The use of "new sincerity" in connection with these bands began with an off-handed comment by Austin punk rock artist and author Jesse Sublett to his friend, local music writer Margaret Moser.
True Believers, led by Alejandro Escovedo and Jon Dee Graham, also received extensive critical praise and local acclaim in Austin, but the band had difficulty capturing its live sound on recordings, among other problems.
[4][12] Despite extensive critical attention (including national coverage in Rolling Stone and a 1985 episode of the MTV program The Cutting Edge), none of the "new sincerity" bands met with much commercial success, and the "scene" ended within a few years.
[13][14] Other music writers have used "new sincerity" to describe later performers Arcade Fire,[15] Conor Oberst,[16] Cat Power, Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom,[17] Neutral Milk Hotel,[18] Sufjan Stevens,[19] Idlewild,[20] as well as Austin's Okkervil River[21] Leatherbag,[22] and Michael Waller.
[24]Sources:[25][26][27][28][29][30][31] In response to the hegemony of metafictional and self-conscious irony in contemporary fiction, writer David Foster Wallace predicted, in his 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction",[1] a new literary movement which would espouse something like the new sincerity ethos: The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of "anti-rebels," born oglers who dare to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall to actually endorse single-entendre values.
[2] Additionally, numerous authors have been described as contributors to the new sincerity movement, including Jonathan Franzen, Marilynne Robinson,[33] Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers,[34] Stephen Graham Jones,[35] Michael Chabon,[36][37][38] and Victor Pelevin.
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, published an editorial a few weeks after the attacks claiming that "this was the end of the age of irony".
[49] One such example of a "new sincerity" movement is the brony fandom, generally adult and primarily male fans of the 2010 animated show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic which is produced by Hasbro to sell its toys to young girls.
[52] In the early 2020s, the shift toward a more overt embrace of new sincerity was codified in James Poniewozik's New York Times piece titled, "How TV Went From David Brent to Ted Lasso.
"[53] Poniewozik details the shift, arguing that "In TV's ambitious comedies, as well as dramas, the arc of the last 20 years is not from bold risk-taking to spineless inoffensiveness.
Poniewozik goes on to address possible impetus for doing away with the disjoint between writer and character ascribing some cause to what Emily Nussbaum calls "bad fans",[54] but the thrust of his critique centers on the possible shift towards the representation of new and previously unrepresented voices.
The voices and faces of the medium have diversified, and if you're telling the stories of people and communities that TV never made room for before, skewering might not be your first choice of tone.
"[55] With this perspective in mind and considering the shift towards an embrace of diverse views and opinions,[56] the appearance of new sincerity in film and television is understandable if not expected.
However, it is important to note that prior to the current shift towards new sincerity, popular culture had embraced a period of "high irony", as Poniewozik deems it.
[59] Other poets named as associated with this movement, or its tenets, have included David Berman, Catherine Wagner, Dean Young, Matt Hart, Miranda July (who is also a filmmaker herself),[60] Tao Lin,[60] Steve Roggenbuck,[60] D. S. Chapman, Frederick Seidel, Arielle Greenberg,[17] Karyna McGlynn, and Mira Gonzalez.