The most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop
February 23, 2015 1:12 AM   Subscribe

Twee, then, is a symptom of profound cultural exhaustion, a pop-cultural response to the death of grand narratives and radical politics: too weary to fight the corporate capitalist machine, the twee instead create hyper-stylized alternative worlds in which kittens play, ukuleles sound and childhood is eternal. Their basic disposition is melancholy rather than angry, and they will always opt for owl-print wallpaper over kicking against the pricks.
In this week's TLS, Anna Katharina Schaffner discusses Twee.

The article itself is a review of Marc Spitz's new book, Twee, reviewed here in Flavorwire. Schaffner herself, a Reader in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent, is completing a book on the cultural history of exhaustion.
posted by Sonny Jim (94 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
If this is exhaustion, then how can it be powerful? Isn't this all an example of weakness, instead?
posted by northtwilight at 1:25 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's an example of inventing something to sell a book as far as I can see.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:37 AM on February 23, 2015 [12 favorites]


Sonny Jim: "Twee, then, is a symptom of profound cultural exhaustion, a pop-cultural response to the death of grand narratives and radical politics: too weary to fight the corporate capitalist machine, the twee instead create hyper-stylized alternative worlds in which kittens play, ukuleles sound and childhood is eternal. Their basic disposition is melancholy rather than angry, and they will always opt for owl-print wallpaper over kicking against the pricks."

Well, I like that this basically confirms my prejudice against all things twee as useless crap.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:45 AM on February 23, 2015 [15 favorites]


Huh. After a year of living in Hong Kong, I've been wondering about the influence of Asian pop culture on the evolution of Twee, but that doesn't seem to be covered in the book.

I may just be an old punk, but Twee always seems so *cynical* to me.
posted by frumiousb at 1:46 AM on February 23, 2015 [7 favorites]


This twee is not my twee. But then, I suppose most things aren't.
posted by pompomtom at 1:53 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Mod note: The author of the first linked article has a number of criticisms of the book's thesis (as does the Flavorwire review). I just mention this to warn against conflating the post title ("... Most Powerful Youth Movement..."), which is from Spitz (the author of the book itself), and the blurb "Twee, then, is a symptom of profound cultural exhaustion...," which is part of the summation by Schaffner, the reviewer.

IOW, it would be a mistake to read this as stating: Part 1; author's claim "Twee is a powerful youth movement" because [Part 2; reviewer's comment] it's weary, hyper-stylized, melancholy and (paraphrased) non-political. Reading the article will make it that clearer. Schaffner says, for example, "[Twee] has neither the anger nor the energy to change the status quo."
posted by taz (staff) at 2:01 AM on February 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


I don't know that exhaustion is weakness. When I am exhausted I am raw, naked and terrible for the most part. People fear the brutal honesty that comes with facing someone exhausted by their bullshit, by their cynicism, by their incessant idiocy. Exhaustion, in and of itself, seems to revert me back to a primacy and primality that people who want me to be obedient and nice and voiceless fear, because I don't have the energy to deal with their stupid assholeness in a way they like.

Maybe exhaustion is only powerful when you expend so much energy on conforming that you've got nothing left to act with, so when the energy is gone, only then can you act.

And it does mesh, at least for me, in the aesthetics talked about in the article. When I'm exhausted I'm not going to laugh politely when Super Hipster Asshole makes me listen to Bearded Monstrosity 15's tedious warbling while also telling me TSwift is dumb. I'm gonna grab the remote, throw on some Shake It Off and indeed, shake it off. I'm not going to have time for dumb ass minimalist cold interiors, I want my fucking blankie and my pillow and nice things.

I think the conflation of exhaustion with inaction reveals something about the reviewers. Like any parent, workaholic, carer, whoever, knows - you can be dying on your feet exhausted and still get shit done.
posted by geek anachronism at 2:05 AM on February 23, 2015 [25 favorites]


This version of twee seems to meld the late aughts/early teens version of hipster culture and the '90s dominance of kawaii. See also: Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic and The Cute and the Cool. But I love books like this and I know I'll read it.
posted by carmicha at 2:21 AM on February 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


Is there twee of color? Perhaps it is more politically engaged.
posted by thelonius at 2:27 AM on February 23, 2015


> I've been wondering about the influence of Asian pop culture on the evolution of Twee

I can't say I was always wondering about it, but the first thing the pullquote used in the FPP made me think of was Takeshi Murakami's rationale of Superflat: Adults using obsessions with childish pop genres which feed only on themselves, in order to unplug from their powerlessness and social pressures.
posted by ardgedee at 2:57 AM on February 23, 2015 [11 favorites]


The review makes it sound as though the book is lumping lots of different types of twee together. The Smiths, say, aren't twee in the way that, I don't know, a hand-crocheted Hatful of Hollow tea cosy would be. They've got more of a postpunk, anti-70s-and-early-80s-cock-rock thing going on. Today's Dalston-hipster twee is reacting to different stuff and it seems less oppositional to me. It's partly a pure fashion thing: a retro-ironic repurposing of older styles in which the ironic bit has been forgotten, or rejected as cynical and 80s and replaced by tropes of wide-eyed 'sincerity'. The collapse of social mobility must have something to do with it too: twee makes a kind of joke out of feeling privileged and guilty and knowing you're too posh under older codes of what's cool. A wider set of people being oblivious to that but vaguely attuned to the general aesthetic gives us Cath Kidston and 'Keep Calm and Carry On' and other horrors.

