Twee Ideals and the Id.

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm always going to be 14 inside. We could definitely go into the personnel files and delve deep into the reason this is, but that's really the same old story you tell your therapist every week, isn't it? This isn't about how I feel abandoned or how I was raised. This is about how dumb and impressionable I am.

I was reading an entry in Jessica Hopper's excellent blog the other day about her problems with The Darjeeling Limited. She then spoke a little bit about Wes Anderson and how he really brought "twee ideals" into the mainstream. What is it about movies like Rushmore and Bottle Rocket that we all like so much? Any of his later work can be put into the "I like it because it's pretty" category, which Hopper pointed out, but that can't really be said about Bottle Rocket, which is very obviously his first film, though it's a very good first film.

I know that the "twee effect" really has pulled me towards Wes Anderson in the worst way possible. He knew exactly who he was making the movies for. The idea that a filmmaker identified all our collective imperfections and put them front and center was startling, but at the same time, it was beautiful. It's not in the twee spirit to say, "No one ever understands me," because that's overwhelmingly nu-metal and instantly unattractive. It's more twee to just assume that no one will ever understand you and live your life alone, in a state of adolescent regression. I don't remember how old Max Fischer was supposed to be, but he seemed pretty damn old to me.

I guess it's always been like this; any of Cameron Crowe's protagonists is, at any moment, so weighed down by his own neuroses that he can't get past himself and see that there are other people living in the world. I swear to God, the names of all these flawed, sad bastard protagonists are all just anagrams of John Cusack. Taking it a step further, it was really John Hughes, with his identifiable, realistic teens of the 80s and his hip soundtracks that really spoke to the Anthony Michael Halls of the world, telling them that it was okay to talk too fast, because even if you didn't make out with Molly Ringwald, you were still going to be okay. While John Hughes was a notorious "culture vulture," feeding off of stereotypes and building the walls of social divide even higher, both Crowe and Anderson seem like they were misguided in a sense. They thought they could show that being neurotic and eternally wounded could be attractive if the protagonist came to some beautiful revelation, but what they've really done is create a whole generation of nice guys, doomed to walk about in the figurative "fog of Manchester" until they die. Of course, it isn't completely their fault, but certainly, glamorizing a certain kind of lifestyle is what leads us down this path.

The other part of my piece is about the Id, Freud's imagination playground where we all hide our deepest, most vile and base pleasures. When you think about all your most evil thoughts, the ones you don't tell anyone about, they're pretty bad, right? Be honest with yourself. Are these thoughts contingent with the aforementioned "twee ideals?" In my mind, they are as opposite as can be, for obvious reasons. I think about the conscious/subconscious mind and the 10/90 split when I think about the Id. Many who followed Freud have said that the Id was as prevalent as any other part of our minds and we just didn't voice what the Id was telling us, however I submit that the Id is often beneath the waterline of the glacier of our minds, motivating us to hurt those around us, for no other reasons besides love and hate and all the other great motivators.

When it comes to loves and hates and passions just like mine, the Smiths were the band that really changed my life in that regard; I haven't figured out whether their music has done more harm than good or not though. Morrissey's ever present struggles with lust and murderous desire in his lyrics were always counterbalanced by those great, bouncy bass lines and Johnny Marr's twee-rific guitar riffs. The Id was present in those notes; I could feel it breathing and acknolwledging it felt amazing, but something told me that I should keep it inside. There were many people who were threatened by Morrissey intellectually, but no one seemed to be truly ruffled by his persona and it really seems like it all had to do with his bookish charm and the idea that even if he was spouting about his absolute misanthropy, he couldn't shake the twee image of the big glasses, the hearing aid and the gladiolus.

Is it a perception issue with those doing the perceiving or is it an illusion, something within us that wants to mislead people? I'll never really know the answer to that one, I guess, but what I do know is that now, there are a generation of impressionable nancy boys (like myself) who've appropriated the general feeling, while still being a little ashamed of the Id, however present it is in our lives. Where that leaves us is with the twee I started talking about, the twee of childish longing, of uncertainty and utter oblivion.

The first video attached is for Belle and Sebastian's first single off of their 2006 album The Life Pursuit, called "Funny Little Frog." The song is about chasing after someone who doesn't love you and doesn't even know that they were being pursued in the first place. Stuart Murdoch is an amazing songwriter and has written some of my favorite songs of all time, but I recognize his shortcomings, one of which is his obsession with the unattainable. One of my other favorite Belle and Sebastian songs is "Marx and Engels," about meeting a proto-anarcho-punk girl in the laundromat and falling for her. I think Murdoch and twee pop's obsession with the ideal of punks being the unattainable ones to fall for is well documented and just takes all of our collective shortcomings and beats them to death; we're timid and they're headstrong or we're kind where they're brash. Just listen to these examples:

Math and Physics Club - "La La La Lisa"

Jens Lekman - "I Saw Her in the Anti-War Demonstration (live)"

John K. Samson is probably where this story ends for me. As I wandered to class this morning, all I could think about was the Weakerthans. Whenever I get myself into a situation that scares me, I seem to fall back on John K's songs. John K. Samson was in a band called Propagandhi, which is one of the most radical, anarcho-hardcore bands from Canada, which would automatically exempt him from the "twee" pile, however, listening to his songs written for the Weakerthans, he really might belong in that stack. His songs are about longing and loss and there are even a few written from the perspective of his cat, Virtute, which is really twee, when you think about it. John K's songs are so beautifully written and so literate, it makes me want to bury myself in books and write until I die, which is the real problem. Even when I feel like I've escaped from the twee sound and everything it does to me, I can't get away that easily.

This video is for one of the Weakerthans' first singles, "Diagnosis." If I say much more, my point will be overstated. Just find the lyrics.



I'm just beginning to realize what all this means for me. Am I going to stop listening to Belle and Sebastian and all their European spiritual kinsmen? Probably not. Sure, I'm going to watch Say Anything anytime it's on TV, but I know now that Lloyd Dobler is not supposed to be my hero. Seriously, if you were Ione Skye, wouldn't you be a little creeped out if I were out on your lawn, playing Peter Gabriel? This all means that I have to be more mindful of the things I let into my life and the way I let them change me, because God knows that I'm as dumb and impressionable as the next "nice guy."