Performative utterances

January 26, 2008 10:43 PM

To the august company of "I now pronounce you man and wife" and "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow," artist Sean Landers adds a new utterance for study, albeit one that perhaps he alone is capable to perform: "I am vastly underappreciated . . . as an artist . . . in my time." [MP3]
posted by electric water kettle (3 comments total)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. How can this be considered a performative utterance?
posted by languagehat at 7:04 AM on January 27, 2008

It's Beat-something-right-into-the-ground Humor (a division of Anti-humor, Inc.) against von Karajan conducting Jupiter, just for reinforcement. In the future, all internet humor will be like this. And that's maybe not so bad.

Beat-something-right-into-the-ground humor has an important use. When it's done right, it burns away all the top level obvious stuff. Then, if your audience hasn't wandered off already, you can get down to the interesting aspects of things that weren't so obvious. Not-funny becomes hyper-funny. The problem is that it requires a lot of audience patience.

I'm not sure if that's an argument for or against Sean Landers. Then again, maybe it's not about Sean Landers at all; I'm pretty sure he won't like that.
posted by SteelyDuran at 10:55 AM on January 27, 2008

I suppose it could be a performative utterance if by saying it he caused himself to be underappreciated. But I don't think it'll change things one way or another.
posted by demiurge at 12:44 PM on January 27, 2008