David Foster Wallace - The Problem with Irony
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FURTHER READING (please consider using these links if you'd like to purchase these books. It helps the channel).
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"Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace (amzn.to/2mf9XdY)
"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace (amzn.to/2DeHoFF)
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Italian Subtitles by Daniele Campisano - ตลก
“You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
I'd argue the existential void is what someone can see at the end of all things. I agree with this quote though. Although, it means I'm still 'blind'.
Meaning exists, we are physiologically tuned to know when we are doing something meaningful. If you listen, that is.
It is insane how quotable C.S. Lewis is.
That's brilliant.
abolition of man was a good book, but Lewis religious arguments make me doubt the mans sanity to some extent.
“Strict adherence to cynicism isn’t really all that smart or cool.” I LOVED that line.
sincerity is very refreshing in media these days.
This is why I think anime and manga is so popular today, almost all of the big ones are overwhelming sincere.
@@dylanduke2018Wow yes. I think you are correct. I always wondered why
I think you were spot on with The Office. Jim personifies irony and is constantly remarking on his coworkers idiocies or poor performances (ironically). Only to later realize that his own ironic approach holds him back from ever leaving the job he hates, getting the girl he loves or having a meaningful, non-superficial relationship with anyone. This approach is one that many, myself included, have. Jim's story tells us that irony is the killer of hopes, dreams and everything else that make life meaningful. -That sincerity has the redeeming quality of making your being meaningful. It's truly magnificent writing and eye-opening once you think about it.
@kukenballenvegavalle - I'm struggling to understand irony, if I try to generalise from what you said:
To embody irony you need:
- criticise a group of people, thing or activity
- you struggle to get out of the problems related to the group of people, thing or activies that you criticise.
So irony is a form of hypocrisy? e.g. Understand what you need to do to achieve a result but you don't take the steps to achieve the results.
@@popmop1234That's not at all what he said. Using irony as a lens to view and interact with the world becomes a barrier to actually being in the world.
Interesting presentation of some fairly complex stuff. But doesn't this video kind of miss Wallace's point about the ineffectiveness of irony? His main problem is not with irony/irreverence/self-referentiality itself but with the fact that where these were effective literary techniques in the 60s and 70s, by the 80s they had been completely co-opted by television and marketing strategies (also on television). The critical force of irony is hollowed out because we've been trained in the arts of thinking ironically by television. By aiming to convey sincerity (the gooey and embarrassing and frankly unfortunate but honest aspects of living) he doesn't turn away from irony but rather passes through it, to the other side, where 'lived experience' shines through again. Maybe Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a good example: where he uses irony as a form of speaking to allow the shittiness of everyday decisions/actions gain relevance/relatability. The Office and Community may have similar objectives insofar as both are ironic and sincere. But isn't this just another example of exactly what he was originally arguing against: that television has the power to co-opt ways/modes of thinking/experiencing the world, where we always experience that world in absolute solitude, completely alone and by its mediation, always at a distance, never IN it. At least with shows like arrested development, it's always sunny and seinfeld, the void is recognizable as a form of experience. With the 'sincere' ones you mentioned, the soft irony and self-referentiality, are techniques used to draw the viewer towards a false sincerity which, in the end, just covers up the emptiness of our lives in world conditioned by total connectivity and total isolation. Pretty sure DFW just wants us all to make friends and be nice to them.
Please read this comment after you've watched the video. This is what good criticism looks like and how it is phrased. And, it's the best criticism I've read so far on this video. Thanks for the thoughtful response, Andrew.
My short response is this: DFW had no illusions about TV. He knew it was a Luddite position to tell everyone to turn all of their sets off. The best we can do against such an indefatigable medium is have culture co-opted in a more constructive way, to discuss the influence of the medium more often than we do now, and to get away from it more often than we do now.
This popular quotation of his I think adds to this conversation:
“Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? "Sure." Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.”
...or Kingsley Amis's line, "The one indispensable answer to an environment bristling w/ people and things one thought were bad was to go on finding out new ways in which one could think they were bad."
Will Schoder-I'm not sure what the pith is of what you're saying in your response to Andrew. Could you sort of dumb it down for me? Lol I just can't fully see the connection to his critique, with what you were saying.
Thank you both for that illuminating and thoughtful exchange. I sincerely wish there were more of that taking place (wasn't that what the internet was meant to provide?) than the snarky, often ignorant put downs which seem to dominate...
I recall growing up in the '60s and '70s, cutting my teeth on such fare as Mad and national Lampoon; it seemed then that in order to mock something, it was first necessary to comprehend it to some extent, which encouraged exploration and discovery. The point made that simply taking the piss out of some preposterous situation is a poor excuse for proposing a better approach probably can't compete with the self-proclaimed hipness that accompanies the snide dismissal of the value of anything outside the sphere of one's own preferences (or the ultimately empty sense of superiority that must accompany it) might account for why this has become so prevalent...but then again, I might be way out in left field...
