90s revisionism, take 2: irony
The “top videos of the 90s” list that’s up at Pitchfork right now is interesting in that it’s not the usual decade-retrospective staff list voted on by all the writers - which implies an expression of critical consensus - but the singular creation of Scott Plagenhoef, and he uses the opportunity to advance a particular critical argument of the 90s as a precursor to the new sincerity of today’s indie culture. I like this, but it also reminded me of the piece I wrote for Idolator called “On Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ and 90s Revisionism.” Though Scott uses the word “irony” in the intro, it appears nowhere else in the piece, despite being such a strong presence in the contemporaneous critical discussion of that decade. And that seems problematic to me.
I like a lot of what Scott does, particularly his points about how the music video aesthetic of the 90s presages the culture of web videos. But his points about the hidden sincerity of the 90s, which he makes most explicitly in his bits about Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots” video and Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” video, were more confusing. Of the former, he writes:
By the time of Mike Mills’ skaters-in-love clip for Air’s “All I Need”, sincerity was poised to creep back into indie rock youth culture. You’d still show up at a Flaming Lips show and people would nervously laugh at covers of “Over the Rainbow” or “(What a) Wonderful World”, but the ground was shifting under our feet.
And of the latter:
This still seems risky. Of course being willing to lay your heart and soul out on the line, to expose your raw feelings to people, became the undoing of Sinéad O’Connor’s career. It wouldn’t have played out that way today.
Though the “Dirty Boots” video will always be adorable, I guess it seems weird to me to talk about the need for a return to sincerity given that the strong presence of irony in the 90s was much more the exception than the rule - indie/underground circles had just come out of the hardcore 80s, after all. The implication is that a culture based on sincerity is the norm, and the irony of the 90s wasn’t vital to the art produced then, but was, rather, an unfortunate aberration that was finally corrected in the 00s. This strikes me as more a rewriting of history than a reinterpretation of it.
While certainly not all the videos embraced irony, at a certain point in the list Scott seems to be almost dancing around the term. He describes “Sabotage” as a “spoof,” Windows 95 premium “Buddy Holly” as “nostalgia,” Spike Jonze’s bad dance troupe of “Praise You” as a “prank,” the goofy “Sugarcube” as “funny,” “In Bloom“‘s cheesy talk-show conceit as a “thing.” The outmoded styles of “This is Hardcore” are “references,” Beck’s whole aesthetic is “cool,” and so on and so forth; this is just the top 20, before we even get to “Big Me” (“the original meme video”). I can understand why Scott might want to avoid that loaded word. I mean, 90s irony really is embarrassing now, for the most part. Created to mock cheesiness, it itself looks cheesy in retrospect. It made us feel smart, but it really just consisted of the kind of easy yuks that would eventually spawn the Scary Movie et al franchise, while the scattered moments of conservative sincerity would end up producing the Arcade Fire.
But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. As easily as irony can be obvious and stupid, it can also be difficult and weird. Irony also produced what I consider to be the best movie of the 00s, Kill Bill, which took these debased forms and resurrected them by finding new life in their guiding themes and tropes. Abandoning irony (or consigning its use to goofs or humor) means that we only have access to respectable parts of the past, the bits we can resuscitate that already conform to collective good taste. Irony, though, opens up a world of culture that isn’t respectable, that needs to be mocked even as it’s revived in order to be convincing. There’s a value in getting at the decontextualized meaning of a piece of art, as Scott does with Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” video, but I think leaving irony out of an account of the 90s video culture narrows our options in the present.
I don’t mean to pin too much of this on Scott, who I know has broad and generous tastes. But I think the fact that he had to so rigorously avoid using the word “irony” gets at a broader attitude within indie culture. Sincere things, even stupid sincere things, accrue an aura of nobility, whereas anything smacking of goofiness or humor gets sneered into a corner. Irony has been transformed into mere taste; 80s fashion now isn’t cheesy, it’s just normal, faked so real it’s not only beyond fake but has managed to erase the memory of ever being fake. But the playfulness and goofiness of the 90s was a big part of what I liked about them, and I think that sense of good-natured but skeptical freedom had a lot to do with the art that was produced. Moreover, the implication that irony was just a trend and sincerity is real is belied by the fact that irony was even huger in the beginning of the decade (remember electroclash?) and sincerity has only recently come into vogue. It’s a trend, too, and one that we will no doubt move beyond. In the meantime, though, let’s not forget where we came from. Generally speaking, I like where we are, but I don’t think we can appreciate it - or be critical about it - unless we’re honest about where we came from.
