Since its inception, film has been accused of being an insincere medium. In 1944, critical theorists Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer asserted that through the hypnotic power of images, film dupes its spectator into misperceiving a fabricated world for a real one. This critique has persisted throughout the history of film, and has been expanded by theorists Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio. But is it indeed the case that it is impossible for a film to be sincere? In the case of film, who is it that is being sincere? Is it perhaps the case that we need not value sincerity in film? Admittedly, sincerity as a literary value does not translate easily to a cinematic one. Sincerity is often incorrectly used interchangeably with the term “reality” and the phrase “honest representation” when discussed in relation to a particular film. This question of sincerity’s role in film arises in the so-called New Sincerity, also referred to as post-irony or post-postmodernism, which is a trend in pop culture that strays away from critiquing the logic of capitalism through irony and moves toward exploring issues of faith, family, and morality through magic realism. The films of Wes Anderson and Charlie Kaufman are most synonymous with this movement, but other films such as (500) Days of Summer, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Sleepwalk with Me, Beginners, and Lost in Translation are grouped in it as well.[1]

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The New Sincerity usually refers to the writings of David Foster Wallace, who is mainly known for his lengthy 1996 work Infinite Jest, a mammoth of a novel that touches on such subjects as depression, advertising, television, and film theory. The one subject that pervades all of Wallace’s work, however, is the question of sincerity. Fed up with postmodern irony and the easy temptation of cynicism, Wallace issued a call for writers in the early 90’s to risk articulating “what it is to be a human being.”[2] If irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying,” then Wallace’s goal was to remind us that a great artist bases his or her work on sincerity, an explicit, “I really do mean what I’m saying.” The artist must throw him or herself into the work in order to become morally responsible for its content. Wallace was one of the few thinkers who attempted to decipher what it could possibly mean to be sincere in a poststructuralist/postmodern world; he also warned us of what the repercussions might be if we chose to wholly dismiss sincerity as a moral and aesthetic value.

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I argue, however, that Wallace did not seek to create a new sincerity; rather, he sought a return to both the artistic concept of sincerity that had been championed by the Romantics and the religious concept of sincerity that was integral to the Protestant Reformation. The films of the so-called New Sincerity feature neither of these essential components of the term; instead, these films evoke a sense of sincerity through Romantic sensibilities. For example, they emphasize both the wisdom of children and the lost purity of adults, and blur the distinction between objective reality and fantastical subjective states. In the films of the New Sincerity the characters are sincere to each other, but the artist is not necessarily pursuing sincerity with the audience. The question thus becomes: Where do we find the more literary concept of sincerity, or, the old sincerity in film? Even greater still, how can film, such a highly collaborative art form, ever be sincere?

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We find sincerity in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall. Like the British Romantics in their poetry, Allen in his 1977 film addresses us with the dramatic specificity of a fictional character, but at the same time makes us believe that this character is continuous with his lived personality. He blurs the distinction between life and art. In Annie Hall, one can see how the sincere artist is inextricably connected with the Bakhtinin fool; indeed, both the fool and the sincere artist have the courage to highlight their human faults. But before discussing Allen, I must first explain what I mean by a return to sincerity.

Before the works of Wallace, sincerity had undergone wave-upon-wave of criticism, eventually becoming recognized as a cheap literary trope shaped by such flaws as subjective prejudice, self-interest, and restricted perspective. Indeed, Lionel Trilling marked the death of sincerity in 1971, affirming that authenticity had taken sincerity’s place as the defining literary value. Sincerity, he argues, does not imply telling the truth about one’s inner self, but consists in revealing obnoxious thoughts and morally or socially reprehensible actions. The prime example, for Isaiah Berlin, is Adolf Hitler, whose popularity was a product of his alleged sincerity, that is, his unabashed self-assertion, unpredictable will, and uncompromising faith to his ideals.