Andrew Grant (or others), please tell me if this properly summarizes your argument. Will's video misses the point that the medium of television is itself isolating and to a degree inherently insincere. One does not speak or collaborate with others to watch shows like The Office and Community. Sincerity and honesty are ways in which we show our fellow humans that they're less alone, that we're willing to reveal ourselves and connect with them. But after finishing a TV show (any TV show), we're just as alone as when we started. In a sense, these 2000s comedies have co-opted sincerity in the same way that TV commercials of the 80s co-opted irony. And that's a shame, since sincerity (like irony) was once a weapon that helped us to differentiate real life from the isolating illusions inside our TV sets.
Another early adoption of what you are talking about is King of the Hill. Tons of heart.
You could make the argument that B&B has sincerity to it, clumsily hidden among the absurdity. Beavis & Butthead are idiots, yes, and they're rude as hell. But they're also obsessed with the things that they love, even though it makes them uncool. They don't live in a state of ironic detachment, they wear Metallica t-shirts and thrash in their living rooms to Slayer. They might treat the people around them badly, but ultimately most of the recurring people in their lives (teachers, Daria) are presented as authentic and decent people, many of whom are interested in B&B's well being, even if B&B don't want or can't use their help. They don't look at life cynically, in fact most of their episodes revolve around them discovering something new and becoming obsessed with it somehow, and even though they Stooge their way to some kind of vague understanding of the thing by the end, we aren't being told to resent them for being dumb, and they're usually punished for being jerks. It revolves around a similar kind of moral universe as Office Space, Idiocracy, and KotH, it's just less polished I think.
mike judge has tons of heart and is also successful in silicon valley in my opinion and office space was filled with so much of his own struggles.
kevin butler It's
This is actually why i try not to take memes too serious, its no longer a counter culture form of information that it once was, and due to the rise of memes its now even more difficult for people to actually address serious issues without hiding it in an empty form of content thats meant to be taken ironically.
I tried to read this dumb ass comment to my self without laughing at your logic. I failed...............Memes were never meant to be taken serious. It's a joke. It's merely a way to relate in joke form. People who make memes and jokes about "serious" things would have make jokes about it even before the modern rise of what a meme is. It's just human nature. That and a way to deflect one's fear about an issue with the use of humor. It is a natural thing. I can argue that nothing has to be taken seriously. Who should we define what is and is not serious? Why should anything have meaning? Is it not you just trying to enforce your arbitrary individual view on the world as to how you think things should be? If we we are worried about social detachment and social positive change. The problem is not memes. It's misinformation, ignorance, and humanities new obsession with the internet and constantly needing mindless stimulation.
Kierkegaard explored all of these ideas in his doctoral thesis in 1841, entitled Om Begrebet Ironi (On the Concept of Irony). On page 261 of the Howard and Edna Hong translation, Kierkegaard explains, “Here, then, we have irony as the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not. The irony establishes nothing, because that which is to be established lies behind it. It is a divine madness that rages like a Tamerlane and does not leave one stone upon another. Here, then, we have irony.” It is not possible, therefore, to present the destructive nature of irony as something missed or misunderstood by the Post Modernists if the father of existentialism wrote his dissertation on the very topic 150 years ago. While the killing of the literary fathers must occur at every generation, at least do it for the right reasons!
I think that DFW is probably attempting to address the hollowness of irony for the sake of irony itself. Irony that never makes an instructive turn towards the sincere, never sees through to some other way of making a situation intelligible, just leaps from ironic caveat to ironic caveat and you get to a sort of prone helplessness at its inward fractal nature, forever dwindling and expanding at the same time. I see irony as a sort of mental agility. The ability to make sense of something even after its original sense has been disturbed. Postmodernism tore up the capital "T" truth and put our foundation on a fluid sea instead of on stoic granite, but that does not mean that there are no stable interrelationships upon which you can set anchor, and it is not as if even if understood ironically one stable interrelationship is likely to be disturbed so perversely that its reestablished interrelationships don't more closely resemble the original sense in its new one. Things don't generally evolve all at once, they are subtle and slow and you can see the genealogy more than you are confronted by something which its sense is completely alien and unintelligible. Endless irony is terrifying if nothing stays still long enough for it to be its own thing. Identity of the self can't exist and all that's left is the abject terror of endless falling, but even nothing can keep juggling more and more things to the limits of infinity. Irony is only irony if it ends once its newly established interrelationship is understood.
I'd also like to point out that "The Office" even has a character named "David Wallace" in the show. I read somewhere that this is no coincidence and that one writer of the show is actually a huge fan of David Foster Wallace's work.
I'm a reader of DFW and avid watcher of the Office and must confess that I'm a little embarassed for not having realized that.
Michael Schur is a huge DFW appreciator. He was a listed contributor to "The David Foster Wallace Reader", in case there was any thought the name of Scranton's honcho was a coincidence.
Schur also owns film rights to the IJ plot I'm guessing to protect it, and also more certainly to shoot the music video for The Decemberists music video "Calamity Song" which is the Eschaton scene from the Enfield Tennis Academy. Super Facts!
And John Krasinski (Jim on the show) is another huge fan who adapted and directed a film version of one of Wallace's superb collections of short stories, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men." Opinions vary on how successful the adaptation was, but one could certainly do worse on a Saturday night.