Or so my off the cuff, pre-second-pot-of-coffee theory goes. To sum up, leave Johnny Marr out of it.
posted by Mocata at 3:11 AM on February 23, 2015 [12 favorites]


I blame Hello Kitty, Zooey Deschanel, and Kate Micucci.
posted by HuronBob at 3:33 AM on February 23, 2015


Malcolm Gladwell is going to be SO pissed when he finds out someone else is using his shtick.
posted by she's not there at 3:34 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Malcolm Gladwell is going to be SO pissed when he finds out someone else is using his shtick.


I was actually thinking it read more like a softer, twee Camille Paglia.
posted by univac at 3:44 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


And then there's this blog post by Tom Ellard about the girl-with-an-acoustic-guitar-and-mild-speech-impediment genre of “authentic” twee-folk, as heard in supermarket jingles.

Every time I hear Allo Darlin', I can't help but think of that essay. And that goes doubly for the singer's solo acoustic records, which sounds like she's sitting crosslegged on her living room floor singing them to her pug, which is undoubtedly named Mr. Snorfles or something.
posted by acb at 4:27 AM on February 23, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm torn between finding twee stuff obnoxious and kind of loving this cover of "Skulls" by the Misfits.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:32 AM on February 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


My biggest issue with 'twee' is that it's just a flat out embarrassing word to say or write.

Also, calling it 'the most powerful youth movement since punk and hip hop' is a pretty incredible overstatement of things. From what I can tell, twee youth culture hasn't influenced a single thing outside of itself and insurance commercials.
posted by still bill at 4:42 AM on February 23, 2015 [13 favorites]


So...The Participant Ribbon of social movements?
posted by Thorzdad at 4:42 AM on February 23, 2015 [5 favorites]


If this is exhaustion, then how can it be powerful?

Maybe a better descriptor would have been more along the lines of 'widespread' or "prevalent' 'quietly, broadly infiltrating,' a sort of slow cultural virus? That's how I read it.

Schaffner: "Originally a niche phenomenon, the aesthetics and ethics of Twee have infiltrated mainstream film, fashion, literature, music and food. Spitz defines the movement’s key features as an unabashed celebration of beauty, whimsy and preciousness, a nostalgic fetishization of childhood paired with a wariness of sexuality, and a glorification of the awkward and geeky."

I've been trying to figure out why I can't connect with twee, and, at least for me, it has something to do with the overrefined, otherworldly and yet inward-turning feel of it all, and the glorification of beauty unconnected to larger contexts. I like Wes Anderson's jewel boxes -- they're gorgeous and meticulously constructed and melancholy -- but I'd be afraid to take them outside, lest they fall apart. Twee may have infected many aspects of American culture, and yet it doesn't feel (at least to me) inherently resilient or able to exist anywhere aside from its well-lit, pleasingly-designed pedestal. It's decadence done cute.

Thanks for posting, Sonny Jim.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:54 AM on February 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


I've been trying to figure out why I can't connect with twee, and, at least for me, it has something to do with the overrefined, otherworldly and yet inward-turning feel of it all, and the glorification of beauty unconnected to larger contexts.

We've been here before. Does this sound familiar? Maybe a bit apropos?
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
This is the burnout cycle of The Last Set Of Ideas. It happens now and then - it's why we're seeing Austerity settle down for a postprandial nap after a hearty meal of its own tail, it's why we're building This Company But For That Other Thing, it's why the biggest thing on the horizon right now is a watch that doesn't do a single damn thing your phone doesn't do, and why the Maker movement is chomping at the bit, frothing with a million things, some of which are going to be the next revolutions.

It's not a reason to worry, really. This is the calm before the storm, if you've got the right eyes to see it. It's going to be huge and loud and terrifying and everything-at-once-awesome.
posted by mhoye at 5:26 AM on February 23, 2015 [19 favorites]


It's going to be huge and loud and terrifying and everything-at-once-awesome.

Singularity?

I find some of the music that would probably be labeled "twee" lovely, but the movie aesthetic highly irritating. On the whole I like my cultural products with a bit more anger and substance, and once things get too delicate I feel large and clumsy.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:42 AM on February 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


I never get the need to be entirely immersed in any one thing, because twee is fun and arguably less dead and Baudrillardian than, say, punk or rock and roll, but you can be twee as pink fluffy Snoopy-dancing fuck and then go all snarly fuck-the-world stompy in the next beat. In fact, the most twee-friendly folks I know are also the biggest DIY shitkickers out there doing and making and being in the world.

