose thats more style than substance. ultimately the purveyors are trying to make an end run around irony to get back to sentiment which had been banished in a seinfeldian world. but the efforts often fall prey to a narcissistic self-appreciation. wes anderson is the perfect example as his movies have become more self-indulgent with each passing effort.
funny that he should cite knocked up as the anti-quirk movie. i loved freaks and geeks so id call myself a fan of judd apatow but he seems to have fallen back on crudeness as a cudgel versus cuteness. but then i havent seen the movie so what do i know.
i think hirschorn knows a thing or two about junk culture. he spews it all day.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN
Executive Vice President, Original Programming and Production for VH1
Michael Hirschorn was promoted to Executive Vice President, Original Programming and Production for VH1 in January 2006.In this role, Hirschorn is responsible for all current VH1 original programming and development for both the East and West coasts as well as music development and celebrity talent development. He is also driving the network's foray into scripted series such as "So Notorious" with Tori Spelling.
Some of the VH1 programming he oversees includes series such as "I Love The...," "Hogan Knows Best," "Flavor of Love," "Celebrity Fit Club," "Best Week Ever," "My Fair Brady," "The Fabulous Life" in additio to VH1 original series "The Surreal Life," "Breaking Bonaduce," and the "All Access" and the "100 Greatest" franchises and documentaries including a slate being created under the new "Rock Docs" banner.
Hirschorn came to VH1 in July 2001 from his position as editor-in-chief of Inside.com, a digital news service that covered the converging entertainment, media, and technology businesses. Prior to Inside's merger with Brill Media Holdings and Primedia, he was also co-chairman and co-founder of Inside's parent company, Powerful Media. Under Hirschorn, Inside.com won the prestigious 2001 Webby Award for Best News Site, topping such entries as CNN, the BBC and Salon, and joining other winners like National Geographic, Travelocity, Microsoft and BBC World Service.
Previously, Hirschorn was features editor at Esquire (1990-94) and executive editor at New York Magazine (1994-97) before becoming editor-in-chief of Spin magazine (1997-99), which subsequently received two National Magazine Award nominations. Hirschorn has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Republic and Slate, and was also a columnist for Esquire.
Hirschorn is a graduate of Harvard University and has a master's degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
yeah hes a peddler.
these are his pieces for the atlantic.
Does anyone else think it's kind of funny/noteworthy that the 'hook' on this story seems to be the fact that he is saying something less than raving about Ira Glass?
"Flavor of Love"
...just pondering glass houses.
i was going to make the same point sans pun but according to hirschorn that makes us elitists or, worse yet, old. i watched a couple of minutes of an mtv reality-drama, a knock-off of The Hills set in Newport Beach and was impressed by the almost cinematic quality of the production, in fact it was letterboxed, but the content was still painfully vapid.
and i never listen to This American Life so i cant comment on the glass bashing.
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- bill 9-04-2007 8:38 pm
good quirk vs bad quirk: listen
- bill 9-04-2007 9:17 pm [add a comment]
He's talking about twee.
- L.M. 9-04-2007 9:59 pm [add a comment]
we dont use that term here other than twee being just so stuff from some place else where they call it that. he suggested that quirk is a post 9/11 vapid indie thing. the bad quirky stuff that is. i think im down with this concept. the radio interview gets deeper into the subject than the article. quirky seems to need a benignly banal host kulture to react against but not topple. im throwing most new media art into it as well. (in the radio interview he only mentions his inclusion of recent art in passing. a notion worth expanding on as a follow up to slacker art.)
- bill 9-04-2007 10:13 pm [add a comment]
where does he suggest that its a post 9/11 pose? i like twee because it suggests a certain preciousness whereas quirky is merely idiosyncratic.
- dave 9-04-2007 11:54 pm [add a comment]
in the radio interview and actually draws a parallel to the post irony factor of 9/11. i like the word twee too, but find it too narrow. i believe he is identifying a huge 20 something "now" trope and twee is more "too too" and doesnt capture the vastness of vapid impotence. just as hippie was co-opted by madison avenue in september of 1967, now they own alt.