All of the relevant traits of the American Office were lifted from the original UK show. That was the turning point where comedy was married with sincerity and, ultimately, redemption.
Scrubs also fits this narrative right. The childishness of JD and Turk, the cynicism of Dr.Cox or just the general lightheartedness of the show gets tied up together with a sincere message.
Cox was a Realist. He balanced JD's childishness.
I was upset Will Schoder didn't mention Scrubs but then, I saw your comment that made me happy.
Pierrick Ozenne I saw your comment and that made me happy. :)
And also The Simpsons, of course.
+Sritanshu Sinha I saw both of you two's comments and they made me very happy
I STILL cry when I watch this. "It's not impossible, it's just really fucking hard." breaks me every time and I have to go run and hug someone. I can't express how much I appreciate this little video for how well it articulates the problems with cynicism and serves as an affirmation of earnestness and life.
Kicks the crap out of me emotionally, and I adore it.
Yep, gotta admit that line ('"It's not impossible, it's just really fucking hard.") made me inhale and shiver pretty deep just now; its delivery is perfect, the message is powerful!
My Name is Earl. That was a gem of a show that had both cynicism and sentimentality with loads of redeemable characters. In fact the entire premise was redemption.
Matthew Bittenbender I love that show
Earl, what show are u talking about?
Logan Roark DFW was talking about post modernism in TV programming and mentioned it’s qualities which I mentioned mentioned in my OP. The Show that I think perfectly typifies what he is talking about is “My Name is Earl.” Check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
My name is also Earl. We are all Earls, here.
totally underrated show, i miss it so much
David Foster Wallace looks like Axl Rose's accountant
OMG that's the funniest thing I've ever read *deadpans into camera*
@@evadwall1057 *hard to criticize something that criticizes itself*
Hahahaha hilarious comment though
This is amazing.
Highlight of my day right there 👍👍
These are the sort of videos that I believe have been sorely missing on TH-cam. Fantastic content. I look forward to more.
You might check Every Frame of a Painting or Nerdwriter1, channels with similar content. The first one more technical about various aspects of film, the second general art analysis.
Great video. I'm tired of enthusiastically (or habitually rather) investing in cynicism and irony. It has only left me thinking that others are NEVER being sincere, especially when they have something nice/good to say about me. And though it makes me feel like I'm right a lot of the time, I also feel in a constant state of (self) doubt, because right in the centre of cynism, even I myself am insincere. No more.
I think Ted Lasso is a first of its kind in this regard. The sincerity and heart far outweighs any shadow of irony, and this aspect is actually completely and consciously embraced (and also presented as the show’s edge). So in 2020, it’s edgy to be unabashedly sincere. It’s probably an inevitable result of irony oversaturation, which was bound to happen eventually. I like where we’re headed.
Schitt's Creek is a similarly positive and sincere sitcom.
Let's not forget Scrubs, which predates it by many years.
The way I see it, the purest essence of memes is to constantly be subverting expectations. Irony and metahumour was the primary way to do that, and now because we are so heavily saturated, sincerity is more subversive than the lack of sincerity. This resurgence in sincerity is simply an extension of the constant struggle to subvert.
the pendulum - its everywhere. politics humor television music etc. etc.
Whatever floats your boat. I just want a feeling of contentment in my life.
Bryan Chu sincerity as wholesomeness?
I see your point but I don't entirely agree as I think it's sort of an oversimplification of the cycle. To me, irony is basically 'subversion incarnate' while sincerity tends to be the opposite. Which is to say, how do people subvert an ironic point?... Generally in my experience with an equally or even more ironic point, except in a different direction.
Hence when you say sincerity is just another subversion of irony, I think this is only true in the sense that it is a *change*. But of course then you're really diluting the word "subversion" and might as well just call it a change, because to me subverting is much more in the essence of irony. I guess what I'm saying is, this is only a subversion in the sense that it is a change to something different. Maybe I'm not reading you exactly right and you in fact agree with me here, but I just wanted to say this.
Memes as in internet inside jokes, or as self-replicating parts of culture?
This earned my sub. As someone internally conflict between cynicism and sincerity, this really spoke to me. I still believe irony has a place in our lives, and in our entertainment, but I think the ideas you presented are important, and you did an excellent job of presenting them. Great work.
For me, the new sincerity began when I got sick of using irony and dank memes in everything as a coping mechanism for my incompetence resulting from some depression.I really do or at least try to change myself for better everyday in a noble-sincere way. People need to understand this! This is a good video. Thanks!
I just started doing new sincerity today when I started watching this video: September 10, 2022. I am happy to in this new journey in being sincere and true to who I am!
Wow, I thought this was an experience of mine and my peers of an aging process, but it makes so much sense that this is really a long term social trend (to simplify egregiously).
I'm in two minds about this. On the surface, I agree with David Foster Wallace. Wall-to-wall, cooler-than-thou snark has a detrimental effect on culture. Frankly, I'd argue that this has gotten worse since DFW made his case, not better. We live in an age of 90s junk-culture nostalgia and semi-ironic music fads like vaporwave. The cycles of what's considered cool and uncool seem to move far quicker than ever before, with flash-in-the-pan hype bands, Netflix/podcast sensations, etc. all eliciting a kind of strangely emotionless interest from the media classes, and remaining largely unnoticed by the general population.