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Sincerity perhaps took its most vital blow from the poststructuralists and their insistence on the death of the author, which would remind us that there is always a fundamental disconnect between an author’s intentions and any resulting textual product. Sincerity is not only ethically ambivalent, but it is also a mere illusion. All models of meaning and truth rooted in the notion of a centered self have been discredited by the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan; the more that the self is probed, the less transparent it appears. Artists would instead come armed with irony to make sense of the anaesthetizing powers of technology, capital, and language.

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Wallace, too, was a fan of such postmodern fiction writers as Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, and Don DeLillo, but he attests that as great and groundbreaking as these postmodern writers were in the 1960s and 70s, maybe even into the 1980s, their use of irony had exhausted itself. In the age of television and MTV, irony—postmodernism’s calling card—would itself become a pop-culture institution. In his interview with Larry McCafferey, Wallace states that art should not just “dramatize how dark and stupid everything is” through irony but that it should “locate and apply CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.” The goal of fiction, or any work of art for that matter, is to “find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”[3] The perpetual ironic stance only produces a culture of lifeless cynics. In Peter Sloterdijk’s cruel but entertaining words, the cynic is “a distance-creating mocker, a biting and malicious individualist who acts as though he needs nobody and who is loved by nobody because nobody escapes his crude unmasking gaze uninjured.”[4]

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If irony was employed by an artist to criticize and ridicule the naiveté of humans and, as Jeffrey Sconce points out, to bifurcate one’s audience from those who “get it” and those who don’t, then sincerity would be used to articulate to all of mankind that humans are defined by there naiveté. “There is no such thing as not worshipping,” Wallace announces in his commencement speech to the Kenyon College class of 2005. “The only thing we get to choose is what to worship.” Adam Kelly in his reading of Wallace’s sincerity concludes that for communication to exist at all a leap of Blind Faith is required of the listener. The sincere artist not only accepts the condition that it is normal to construct meaning out of unexplainable experiences but also risks being seen as sentimental and weak by positing such moral questions as: How do I know if there is a God? How do I live, whether there is a God or not? These questions, ones that Allen persistently foregrounds in his films, would be brought back to the surface.

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During the Protestant Reformation, the Christian would become sincere, that is, present or sound, by confessing in private his or her sins to God—one could not be sincere without having first sinned---while only God could become sincere through a written text. It was the Romantics who believed that a poet, in the God-like position of author, could become present through a form of absence. The poet could become sound, present, sincere, so long as he confesses that he is a human. Such is the required courage of the sincere artist; to be willing to not only remain human as a character in the textual artifact, but to highlight his or her own limitations as a human. The artist does not convey an inner-truth or confess a personal sin, but rather expresses a universal, intersubjective truth. Truth is therefore not conceived empirically, but rather holistically as a body-centered experience of a decentered subjectivity.

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Much akin to the Christian who moves to sincerity by confessing to God, Allen, the New York-based Jewish filmmaker, moves to sincerity by subjecting himself to “rigorous scrutiny” in the opening of Annie Hall. He allows the audience to judge him. However, it is wrong to claim that the audience is in the position of God; rather, in the God-like position of film director, Allen chooses to remain human as a fictional character in the film. He places himself on the same metaphysical level as the audience. By throwing himself in the work, Allen’s persona becomes projected lyrically; he becomes present, sound.  Truly, Allen becomes Alvy Singer. Riddled with direct references to the real Allen, Annie Hall’s narrative acts as a kind of psychotherapy session. All of his subconscious maladies are revealed.

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But unlike the Romantics, Allen’s sincerity is not a product of his use of language. The linguistic turn and the philosophy of Wittgenstein have since challenged the notion that through using the “language of men,” or, vernacular, a poet could connect his own heart with the heart of the reader. An expressed thought either turns into a cliché or becomes lost in translation. Words, gestures, and signs are inadequate. In one scene of Annie Hall, Alvy has to invent words in order to articulate how he feels about Annie. If not through language, then it is through posthumous publication that an artist often affirms his or her sincerity, as it indicates that he or she is not speaking truthfully for monetary gain or celebrity. This was the case for some writers such as Wordsworth, Plath, and even David Foster Wallace. But is it indeed the case that one must first die to be considered sincere? Allen’s sincerity, I argue, is located in his humor. While it may not be as convincing as being published posthumously, humor, particularly the kind that is directed at human mortality, allows Allen to bring himself closer to the audience.

