Cringe Dialectics | @ghostofchristo1
Guest Column #023
The clip begins. “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio (feat. L.V.) comes in on the speakers. A team of NHS ward staff in masks and blue surgical scrubs approaches the camera down a hospital corridor, the footage slowed down so that their footfalls match the opening beats of the song. The lead nurse gestures, rapper-style, her arms outstretched. The clip cuts abruptly at the end of Coolio’s first line, after the word “death.”
A second clip. In this one, a group of young men, evidently in their twenties or early thirties, go through a pair of wooden double-doors. A couple of them carry American flags. Others wear brand-new-looking red MAGA hats, the “45” representing former president Donald Trump standing out in white above their ears. “Is this the Senate?”, one of them asks uncertainly. Later in the clip, Jake Angeli, the “QAnon Shaman” whose painted face and cartoonish outfit would become the dominant meme of the day’s events, can be glimpsed on the balcony above the Senate floor, jumping up and down in an apparent attempt to maintain energy.
A third clip. Stephen Colbert, midway through a 10-minute YouTube compilation of “Vax-Scene” segment intros from The Late Show, bops quietly in his chair to a pastiche of Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” as animated versions of the band—reimagined as COVID-vaccine syringes—briefly cavort at the bottom of the screen. The lyrics appear in a chyron (all in caps, naturally): “I WANNA VAX YOU UP. QUICK SHOT IN YOUR ARM NOW.” The music quickly fades out. As though acknowledging the insubstantiality of the joke, Colbert gurns in mock embarrassment (or perhaps in genuine self-amusement), announcing to the camera, “no need to have a definite ending to any of these.”
Depending on one’s political orientation, elements within any or all of these tableaux could be labelled “cringe.” Cringe is a display of high awkwardness that can often generate an intense feeling of second-hand embarrassment—or even shame—in having witnessed it.1 Above all, however, cringe is undignified. It seems to have no inward dimension, involving instead the unfiltered outward projection of narcissistic fantasy, naiveté, or impulse. In the January 6 footage, an increasingly agitated young man rifles through what seems to be a sheaf of abandoned Senate committee papers, saying, “there’s gotta be something here we can use against them.” In this moment, a set of fantasies about power and where it resides appears to collapse in real time when faced with the banal and obfuscatory nature of everyday bureaucratic language and procedure. Cringe, then, often incorporates a strong element of self-abasement. When synchronised or taken up en masse within crowds or political movements, this kind of behaviour assumes an almost uncanny dimension. Commenting on what he called some of the more extreme “orgiastic, quasi-religious” displays of ritualistic synchronised emotion during the Summer 2020 protests, Matt Taibbi suggested that their cumulative effect was so “deeply weird” as to essentially “paralyse” mainstream press commentary.2 Events of this sort can therefore act like dazzle camouflage, leaving onlookers in a state of immobilising aesthetic confusion that circumvents any attempt to rationally assess what they might mean.
While, for some witnesses, cringe can generate a strong desire to look away—to pretend that none of this is actually happening—for others, it can invoke an almost magnetic fascination. There can be an impulse to collect and curate cringe, as with the r/cringe and r/cringepics subreddits. When the divisions between competing aesthetic regimes appear to demarcate a political boundary, this collecting and commentating urge can be stronger still. For many conservative social media users, such as the reply-guys who comment on the Libs of TikTok Twitter account, critique often amounts to little more than identifying the existence of stereotypically “progressive” aesthetics. In this mode, personal attributes—“blue hair” or “pronouns in bio”—become forms of diagnosis that are assumed to disqualify the aesthetically tagged individual from being taken seriously. Far-right commentators Lauren Southern and Katie Hopkins both used the “dancing TikTok nurses” craze of 2020–1 as a means of targeting the political establishment (and bolstering their own “dissident” brands). In their response videos, the spectacle of gyrating surgical staff symbolises what they represent as the hypocritical and unserious nature of the pandemic response itself. As these responses indicate, “cringe” is not simply an involuntary physiological response to external stimuli. To label something cringe is also often a political move—a form of social classification that aims, above all, to invalidate.