TV shows like Seinfeld and Animaniacs were rebelling against the hollow, unearned emotional content of earlier generations of sitcom, wherein a character would make a facile emotion-based speech (something like "Who cares if I didn't get to go to the tournament? I got to be here with the people I love"). That kind of dialogue was just as cynical as the 90s slackers who reacted against it. It played on the audience's emotions in an exploitative, surface-level way. The Office scene depicted here made me feel kind queasy too; it seemed like a cute way of rounding off a half-hour episode rather than a properly-released character beat.
It takes some incredibly skillful writing to avoid the arch cynicism of post-modernism, while also avoiding the puke-inducing cynicism of unearned emotional manipulation. There’s a happy medium that few manage. I'd say Wes Anderson does. Mad Men did. 90s Simpsons episodes did too.
Also, Modern Family is such a banal, anodyne nightmare of beige nothingness, that it’s hard to see it as a positive example of anything.
but it sounds nice.
You make some good points. I think the word "irony" makes things needlessly complicated, just as the term "postmodern" also does. You'll rarely get two people to agree on what postmodern means, and irony is the same (IMHO).
As you say, "cooler-than-thou snark" (or simply the term "sarcasm") reduces the phenomenon we're talking about to what it is, instead of the (false) high minded games/tricks that the word "irony" implies.
It's hard to say what's what, though. The beginning of this video had some interesting points, but the examples that most of the video depended on didn't convince me of much.
Perhaps sarcasm vs. sentimentality is just another version of love vs. fear. And that back-and-forth game is as old as time.
Well said.
"Electronica" isn't even a thing. That's called a problem of universals, but culture snobs want to use stipulative definitions to define and categorize things. It's not a new style, it's basically BBS-era posturing from the 90s.
That first part of your comment reminds me of the way Gibson described things in Neuromancer:
> "Fads swept the youth of the Sprawl at the speed of light; entire subcultures could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly"
I've exhausted all of Nerdwriter's videos and now this channel comes along. Thank you!
Some tv Show to watch:
- Ted Lasso
- Scrubs (same showrunner)
- Man Seeking Woman
- Fleabag
- My Name is Earl
- Gravity Falls
- Over the Garden Wall (masterpiece)
I feel validated. I have been struggling to put these concepts into words -- why specific shows are worthwhile and others are not -- and it's comforting to see that someone has done just that.
agree 100%. i can't express my feelings as effectively as this video did but it is really reassuring. im going to remind myself to watch this every once in a while.
I still cry when I watch this essay. I love this.
this was a really awesome video. Thank you for investigating and splaying out the forces at play in the world today
Thanks Nathan :)
Will Schoder Love your videos. Great editing and ideas.
I come back to this video every year it feels, greatly construed man has always given me a lot to think about
I don't think the Simpsons is insincere, there are tons of sincere moments with lots of heart.
fiji same with family guy. Watch the episode where Brian and Stewie get locked in the bank vault. Lots of genuinely touching moments between Brian and stewie in that episode and others.
Especially in the earlier seasons
In the early seasons of the Simpsons it was a lot like a modernist sitcom, but animated, and with some more boundary pushing humor. But the show's corpse has been dragged through the decades and it quickly devolved into a cynical and ironic contest with completely flanderized characters.
All I know is that the Simpsons have entertained me for decades. At least the first 15 seasons or so...
Jordan Peterson would agree with you. He calls homer the noble fool.
Sometimes youtube recommendations hits it out of the park. This is one of those times.
this was very uplifting, and while I expected this to be more focused on DFW and his work, I was happily surprised with this commentary on modern entertainment's approach to irony/sincerity (using DFW as a reference point)
this is so well put together. thank you - i have been feeling like i am just getting old (35) and not understanding people's indifference and distraction. nothing important is ever talked about and the ones who care about what is slipping away right before our eyes - end up going crazy because nobody will share the load and find solutions. we've become to comfortable and one day we won't just be making fun of our issues, we'll be poking at a corpse. it's not going to sell so much at that point.
After watching this video i got this bittersweet feeling that i think I usually only have right after I’ve heard or read something that changed how I view the world for the better. Thanks for that!
This video popped up on my feed at the exact right time. Thank you for the moment of clarity.
Awesome. There should be more DFW videos.
Thanks so much Wombie!
This is a wonderful essay and has tied together some thoughts I've been having about my own perspective/approach to life recently. Thank you! I agree that a balance between cynicism and sincerity is the best ☺️
Unbelievably fascinating. Extremely well done video. Thank you!
You just earned yourself a new subscriber (or maybe a patron if there are more of these types of videos to come)
Great video, but I feel like it was more about ideological choices made in television than to do with David Foster Wallace. While I did enjoy the video, it was not what the title would make you believe it is about - at least not in full.
DFW was raising the flag about this 25+ years ago, that's the point.
The Office and Parks and Recreation were heavily influenced by David Foster Wallace.
