Rudie can't fail

I overheard an interesting conversation at the bank one day. I was standing in the predictably long line that forms just before closing time, there on a work errand. Two WASPy men behind me struck up a bit of idle chatter. One recounted a previous time he waited in a long line at this bank, next to a woman who, bored, twirled her pen in such a way as to repeatedly come close to hitting the mans shirt with it. One man said, "You know, at a certain point in time you have to ask, 'Is it a lack of culture, or the prevailing culture?'" This stuck with me. Now, I always secretly take pleasure in my appearance whenever I go there; grease-laden and sweaty, I feel like the humble laborer sticking out starkly in this polished house of commerce. But this feeling never enters the realm of rudeness. I was raised to have decent manners, and my parents were moderately successful; except for my habit of fiercely picking my nose at any time, I would consider myself polite. And it's not as though I would begrudge this man his right to take offense at the girls wayward pen. But standing there, intently eavesdropping on the rest of their exchange wherein they lamented, in a pompous way that would make T.S. Eliot proud, the Decline of Culture in America, I couldn't help siding with that crass girl. When the elite in society claims a monopoly on taste, what could be more powerful as a political expression by the underclass than being just plain rude?

Irony is for suckers

You've done this before. You walk down the street with a few friends, chatting, perhaps with somewhere to be but little hurry in getting there. Passing another small group, or maybe just one person, you glance at their most American item of clothing: the t-shirt. What it says (and it always says something) doesnt especially matter here. But it has an effect on you, forcing you to communicate it to your companions. Once sufficiently out of earshot (or not), you gasp to them, "Did you see that shirt? Amazing."

"Amazing". When did we all become so amazed by everything? Return to the previous paragraph; whether we thought the shirt was aesthetically pleasing has very little to do with its being amazing. More importantly, we say amazing whether we look down on the wearer or admire them. The sentiment, and the word, is disingenuous in all cases.

Such is the scourge of irony. Once the only aesthetic weapon of the disaffected, irony has become the calling card of the smug and the self-satisfied. Lets not forget that Oscar Wilde, one of the most famously ironic people in history, died in prison for being gay. He wasnt shopping in vintage stores looking for twenty dollar threadbare Foreigner shirts, he was fighting for his life. And now you have those with the least to lose co-opting underclass aesthetics. Mullets, moustaches, Steve Miller Band t-shirts, these have all become in-jokes made by rich kids at the expense of the working class; whether you can still associate these things with the working class in terms of taste is really beside the point.

This class issue to me is the keystone. If you consider irony as an expression of class conflict, the reason we can say, "Amazing," and mean nothing is that a key aspect of irony itself, its heart, is the sly airing of a grievance. With nothing at stake, ironic expression is at best an empty gesture. Lacking any grounding, one can't determine whether they actually like a particular thing. Frightening? When we've become saturated in irony, its hard not to respond ironically, because we wouldnt necessarily know where to start if somebody asked us to give an example of something we genuinely liked. Sincerity would sound too starry-eyed and, well, uncool. Its almost enough to make one pine for the days of the commodified Che Guevara; at least the simpletons who coughed up for overpriced Che shirts thought they meant it. Almost. Now everyone's Thora Birch in "Ghost World" (that movie made me sick), picking on everyone without ever having to hold an opinion.

But here's what gets me. I had a mullet, or whatever you want to call it, for a couple of years. I had a rat-tail before that (it came from behind my ear and it was braided and since I can't braid for shit I glued the top of the braid so there was a dread there after a while). I liked these hairstyles. I thought they suited me. Right now I have a moustache, and I'm trying to decide whether the same is true. But two questions bug me. For one, how am I to be believed when I say I like a thing? "I like Earth Crisis." (Few do; I am one or them.) Couldn't I just be acting ironical (I've always wondered if that was a word; the mathematician guy says it in "Good Will Hunting," a movie I love unironically and frequently causes me to cry)? Second, how can I even tell myself? Maybe it seems aesthetically pleasing to me as a part of this constellation of ironic behavior I take part in.

I feel like Clement Greenberg in his diatribes against kitsch, a withered old square railing against the young whippersnappers. But the reason this has me on edge so much is because when conversation turns to taste the participants become cagey poker players. Irony absolves you of ever having to commit to a preference, and its adherents can dance around the question of liking something without ever touching down on it. Can't we admit to liking some things that it would be uncool to genuinely like? How about coming clean about how we don't really like some of the things we say we like, we just say so to make fun of people who actually do like them? I love Jesus Christ Superstar. I won't fucking shut up about it, and anyone who knows me will verify this. I hate R. Kelly's "Trapped In the Closet," and I watch it only to laugh at the possibility of taking it seriously. Who's next??