Just returned from a 90 minute talk given by Art Spiegelman covering comics, comix, history, & politics. Art devoted a good deal of his talk to the recent Danish Muhammed Comics uproar. He also talked all too briefly about what he termed "Neo-Sincerity" which seems a good deal like the old New Sincerity of Summer ought-five.
Neo-Sincerity uses all the tools available (post-avant, "irony," new punk, hot funk, even if it's old junk) to do more than merely shrug or "be ironic"--it tries to "say" something. And in a bit that L. ensured me was stolen from Jon Stewart (which I believe as Spiegelman talked a lot about the Daily Show), he explained the necessity of Neo-Sincerity thusly: "It's hard to say to your kids 'you suck' and hope they understand that it means you love them." Well said, Jon and/or Art.
*
This following a talk this afternoon with a certain too-perky MFA student who spent 25 min. telling me about how lame workshop is. Well, yeah.
*
OFFER!
A neat postcard (and a beverage IOU) to the first backchannel email that tells me the two musicians who I reference in the above posting--artist, song, album. Offer closes at midnight, PST this Wednesday.
No googling allowed. Honor system.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Art was here in early Feb and I heard the same Neo-sincerity thing from him. I took him out to dinner after his talk and we chatted about that for a while. It was so interesting! I think September 11 is responsible in a lot of ways for this partitioning of balls-out irony and balls-out sincerity, don't you? Equal and opposite reactions to the same event...?
I hope I get a chance to see you next week! It would be great to continue our drunken chit chat.
Now I really wish I had gone to that lecture.
Are we allowed to acknowledge each other in public now, or still keeping it a secret? ;)
Hi Julie,
I'm assuming your emoticon suggests that the acknowledge-in-public thing is a joke....but I never see you in public, unless it's planned! Have you been seeing me all over town?
Spiegels was good.
I was just kidding, you're right. But I like the idea of me waving madly at you in public, and you running away. Well, not like it, but I get a laugh out of it!
Post a Comment