Paul Andersen, I agree... the title of this video would be more accurate: 'David Foster Wallace and his influence on today’s sitcoms.'
Love, love, love. Putting a reminder here to rewatch later to fully digest
this was one of the most interesting and thought provoking things I've seen in a while
@@angryscotsman339 The Scottish having to write an insult in another countries language. That's how much England continues to own you.
I resent the implication that Arrested Development doesn't have a heart! That show has tonnes of heart, and in fact I'd say that one of the biggest points of the show is that everyone puts up a front but deep down, they're all as broken as each other, looking for that connection. GOB's arc in season 4 being the best example.
Other than that, great video.
It doesn't have a heart, it's a TV show, IE a capitalist venture to sell adds.
@@BuildinWings well, Season 4 was a horrible pointless crap :)
Doesn't Simpsons just fuck this up? It's always had a positive and sincere message, yet it uses a lot of irony, and it's been pretty much the most successful tv show of all time.
Jamming InDaStreets The Simpsons is a tough one. It falls into pastiche, so it's got some serious postmodern going on. It's also an ironic mockery of the sitcom. That doesn't automatically make it cynical, though. It just means that the irony it engages in can be dangerous. A hugely popular TV show that constantly references pop culture and TV slowly makes TV THE culture, and that's a dangerous precedent. Yet, The Simpsons has some incredibly sincere moments. That's why it's a tough one. One of the big things to look for is if the characters are allowed to be redeemed and are redeeming, and whether or not that redemption/sincerity is believable. It gets a little murky. Then you get into arguments about structure and music and presentation. For example, Big Bang Theory is sincere, but it's not believable. Family Guy has faux-sincere moments that are immediately discredited by irony. That's why Family Guy is much easier to explain as an example, and the Simpsons is so complex. People would get up in arms about it, and it deserves its own video. Overall, it's the tone you're looking for. I think the Simpsons probably is unique in that its tone likely varies episode by episode, rather than as a series.
The best of satire always has a sincere motive.
Thanks for your comment!
My best,
Will
Will Schoder Now that I think about it Futurama is an even better example of how a tv show can have post-modernism and be cynical at times and yet be sincere and positive as a whole. Just look at Bender, who seems completely unredeemable, yet the show has episodes like Godfellas which was one of the most beatiful things I've ever seen on television, and the best part is that Bender is the main protagonist of the episode.
Jamming InDaStreets absolutely. And the point of this video is not to say everything should be sincere. It's about a balance. The chronology may be bunk for some people, but the concept should not be.
Will Schoder I would also like to defend South Park which I have watched from a very young age and Kyle Broflowski was an absolute inspiration to me as a kid. So I guess you can have both if you're good enough since Eric Cartman is obviously just a complitely cynical character.
Will Schoder Oh thanks for that, sorry if I misinterpreted you. I agree with the point you're making too then.
This articulated a problem I've always felt but couldn't understand or put into context. Thank you!
He was one of my favorite writers. Really miss his essays.
Love the new format!
Same, James!
Could use some more memes though.
This was awesome. Keep these coming. I have never read David Foster Wallace but now well.
I mean the latest season where Mac constructed an entire “coming out” ballet was entirely sincere and it made me cry so that means something no?
While I understand the desire for a new sincerity I think that DFW made the assumption that his idea wouldn’t immediately be subsumed by capitalist realism. While these TV shows serve as a good educational tool I think what they demonstrate is how Capital took the desire for a new sincerity and morphed it into a new escapism or a new placation. Capitalist realism takes a yearning to be able to experience some kind of more honest “humanity” and gives us Netflix and chill.
This channel is going to blow up, you can just tell.
Tom A
Agree I have watch all the videos they are amazing.
The number of arguments and connections to other analysis made this video levels above Nerdwriter1
Personally I don't enjoy Nerdwriter as much. He rarely proposes a fresh point of view as much as presenting ideas that are out there. I don't mean he does alazy job at all but this video actually made me pause and think
Quick i gotta check his current sub count for future bragging rights.
Very nice, would love to see more of this kind! Thanks
very well done. thanks for putting this together!
Thanks Will, great video and loved the highlighted dysfunctional gaps in our building connections between us. Thanks 👍🏼🌞
Brilliant content, Will!
I feel that's a very surface level analysis of the critiqued shows. sure, always sunny may seem hopelessly pessimistic and dark at first glance, and in a way it is, but it's much more than that. dark humor is about finding worth in every human effort, as ill-intended or as flawed as it might be. the beauty of gallows humor is that it deals with great problems by facing them head on, by accepting human flaws rather than redeeming them and, by joking about it, somehow making it more bearable. we all know that characters such as charlie and frank are terrible people, but we can't help but like them because they're our protagonist and that means we see every facet of their lives, making us realize even horrible people are people, who love and feel sadness and try to live life as best they can. in a way we all relate to them and at some point or another we all feel like them, and by watching them we feel it's okay to not be perfect.
One of the most touching video I’ve seen on youtube in a while. Thank you
So full of meaning it totally changed my life!