At the same time, however, there is an escalatory and mimetic quality to these exchanges. Cringe has a way of forcing others to play by its own rules, to be caught up within the cringe dialectic. There is something in the outrageousness and lack of proportion involved in “cringeworthy” spectacles that appears to demand a correspondingly outsized response. Responses to cringe (even, or perhaps especially, those that believe themselves to be “based”) thereby often become “cringe” in themselves. Writing about the first anniversary of January 6 in the Psychiatric Times, H. Steven Moffic diagnosed a society-wide condition he called “anniversary trauma.”3 The only way of solving the problem of “the Capitol event and all its supporters,” he wrote, would be the political equivalent of involuntary psychiatric commitment. Once subjected to this form of therapeutic treatment, “the Capitol opposition will eventually conclude that repentance was needed” for its own “recovery.” Moffic then imagined that this opposition might, like some of his own former patients, end up “thanking” their political opponents for their timely intervention.4 While the official events commemorating the first anniversary of 9/11 had largely followed traditional, twentieth-century modes of commemoration, with carefully observed minutes of silence, the 6/1 official anniversary programme included a live performance of “Dear Theodosia” by members of the Broadway cast of Hamilton, introduced by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Simultaneously observing both the anniversary itself and COVID-19 sanitary protocols, this was what Paul Virilio might have called an “optically correct” performance.5 All participants beamed in virtually, occupying their own hermetically sealed, socially distanced screens. Rather than seeking to project a sense of national unity, as the commemorative logic that structured the 2002 9/11 ceremony did, the 2022 6/1 ceremony seemed designed to project faction. The response to the aesthetic provocations of the January 6 Capitol incursion—the MAGA hats; the inappropriate use of lecterns; Angeli’s artfully displayed body with its highly “problematic” Nordic-themed tattoos—here takes the form of an aesthetic counter-provocation, one that abandons traditional commemorative ritual in favour of the contemporary (but tribally identified) middlebrow. In placing that totem of liberal-progressive-nerd cultural identity, Hamilton, at centre-stage, this was a programming move seemingly calculated to generate as many “dislikes” from ideological opponents as “likes” from the like-minded.
Much of what is described as “cringe” online could fit within the wider remit of kitsch. As Thorsten Botz-Bornstein defines it in The New Aesthetics of Deculturation, kitsch is “a tasteless copy of an existing style or the systematic display of bad taste or artistic deficiency,” often accompanied by “an exaggerated sentimentality, banality, superficiality, or triteness.”6 More than a quality that inheres within specific art objects, however, kitsch can also act as a kind of “cultural structure.” It is a mode of cultural production that normalises “formulaic” thought, behaviour, and language, exaggerated statements and expressions, and a pervasive sense of “inappropriateness.”7 Above all, Botz-Bornstein suggests, the cultural structure of kitsch encourages the production of simplified truths and stylised realities. Its proponents base their claims to authority on emotivism, compressed and simplistic slogans that deliberately eschew nuance or complexity, and inappropriately intrusive expressions of personal sentiment. In a milieu governed by the dictates of kitsch, believing in these kinds of “absolute truths” is a moral necessity, and the dominant affect can be disconcertingly ingenuous and infantilising. The “reality” projected by kitsch’s simulation is accordingly reminiscent of the religious sect or the classroom. At the same time, kitsch governance often likes to conceal its coercive nature in displays of cute or self-consciously “harmless” aesthetics, expressions of mildness or benevolence, or appeals to the greater good.8
Seen through this interpretive lens, many of the aesthetic and communicative phenomena of the Trump and COVID periods resolve into expressions of kitsch. There’s the MAGA cap, with its inappropriate melding of leisurewear functionality, sports fandom, and political signification. Colbert’s “Vax-Scene” intro-segments, with their jarringly inappropriate juxtaposition of propagandistically repetitive and simplified public health messaging, garish cartoon imagery, and self-consciously terrible musical choices, all overseen by the “cute,” gurning visage of Colbert himself. The formal, repetitive, childlike recitation of honorific titles like “Dr Fauci” on all major news channels. The barely concealed revenge fantasy evident in Moffic’s 1/6 anniversary pieces, in which his political enemies are reduced to the status of involuntarily sectioned psychiatric in-patients, the levels of kitsch simplification heightened by a passive-aggressive and outwardly “caring” language of healing and benevolent therapeutics, and sanctioned by the self-serving fantasy of retrospective consent and gratitude.
