new sincerity

here's another throwback treat, the very first proposition I chalked up on New Sincerity circa late-Fall 2005...

The New Sincerity is the cultural and philosophical movement that is taking root and follow postmodernism. It is an age of compromise that negotiates between the two significant movements prior to it, modernism and postmodernism.

Within modernism it was believed that through science the answers that we sought to find could be found. The Enlightenment gave emphasis to reason and the new wonders of scientific explanation. Nature was a hierarchical system that could be deciphered into a logical, linear structure. In this context, the Enlightenment and modernism was an era that empowered the rational human mind. We are beings that have an inherent tendency to problem solve, collect information, and delineate status structures. Modernism gave us the confidence that through the developments of science we could answer all questions and know concretely our place here. In this sense, we felt not only empowered, but as if we had divine purpose to answer these questions and improve society, modernize. The term 'modern' or 'modernity' is defined as having a conscious understanding of time as ever-shifting. Basically, it is an understanding of a past, present, and future. In modernism, our purpose was to gather the necessary information and knowledge in building toward Utopia. However, as reason and the powers of science became predominant, art was left vulnerable to questioning. What is art? How is it defined, constructed, scientifically criticized?

With postmodernism, our collective empowerment of the rational human mind was deflated by the discoveries of Einstein, Plack, and modern science. The feeling of divine purpose was blunted as many of the answers we thought we knew were invalidated. So, with this came a decentralizing reaction. Nature and our place within it are naturally chaotic and there are no concrete answers, only the illusion of such. This new perspective deemed that there were no true answers and thus, there is nothing that is true or sincere or real. Everything down to the last grain of an idea is constructed, contrived. In accordance, with this, if there is no Great Truth and we have no ultimate equation to solve, what is left to be done? We have no purpose, why should we care about the improving society when the concept of improvement itself is unreal? Everything is socially constructed, ideas of morality and values have no true definition, have no true place. Everything was still in question, but we had no answers, the search deemed futile. We became skeptical of, ourselves and each other, and because of our collective letdown, cynical. In modernism, we may have had foolish pride and ignorant arrogance, and in any case, when that pride is debased, cynicism and angst will surely manifest. In postmodernism, sarcasm and a sense of lofty intellectualism arose. We were too smart, or perhaps, too scared of feeling foolhardy again to search for true meaning or anything infinite, using instead sarcasm to veil ourselves from vulnerability.

This leads me to New Sincerity. As beings that strive for status (in the most broad sense), living in a condition of purposelessness, stagnation becomes quickly uncomfortable. We yearn for direction and purpose. we want meaning in our lives, and the mundane existence of not having such is something that wholly contradicts us. New Sincerity has its roots from the circumstances of 9-11. In this moment when our nation fell victim to a devastating reality, we united with a common empathy for one another. This is where the seeds of New Sincerity were truly bore, put into motion. We began our transition from an aggressive society to one more sensitive. In this way, New Sincerity grows from the depraving irrelevance of postmodern esteem, or lack thereof. Yet, it also understands that the righteousness of modernism and the emphasis on rational mind as sole guide was also problematic. Yes, perhaps we may never find true answers, but that doesn't mean searching is a lost cause. This is an age of compromise in which both of the previous movement's experiences are coalesced. It is a cautious optimism. It is our yearning for genuine meaning in our lives.

New Sincerity privileges non-ironic human expressions and concerns itself with reemphasizing the concept of beauty in consideration to social construction and aesthetics. I remember after 9-11 many pundits declared that it marked the end of sarcastic humor and in our everyday lives. This is slowly occurring. Many believed that the effects of the millennium would be reflected in Y2K, or technologically, but perhaps, it is 9-11 that is the precursor of Millennialism. Although we understand that there may not be a presiding God, we choose to find our own interpretation of spirituality. And, as religious institutions have gradually lost social credibility, we may yet find true spiritually through amalgamating the truths of all religions. Perhaps, destiny does not exist, but maybe there are forces at work to go along with the individual's will. God is in the individual, and this sense of destiny will guide us to a greater self. There are many factors that interacting and aiding this collective shift, but most important is mass media.

Throughout civilization, art has been the harbinger for social change. What is art? Simply, it is the human expression. The mass media is the channel that captures and disseminates this, and as such, it is the main catapult of the hegemony. Yes, I believe in good and evil, light and dark, and to a greater extent, I believe that this may be a moment in time that will surely exemplify that these two forces exist in unexplainable form. There are forces beyond our recognition, beyond our will that guides us. We are the chosen species among living organisms. We are the controllers of our time here.

I will try to focus my attention on the mass media to elaborate on New Sincerity. First of all, let me preface by saying I will continually reference matters in a biblical context. I am not one of religious background, and have no preferences. In fact, at the peak of my adolescence I was atheist and naively anti-religion. That being said, I will constantly use Judeo-Christian references only because I was raised in a Western culture that manifested such. In accordance with the Holy Trinity, I believe that the number 3 is a telling number, and within the patterns of time and reality, is a significant number in recognizing the context of our future. Thus, there is a three step process in explaining the transitions of our society: the inception, the conflict, and our ultimate redemption.


...I forget if it was Fellini or Gandhi that said it, but in any case, he said that although his perception and writings have changed, that if you return to any of his most early works, the roots are no less different.