Cultural viruses only work when you believe culture was ever real or any more sincere than it is right now.
posted by sonascope at 5:43 AM on February 23, 2015 [8 favorites]


Just because something happens doesn't make it a youth movement though
posted by clockzero at 6:04 AM on February 23, 2015


Man I don't know if I'm wild about the lumping going on in that article but for a ten-year-old, P4K-sourced piece about a different valence of "twee" this is a lot more sympathetic to its protagonists: "Twee as Fuck".
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 6:06 AM on February 23, 2015 [5 favorites]


I remember being in college ca. 1995-99 and hearing my indie-rocker friends (they weren't called hipsters at that point) complain about all the twee kids cluttering up the scene. This was the first that I'd heard about it (actually the first I'd even heard the word "twee") , and that was ~20 years ago. So I suspect that twee-ness is hardly a new development in youth culture.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:08 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Say what you will about Twee, " probiotic goat yoghurt" would make a dandy user name.

Besides, as we learned last week, the future is not Twee. (Well, the Metrognome might be a little Twee.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:13 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Is twee the plural of twit?
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:15 AM on February 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


> I remember being in college ca. 1995-99 and hearing my indie-rocker friends (they weren't called hipsters at that point) complain about all the twee kids cluttering up the scene.

Belle and Sebastian were considered the benchmark of twee at the time and those song lyrics were way too dark for any 30 second household furnishings tv commercial. Although it'd be wonderful to see someone try.
posted by ardgedee at 6:17 AM on February 23, 2015 [7 favorites]


Is the essence of Twee tragicomic, romantic or just escapist?

Yes.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:18 AM on February 23, 2015 [7 favorites]


TWEE SONG REC:

I See Spiders When I Close My Eyes by The Boy Least Likely To. Twee at its best IMO, pairing that kind of characteristically sweet, deliberately catchy instrumentation with melancholy lyrics produces a nice contrast.
posted by Quilford at 6:28 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Like many other cultural definitions, the nickname used by alt-paper critics to gently but firmly deride a defined phenomenon as represented by a band ("Goth" to Bauhaus in 1983, "Emo" to Fugazi in 1990, "Twee" to Belle and Sebastian in 2002) was then reclaimed by the fans of that band and phenomenon, which was then co-opted by venal marketing agents to reach those fans, which then spread a version of that phenomenon to younger fans who, often without even knowing the band or movement that spawned the term, embraced elements of it in way more or less faithful to the original spirit, which then became associated with the name, pissing off early adopters of the thing, but then those adaptations nevertheless became part of the marketing package to target even younger adopters who don't yet know the history, who don't realize or care how much Morrissey hates cutesy animal hats, and then at some point all the early adopters are like "I'm out" and the word becomes merely a symbol for all the later adaptations which everyone universally agrees are kinda wack, and it's over. Then 10 years on some kids in Cleavland discover The Vaselines and it all starts over again, but this time it culminates in a fashion runway binge of ripped sweaters and Ghost World glasses and a general merger into the pantheon of dead things that everyone agrees are OK and slowly all difference and diversity and coherent community gets stirred into the soup and lost, like a fox in the snow, rotting into the earth.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:32 AM on February 23, 2015 [33 favorites]


kids today need to listen to more early King Crimson. There are both gentle, romantic passages and volcanic eruptions of the soul. One needs both to get through the day. Also, early Genesis.
posted by philip-random at 6:33 AM on February 23, 2015 [5 favorites]


An article that lumps together the aesthetic sensibilities of Lena Dunham and Zooey Deschanel is suspect.
posted by Beardman at 6:37 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:38 AM on February 23, 2015


An article that lumps together Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie is suspect.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:39 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


philip-random:
"kids today need to listen to more early King Crimson "
I've always felt the world needs more songs about giant mechanical armadillos that wage war on God. (I know, ELP not King Crimson...)
posted by charred husk at 6:40 AM on February 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


This is the calm before the storm, if you've got the right eyes to see it. It's going to be huge and loud and terrifying and everything-at-once-awesome.

Bingo. There have always been the people who preferred not to pay attention to the news and to ignore and stick their heads in the sand and not think about the icky stuff. This is not anything new, this is the Same Old Thing With A Different Name And Different Trappings.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:44 AM on February 23, 2015


Why?

Maybe at second pass she's just reporting, not endorsing, Spitz's inclusion of Dunham in the lineage of twee. At first pass, I took her to think that part was fine, and to flag only other figures as more outlandish inclusions, e.g. Anne Frank. (Though incidentally, in Spitz's defense, I think Kurt Cobain's valourization of K Records does make him a candidate...)

But if Schaffner does think Dunham is a twee figure, then that's in tension with her own gloss of twee as profoundly asexual, in the manner of 'adorkables' like Deschanel. Dunham's sexuality seems central to her aesthetic. That's not to deny that there's some overlap too (they're both on TV playing childish characters, though they're really different forms of childishness portrayed with different degrees of self-consciousness). But I think the salient features of their respective aesthetics are different enough that it'd be overreaching to just plop them into the same list.
posted by Beardman at 6:54 AM on February 23, 2015


This reminds me that it's been almost 20 years since the first Tweefest.
posted by plasticpalacealice at 6:59 AM on February 23, 2015


There is no youth movement anymore, and there will never be another youth movement. Everyone is old, and they're not moving. Everyone is standing perfectly still, and waiting… waiting… for that ukulele in the corner to burst into flames. And when it does, oh, when it does… James Brown will rise from the dead, yes, JAMES BROWN. And the One, the eternal ONE will resound. Yes, brothers and sisters! The Kick Drum and the Bass Note will sound once again, on the Eternal One! And we will take it to the bridge. Yea. Verily.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:01 AM on February 23, 2015 [13 favorites]


pompomtom: This twee is not my twee. But then, I suppose most things aren't.

