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February 17, 2010
Notes on Whimsy
This was the entry to a longer piece that I started a few weeks ago and then promptly forgot, inspired by a viewing of Spike Jonze's I'm Here at Sundance.
Whimsy is a delicate thing. As much an art in and of itself as a quality of art, it is capable of execution with as many varying degrees of quality as its outriding vehicles. Like wit, whimsy is a stealthy property, able to slip itself into the direst of straits. Wit is a razor, whereas whimsy is a dirigible, holding its host aloft against the general pull of reason.
Whimsy is a gentle transposition of expectations. A shift in color or proportion in a Magritte painting is whimsical. It is also surreal, a trait which, like irony, whimsy frequently trades in but which it is not interchangeable with. It frequently plays upon the extant, but it needn't alter it so much as widen our perception of it. In other words, it surprises us, but doesn't shake us from our footing. Flight Of The Bumblebee, for example, is whimsical, and it expands our comprehension of what Korsakov's opera is while leaving no doubt in our minds that we are, indeed, still listening to Korsakov's opera.
Like wit, whimsy often works - and works best - when its innate frivolity is a subterfuge. But give melodrama an inch and it'll combust all over, and hence what is whimsical will often come crashing down when buoyed by too much pathos - a great Hindenburg of caprice. This is often what we mean when we say that something is precious; its whimsy is leaden.
Posted by David Lowery at February 17, 2010 8:22 PM