Tuesday, February 05, 2008

The beginning of the end of quirky and weird?

Ever since Michael Hirschorn defined "quirk" as an indie-culture aesthetic principle—"an embrace of the odd against the blandly mainstream. It features mannered ingenuousness, an embrace of small moments, narrative randomness"—I've been sort of waiting for a quirk backlash. Hoping, really. Because as Hirschorn warned, quirk has become as an end rather than a means of storytelling, and I don't think that's very smart or entertaining or even irritaining. It's actually lazy and formulaic. So my own personal QuirkWatch, which unofficially began with Wendy's Red Wig news, now continues with two new notes.

From Project Rungay's review of the Elisa Jimenez show at Fashion Week: "We'll always be interested in what the weird girl in the cafeteria has to say, but just being weird isn't enough. Sorry, puppet girl."

From New England Guy's review of Super Bowl ads: "I salute the weirdness but I don't get it anymore."

"Weird isn't enough." I don't know. Just wanted to note that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed. I'm bored with it.

Irene Done said...

I love the name "premumble." And thanks for reading.