The word weird has so many different meanings, depending on who you go to. It is a word that is thrown around casually to describe people and feelings. It's become a really casual term, like the word "love." Also, like someone said in class earlier, it's become popular these days to braggingly call yourself "weird" or "quirky," kind of like how it's recently become popular to ascribe various mental illnesses to yourself. It's been in fashion lately for people to try to stand out more, but stand out in a way that's still socially acceptable. There are certain mental illnesses that people over-diagnose themselves with, and others that people shy away from. There are certain "weird" and "quirky" attributes that people will try to absorb, and others that people still have stigma toward. This has become so popular it has a meme now!
It seems like people are always trying to decide which level of clichéness they're okay with for themselves, and they judge whoever is on a lower level of clichéness. But they also judge some of the people who are on a higher level, and some of the people who are on the same level, like they feel like what they're doing is more genuine than what other people are doing. In general, though, I think this trend is nice for kids because I think it might decrease bullying a little, and nice for people in general because it makes you feel a little safer to reveal parts of yourself that you normally wouldn't.
To me, the term is something that is more of a feeling that we apply a word to than a word that can be easily described. It's easy to call something weird, and know when something is weird, and if someone else calls something weird, you can usually agree with them. I think that it's not as easy to pinpoint exactly what makes one decide that something is weird, though. Sometimes if you look at two different things that you truly believe are both weird, it can still be hard to find a connecting line between them that originally made you decide both of them are weird.
The word weird also has a dictionary definition.
1) involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly or uncanny:
a weird sound; weird lights.
2) fantastic; bizarre:
a weird getup.
The dictionary definition gets closer to my interpretation of the critical genre of the "new weird." I had actually never heard of this genre before my introduction to it in this class, but I think I can see what the meaning of the term encompasses. I was never sure what a book like Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk would be classified as. I probably would have lumped The Cabin in the Woods into the horror genre, but there is definitely more to it than a normal horror movie. "New weird" makes sense as a genre for both of these works. They both take something that we've seen before, but put a spin on it that makes it really unique. Both The Cabin in the Woods and Lullaby are based in the horror genre, but they're done in a unique way.
A side fact is that in high school I was really into Chuck Palahniuk. I read Fight Club, Diary, Haunted, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke and part of Pygmy (though I didn't finish it because I didn't like it). It was actually just as I was about to start reading Lullaby, which was next on my list, that my parents said, "Hmm, we see that you have been into this Chuck fellow lately. Let's see what this is about!" As you might already know, Lullaby was influenced by the brutal murder of Palahniuk's father and girlfriend. So, my parents were really disturbed by this and decided to ban me from reading any more of Chuck's books. So I finally read the book that I had initially set out to read about four years ago! Lullaby was definitely very similar in writing style to Chuck's other famous books. It had the same use of short choppy sentences and repeated phrases and lack of certain types of punctuation. One difference in the writing was that this one alternated between past and present tense. Also, this was the first horror genre story I'd read by him. Diary had supernatural elements too but this one had them more strongly. Other parts of this book reminded me of Invisible Monsters. Though I don't remember Invisible Monsters super well, I remember there was a group of weird characters who went on a sort of road trip. Lullaby also featured a weird cast going on a road trip, though their road trip had more of a purpose. They also both had nonlinear structures.
From Lullaby and The Cabin in the Woods, I think it might also be safe for me to gather that works in the "new weird" genre have their own unique, satirical tones. Lullaby's tone is witty, meticulous, and dry. The Cabin in the Woods' tone is rather tongue-in-cheek, comedic, and heavily satirical. At points in the movie, it also had a shallow tone, which was intentional. They used this shallow tone for the parts where the "gamemaker"-type people putting the movie together were working or talking or partying afterward. They were disconnected from the feelings of the people in the movie and were very business- and money-oriented. Their shallow lack of empathy added to the satire feeling of the movie because it was shown back-to-back with characters in sheer terror and confusion. It trivialized the feelings of the people in the movie-within-the-movie. It was very different from the tone of a normal horror movie.
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