Heidi Montag’s Video: Sincere Expression? Or Parody? Yes.

Picture, if you will, that you have no idea who Heidi Montag is. Visualise it. Just pretend. Then, watch this video. [as always, via]

Okay, are you back? Good. Your brain hurts? Fine. You say your eyes are bleeding? No, no – those are just tears. Brush them aside and stick with me now. So: as you watched the video – pretending, as you did, that you do not know who Heidi Montag is – how might you tell if it was a genuine music video that would air on Much or MTV? Or, perhaps the better question is – if you didn’t know who the star of the piece was, could you tell that it wasn’t a parody of pop videos from Mad TV or SNL?

If, dear reader – and both of you are very dear to me – you might permit me some wankery and entertain my thesis: you wouldn’t. Perhaps it sounds funny or oblique, but when we engage with pop culture, by what mechanisms do we determine what is sincere and what is parodic or ironic? For me, I usually look for two things that mark out parody: exaggerations; and references to other pop culture phenomena. And how is one supposed to read the fact that Montag is so unironically marketing her sexuality and new and improved body? Her overtly – and I use the term very loosely – ‘sexy’ gyrations seem so forced, so over-the-top, so blatant, that without knowing who she is, couldn’t someone believe that they were watching a MadTV skit? After all, it is precisely those types of exaggerations that make parodies funny. They highlight the ridiculous in order to ridicule. And what of references to other phenomena? Well, c’mon:, she’s running on a beach people! Is is just me, or does taking that at face value involve pretending that Baywatch, Pamela Anderson and their status as cultural memes never happened?

What are we to do when ‘sincere’ expressions of culture out-parody parody? If the markers of satire and ironic detachment are some sort of wink or nod at the viewer, what does one do when the frame of reference by which those winks function just evaporates, the object of derision becoming more satirical than satire ever could? On some level, what you require is a line that distinguishes parody and ‘the real’, some sign that what you are watching is either heartfelt or a joke. But when ‘heartfelt’ expression has become so cynical that it seems like parody, so exaggerated that it seems grotesque, what then? We are left in the post-ironic, a phase marked by an inability to pin down whether what we are watching is sincere, ironic, meaningful or just fluff. And I think there’s a lot to be said about what the implications of that are. But for the time being – let us never ever speak of this again…