The same goes for this piece, which I never quite finished. This reflected me, as well as an early stage in New Sincerity, and as should, I have gained experience and grown. Since I wrote this, the notion that New Sincerity is like the 'New Christianity' has arisen. Which I find now quite interesting on several levels. At its foundation, New Sincerity is the rebirth of faith. New Sincerity is the process, not the result, and as processes go, it is in constant fluctuation and evolution. In many of my past writings, I have correlated 'New Sincerity' with 'The Age of Humanity", but only recently have I realized that The Age of Humanity is the next transition and perhaps, the culminating embodiment.

little miss sunshine as allegory

Here's a nice throwback, an article I wrote for The Daily Trojan about 2 years ago. Still a nice intro to New Sincerity.

This article has been a long time coming with many false starts and incarnations. I struggled with how I would articulate the nature of New Sincerity, if I could, whether it would be a masterfully-written work of academia that showcased my raw genius, or if I would just keep it as material for my future best-seller. I decided against writing something academic because firstly, I'm only a borderline genius. More importantly though, it would have been counterintuitive to essential New Sincerity. This movement is about simplicity and accessibility, not lofty and isolating intellectualism. In New Sincerity, simplicity is a revelation. As far as my future best-seller goes, the future is now. Shh, quiet revolution.

I could gallivant through broad definitions of Modern and Postmodern experience to explain New Sincerity's correlation to the prior, but its redemption is in its symbiotic relationship to the biggest moneymaker in our history, mass media and entertainment. Thus, it works best to discuss New Sincerity through the narrative lens of Little Miss Sunshine, and it as an allegory for New Sincerity's compromise of Modern and Postmodern thought. Let's get this journey started with Richard (Greg Kinnear). He's an unemployed, wanna-be self-help guru banking on his pseudo "7 steps to success" book to enlighten his living situation. Obvious irony here: although with good intention, Richard self-righteously claims that he's found this efficient, almost scientific process to achieve happiness, but conversely, he's not happy himself and his family isn't either. Metaphorically, Richard is Modernism.

Modernism, or the Age of Enlightenment, gave emphasis to reason and the powers of scientific explanation. Nature and our existence were hierarchical systems that could be deciphered into a logical, linear structure. Modern thought gave us a swagger of idealism and a divine purpose to progress society with our rationale. But, then came Post-Modernism A.K.A. Dwayne (Paul Dano), and all that divine purpose and idealism was deflated by existentialism and the discoveries of Einstein, physics, and modern science. Even though Dwayne is eternally a part of Richard by relation, he is a complete, decentralized reaction against him. Referentially, there's Dwayne's vow of silence in the name of Nietzsche, but more so, it's his cynical sarcasm when writing responses to the actions around him and his color blindness that are the most symbolic of Post-Modernism. With social construction, what we thought we knew was invalidated and as a result, we became skeptical of ourselves. It crippled our collective esteem, and to compensate for this intellectual letdown we became cynical, using sarcasm as a kind of defense mechanism. Dwayne is color blind because the colors, the beauty, and the art of life in Post-Modernity are hollow, constructed nuggets of nothingness.

Then, there's Grandpa (Alan Arkin) and Sheryl (Toni Colette), experience and nature, the two consistencies in our transience. Grandpa is empiricism, the John Locke, the David Hume. Basically, the fundamental role of experience in the formative understanding of how we are to live. The man has accumulated a crap load of experience and knowledge in his day, but, still, he's a neglected and discredited source in the family. We sometimes forget the past experiences we've accrued. New ain't always better, naw mean? Sheryl is essentially mother nature. She might play second fiddle to all these arrogant, dynamic concepts, but she's the accommodating, stubborn glue that holds this baby together. She's able to aid Frank in recovery simply with her soothing, un-judging demeanor. No rhetoric necessary. Funny though that when she gets frustrated she erupts like a ferocious natural disaster.

Frank's (Steve Carell) role in Little Miss Sunshine is the most intriguing because he's the figure in white, or for lack of a more encompassing word, the prophet, the seeds of change. Firstly, he's a Proust scholar. Proust being the novelist of Remembrance of Things Past, really an exploration of memory, time, perception, reality, and free-will and destiny, basically every WTF in our existence. Moreover, he's coming from the darkest of places, attempted suicide, and emerges as the harbinger for this family's breakthrough to happiness. He's able to do this because of his ability to empathize with each character's perspective. He respects Grandpa's experience, understands Dwayne's feeling of isolation, relates to the Richard's idealism, and is endeared by Olive's purity (Abigail Breslin). Despite his personal flaw, he understands an idea of compromise between this sometimes divergent soup. Postmodern sarcasm wasn't a bad thing, but the cynicism that was coupled with it is.

Then, there's the sunshine, the encapsulation of New Sincerity, Olive. In an mass-mediated culture of rising self-commodification, Olive's journey is to Orange County for a beauty pageant, the epitome of artificial commodification (in both concept and location?). But, her family's guidance, their coalescing of past mistakes and triumphs, helps her to embrace her true self, to self-commodify as a way of self-empowerment, to be a knowing product. New Sincerity is essentially the negotiation of commerce's inevitable influence on our own humanity.

I didn't coin New Sincerity. I call it the Age of Compromise. If po-mo was the deconstruction, New Sincerity's the reconstruction. But, really, as Andy Hsi (Beef On Tuesdays columnist) calls it, it's the Age of Humanity. The first time we've had a concept of what humanity actually intimates. New Sincerity is exactly how it sounds: to be sincere, even if we are products, because that's our closest compromise to nature and intelligence. In the wake of The Number 23 (it in itself so early-21st century Po-Mo) think about this: the year 2006. 2 divided by 6 = 3 infinity. Redemption. Make it or break it time, man.