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Mikhail Bakhtin in his Dialogic Imagination argues that that through humor the character of the fool is able to bring humanity into a “zone of maximal proximity.”[5] As a fool, Allen can “investigate man freely and familiarly, turn him inside out, expose the disparity between his surface and his center, between his potential and his reality.”[6] The balcony scene in Annie Hall, for example, cleverly turns Annie and Alvy “inside out” by “exposing the disparity” between their calm, collected demeanor and their frenzied, highly self-conscious thoughts. Because it proves that he is just as flawed, finite, and human as us, Allen’s humility creates a sense of trust. He is sincere. It is through laughing at death in particular, however, that Allen can express a universal, intersubjective truth. As Ted Cohen notes, “There is no more durable topic than death. It is permanent and universal. Jokes about death are virtually inevitable, and they will be with us until we either stop joking altogether, or we stop dying.”[7]

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Indeed, Alvy is a character who is constantly pressured by the existential reality of his own mortality. Alvy tells Annie, “I’m obsessed with death, I think. It’s a big subject of mine.”  Annie chuckles when Allen rants about how “life is divided between the horrible and the miserable.”[8] Earlier in the film, we find that Alvy refused to do his homework as a child because he felt that the universe’s finitude rendered everything meaningless. Alvy at one point refers to his relationship as a dead shark. One of the more memorable references to death is found halfway through the film when Annie’s younger brother Duane unveils his suicidal thoughts to Alvy.

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After enduring an awkward Easter meal with the Halls, Alvy is pulled aside by Duane only to learn that he has a twisted desire to drive onto incoming traffic. Upon listening to Duane’s fantasies, Alvy replies, “Well, I have to go now, Duane, because I’m due back on planet earth.”[9] The reality and “earth” that Alvy must return to is not that of the cynical Halls—where believing in God is deemed naïve; rather, it is the reality of the Singers, where it is accepted that to be human is to be loud, irrational, and emotional. It may seem as though the Singers are chaotic, and perhaps insane, as they are visually represented in the prior scene, but real madness is found in the impossible desire to be rid of such human impulses as being superstitious and outwardly expressing emotions. This message permeates the film, but is perhaps made most clear in the psychiatrist joke told by Alvy in the last scene of the film. When trying to make sense of his relationship with Annie, Alvy ruminates:

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It was great seeing Annie again. I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother's crazy.  He thinks he's a chicken.”  And the doctor says, “Well, why don't you turn him in?”  And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”[10] 

 

According to Alvy’s psychiatrist joke, the illness that all humans suffer from is the inability to understand why we need to feel connected to others. We desperately seek a diagnosis to our irrational human nature. The only treatment, it seems, is to accept our humanity and to continue living in madness, perhaps by laughing. According to Aristotle, a child does not gain a soul and become a human being until it has its first laugh. In his Praise of Folly, Erasmus urges us to consider that we “live in folly, illusion, deception, and ignorance.”[11] Laughter in the Old Testament is a “fully human, fully acceptable response to the mystification of the world.”[12] If the value of sincerity lies in its ability preserve universal truths about what it means to be human, then perhaps the best way to be sincere would be to highlight our capacity to laugh at that which we cannot understand. Many of Allen’s films foreground the irrationality of human behavior, but only in Annie Hall does he speak directly to the audience. What begins as a seemingly narcissistic film ends up being about humankind. Allen does not make Annie Hall out of personal catharsis, as Alvy does with his play, but rather makes it to preserve a felt truth.