Wow man, I see all of the behaviour you describe in this video in myself, and although I'd recently started to become aware of my own delusions, this really feels like a slap in the face. Great job, and I have to say David Foster Wallace was really, really way ahead of the curve.
PSSSHHH...guy uses David Foster Wallace to defend his love for Community, The Office, Parks and Rec., upon further investigation turns out he works for NBC.
Joel Middaugh yea but he is right Seinfeld sux
@@phillipgregory9671 obviously everyone doesn't agree or it wouldn't have been on for 9 seasons. One could argue that taking things too seriously is just as bad as not taking things seriously enough. DFW's disdain for sarcasm is sort of a quirk if you ask me, not the biggest problem with our society. I guess Seinfeld sucks if you don't like Jewish humor, I think it's a great show.
NBC... Don'cha think... A little tOoO ironic? Yeah I really do think, it's like rAyAyane
This right here is a nice piece of irony in and of itself. The main point of this video was how postmodern tv shows use irony as a means to deconstruct a problem, but offers no solution to said problem.
The OP uses irony as a means to deconstruct a problem in the video made by Will Schoder, but doesn't offer a solution to the problem.
@@feybart isn't being earnest the answer? Being vulnerable and emotionally honest when you are in a safe place with people you can trust would be the way back.
what an awesome video essay. Truly the best i’ve seen lately
Love this and keep coming back to it!
This is such a phenomenal, well written video. Kudos to you, man.
Thanks Nolan!
Your small but surprising use of profanity was also an example of the new sincerity.
Man, I really love your videos. You have an impressive ability to articulate things I never could explain. The editing is amazing and you always leave me feeling really good about myself at the end of the video, no matter the topic. Thank you @Will Schoder!
Thank you for your very nice comment!
I love how you present this. Love your work.
First of all, I can't believe this video is 5 years old!! In 2022, Im amazed at how the argument you made in this video has really been so accurate to our culture.
Also I love that this video is encouraging people to respond thoughtfully! At least, it encouraged me. Really well done, I can tell that a lot of thought + research was put into it.
This comment is a long one lol kudos to anyone who reads this. I have a slight background in philosophy and theology. But I'm just a senior in college so I don't know a ton. Anyways...
The end of this video struck me. It seems that the newer tv shows, instead of really changing the ironic way of presenting "problems without solutions", that they are embracing the problems of the world in a more light-hearted way. I might be wrong. but I see you saying the moral of these shows is "celebrate the things YOU enjoy", and "embrace each other's differences". I think this is honestly a postmodern concept too: Embrace others differences, do what you want... because, well, nobody is right, and nobody is wrong.
At its core, this sounds like disguised-as-positive wording for what would've been open nihilism/relativism in "ironic" shows. The main difference is: when shows were being ironic, they weren't attempting at hiding the evil of the world. (I think of that clip where Peter Griffin is sitting with orphans in a third world country(?))
Your assessment of ironic shows is right: They were not embracing messy reality. But they weren't giving a solution either.
However...
The solution that you present is: we should embrace the approach of shows like parks and Rec. We should simply focus on the good things about life, instead. Do not address the messy, evil stuff in your television show. Don't make light of it, actually, just don't show it. And if you do, balance it with something happy so it doesn't hurt. show a happy quirky family to make viewers feel better and ...escape messy reality.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the happy shows you listed, I've watched every episode of all of them :) buuuuttt if we're talking philosophy, i can't be unresponsive to an appeal to escapism. Especially not now, in 2022. I need to get back in touch with reality, or I'm going to die from depression.. as many recently have. David foster Wallace saw what we couldn't, but he didn't have the hope that some of us do.
In the spirit of providing solutions, (I hope you'll hear me on this): I think your argument that "we need not appeal to something as abstract or dangerous as the grand narratives of modernism" is wrong. Firstly, I see an unexplained use of the word "dangerous". I'd love to see what your reasoning was for that word!!
But also, I agree. Honestly, abstract thinking is dangerous. But how much more dangerous is escaping forever and dying unfulfilled? You might realize at the end of your life, that the answer could have been discovered if you were only to peer into the terrifying and beautiful unknowns of reality.
Modernist ideas touch on concepts like the afterlife, morality, relative and objective truth, God, Hell, those things. But i want you and anyone reading to think on these things, because there is a solution, there are answers, and there is peace and truth to be grasped in this dark reality.
If you're interested, I'll explain more and id love to hear any responses.
I'll likely draw from classic literature and philosophy as some other commenters have!
Family Guy tried in the later seasons to get more sincere and include more serious dramatic elements between characters (such as Quagmire going on a long rant about why he hates Brian or Meg going on a long rant about why she shouldn't be put down so much) but the writers failed to do it in an interesting way and it just sounded sloppy and unnecessary. Now they're back to just doing nonsense for 22 minutes which is what I think works best for them and the FG formula.
They did just put out a whole episode deconstructing Stewie's narcissistic personality when he visits a therapist, but it didn't really land and seemed out of place for Family Guy. No one watches them for serious hard-hitting content, just for satire if were being honest.
The loss of DFW increases exponentially every day, every week, every month, every year...
