On Demand
Quirked Out
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Michael Hirschorn, contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and executive vice president of original programming and production at VH1, believes American pop culture has been oversaturated with quirk.
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There is no pop culture. The worst of the 70s is miles above anything that exists today. Today's pop culture equals the latest picture from the papparazzi, taken of people who are talentless or famous for nothing. Andy Warhol's time has come. The 60s and 70s even, had music, movies, arts...What is there now? Dogfighting? Gold teeth? A drunken Brittney?
You keep it.
Haven't heard this segment yet but, c'mon, one can always criticize some aspect of popular culture (too violent, too boring, too predictable, too inconsistent, not enough roles for women, too many female-oriented shows, too much science fiction, too many crime solving shows, etc.).
To devote a segment critiquing pop culture as being too "quirky" seems like really a stretch in the search for meaningful topics of conversation. I mean, is this really an important topic worth your airtime?
quirkiness promises to be an interesting vantage, though perhaps essentially an epiphenomenon of anomie
He's completely on with this. I hope he mentions/adds everything connected to the McSweenys/Believer publishing enterprise -- a lot of the worst contemporary [fad] writing.
On this 50th anniversary of "On the Road" quirk is significant because it attempts to play the antidote to that book's self-conscious earnestness. I like that quirk, ashes to ashes and all that.
What I find more cloying is the so-called "Snarkiness", ie college grads from Ohio moving to 212 and 718 trying to sound like the NYC they always dreamt of. As with "Gawker.com" --
--it's taking quirk and re-applying the self-conciousness.
Quirk qicks butt.
But its not really that new, its just taking an already well-known aspect of humor, absurdity, and isolating it.
n+1 on Dave Eggers and the magazine "The Believer":
"As far as content goes, though, the innovation of the Eggersards was their creation of a regressive avant-garde. The first regression was ethical. Eggersards returned to the claims of childhood. Transcendence would not figure in their thought. Intellect did not interest them, but kids did. Childhood is still their leitmotif. "
quirk is a benign position that appeals to thinking white males who want to set themselves apart from historical western european patriarchal culture. it's very quiet and very subtle and observes the minitutia of existence
Good quirk (e.g. NPR's Fair Game or HBO's Flight of the Concords) is based on profound themes and topics. If you take Plato's cave analogy, quirk is a foil to the shadows being cast.
The culture of quirk became difficult to stomach when is was co-opted by large commercial culture. I think it started with punk rock, not at all cute, then spread out from there into various segments of culture until it became marketable for things like VW Beetles and iMacs, and therefore somewhat meaningless. I think the coming movement will either be hiply then annoyingly earnest, or just plain grizzled and hardboiled, like a cultural movement of old men (which I look forward to).
The trouble with "This American Life", as much as I usually like it and listen to it, is that sometimes it morphs into a freak show, a Ripley's Believe it or not. It makes me feel that I'm too much a voyeur and should not listen because I'm intruding on someone's privacy. Sometimes because of this, I turn the radio off.
come onnnnnnn. So is the alternative to this "quirkyness" the brilliant reality TV that VH1 brings us? He is degrading culture today more than flight of the conchords. It isnt a lazy crutch, it is funny.
That was Lopate.
I welcomed the quirk. I grew up in the 70's feeling totally alienated and w/o anchor. Early "strange" shows and music (esp. punk) offered great refuge for my inherent strangeness w/o fear of peer retaliation (often violent). Identifying with the nascent independent movie/zine/music scene also offered ample opportunity for socializing.
I now have a son w/ Asperger's syndrome and am saddened that he won't have something like the punk scene that will allow him to be comfortably weird.
has quirk been exploited in the age of the internet and the thralls of geekdom? Sure...but it is nice to know that I am still not alone, maybe not making any money off my alienation...but even then, still in good company.
Finally, being a person of color, I feel as if the exploitation of the indie scene has squeezed out the opportunity for participation of tose of us of different color/race.
That's the problem with hipsters of today. They want to be part of a 'sub-culture' but don't really stand for anything at all except follow the sheep TMZ Pop culture.
Case in point: Gimme Coffee in Williamsburg
kudos to that great caller -- he did a Williamsburg kid to a T.
What about the movie "once"- what category does this go into? Small story belies big story.
I think ultimately historians will count "quirk" as an escape from reality, not a confrontation of it, and therefore there is something truly decadant and artistically meaningless about "all" of it.
There is no alternative culture. Every tiny twitch of individuality is immediately swallowed up and "branded."
"There is no alternative culture" -true. But the reason why, is because nothing is hidden anymore. Welcome to the world, World.
To the woman who called in defense of *This American Life.* I agree with you, and think that the Habeas Corpus episode was similarly important.
But can we avoid racist assumptions? The episode in which the prisoners performed Hamlet was NOT IN HARLEM. It was in MISSOURI.
seems that way to me, too, jay. everything storebought. culture more consumed than created. lotta conformity. NY used to be such a parade, before the 90s I would say.
i agree with the guest completely. Just to hilight the difference between subversive quirkiness of the past & present compare any of the current pop culture with such truly anti establishment quirky works as the novel " A Confederacy of Dunces" or the film "Harold & Maude". Where is the pathos? Why does everything seem so lite? The only ray of hope I see is the internet, where you have stuff floating around (i.e. "Chocolate Rain") that at least is truly bizarre if lacking in any deeper meaning.
For me, the value of 'quirk' all depends on what comes first.
Quirk that arises organically from character (This American Life, Rushmore, etc) has some value because it is inherently human. Characters WHO HAVE certain quirky traits.
The times that I find it has less value is when the quirk comes before the character. Movies like Napoleon Dynamite & Little Miss Sunshine feel (to me) as if the Big Wheel of Wacky Characteristics was spun, and then the creators built characters TO HAVE these quirky traits.
What is it about Ira Glass that irritates? (scuse any mispellings -- I'm half in the effing bag). He wouldn't be sh*t without David Sedaris. Glass's ironic quick seems to me based on a sort of un-earned world-weariness. It's all too safe.
Seems to me he finds his stories via casual conversations with people in the office and their friends. Doesn't his mother work for NPR? Have you noticed how much of his pieces are filled with psuedo-Philip-Glass filler? There's not a lot of content.
Throughout the segment, I couldn't help thinking over and over, 'Well, perhaps Hirschorn is simply a square'. Throughout the history of literature and culture, there is always a resistance and dismissal of things that cannot be easily categorized. Other commentors have already done a good job of defending This American Life, so I won't bother, I think it goes without saying that many of their episodes have gone well beyond Hirschorn's narrow view of that show.
Also, when it comes to Flight of the Conchords, I feel like Hirschorn makes a large presumption in what that show is trying to do: It seems his problem with quirkiness is that it avoids asking 'The Big Questions' of life. Well, is that REALLY what someone tuning into F.O.T.C. is expecting? A charming, funny show by two alternative comics in which they try to make it as a band. Dis he tune in expecting Proust? Was he Similiarly let down years ago when The Monkees never led to any ephiphanies?
One final thought-- Is an entire Atlantic Monthly article devoted to the dangers of quirkiness, with the examples being from the world of arts and entertainment not, in itself, a bit quirky? To use Hirschorn's own metric, is this really one of the big questions, worth being asked?
I offer a few comments here:
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2007/09/quirk_kitsch_qu.html
This is a nice essay in that direction:
http://www.en.utexas.edu/Classes/Bremen/e316k/316kprivate/scans/numbing.html
Finally, for some brutal reality:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/09/dont-tase-me-br.html
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