I am definitely with you there, pompomtom.
posted by wyndham at 7:06 AM on February 23, 2015


An article that lumps together Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie is suspect.

Ha. But from high enough up, all sorts of things can look close to each other, right? Crass and The Fall are both pissed off, noisy, and British, and The Pixies and the Jesus Lizard were both American underground bands with singers who screamed. To that extent you can always lump things together and not be wrong. But if we're trying to define and diagnose a particular aesthetic sensibility, as I take twee to be, it seems like maybe Schaffner follows Spitz in doth lumping too much.
posted by Beardman at 7:06 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


... then reclaimed by the fans of that band and phenomenon, which was then co-opted by venal marketing agents to reach those fans, which then spread a version of that phenomenon to younger fans who, often without even knowing the band or movement that spawned the term, embraced elements of it in way more or less faithful to the original spirit, which then became associated with the name, pissing off early adopters of the thing, but then those adaptations nevertheless became part of the marketing package to target even younger adopters who don't yet know the history, who don't realize or care how much Morrissey hates cutesy animal hats

Exactly.

I think the turning point was the first American wave of twee, around the 1990s and the Elephant 6 collective; before then, what would be called “twee” was basically British post-C86 indiepop, and in particular, its rejection of the machismo of rockism and the conspicuously capitalist gloss of expensively produced Thatcher-era commercial pop. Partly out of not being able to afford expensive synthesizers and studio time, they embraced a 1960s-style guitar-based pop aesthetic, whilst also conspicuously rejecting the rock'n'roll idea of masculine swagger (the rise of the original emo—or “emotional hardcore punk”, to give it its full name—is a US parallel). This, of course, developed its own audience, and stripped of their context, these elements—the lack of traditional gender roles, the retro-styled production—became stylised elements, and eventually the Deschanelian kitsch we see today.
posted by acb at 7:26 AM on February 23, 2015 [11 favorites]


Is there twee of color? Perhaps it is more politically engaged.

My mind immediately flashed on both James Harden's fashion choices, and Lester Freeman making dollhouse furniture.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:46 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


She said hey, hey, hey!
With less than three weeks to go
She tried to justify the goth scene
but the relevance was low.
And she said hey, hey, hey,
Won't you listen to me?
Well, you can keep the punk rock
ska rap beats and house
Fuck me, I'm twee.
posted by maryr at 7:54 AM on February 23, 2015 [5 favorites]


You can pry my Lucksmiths CDs from my dead word-play-loving unmarried fingers.
posted by maryr at 7:56 AM on February 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


Twee is older than the 90s. It's been a little bit of a hobby horse of mine to trace that aesthetic back as far as I can. The furthest back I've gotten is Olympia, Washington, in the early 1980s. I haven't found any earlier instances of that ironic housewife thing that's so fundamental to twee. Young women in Olympia would wear 50s style housewife dresses, bake cookies, knit and so on. Over time the irony fell away and it became a reclamation of all those things housewifes did that were considered too dreary for thinking people to engage in.

The thing about twee that's really interesting is that it's always been a very female centred. Men were part of it from the beginning, but they were expected to be the coy objects of desire (e.g. Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening flashing his belly button during concerts). The ironic housewife subculture spread slowly to the rest of the Pacific Northwest, and from there to the rest of North America and eventually the world.

Musically it's a lot more complicated, but people releasing indie records in the 1980s were always very internationally minded, which is why someone living in Seattle like Kurt Cobain (who was twee as fuck) knew Scotland's Vaselines when few people in the UK had ever heard of them. There were extensive global distribution networks by 1990 already, and not just between the big cities, but also smaller nodes, college towns and the like (such as Olympia). Twee took that DIY capitalist aspect of punk and ran with it. I'm not surprised how it became a financial behemoth. It already had fairly sophisticated distribution networks at infancy. The musical aesthetic, which was pretty well established by 1990, probably came out of the cassette-trading scene of the early 80s, but I haven't been able to pin it down more exactly than that.

However, one thing that's been a strong factor in twee from its beginnings has been a rejection of macho culture. Again, that sexual objectification of waify male singers, but also adulation of artists of all kinds and genders. I think twee has very consciously "kicked against the pricks," as the out group in twee is "macho pricks." Jebus knows that there are plenty of bad gender politics in twee, but to say that it's an apolitical subculture is to be pretty blind to what it's all about. Most of the things that are fundamental to twee (pretty music, knitting, granny glasses, cupcakes etc.) are female-gendered. Twee is a celebration of those parts of Western culture which have been gendered as female. I suppose it's no surprise it gets no respect despite having pretty much taken over the world leaving lots of other, better known, subcultures exhausted in its wake while twee keeps marching on.
posted by Kattullus at 8:23 AM on February 23, 2015 [43 favorites]


Kurt Cobain (who was twee as fuck)

Maybe he had some twee traits but he made music that was very un-twee.
posted by jonmc at 8:27 AM on February 23, 2015


Kattullus, your comment was amazing. TWEE KEEPS MARCHING ON!
posted by wyndham at 8:29 AM on February 23, 2015


Why?