I'm so happy I discovered your channel! better late than never.... this is a brilliant video, well done!
excellent. just what i needed to take in today. thank you for sharing.
PLEASE do more! This video was fantastic
Thank you!
Not sure about your description of modernism. It is more usually associated with uncertainty, fragmentation, disillusion, scepticism, self-awareness and auto-criticism (from which postmodernism extended). It does sometimes operate under a grand narrative but very rarely through the idea that there is one true God, and in fact in modernist art and literature the single stance or stable viewpoint is often split or distorted as can be seen in cubism and the literary cubism this inspires in Gertrude Stein for example. It sounds more as though you are referring to the set of ideals more commonly associated with the 19th Century and in particular the Victorian novel, which is to say it sounds more like you are referring to something like George Eliot's 'Middlemarch' rather than James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. Although I know this wasn't really about literature but thought I'd bring it up. Nice work though otherwise, keep it up!
Or more enlightenment philosophy
+DrCluckinstein yep
Yea, that's the biggest mistake in the video. I meant to write/say modernity, not modernism. There is a correction in the video if you watch on the computer, but not on mobile. Thanks for making the effort to write a thoughtful comment, and glad you overall enjoyed the video!
I'm not so sure replacing "modernism" with "modernity" is fixing your description. Modernity was also characterized by distrust in religion (or one true God), stabbing at enlightenment ideas of history being progress, and nullifying ideas of "peace on Earth". Any reference to Earnest Hemingway (finding irony in war, love, courage, hope etc), Tennessee Williams (satirical critique of religion, critique of the family unit, critique of the American dream, anything pulled from The Glass Managerial really), Thornton Wilder (happiness found not through religion, money, or success, but rather through mundane "life" things) would be a reference to the writers of modernity and the movement itself.
This would also include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and so forth. Great minds of modernity.
As far as I know there can usually be found some sort of idea of 'goodness' in modernity writing and ideas while not so much the case in post-modernity. This is hardly to say that the idealists of modernity would agree with "one true God", "history as progress", and "peace on Earth" though.
This was uplifting, intelligent, and beautiful. Thanks!
damn, i'm amazed david foster wallace saw this such a long time ago. bless his soul
Great, thought-provoking video.
I feel you short-changed Seinfeld, though. The thing with Seinfeld is that the irony IS the sincerity. In a time where sitcoms were mostly trying to manipulate your heart-strings in the hopes of passing a crap product off as watchable, Seinfeld dared to do away with the fluff, and show its naked self to the world, and stand on its own merits as a comedic commentary.
Of course there were also exceptions to the "manipulate" sitcoms, as well. It's been said elsewhere in these comments, but 90s Simpsons is a great example full of irony AND heart.
moaning lisa is my favorite episode. it had a soul
A lot of earlier sitcoms were great, if people actually watch them. (People never do. They just vaguely hand wave about 'corny old sitcoms' without mentioning any in particular.) My favourite is Eight is Enough, from 1977. It's about a father with eight children. It blurs the line between drama and comedy in a very compelling way; the size of the family is played for laughs and is used as a vehicle for interpersonal drama too all in the same episode, and just because it's 'sincere', doesn't mean that it's not witty.
Thank you so much for this. I've had trouble conceptualizing postmodernism in my Rhetoric & Narrative class.
I've had trouble fully grasping this concept for years. Such a revelation
L O L O L O L
I think the problem is how broad the definition of "postmoderism" is. You're talking about history and politics, while the scope of this video is more limited to the media.
Will, I keep coming back to this video. I see what you describe everywhere around me but most importantly in me.
This really shed light on things I've been seeing and feeling but didn't know how to articulate. The comments also shed light on some of the one dimensional conjectures of OP
It's hard to have a solution for a problem you didn't even know was there until it was pointed out to you through irony. Irony isn't designed to be the solution. It's the first step.
Hmm... I feel like it's an oversight not to have My Name is Earl in this list. The "sequel" series to it "Raising Hope" is even more blatant IMHO.
Great video man, really appreciate all the topics you cover and how well you balance the entertainment side of your videos with the informative side of it. Subscribed!
First video of yours I’ve seen and I was really impressed. Subscribing...👏
My appreciation of Family Guy has soured...and it was once My Favorite Show. It didn't change, I did.
Thank you so much fro this video! I have been struggling to fully comprehend this issue in the last few weeks and you really helped!
Thanks for your comment! I'm so glad it helped.
Same here. thank you.
yah dig. The main thing is that we need to focus on our own lives, not on its reflection in television/media--
Thanks for this. Really needed it today
I wholeheartedly agree that living your life with optimism, kindness and gentleness is a far better way to go than being cynical and unsentimental. And yet, I think there is still a good deal of room for TV shows that espouse a more cynical view. 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' is probably my favourite show of all time and you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger misanthrope than Larry David, as he hilariously plays himself. Even hints of sentimentality are pretty, pretty, pretty much out the window! Funny is funny. You really can't argue with what makes you laugh (and laugh hard!). Fortunately, I don't take my cues from television. TV is not my god. Between 'Seinfeld' and 'Curb', Larry David has quite simply made my life happier. Fawlty Towers is another cynically wicked show that is hard to beat, and the list goes on. Let's not get carried away and throw the baby out with the bath water!