A similarly flattening and simplifying kitsch logic is also increasingly prevalent in journalistic and academic commentary. Early on in the pandemic, Bernard-Henri Lévy had already identified the press tendency “to make physicians into supermen and superwomen and to endow them with extraordinary powers,” as well as the “dark providentialism” and “punitive magical thinking” that subsequently came to typify a certain sort of pandemic commentary, whereby COVID became the “revenge” or logical consequence of whatever trend or political issue the commentator had previously advanced their personal brand by decrying.9 A flattening, simplified emotivism also underpins Masha Gessen’s defence of the new “moral clarity,” published in The New Yorker at the height of the global 2020 protests. For Gessen, the old journalistic ideal of objectivity, based on a careful balance between opposing viewpoints, needed to give way to one in which certain views were systematically excluded from view or expression. “Not every argument has two sides,” they asserted. “Some have more, and some statements should not be the subject of argument. There cannot be arguments about facts.”10 Yet, the types of “facts” outlined by Gessen in the article were in practice often indistinguishable from the subjective “takes” and moral values of commentators in Gessen’s political tribe. The abstract—volatile and heightened emotions, moral commitments, momentary impressions, and shared vibes—is hereby flattened into supposedly concrete “facts,” which by the simplifying and self-serving logic of the argument are thereafter beyond all question or challenge. The new craze for retrospectively cancelling writers and artists, which gained momentum in the same period, follows the same trajectory. Artworks are conflated with the artists who created them (or, at least, a quick skim of the “personal life” section of the artist’s Wikipedia page). The logic of TV Tropes-style online pseudo-criticism appears to be at work here, in which tagging or binary classification (“OK”/”Not OK”) becomes the primary means of assessing culture. In the process, the act of attributing morally inflected “tags” to artworks is represented as objective fact rather than subjective (and highly reductive) interpretation or feeling. 2020’s retreat into screen-mediated life has brought with it a corresponding projection of simplifying screen logic onto all aspects of culture.
The peculiar consumer culture of the pandemic age is also undeniably kitsch. The “Dr Fauci” tag on Etsy features Dr Fauci-themed mugs, badges (“Got my Fauci Ouchie!”), t-shirts, hoodies, onesies, socks, and crochet-pattern dolls, as well as prayer candles (available in both the “Wear Your Damn Mask: Saint Anthony Fauci” and “Patron Saint of Staying Home” brands). Or consider the chain of “COVID-19 Essentials” boutique stores that opened in the US in 2020.11 Fashion cloth masks printed to advertise a range of secondary messages, such as voting rights or breast-cancer awareness, combine COVID protection and politics in a manner reminiscent of what Anton Jäger has recently called “hyper-politics.”12 They also represent a “simplified reality” that effectively evades the question of whether fashion cloth masks are especially effective in stopping the transmission of COVID-19. “Drugs Not Hugs” t-shirts, also on sale in the stores, express COVID public health messaging in the combination of glib humour and “there is no alternative”-style coerciveness characteristic of the contemporary kitsch aesthetic. Their compressed sloganeering also evades other questions. What are the long-term psychological and emotional effects of withdrawing hugs? And withdrawing them from whom? Is long-term social distancing effective or sustainable? Which drugs, and how effective are they? What, ultimately, are we all doing here if this indescribably bleak messaging represents the sum of our social imaginary?
