And Isn't It Ironic... Don't You Think?

The late 1980s introduced the buzzword "New Sincerity" in three spheres: post-postmodern literature, genre film, and punk rock music. Post-postmodern, because what can we call the writers who react to postmodern literature? New Sincere writers don't dismiss irony. Maintaining some ironic distance (and irony is primarily a distancing tool) does not denigrate the inherent truthfulness of their story, these writers feel. They are not cynics. 

As far back as 1953, Vladimir Pomerantsev attacked both style and poor construction (farfetched plots and characters, for example) as insincere. His goal was to study everyday life "so that we might lift the reader even higher above everyday life." New Sincerity takes a similar stance. Down with absurdity and postmodern excess! A chair is just a chair. 

Film critics now might call sincerity "new," but the movement really started with the 1980s. Not a watershed time for filmmaking, in my opinion, but a deeply earnest one. Many straight dramas wallowed in tears, endearment, and tender mercies. The top-grossing films of the decade made up an explosion of genre work: E.T., two Star Wars and three Indiana Jones films. An innocence started to emerge in these escape fantasies; we reverted to coming-of-age comedies and Kevin Costner films, with less of the 1970s paranoia. Auteurs of the New Sincerity took over: Pedro Almodovar, Charlie Kaufman, Wes Anderson, all steeped in irony but searching for the sentimental behind it.

A wave of alternative rockers, including The Reivers, was credited with jump-starting the New Sincerity movement against ironic punk bands around 1985. But five years later, the gig was up. Apparently people didn't buy sincerity on CD. One of the band members of Doctor's Mob remembers thinking audiences "were in on the joke." The concept of New Sincerity isn't about taking yourself too seriously as an artist; if anything, some thought these bands were parodies. They kept their ironic distance, able to step back and laugh at themselves. 

Whether or not these artists wanted to be newly sincere, they all stood up for and against excess. Layering on style was useful to a point, but it had to be in service to the substance beneath. So you're ever trying to decide if your writing is sincere or ironic, realize that it's a New age: it just might be both.