Thursday, June 08, 2006
I am really looking forward to watching The Society Murders. Sometimes I am full of self-loathing thinking about my hipsterish ways. I fret that I go to too many parties and launches and see the same people there all the time, and then befriend them on MySpace, and that perhaps my tastes are shaped by postmodern irony and that my self-esteem depends on others recognising my skilful bricolage. (I was pretty crushed that nobody found this as funny as I did.)
And then I catch myself musing that I am looking forward to watching a true-crime telemovie starring Georgie Parker and Alex Dimitriades.
Recently I was having a hugely enjoyable session of pub theorising (the best kind! Hey, who wants to start a collaborative blog called Pub Theory?) with Joshwah, who ventured the notion that we are living in 'post-ironic' times in which irony has become the default state of play and has lost its ironic effect/affect. The waning of irony? Oh how sagely we nodded before obtaining further beers. I remember that someone on this blog last year said that irony and sincerity are not opposite ends of a continuum. Perhaps sincerity has itself become a mode of irony.
But I've been thinking about how things I like inspire a genuine emotional response in me, and how I find it alienating to engage with people whose interactions are playful, rhetorical, sarcastic. It's not that I collapse in front of the TV cutting out endless paper snowflakes and watching whatever's on. I look forward to specific programs. And I engage with them: Natalya finds it puzzling that I am quite physically frightened by scary moments in Supernatural.
This makes me wonder about the nature of 'looking forward', about the pleasure of anticipation. Can't say I have anything substantive to say about it right now, but perhaps you fine people do.
And then I catch myself musing that I am looking forward to watching a true-crime telemovie starring Georgie Parker and Alex Dimitriades.
Recently I was having a hugely enjoyable session of pub theorising (the best kind! Hey, who wants to start a collaborative blog called Pub Theory?) with Joshwah, who ventured the notion that we are living in 'post-ironic' times in which irony has become the default state of play and has lost its ironic effect/affect. The waning of irony? Oh how sagely we nodded before obtaining further beers. I remember that someone on this blog last year said that irony and sincerity are not opposite ends of a continuum. Perhaps sincerity has itself become a mode of irony.
But I've been thinking about how things I like inspire a genuine emotional response in me, and how I find it alienating to engage with people whose interactions are playful, rhetorical, sarcastic. It's not that I collapse in front of the TV cutting out endless paper snowflakes and watching whatever's on. I look forward to specific programs. And I engage with them: Natalya finds it puzzling that I am quite physically frightened by scary moments in Supernatural.
This makes me wonder about the nature of 'looking forward', about the pleasure of anticipation. Can't say I have anything substantive to say about it right now, but perhaps you fine people do.