Authenticity, I guess. I'm glad the tweesters don't have to keep on pretending to be hardcore gangsters/punks/whatever.

They were never fooling anyone anyway. It's nice they have a thing of their own, instead of polluting our things.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:30 AM on February 23, 2015


kids today need to listen to more early King Crimson yt . There are both gentle, romantic passages and volcanic eruptions of the soul. One needs both to get through the day. Also, early Genesis.

If they really want the roots of 60's twee, look no further than the Incredible String Scientologists
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:34 AM on February 23, 2015


Needs more Amelia Fletcher.
posted by thivaia at 8:41 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


From acb's link to Tom Ellard:

Have you seen what happens when people talk to cats? Their voices go up an octave and they start babbling shit like Aw Wook At Da Widdle Pussy Kitty. This is authenticity. This is people revealing what they would be like if toilet training, school and a long stretch in prison hadn’t sorted out their kinks. Here is the basis of a whole renaissance in the media industry – write your music and films as if you are singing to a cat and your success will be the stuff of legends.

Where punk's genesis is "Here's something the cool people will hate, and fuck you if you don't like it," twee's seems more "This is what I like when I completely ignore your opinion of what's cool."

Of course both punk and twee and every other cultural movement quickly devolves into imitators looking around self-consciously and asking, "Am I doing this right? I'm really punk/twee, right?" But real twee doesn't care if you think it's insufficiently masculine or political or sexual.
posted by straight at 8:43 AM on February 23, 2015 [8 favorites]


The last time I saw Belle and Sebastian, I felt bad because I didn't have time to change out of my teacher clothes before going to the the show, but it was okay because most of the people there were dressed as teachers.

This book's treatment of race made me pretty angry when it came out. I (poc) spent so much of 1998 making copies of Tigermilk for other fans (also poc) and the shows I've been to were as diverse as other non-twee concerts I've attended, like NIN or Taylor Swift.

I think Taylor Swift is a good example of 'twee' style becoming mainstream: cupcakes, fringes, road trips in vintage trailers, deliberately awkward dancing.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:08 AM on February 23, 2015 [11 favorites]


I'm not sure it's deliberate so much as unabashed.
posted by maryr at 9:21 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Singularity?

No, those people are superstitious cranks.
posted by mhoye at 9:26 AM on February 23, 2015


jonmc: Maybe he had some twee traits but he made music that was very un-twee.

That's true, but he also made Unplugged, which is pretty damn twee.
posted by Kattullus at 9:33 AM on February 23, 2015


Kurt loved twee but even with a cardigan on cooing a Vaselines song over a cello, his music isn't really that close to it. He was too ironic and angry, and loved dissonance and anarchy too much.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:59 AM on February 23, 2015


Belle and Sebastian were considered the benchmark of twee at the time and those song lyrics were way too dark for any 30 second household furnishings tv commercial. Although it'd be wonderful to see someone try.

We've had Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" show up in everything from SUV to juice commercials. Where is the high bar set for this project of yours?
posted by mhoye at 10:17 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Twee is a celebration of those parts of Western culture which have been gendered as female.

This is a terrific point (and it's been conspicuously missing from all the discussion of the Spitz book that I've seen, which leads me to worry it might be missing from the book, too), and you're certainly right that anti-macho/anti-bro is a defining element, but I think a better word for that might actually be "feminine," not "female." Seeing twee as a deliberate embrace/heightening of femininity helps explain the gender asymmetries of the twee persona — the way it yields male effeminacy, but female hyperfemininity. And seeing that, the embrace of femininity, as at least potentially a kind of underlying gender-conservatism also might help explain why genderqueerness/boundary-blurring/other forms of gendering don't seem to read that easily as twee: like, there isn't really a twee Bowie, or a twee-boi subculture, or whatever, even though on the face of it those seem like possible adaptations of the aesthetic.
posted by RogerB at 10:25 AM on February 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


Potomac Avenue: He was too ironic and angry, and loved dissonance and anarchy too much.

I basically agree with you, and I'd add that the label twee hadn't been coined yet. However, a lot of the originators of that style, e.g. Beat Happening, loved dissonance. Probably anarchy too. The other subculture to come out of Olympia was riot grrl, after all. I don't think Cobain would read as twee according to modern definitions, but he was at the very least drawing water from the same well.
posted by Kattullus at 10:33 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


originators of that style, e.g. Beat Happening

I think I disagree with your origin story as well though. I see the bloodline run through Donovan, Nick Drake, Billy Bragg and Young Marble Giants making Folk Punk in the UK alongside Jonathan Richman, the Fugs, Lach, on through Half Japanese and Violent Femmes and other folk-punk/freak folk/anti-folk in the US. Add the lo-fi Powerpop coming out of Australia and NZ and you get the Pacific NW twee movement in the mid-late 80s.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:57 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I should have made this clear. I meant that Beat Happening were one of the originators of the subculture, not the music style (though I'd argue Beat Happening were one of the ingredients that went into the music style).
posted by Kattullus at 11:02 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well I just realized that Half-Japanese was pretty dissonance happy too so my argument is invalid.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:10 AM on February 23, 2015


I gave up on the article when he threw in Art Spiegelman. I don't care where in his "lineage" the author of Maus is supposed to be; no.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:26 AM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


kids today need to listen to more early King Crimson yt . There are both gentle, romantic passages and volcanic eruptions of the soul. One needs both to get through the day. Also, early Genesis.

