Being American: The Voice of the Sock Monkey

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I. The Diamond-Studded Lemur

I used the phrase "Ironic Lite" in the previous post, referring to a communication style that's popular now.
It's a precocious style that might include, say, composing a song about your sock monkey's preference for root crops.

I don't know if it's prevalent all over the Western world, but recently this clever style has become one of the dominant ways of communicating in the United States, among certain groups. *

"Ironic Lite" is too sharp-edged to be the right name.
I'm going to call it Voice of the Sock Monkey, because it often includes some sort of exotic but endearing, possibly endangered or old-fashioned, animal or toy.

Like, here, I found this on Vitaminwater's Facebook page:

"take that refund check and spend it on something important like a pet lemur named 'richard' or diamond-encrusted belt buckle that reads 'head honcho'. what are you going to spend your tax refund on?"
[image from Nat'l Geographic.]

(Need I mention, the speakers/consumers of Sock Monkey are usually not poor.)


II. Sock Monkey Mammy

I went looking for images of sock monkeys, and they're more popular than I realized.
After scanning through many pictures, it struck me that there's a kind of frightening old-fashioned "cozy" (to whites) racism to sock monkeys, with their soft brown color and thick lips sewn shut.
Like the myth of Mammy or the old picture of Aunt Jemima, they are meant to be comforting to the privileged children they care for.

This Obama sock monkey was meant for supporters of Obama. The makers pulled it after accusations of racism, but you can hear the hurt in their voice, because they are nice white children who meant no harm.

If only the harm done by people who meant no harm didn't count.

I don't mean people who speak Sock Monkey are racist.
The common element isn't the toy, it's the child.
How comforting to think of oneself as a privileged child, since children are not repsonsible for the social inequality they benefit from. And how dangerous.
There's nothing wrong with being children.
Except when we're not.

III. Putting Padding Between Oneself and Horror

I say the Voice of the Sock Monkey has become popular recently, but I don't know since when.
Could it be since 9/11?

I'm tempted to say so, because as an American, to express authentic hopes after 9/11, even if you speak very intelligently, opens you up to charges of naiveté, opens you up to ridicule.
While to express authentic fears is again to make yourself vulnerable to social disapproval:
no one wants to hear that fear because they feel impotent in its presence too.

This was probably always the case in the past too, more or less. No one likes prophets of doom, and "laugh today, cry tomorrow" is an old formula warning against being too happy: it will bring bad luck.

I suppose we just come up with new ways to pad our hopes and fears to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
If I tell you my sock monkey lives in the root cellar, there's enough of the padding of humor to make the palpable fear palatable.

There is irony in this style, just not full-on irony. You can see--are supposed to see--the tender heart underneath. But if you come at that heart with a stick, the sock monkey can step in front and take the jab.

Sock Monkey/Irony Lite seems to me to be the protective voice of someone who's smart and educated enough to express themselves smoothly but not sure where to go from there.

In some ways, it's the voice of a young person--though it is not just people in their teens and twenties who use it-- like Holden Caulfield, feeling their way forward in a hostile world. Reluctant to take on full adulthood because the mantle of power that goes with it looks--is--so heavy and cumbersome.

Maybe that's why it feels so American to me.
We are a young nation, in so many ways... precocious and powerful, but not sure what to do with that.
And then, we get hit--hard, on the nose--and now we're even more unsure.

But don't make the mistake of confusing Sock Monkey, who truly does not want to hurt, with a being who is unable to hurt.
That sweet hand is quite capable of dropping the sock monkey and pulling the trigger--and then feeling truly and horribly sorry afterward.

I like Sock Monkey/Irony Lite the way I like Holden Caulfield:
I recognize myself in it, and I really like the tender heart that peeks through.

Today, in fact, I relate a lot, because I'm sick with a fever (spring cold? or flu). I feel little,
the way you get when you know you couldn't defend yourselves against ravening wolves. I felt this way when I came home after I gave blood for the first time (almost fainted twice), and took to my bed with my toy panda.

So, I'm sympathetic to the Voice of the Sock Monkey, even if I don't want to hear much of it.

IV. The Monkey on Our Back

Here's what seems to me the Most Important Thing:
Like it or not, the Voice of the Sock Monkey is an expression of people who are feeling their way (one hopes) toward growing up (even if they are in their forties).
As such, I am fine with it. We all need comfort and funny voices.

Who am I to judge, with my Captain Kirk obsession?
(That's organic vitamin-fortified Saurian brandy he's drinking, in a reusable container. And his makeup was not tested on animals.)

But what I do judge negatively is the theft or co-option of that voice by marketing.
There's nothing authentic about the top quote from Vitaminwater, owned by a subsidiary of Coca-Cola, btw (link to Wikipedia). The clever quirky copy on its every label was mindfully composed to sell colored water in a plastic bottle.

V. Rebel, Rebel

Here's an idea of how to resist this particular marketing:
Eat oranges.

Really. I read on one of your blogs (RR's?) that people aren't eating many oranges because they don't want to do the work of peeling them.
We could start a rebel group...

VI. Mockery and Mufflers

I've been wanting to write about this peculiar American voice for a while.
What triggered me today is this interview with David Foster Wallace, who does not use it.

[Below, part 3 of 10, from 2003; sent to me by Lee. Thanks, Lee!]

Wallace says here--with awareness of the paradoxical bind he's in--that he thinks the idea, the work, of being a citizen is important.
He's ashamed to say stuff like that, he says, because "it'd be very easy to make fun of what I'm saying." He says he can hear the mocking voices in his head.

Boy, do I recognize this.

I think this is where the Voice of the Sock Monkey comes in. It muffles the voices inside our heads and the mockery outside.

Wallace does not use a muffler.
You can see him working hard to speak authentically here, wriggling to get around the blockades of doubt and dismay, which are visibly, in his body language, present.



And now, me and my fever are going to take a nap with Stuffed Panda.
But first I'm going to eat an orange.
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* Besides Sock Monkey or Irony Lite, another popular modern style is belligerence, which we've seen a lot of lately.
Possibly belligerence is an expression of people who feel intellectually insecure;
while Ironic Lite is the expression of people who feel emotionally insecure?

Country-Western tends toward belligerence;
bright young things tend to employ Irony Lite.

P.S. An earlier post, on a related subject: Being American: Cheetohs and Arrogance.

I think the Voice of the Sock Monkey is also related to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl phenomenon.
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2016 Update, via Tumblr--The Sock Monkey Abides!