In Film Criticism
Critic Jim Collins introduced the concept of "new sincerity" to film criticism in his 1993 essay entitled “Genericity in the 90s: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity.” In this essay he contrasts films that treat genre conventions with "eclectic irony" and those that treat them seriously, with "new sincerity." Collins describes
the 'new sincerity' of films like Field of Dreams (1989), Dances With Wolves (1990), and Hook (1991), all of which depend not on hybridization, but on an "ethnographic" rewriting of the classic genre film that serves as their inspiration, all attempting, using one strategy or another, to recover a lost "purity," which apparently pre-existed even the Golden Age of film genre.
Other critics have suggested "new sincerity" as a descriptive term for work by American filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, P. T. Anderson, Todd Louiso, Sofia Coppola, and Charlie Kaufman, Zach Braff, and Jared Hess, and filmmakers from other countries such as Michel Gondry, Lars von Trier, the Dogme 95 movement, Aki Kaurismäki, and Pedro Almodóvar. The "aesthetics of new sincerity" have also been connected to other art forms including "reality television, Internet blogs, diary style 'chicklit' literature, personal videos on You-Tube. . . . "
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