In defense of quirk
The latest rash of criticism from the literati has been targeted at quirk, or quirkiness, or whatever you’d like to call it. Manifesting itself in things like Dave Egger’s McSweeney’s, Ira Glass’s This American Life, and the films of Wes Anderson, quirk is defined as such by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic:
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… and unexplainable but nonetheless charming character traits. Quirk takes not mattering very seriously.
Hirschorn also points out a number of other instances of quirk: Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, and Garden State all get mentioned. Inevitably, the point is made:
Quirk, loosed from its moorings, quickly becomes exhausting…But the pleasures are passing. Like the proliferation of meta-humor that followed David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld in the ’90s, quirk is everywhere because quirkiness is so easy to achieve: Just be odd … but endearing. It becomes a kind of psychographic marker, like wearing laceless Chuck Taylors or ironic facial hair-a self-satisfied pose that stands for nothing and doesn’t require you to take creative responsibility. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Unlike the critics of quirk, however, I’m not particularly bothered by the phenomenon. To me, its onset was inevitable as a generation steeped in the postmodern condition finally reached an age where they were self-aware enough to start expressing themselves via artistic mediums and become visible in the entertainment spectrum. Art imitates life and the quirk that has become so prevalent in entertainment mediums is the byproduct of the cultural consciousness in which we are raised. We are the protected generation-political correctness, the “you can do anything if you set your mind to it” mantra, and every-opinion-has-value were our moral and social foundations.
We weren’t stupid, though. As time wore on, the cruel truths of reality began setting in and we started realizing that our cultural infrastructure was mostly false. We’re more connected as a generation than any other one in the past, thanks to the internet. And yet we can’t figure out how to mobilize politically. After flooding into college and doing what we liked, a lot of us are realizing that the adults were fucking with us-college does not spell automatic success and I cannot do anything I want in life and become successful no matter how much I’ve set my mind on it. It’s all false or, at the very least, mostly untrue. Out of this deep distrust of the structures we were taught that we could trust, it comes as no surprise that nothing is really sacred any more.
Our generation is one of satire, a generation disillusioned by the “good liberal” mindset being shattered upon our reaching adulthood. Even the classic dichotomy of good versus evil are probably questionable expressions of actual, real-world situations. Furthermore, most of us will never change the world. The teachings and commandments that our society operates on are being disproven almost daily. And we’re realizing, slowly, that these classical conceptions of “good” and “possible” are myths. We haven’t held onto them. We’ve recognized their futility and shed them. They are old news, laughable and probably the target of some satire, whether it be Team America: World Police, Family Guy, or Adbusters. Again: nothing is sacred.
With the possibility of heroism and value long gone, what’s left? Quite simply, the little things-the stories that lack a meta-theme or a “bigger” message. Things that are self-effacing and not afraid to admit that they are flawed and terrible and are willing to poke fun at themselves and, in turn, at us in a very subtle way. This isn’t an era for heroes. This is an era of us, where the characters realize that the world is probably against them or, at the very least, totally impartial to them and they simply go about trying to find meaning in the world that has none to give.
What remains? A world where solace can only be found in the very personal and on the micro-level. Compare The Office to The Lone Ranger-the heroic epic is gone, replaced by a small circle of people simply trying to deal with very usual problems of day-to-day life, albeit it in an entertaining way. The entertainment factor is introduced when day-to-day situations become quirky. Further, there is room for nothing more than quirk here, unless you want to show the very normal lives of some very normal people doing very normal things. Which really doesn’t make for good entertainment.
The fact that quirk saturates our entertainment culture is not the fault of uncreative directors or bored writers. Quirk is the last possible facet of entertainment in our culture. This would be depressing if we accept Hirschorn’s definition. I do not defy his conception of it, but merely choose to approach it from a different angle-it is the expression of our experience. It is what we seek and latch on to-the unusual and fantastic parts of Being-with-the-Other in an entirely mundane, unexotic manner and environment. Far from being worthless, there is something valuable in me sitting down with you and sharing an interesting or profound moment that is marked with something out-of-the-ordinary. This is where we can be passionate about something-that moment. For us, the progeny of the postmodern world, it might be the only meaningful thing out there.