If they really want the roots of 60's twee


to be clear. I wasn't proposing that early Crimson and Genesis were proto-twee outfits. But rather that they explored a range of dynamics from the gentle (arguably twee) to the outright explosive (definitely not). All gentle just doesn't measure up for me as an honest reflection of anything ... except perhaps a overly sensitive worldview that can't abide a little friction and collision. Likewise, all explosion just gets tiring after a while.
posted by philip-random at 11:42 AM on February 23, 2015


It's interesting that there seems to be a bit of a divide across the atlantic on this one form my eye. In the states it seems that twee is kind of where Portlandia and Brooklyn hipster intersect (lumbercore? stoke-folk?) whereas in the UK it's maybe a softening of Steampunk crossed with Hello Kitty?
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:44 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


All gentle just doesn't measure up for me as an honest reflection of anything ... except perhaps a overly sensitive worldview that can't abide a little friction and collision.

Or as Emmett Grogan (Digger, proto-hippie) put it way back when, "flowers are nice and all, but they don't survive the winter"*


* or words to that effect
posted by philip-random at 11:45 AM on February 23, 2015


Well, all I've learned from these articles is that I will never be a good music critic.

Genre is not a good marker for self-awareness. Jam to whatever you like.
posted by halifix at 11:46 AM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]



if Schaffner does think Dunham is a twee figure, then that's in tension with her own gloss of twee as profoundly asexual


Well, she's not referring to twee as "asexual", she refers to "a nostalgic fetishization of childhood paired with a wariness of sexuality". And one of the notable aspects of Dunham is how she combines sexual frankness with, well, wariness of sexuality and nostalgia for pre-sexual childhood (maybe more so in Tiny Furniture than in Girls). Most of the women in her lineage, like Erica Jong, treated sexual frankness and sexual enthusiasm as synonymous. But Dunham is much more likely to treat sexuality as something that usually disappoints. It's true that her take on tweeness is much more gritty than Wes Anderson's, but I can see how there's some commonality.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 12:57 PM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh my god, fucking twee. Fucking owl prints and floral patterns and fucking bunting bunting bunting for your fucking twee wedding in a meadow where you knitted all the decorations and made yourself a quilt for your shabby chic sofa with your Cath Kidston bag next to it while you listen to 30-something women pretending to be 15-year-old girls singing in breathy little voices next to their ukuleles and eat a cake pop you made in your bright pink cake pop maker. And you have a cat or a tiny dog with their own little bed shaped like a boat or a tiny house and your old punk t-shirts are a braided rug underneath because you're too old for that now, you like wearing lace skirts and statement necklaces that you made yourself from a couple of large beads and some twine because everything is just so fucking precious.

Argh, seriously. I keep on trying to join groups and get involved in things that I like, like baking, and knitting, and I want to learn how to make jam and sew my own clothes, and I end up getting furious and leaving because everything I do isn't good enough because it isn't fucking twee enough.

I don't want your bunting. Or your deer picture. Or your Cath Kidston bag. I want to knit a goddamn Graboid from Tremors and make a Millennium Falcon cake and make a bag from an old Superman pillowcase and if you think it isn't as awesome as your twee bullshit, you can fuck right off.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know there are good things about twee. And I like that. But fuck me, the cult of twee in the maker community drives me up the wall. And I'm not even getting into how patronising other makers can be because you're involved in traditionally "twee" hobbies.
posted by Katemonkey at 1:34 PM on February 23, 2015 [14 favorites]


Twee is . . . A turn to the past . . . It has a regressive tendency, both in a temporal and in a psycho-sexual sense: while Twee sometimes borders on camp, it is ultimately profoundly asexual . . . appears to yearn to return to an idealized state of perma-childhood, eager to rid itself of the responsibilities of adulthood . . . fetishization of childhood . . . produces hybrids such as the man-child . . .

Twee is . . . The most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop

Boys and girls, introducing Hebert Kaury.

He appeared in . . . You Are What You Eat (1968) in which he sang the Ronettes song, "Be My Baby" in his falsetto range; also featured was a rendition of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe", with Tim singing the Cher parts in his falsetto voice, with Eleanor Barooshian singing Sonny Bono's baritone part. [This] led to a booking on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In . . . he entered carrying a shopping bag, pulled his soprano ukulele from it, and sang a medley of "A Tisket A Tasket" and "On The Good Ship Lollipop".

In a later appearance, he entered, blowing kisses . . . and after a short interview, sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips".