What the particular dynamics of “cringe” do is to package and target kitsch according to the platform logics of the social media era. Involving the synchronised production and reception of knowingly kitsch or “awful” material, contemporary cringe is made to be shared, retweeted, liked, and above all (perhaps), disliked. Its rationale is to generate strong responses and mimetic (and anti-mimetic) behaviour. As @abortionqween, an influencer known for producing fake TikToks ostensibly celebrating her abortions that employ (in deadpan fashion) the standard audio-visual aesthetics of TikTok, puts it, “I think a lot of my followers know I’m not getting like 50 abortions a month. But people will just see that and I guess like normalise it. People will also get very angry about it. But it always goes viral.”13 For its ideological target audience, this kind of material produces an intense feeling of recognition. Kitsch or cringe aesthetics provides an opportunity to display the self and its political and cultural commitments in their most heightened or concentrated form. It may involve the defiant or unapologetic championing of middlebrow or pop-culture artefacts, their kitsch potential elevated, in this instance, by the attribution of an inappropriate partisan-political significance. In hovering so close to self-parody, cringe can be almost impossible to satirise. It can also be disavowed at will, its former champions abruptly turning the tables on their critics by asking why they are taking something so obviously ridiculous so seriously. Perhaps this is why the use of kitsch aesthetics in authoritarian politics can be so effective—it means people don’t take those movements seriously until it’s too late. Like the “badness” of a “bad movie” festival, cringe acts as a kind of shared aesthetic ordeal for cognoscenti that provides an opportunity for the expression of group belonging (as well as a degree, maybe, of narcissistic self-regard).14 Its virality, however, also depends on the opposite reaction—an over-the-top negative response that may resemble the initial piece of “cringe” itself in its lack of proportion or dignity. This “counter-cringe” not only inflates the engagement metrics of the initial piece of viral content; it also acts as a kind of ideological reinforcement for the initial group by emphasising the “badness” of the other side. A mimetic spiral may develop in which each side attempts to goad the other into a credibility-destroying piece of over-reaction.
Interviewed in 1971 for the first issue of Diacritics, Claude Lévi-Strauss was asked what he saw ahead for the future of civilisation. He responded by predicting the increasing fragmentation of society. “One may wonder,” he said, “whether societies that continue to expand enormously and look more and more alike do not re-create within themselves differences along axes other than those of their similarities.” In support of his assertion, he cited “the various hippie movements,” the “generation gap,” and the “sexual revolution” as intimations of where things might be heading.15 The polarising potentialities of online platforms provide another, more contemporary instance of this axial splitting. Under our current dispensation, it is the extreme and initially unusual that possesses the most viral potential. Once amplified by the replicatory and mimetic powers of the platforms, the viral thereby remakes our sense of reality in its image. Perhaps, in a sense, we are all cringe now.
Drawing by Lawrence “Sketch” Cheatham. Colour pencils. November, 2020.
Of course, the term “cringe,” with its 4Chan origins and association with the often self-caricaturising online New Right, could easily be seen as cringe itself. See Park MacDougald, “Is the New Right a Grift?”, UnHerd (12 January 2022).
Matt Taibbi, “The American Press Is Destroying Itself,” TK News (12 June 2020).
H. Steven Moffic, “Soul Searching on the Anniversary of our Capitol Conflict,” Psychiatric Times (6 January 2022).
H. Steven Moffic, “How the 1/6 Anniversary Reminded Me of Clinical Psychiatry,” Psychiatric Times (7 January 2022).
Paul Virilio, Ground Zero, translated by Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2002), p. 31.
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, The New Aesthetics of Deculturation: Neoliberalism, Fundamentalism, and Kitsch (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 1; 43.
Botz-Bornstein, pp. 47–8.
Botz-Bornstein, pp. 53; 79; 89; 70.
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Pandemic in the Age of Madness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), pp. 5, 23.
Masha Gessen, “Why Are Some Journalists Afraid of ‘Moral Clarity?’”, New Yorker (24 June 2020).
Thomas Pallini, “I visited a COVID-19-themed boutique selling high-priced 'essentials' to wealthy shoppers in high-end malls alongside Hermes and Louis Vuitton stores,” Business Insider (18 October 2020).
Anton Jäger, “How the World Went from Post-Politics to Hyper-Politics,” Tribune (3 January 2022).
Emily Shugerman, “Women Are Putting their Abortions on TikTok—But Is It Real?”, Daily Beast (27 February 2021).
Jeffrey Sconce, “The Golden Age of Badness,” Continuum, 33.6 (2019), pp. 666–76.
Claude Lévi-Strauss and Peter B. Kussell, “Interview: Claude Lévi-Strauss,” Diacritics, 1.1 (1971), p. 49.