Sincerity Forever

by 99 Seats

Watch this.

Okay. Now watch this.

A few weeks ago, I was kind of fascinated by the tamtampamela story. In case you have, you know, a life or something and don't want to click the links (actually, I really don't recommend clicking the first one, seriously), the story goes something like this: for a few months, this young woman was posting videos on YouTube as a fundamentalist Christian of the Fred Phelps stripe, condemning various groups and people to hell for relatively small offenses. She would hit message boards, claiming to be sincere and trying to get other sympathy from other Christians. After the earthquake in Japan, she posted the video linked to above, thanking God for the destruction and death in Japan, taking it as a sign of His power and a sign to the world to wake up. Obviously, there was outcry. If you do watch the video above, you might get, like me, a strange sense of dislocation. She seems so sincere...and yet, there's something off about it. But the sentiments are so disgusting...but are they that surprising? Fred Phelps protests military funerals saying that the soldiers died because God hates homosexuals. Is someone saying earthquake happened because of our secular ways so much more upsetting? But there's still something wrong.

In the end, tamtampamela turned out to be a troll, a fake Christian trying to make a statement. But her statement was close to reality, it was indistinguishable.

Around the same time, I saw the Forts and the Inbetween video above and I was introduced to Donald Glover's rap alter ego, Childish Gambino. And I felt some similar feelings of dislocation. Watch that Forts video and tell me that it doesn't look and feel like something Lonely Island would do on SNL and we'd all laugh about. But is it sincere? Whoever posted it, whatever their intent, as soon as it started to go viral, they pulled it down. It seems like it was actually sincere. And so is Childish Gambino. Donald Glover isn't doing a parody of a rapper, he is a rapper. But he's a funnyman, right? How do I take this seriously? Is the misogyny serious?

I don't often get into the whole world of "these kids today just ain't no damn good" or "the internets are taking our society down with them in their tubes." But I do wonder about how sincerity lives in a world like this? How do recognize real sincerity and earnest feelings in a world of cringe comedy and constant irony? As a writer who actually like sincerity and tries to write with it, I often find people laughing at things I meant honestly. Sometimes I don't mind. But sometimes I wonder, is there a point where we've seen too much parody of emotion and our ability to recognize actual emotion is stunted?

Comments

[Josh]

This is something I thin about a lot. As a satirist who deals a lot in camp and what you would call "cringe comedy", I would be on the opposite side of the sincerity scale as you. At least according to some people's estimation.

I don't think my work is insincere. Camp is a sensibility and is really part of a larger queer vernacular. It's the mode of telling the story, not the story itself. If anything, I think my plays and the plays of other camp writers are ULTRA sincere, because they take the unfiltered truth and blow it up.

Irony is a little trickier, but I do think irony is a tool that writers of a certain age yield to tell their stories. I don't necessarily think the use of irony is the same as an insincere work.

[99]

I like camp, too, and a certain amount of irony. But it feels somehow overpowering in our society. Or maybe just with unintended effects. Especially because things move so quickly through the body politic now. It's easy to get separated from the original source, or the original intention.

The tamtampamela thing introduced me to this Poe's Law thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) and how satire, removed from context, can be mistaken for sincerity. But then again, sincerity, in the wrong context, can be mistaken for satire. Is that something we should be cognizant of, as artists? Or just something we leave to the world?

I don't think camp is separate from sincerity at all. I just wonder about the audience's ability to connect to it.

[Jihad-Punk]

they have all failed Poe's Law. what the above person said. satire isn't easy to write (or film or sing or rant about, etc).

but then again... some people are seriously dumb as hell, and can't distinguish parody from reality. See Facebook commentators on The Onion's links, and then check comments on The Daily Squibble for example (ie: the newly published parody article about Paris Hilton converting to Islam, have garnered a lot of really dumb comments from people who actually thought she became a Muslim for real)...

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