In 1968, his first album was released. It contained an orchestrated version of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" which became a hit after being released as a single. For All My Little Friends, 1969, a collection of children's songs was nominated for a Grammy Award.

On December 17, 1969, with 40 million viewers watching, he married Victoria Mae Budinger (aka "Miss Vicki") on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

A huge fan of Arthur Godfrey, he taught himself to play ukulele using a method book that came with the Godfrey-endorsed Maccaferri Islander plastic ukulele.
 
posted by Herodios at 1:51 PM on February 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


The best thing about this thread is that because of it I've spent all day listening to Marine Girls, Barcelona, Even as We Speak and now The Field Mice.
posted by wyndham at 2:01 PM on February 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


Boys and girls, introducing Hebert KHaury.

Oops.
 
posted by Herodios at 2:13 PM on February 23, 2015


Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" is also recurring in "Insidious", including one very creepy scene you might want to watch more than once. Twee out of context can be profoundly disturbing.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:28 PM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Hello Kitty, not twee.
Hello Kitty jewelry from when you were five, riot grrrl.
Pendant from etsy featuring a white cat playing the ukelele, twee.

Kurt Cobain, twee.
Nirvana, not twee.

Morrissey, not twee.
The Smiths, twee.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:18 PM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


To put the last nail on the Kurt derail, here's a tune from his stint in the Go Team, which was kind of an all-star K Records project featuring many Olympia twee/riot grrl luminaries. Not especially memorable, but the guitars do have a distinctly Cobainish tone and strum to them.

Oh, also, he was responsible for DGC's '90s reissues of the Raincoats, another very important influence to the twee sound and aesthetic. The whole UK DIY scene of the early '80s was arguably just as big a factor as K, but most of it is only now getting its due. This massive list covers the breadth of it and then some.
posted by sphexish at 4:02 PM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


As another small derail, Tiny Tim, despite his floral act, was actually a stern and unpleasant man. His marriage broke up because he was too strict and traditional a husband. Twee doesn't run straight through, I suppose.

I wonder if you can say that They Might Be Giants are proto-twee. They're nerdier than that, so I suppose it doesn't count, but their large female fanbase (of which I am one) runs along the same lines. In any case, I am always made certain that I am wrong for liking what I like -- liking bluegrass but not the Nashville Sound makes me a classist hipster, not having a hip-hop collection makes me racist, liking chiptunes makes me an overgrown child. So I am perfectly content to be considered shallow and quietist for liking ukeleles and crochet. I'll be in the corner if you need me.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:37 PM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


you're certainly right that anti-macho/anti-bro is a defining element, but I think a better word for that might actually be "feminine,"

But does unmasculine automatically imply feminine, or is the masculine/feminine dichotomy in itself broken?
posted by acb at 6:09 PM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Okay, great, but does this mean I can find someone to talk to about the Lucksmiths again???

(please note, am currently wearing a cardigan; there is a pom-pom maker and a card of vintage buttons within arm's reach. I didn't choose the twee life; the twee life chose me.)
posted by nonasuch at 7:47 PM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


You may be unsurprised to learn that Melbourne has a number of Mefite Lucksmiths fans.

That said: have you ever heard the Sugargliders?
posted by pompomtom at 8:27 PM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh my god, fucking twee.

That is what I feel when I look at my Pinterest feed. That, and the urge to post highly saturated HDR photos of horrific flesh wounds, so as to bring balance to the Force.
posted by emeiji at 8:34 PM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Okay, great, but does this mean I can find someone to talk to about the Lucksmiths again???

(please note, am currently wearing a cardigan; there is a pom-pom maker and a card of vintage buttons within arm's reach. I didn't choose the twee life; the twee life chose me.)


I gave up my twee badge when the Lucksmiths broke up, though I don't really think I'd call them twee. Still can't bring myself to finish that DVD of their final show in Melbourne (maybe 'cos I was at that show, and it all seems so final). Is that Last Leaves record ever going to come out?
posted by plasticpalacealice at 9:35 PM on February 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Regarding twee and wariness of sexuality, this seems very connected to this generation's experience of porn: constantly available in all flavors thanks to the internet. Nowadays, people get exposed to an overwhelming amount/variety at ages where they lack the maturity and experience to process it. See also: b/chan, reddit/r/wtf, etc. This explains both a) rebellion against that onslaught and b) the coexistence of things like embracing both a twee aesthetic and anal sex.
posted by carmicha at 12:10 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh goodness The Sugargliders were such a fine band. Will We Ever Learn? immediately transports me back to a particular time and place in my teens.
posted by Kattullus at 3:17 AM on February 24, 2015


RogerB: anti-macho/anti-bro is a defining element, but I think a better word for that might actually be "feminine," not "female." Seeing twee as a deliberate embrace/heightening of femininity helps explain the gender asymmetries of the twee persona — the way it yields male effeminacy, but female hyperfemininity. And seeing that, the embrace of femininity, as at least potentially a kind of underlying gender-conservatism also might help explain why genderqueerness/boundary-blurring/other forms of gendering don't seem to read that easily as twee: like, there isn't really a twee Bowie, or a twee-boi subculture, or whatever, even though on the face of it those seem like possible adaptations of the aesthetic.
There have been some terrific comments in this thread (Kattullus: sounds like you've got a book project there), but I just want to jump off this point for a bit. I definitely agree that there's a misogynistic element to some twee-hatred, although I don't think that's a major part of the critique aimed at Spitz in either of the two reviews in the FPP. But RogerB's point about the constructed nature of femininity/not-macho in twee/alternative/hipster/riot grrl culture is a really astute one. One has to have certain attributes and material advantages to play those games and hold those poses, and they tend to be ones that ultimately derive from or reproduce advantages of class or body conformity. Or risk doing so. So there's definitely a conservative aspect to this "ironic" or "playful" performance of "traditional" forms of gendered self-presentation.

