EMILY BACAL
MA CANDIDATE
NYU PERFORMANCE STUDIES
I'm Emily. Welcome to my Performance Studies Master's Project. Let's dive right in -- the water's not not not fine :)
POST-IRONY
HEY THERE
ITS ON.
In this project, I'm thinking about the way we relate to pieces of media -- specifically pieces of media to which our relationships have changed significantly over time. I'm postulating links between the kind of thinking we do while engaging with internet-based discursive communities, and the avowals/disavowals of post-ironic relations to objects. And these ideas, of course, came from deep thinking about the Twilightaissance.
isn't it ironic?
...isn't it?
what it means to like an object post-ironically
1. Liking Twilight directly.
What they say: A. I like Twilight. I believe that Twilight is a good movie.
What they believe: I think Twilight is a good movie, and I enjoy watching it.
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2. Not liking Twilight.
What they say: B. I don't like Twilight. I believe that Twilight is a bad movie.
What they believe: I think Twilight is a bad movie, and I do not enjoy watching it.
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3. Ironically liking Twilight.
What they say: C. Yeah, I like Twilight. What an example of great cinema.
What they believe: The speaker actually dislikes Twilight and believes that it is a bad movie -- so bad, that the statement "Twilight is a good movie" becomes funny to them. The speaker assumes that their interlocutor(s) will understand that they are being ironic. This assumption is probably based on the speaker's belief that their own opinion is commonly held: that it so obviously correct that Twilight is actually a bad movie that stating the opposite will be recognized as a false statement. This implied obviousness exerts a kind of pressure on the interlocutor to agree with the belief that Twilight is a bad movie.
The speaker may still enjoy watching Twilight, but this kind of enjoyment would be an enjoyment of the film because of its badness, the egregiousness of its negatively-defined aesthetic value. This phenomenon is called hate-watching.
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4. Post-ironically liking Twilight.
What they say: D. I love Twilight!
What they believe: The speaker is aware that the film in question in commonly conceived of as 'bad', to the extent that it is commonly invoked ironically. This person might still dislike some aspects of the film, or at least be very aware that there are aspects which people find fault with. Nevertheless, the speaker has a genuine, deep enjoyment of the film that coexists with it in its entirety. This speaker perceives Twilight as having its own schema of positively defined aesthetic value, and appreciates the film on its own terms -- their opinions on it are not solely based on generalized standards of what makes a film 'good' or 'bad'.
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If we sort these statements into JrEg’s layers of irony, we see that statements A and B exist at the level of sincerity, which is the zero degree of irony. Statement C exists at level one (one degree of irony). Statement D contains two levels of irony, which means it belongs in layer two, the post-ironic.
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Irony always involves the subversion of expectation, and a confusion of a thing with its opposite. The speaker of an ironic statement says the opposite of what they mean. See this article for a deeper dive into irony's definition and function, as well as reflections on trends in irony over time.
Importantly, though statement D involves a sort of sincerity – the speaker at this point actually does like Twilight, and thus does mean the statement that they say – it’s meaning is not identical to that of statement A. The words used – “I like Twilight” -- might be the same as those in statement A, but statement D clearly involves more layers of meaning, which include the dynamic movement between avowing and disavowing the thing twice over, as well as an awareness of mainstream expectations of one's relation to the piece of media in question and a subversion of that norm. Additionally, the phrase "I like Twilight" might also be spoken as an articulation of an ironic liking -- the same phrase can be used to communicate three significantly different meanings. As such, it would be useful to have a clearer way to indicate the thickness of meaning attached to statement D as opposed to statement A.
It is to this end that I propose triple-truth values.
say it. out loud.
symbolic logic.
are you afraid?
... a little
a brief poem, or, tip-toeing into triple-truths
It’s good. It's not good. It’s not not good.
I mean it. I don’t mean it. I don’t don’t mean it.
It’s true. It’s not true. It’s not not true.
How many layers of not’s can we hold in our brains at once?
T/F
FT/TF/TT/FF
What happens if truth values, instead of being T/F, become TT/FF/TF/FT? Or TTT/FFF/TTF/TFF/FTT/FFT/TFT/FTF? Each combination of true and false suggests a different kind of nested truth, holding suspended movement through layers of sincerity or complexity.
What kinds of things can we conceptualize with an expanded sense of symbolic logic?
I’m not proposing triple-truth values as a solution to the inadequacy of a T/F formulation. I don’t know if expanding T/F but working within its terms ‘solves’ anything (although, I don’t really know if what I’m proposing fits within T/F’s terms, as I am throwing out one of symbolic logic’s core tenets — the law of excluded middle, or bivalence). But I think it is a useful thought experiment, and I am interested in what might happen if we play around with TTT/FFF and all its variants, what becomes possible, or what is revealed to have already been possible. What kinds of things can we conceptualize with an expanded sense of symbolic logic? Once we get to some of those concepts we will consider whether triple-truth values were necessary to get there, or if there might have been another way of coming to understand heavier truths, chains of meaning that backtrack and double-cross themselves while refusing to erase where they have been, sentiments that are sentimental, and angry, and loopy. Loopy: as in loop back and over and into and outside of themselves, and other things as well. Sara Ahmed in speaking about Audre Lorde talks about ‘sweaty concepts’. Concepts that make you sweat, make you maybe a little nervous, that are thick, that perspire out of a sense of bounds, limits, proper place. My hope is that triple truth values would make the concepts logic is able to articulate triply as sweaty.