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Many films illuminate some truth of the human condition but by implicating himself in the story and speaking directly to the audience Allen fosters a greater sense of intimacy. The message is more direct. Jean-Luc Godard’s films might also be considered sincere in the traditional literary way, but we connect to Godard only through his personal politics. Moreover, we do not see him physically. While we hear that he is within close physical proximity to us in 2 or 3 Things I know About Her, he is still abstract and mediated. Although it is in many ways more difficult and therefore more rare to see a writer-director place him or herself in a film, Allen has shown us that it is not impossible. The New Sincerity films, meanwhile, merely use sentimentality, nostalgia, and optimism, to produce sincerity affects. While New Sincerity films are, to use Adorno and Horkheimer’s compelling phrase, “infected with sameness,” they do indicate a growing desire for a return to stories that have human beings in them, with characters that are trapped in bodies.[13] The only thing new here is the desire for sincerity, which was spurred by the writings of Wallace. If we are to value sincerity then art becomes less a mode of critique and more of what Georges Bataille might call a search for lost intimacy. Imaginative access to other selves makes us feel less alone inside. A truly sincere cinema must therefore center on the spectators’ relationship with the auteur. It is precipitated on a dialogic dimension with two human beings.  

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One of the folk etymologies of “sincerity” tells us that the term may have originated from the Latin sine cera, or “without wax.” The story behind this etymon, of course, is that when a sculptor came upon a flaw or chink in the marble, he or she would place wax on its surface in order to deceive its viewers of a perfect form. The wax blended in perfectly with the surface of the sculpture, allowing the artist to fool his or her audience of an honest and pure work of art. A clause in contracts was later added stating that all statues were required to be sine cera or without wax. A more contemporary understanding of sincerity can be found in the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, which is the art of repairing precious pottery with gold. Although kintsugi refers to pottery, the idea of highlighting damages with gold can also be applied to statues. A statue, I argue, is not sincere because it is “without wax”; rather, a statue is sincere because its cracks are highlighted “with golden wax.” The sincere artist has the courage to feature her human imperfections by accenting them with gold; she is the purveyor, proclaimer, and preserver of truth. Like the rest of humanity, she lives in madness with her illusions and laughter. She is cracked.

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Bibliography

Adorno, Theodore W. and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1944.

 

Allen, Woody. Four Films of Woody Allen. New York: Random House, 1982.

 

–––. Annie Hall. Burbank, CA: MGM, 2000, DVD.

 

Bailey, Peter J. The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

 

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Translated by Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006.

 

-–––. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1984.

 

Bataille, George. Erotism: Death and Sensuality. Translated by Mary Dalwood. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Publishers, 1986.

 

––––. Literature and Evil. Translated by Alastair Hamilton. London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 2001.

 

Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.

 

McCaffery, Larry. “An Expanded Interview with David Foster Wallace.” In Conversations with David Foster Wallace, edited by Stephen J. Burn, 21-52. Jackson, MI:  University Press of Mississippi, 2012.

 

Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

 

Wallace, David Foster. Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003.

 

–––. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” In A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, 21-82. New York: Back Bay Books, 1997.

 

–––. “David Lynch Keeps His Head.” In A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, 146-212. New York: Back Bay Books, 1997.

 

–––. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996.

 

–––. The Pale King. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2011.

 

Works Cited

[1]. R. Jay Magill Jr., Adam Kelly, and Jonathon D. Fitzgerald have each written that these films typify the New Sincerity.

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[2]. Larry McCaffery, “An Expanded Interview with David Foster Wallace,” in Conversations with David Foster Wallace, ed.

Stephen J. Burn (Jackson, MI:  University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 26.

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[3]. Larry McCaffery, “An Expanded Interview with David Foster Wallace,” in Conversations with David Foster Wallace, ed. Stephen J. Burn (Jackson, MI:  University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 22.

 

[4] Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis, MN:  University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 3-4.

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[5]. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin, TX:  University of Texas Press, 2006), 23.

 

[6]. Ibid., 35.

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[7]. Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 45.

 

[8]. Woody Allen, Four Films of Woody Allen (New York: Random House, 1982), 45.

 

[9]. Ibid., 58.

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[10]. Ibid., 105.

 

[11]. Erasmus, Praise of Folly (New York: Penguin Classics, 1971), 111.

 

[12]. Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters 51.

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[13]. Theodore W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Palo Alto, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1944), 94.