- bill 9-05-2007 12:04 am [add a comment]
I've always considered the adjective 'quirky' applied to an art work, as a major insult.
With a few exceptions, most of the stuff that the author cites as genial quirky expression is stuff that I hate, so I can't really object to what he's saying.
- L.M. 9-05-2007 12:17 am [add a comment]
The exception I make is for "Arrested Development" I thought it was brilliant satire, and some of the best crafted TV I've ever seen.
- L.M. 9-05-2007 12:19 am [add a comment]
dave likes AD too. me notsomuch. we three are all probably better judges (than he) of what is and isnt junk culture. in addition, cites aside, i appreciate a good guilty pleasure from specific junk cultures of choice.
- bill 9-05-2007 12:40 am [add a comment]
im not sure its all junk culture unless all pop culture is junk. he seems to be lamenting a certain ironic pose thats more style than substance. ultimately the purveyors are trying to make an end run around irony to get back to sentiment which had been banished in a seinfeldian world. but the efforts often fall prey to a narcissistic self-appreciation. wes anderson is the perfect example as his movies have become more self-indulgent with each passing effort.
funny that he should cite knocked up as the anti-quirk movie. i loved freaks and geeks so id call myself a fan of judd apatow but he seems to have fallen back on crudeness as a cudgel versus cuteness. but then i havent seen the movie so what do i know.
- dave 9-05-2007 1:21 am [add a comment]
i think hirschorn knows a thing or two about junk culture. he spews it all day.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN
Executive Vice President, Original Programming and Production for VH1
Michael Hirschorn was promoted to Executive Vice President, Original Programming and Production for VH1 in January 2006.In this role, Hirschorn is responsible for all current VH1 original programming and development for both the East and West coasts as well as music development and celebrity talent development. He is also driving the network's foray into scripted series such as "So Notorious" with Tori Spelling.
Some of the VH1 programming he oversees includes series such as "I Love The...," "Hogan Knows Best," "Flavor of Love," "Celebrity Fit Club," "Best Week Ever," "My Fair Brady," "The Fabulous Life" in additio to VH1 original series "The Surreal Life," "Breaking Bonaduce," and the "All Access" and the "100 Greatest" franchises and documentaries including a slate being created under the new "Rock Docs" banner.
Hirschorn came to VH1 in July 2001 from his position as editor-in-chief of Inside.com, a digital news service that covered the converging entertainment, media, and technology businesses. Prior to Inside's merger with Brill Media Holdings and Primedia, he was also co-chairman and co-founder of Inside's parent company, Powerful Media. Under Hirschorn, Inside.com won the prestigious 2001 Webby Award for Best News Site, topping such entries as CNN, the BBC and Salon, and joining other winners like National Geographic, Travelocity, Microsoft and BBC World Service.
Previously, Hirschorn was features editor at Esquire (1990-94) and executive editor at New York Magazine (1994-97) before becoming editor-in-chief of Spin magazine (1997-99), which subsequently received two National Magazine Award nominations. Hirschorn has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Republic and Slate, and was also a columnist for Esquire.
Hirschorn is a graduate of Harvard University and has a master's degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
- dave 9-05-2007 1:23 am [add a comment]
yeah hes a peddler. these are his pieces for the atlantic.
- bill 9-05-2007 1:30 am [add a comment]
Does anyone else think it's kind of funny/noteworthy that the 'hook' on this story seems to be the fact that he is saying something less than raving about Ira Glass?
- sally mckay 9-05-2007 7:11 am [add a comment]
"Flavor of Love"
...just pondering glass houses.
- L.M. 9-05-2007 8:52 am [add a comment]
i was going to make the same point sans pun but according to hirschorn that makes us elitists or, worse yet, old. i watched a couple of minutes of an mtv reality-drama, a knock-off of The Hills set in Newport Beach and was impressed by the almost cinematic quality of the production, in fact it was letterboxed, but the content was still painfully vapid.
and i never listen to This American Life so i cant comment on the glass bashing.
- dave 9-05-2007 4:50 pm [add a comment]