A few weeks back my friend Evan from the very excellent group The Pathways sent this email about an essay he's been formulating for a while. It's something I've also been meaning to write about for a while, and hopefully I will post my piece later today. Meanwhile, if you have something you want to contribute to Evan's project I'm sure he'd like to hear from you. evankindley at gmail is the address you can reach him on.
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So, I'm finally beginning to write an article I've been thinking about doing for a year or two, called "Notes on Twee" — a response to Susan Sontag's famous "Notes on Camp" essay, published in 1964. And I would like your help!
What I'd like from you all are ideas of cultural phenomena — anything: books, films, fashion, art, music, social mores, etc. — which you think belong under the general heading of "twee." (I'm going to refrain from defining the term for you from the outset, but I'm guessing you all have at least some vague sense of what it means. In fact, people's different senses of what it means is part of what interests me about it, so if you want to include a provisional definition along with your examples, I'd be grateful for that as well.)
Contemporary manifestations are welcome, as is old stuff, though my focus will be on objects and events dating from after Sontag's essay, i.e. mid-60s onward. I'm particularly interested in websites, since I think I'll be devoting a fair amount of space to the resurgence of a twee aesthetic on the internet. I'm less interested in hearing about music (bands, etc.) because I feel like I already have a good handle on what "twee" means in music, but feel free to make suggestions anyway. And, finally, I'd like to hear from people in both pro- and anti-twee camps: that is, if you hate the word and everything associated with it, I'd still like to know what you think those things are.
Thanks in advance for your help with this! (And of course you don't have to write back much, just whatever pops into your head. I won't even be mad if you don't write back at all.)
Best,
Evan
P.S. Sontag's essay is here, in case you feel like perusing it: http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html
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