In terms of the performance of "male effeminacy": definitely, that's a part not only of what we might narrowly define as "twee" but also the slightly older "indie" guitar-based musical subcultures it feeds off. Years ago, I shared a university office with former Sneaky Feelings frontman Matthew Bannister while he was working his PhD thesis on masculinities in indie guitar rock up into a book, and he liked to talk. Now, Bannister's music is undeniably, almost overwhelmingly, "twee" according to current metrics, but wouldn't have been described in those terms at the time. More "fey," maybe? Sneaky Feelings was certainly part of the Dunedin/New Zealand indie scene, but derived its musical reference points almost entirely from overseas: specifically the Beatles and the Byrds and, more immediately, the contemporary early '80s British jangle pop scene. (Which isn't surprising, really, considering that Bannister himself was a Northern Hemisphere transplant, imported as an unwilling 17-year-old from Scotland when his biologist dad got a Professorship at the University of Otago.) Bannister (to my mind brilliantly) dissects the "fey"/effeminate pose in indie music in the Introduction to what became White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie Guitar Rock (2006):
The words ‘masculinity’ and ‘rock and roll’ commonly conjure screaming, hipswivelling singers, virtuosos with medallions banging on their hairy chests and an electric guitar glued to their hips, groupies, sex and drugs – the whole 1970s, decadent, Spinal Tap trip. This book is about indie guitar rock, a 1980s musical genre that eschewed many of the conventional models of rock machismo, resulting, some have claimed, in a more ‘enlightened’ male sexuality ... But I am going to argue that this is not the case.
The whole Introduction's available online and it's a cracking read. Bannister ultimately traces the "passive"/fey form of masculine performance he identifies as characteristic of male indie gender identity to Warhol. It's an interesting genealogy and one I remember talking about with him a lot. I guess I was a little data point for him: someone a lot younger who grew up on derivative forms of the music he produced, and he wanted to know why I liked and reacted to it in the way I did—what I got out of listening to Bailter Space, for instance. I miss those conversations and that office sometimes. He still has my copy of the Foucault Reader.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:17 AM on February 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


embracing both a twee aesthetic and anal sex.

The correct term is "tweenal sex," only to be performed under an owl coverlet.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:55 AM on February 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


I do wonder how much the twee aesthetic has sprung up as a response to the movement towards latchkey kids during my adolescence...independence at a young age/exposure to difficult family life and alienation from it combined with subsisting on prepackaged foods and wearing cheap clothing leads to a greater interest in traditional femininity and artisinal food, clothing, etc. This is a half-baked thesis, but I'm thinking about how a lot of signs of our zeitgeist (Zooey Deschanel, YA lit) could be seen in part as responses to abrasive, hypersexualized media (Bratz Dolls; revenge porn/MUAs, PUAs/Gamer Gate). This isn't a thesis, necessarily, but it's something that's been on my mind.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:59 AM on February 24, 2015


Okay, great, but does this mean I can find someone to talk to about the Lucksmiths again???

Any time, any place. I was just musing to myself that it's a little sad how romantic I find the line "Like a self help manual that's been written in Braille, it seems the more that we touch the more we learn about our failures." Like... that's probably not a good sign, right?

You may be unsurprised to learn that Melbourne has a number of Mefite Lucksmiths fans.

This makes me happy as my Australian coworker has never heard of them. But then, she's a Rage Against The Machine fan, so.
posted by maryr at 8:04 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Authenticity, I guess. I'm glad the tweesters don't have to keep on pretending to be hardcore gangsters/punks/whatever.

Twee is hardly "authentic". It's more like a perfect distillation of ironic chic. So perfectly, full-time ironic to where the seams hardly show.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:13 AM on February 24, 2015


So perfectly, full-time ironic to where the seams hardly show.

Chopped, dropped, channeled, frenched, nosed, decked, and shaved.
 .
posted by Herodios at 11:21 AM on February 24, 2015


and speaking of Sneaky Feelings -- if you haven't heard Not To Take Sides or PIT song, well, you really haven't yet achieved your potential ...


nothing twee about either of them to my ears, which goes a long way to telling me that Twee, if it means anything, means something I don't like
posted by philip-random at 12:07 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


it's just such a tinny word
posted by philip-random at 12:08 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's more like a perfect distillation of ironic chic.

You know what they say, scratch an ironic ukelele virtuoso...
posted by straight at 12:33 PM on February 24, 2015


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