Amazing vid bro really gave me a lot to think about.
Thank you!
thanks for making this uplifting video.
Thanks so much for this video! I’ve been thinking about “the fall of irony”, particularly on social media, for the last several months. I’ve saved your video for later viewings. It is a surprising glimmer of positive energy. Thanks again.
The solution is not fixing television , its turning it off. Humans were not meant to consume entertainment every single day.
It's the idea of consuming entertainment, rather than enjoying it together, that is a problem. Nothing wrong with a group of people entertaining themselves everyday by singing together.
Humans aren't _meant_ for anything. There are no teleological rules. Watch TV or not, be entertained every day or not - it doesn't matter.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself I enjoy your pomo rejection of a grand meta narrative of the human experience
mdiem Quite the nihilist aren’t you ;)
We're not meant to do anything, there is no obvious purpose to what we should do collectively outside of what benefits us as individuals & benefits those we care about overall. To blanket say 'we're supposed to turn off tv, we're MEANT for something else' - without actually defining why, isn't making a very good argument since it just skips the why.
Excellent!
That was a very insightful video. Thank you and please make more.
That was HIGH QUALITY!
If Wallace was so anti-TV, I really wonder how he would react to his name being attached to a video that mostly concentrates on how TV has apparently moved past the problems of irony. It's like, we got this now! Look at THESE shows.... see, ghost David? We learned from you and started making better TV again! I don't think the problems of irony have been solved, in fact, quite the contrary, the grey areas that irony produces are regluarly used to still exploit us.
Exactly, This video needed major work. Its as you stated, movies and entertainment on moves from heavy bleakness to this overly stylistic woke and grey elements trope we have today. Its still running away from the true subject matters that should be relevant. Truth and responsibility.
He wasn't anti-TV. I've listened to interviews with him, and he sort of exclaims, since TV is so great, why do anything else. Like the problem of TV, is that it is so good and easy to just be entertained by it. He watched a lot of TV. Maybe one of the reasons he reflected on it so much. Infinite Jest, being about if TV can substitute everything in your life, like a drug. I'm not a DFW expert by any means though, but he saw TV as a reflection of a generation.
@@FlanaFugue Fair enough, wasn't supposed to be a hard rebuttal -- Just adding nuance.
Yeah i doubt David would think highly of adult Barney.
I don't totally agree with this comment, but it's one of the first to finally say yes, this video is missing things--Wallace wasn't anti-TV, but he was apt to point out in his own sincere yet contradictory way that TV is so good that it's bad, that it can be easy to fall into a sort of trance watching it, facilitating alienation in society. Wallace to me was actually an incredible ironist, to the point where I think the sincerity thing was actually all bullshit, and his own greater, and I mean MUCH greater, joke about communication, philosophy, etc.: no matter how sincere you are, you can't escape irony, and yet therefore the way to break free from it, is to embrace it fully. I mean, to clarify, take Infinite Jest. That is one motherfucker of a satire. The layers to it I don't think any of us could fully peel apart in any of our lifetimes if we dedicated ourselves to it like study, and especially because he's dead and no longer able to explain any of it to us. It's a book so loaded with irony, as in nearly every single word choice, that it becomes a profoundly sincere, real, engaging, universal place of understanding, and all within language. I mean, the title even means, basically, the greatest joke... Infinite, the greatest, and jest, so a joke? Following? I'd hope. But many people don't get this far! Many people think he was some angsty cynic, when I think he's more akin to Shakespeare--and this is coming from me, a guy who used to really look down on his material, really look down on the culture of people who followed him so passionately especially after his passing. I came around to his wit, to his truly mind-boggling style. It's accessible to the public, and yet absolutely not when one gets into the details, because the details require an academic or at the very least a well read reader's perspective. I know I personally plan on writing some extensive essays about it. But Wallace was an ironist, just such a great one that everyone thought the opposite. There's my take on things.
dude, this is a nearly perfect analysis.
arrested development has redemptive qualities though, imo.
Yeah I'm not sure why AD was singled out because it's filled with the same earnest moments that give those other shows their redemptive qualities. The problem with AD though is that the earnest moments of self-acknowledgment never alter the characters or enable growth in any meaningful way... the characters quickly return to the way they've always been and the earnest moment develops into its own kind of empty cliche. I love AD but it doesn't have the same fleshed out characters as the show's highlighted here. I guess i changed my opinion mid-post.
Nice Essay. Really resonates with current political issues worldwide. Division or Connection
DFW and this video have impacted the way I see life and art in general.
Thank you for that!
I wonder if this rejection of irony is one the reasons My Little Pony Friendship is Magic became popular. It's unabashedly about the importance of friendship and love and people connect to that, even if it's through pastel ponies.
Can someone explain to me how Rick and Morty is even remotely considered “sincere”? Their entire shtick is just cynicism and deconstruction.
I thought it said that R & M was an example of the deeply cynical, not the sincere.
This is a great breakdown, really helps me explain New Sincerity. Thank you!