So! We’re getting sweaty with post-irony.
GETTING
SWEATY
WITH POST-IRONY
belief/ non-belief, true/ false
When a person engages with levels of irony, they play with ideas about what they believe to be true, what other people believe to be true, and what other people believe that they believe to be true. If an ironic statement is correctly perceived as ironic, the person who notices its irony finds that statement to be unbelievable – they do not believe that the speaker believes the statement.
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Within the ironic, belief/nonbelief and true/false are enmeshed binaries, wherein the enmeshment disrupts their binarism. Here is an example of all of the ways that true/false and belief/non-belief are twisted up when we use irony:
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Edward Cullen makes the statement “Paramore is a great band”, but he actually hates Paramore. Edward is saying something he does mean by making a statement that he does not believe. He disagrees with the statement he has made – he believes that the statement is false.
Edward had an opinion that he truly believed – that Paramore is a bad band – and expressed this opinion ironically, with a statement he believes to be false – “Paramore is a great band”. Thus, Edward’s statement can be said to be True-False.
Edward does not believe the statement -- it is false that he believes the statement. However, it is true that Edward made the statement.
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Let’s say that Edward spoke this statement – “Paramore is a great band” – to Emmett. Emmett believes that Edward believes the statement he has spoken is true, but in fact it is false that Edward believes the statement he has spoken. Emmett now holds a false belief. In actuality, Edward’s statement was ironic – he uttered the statement “Paramore is a great band” because it is untrue. Emmett missed out on the context of the statement. Edward assumed that Emmett would understand his statement as false, as a statement that he did not indeed believe, but Edward's assumption turned out to be false.
Now let's consider an example of a post-ironic relation to a piece of media:
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It is true that Alice post-ironically likes the song “Replay” by Iyaz. “Replay” is a song that was commonly liked, but then regarded as an example of Bad mainstream pop. Alice liked “Replay” at first, but then she disavowed it because everyone at school told her the song was uncool and she started to agree that it was indeed soulless and cookie-cutter. In fact, so many people said the song was uncool that it became funny to say “‘Replay’ is such a good song” (irony).
But now, Alice is like, wait, ‘Replay’ is actually a bop. So she says “I love ‘Replay!’” post-ironically. The fact that she actually believes that she enjoys 'Replay' subverts the expectation that she would merely like it ironically. The relationship that Alice has to ‘Replay’ can be represented as True-False-True, TFT. It was true that Alice liked ‘Replay’. She then treated the song ironically, professing a false belief when she said "I like Replay". Finally, she realized that everything is a little soullessness and cookie cutter-ness can actually be interesting, and enjoyable, aesthetic qualities in music. They interestingly subvert what we think of as 'good music' and evoke a particular affect really effectively. She now genuinely enjoys the song, and post-ironically sings na na na na everyday, like her I-pod's stuck on replay, replay-ay-ay-ay.
Other things I think people have been liking post-ironically: “lol” and other original txting abbreviations, The Bachelor, Crocs, Uggs, amusement parks, minion memes, Y2K fashion/ other cringey accessories, "Sneakernight" by Vanessa Hudgens, etc etc.
My post-ironic liking of Twilight would be expressed as True-False-True.
The first "True" represents my initial sincere engagement with Twilight. The middle "False" indicates my former ironic sentiment towards Twilight, which involved my knowledge of all the reasons that people hated and insulted Twilight, and the way I declared my allegiance to this belief by speaking ironically about Twilight. The final "True" represents my current delighted love of the series, a delight that is inflected by a sense that liking Twilight is actually subversive, defiant, resisting norms that dictate I should not actually like Twilight. My post-ironic engagement means that I am self-aware about myself as a self who likes Twilight in relation to the previous painfulness of the youthful realization that liking Twilight made me lame and basic -- I am reclaiming my ability to form my own opinion about this film outside of what is 'cool' or not, and choosing to honor my childhood love of the series -- me in a simpler time, when Sincerity wasn't Scary.
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Liking things post-ironically allows us to like things in more complicated ways -- ways that do not ignore qualities of a thing we might not like, or the complex development of sentiments about the thing (both our own and those of our culture). And in our world of rapid exchange, where you may be exposed to a hundred+ opinions about an object in rapid succession, we need this kind of iterative, complex mode of relating to be able to like things at all. Sincerity is scary, but not as scary as someone from the internet making me feel like I'm pre-critical or not self-aware.
THANKS
for reading, or maybe just for scrolling :)
