Culture
16 Apr 01

Naff Off

No, it's not the overworked Hot Press subs finally snapping beneath the strain of a hectic production schedule but a finely argued debate by our finest writers on the phenomenon of naff. What is naff? Are you naff and if so how do you go about rectifying matters? Read on and be saved . . .

JACKIE HAYDEN

Naffness is all about us. It may even be a part of what we are, an intrinsic part of our national psyche, like knowing things we don’t know.

It’s toys in the rear windows of cars,

stickers with a heart-shape instead of the actual word,

radio DJs coming over all amazed about some mindnumbingly trivial item they read in a newspaper,

artists telling you what a great audience you are,

Irish politicians believing that the public regard them as honourable and respectable,

wearing strings around your neck to hold your pen,

television ads that pretend to use the voices of ‘ordinary people’, taxi drivers explaining how they know for a fact that the national lottery is fixed,

folk masses,

amateur sportspersons who insist on purchasing the most expensive gear available in their efforts to convince themselves they can actually play,

requests on radio programmes,

people who show you photos of themselves with celebrities you’ve never heard of,

horse racing enthusiasts who wave at the TV camera from behind the commentator,

personalised car registration numbers,

rock bands thinking they are being really rebellious by trying to shock people,

priests who pretend to be just like everybody else,

The Sultans Of Ping,

Irish people who tell you that John Major seems like a nice man, shouting ‘yow’ during Irish music sessions

and wearing baseball caps backwards.

Liam Fay

TO SEE naff is to know naff. It is important to remember though that there are degrees of these things and that there is a difference, for instance, between being naff and being wanky. A student with a goatee is wanky. Dating a student with a goatee is naff. (Unless, of course, the student with a goatee is a woman – Ed)

The quickest route to true naffness is to aspire to be seen as sophisticated. People who say ‘touché’ or ‘Je ne sais quoi’ are profoundly naff, even if they’re French – especially if they’re French. Use of the phrase ‘Hasta la vista’ also confers an immediate badge of naffosity. People who say ‘ciao’, meanwhile, should be shot dead the minute they turn their backs.

Daniel O’Donnell isn’t naff, but the thousands of Daniel O’Donnell clones who now infest the Irish country music circuit are. Everything to do with the sorry, soggy saga of Jack’s Army is naff. Politicians are naff. Toupees are naff. A politician with a toupee, however, is Donie Cassidy.

The naff catalogue is an horrendous litany. Read ’em and weep. Poplin raincoats, Dr. Hook, car magazines, knowing all the lyrics of ‘My Way’, blouson jackets, tapioca, heroin, Twink, bunches of keys dangling from belt loops, women who refer to their periods as their ‘friends’, string vests, Gardaí, Fine Gael, Boz Scaggs, houses with names, UTV light entertainment shows (especially those presented by Gerry Kelly), Des Rushe’s Words To The Wise in the Irish Independent, sideburns, stripograms, sandwich spreads, rhyming slang, organisations with ‘Peace’ in their title, the 2FM Beat On The Street, Chris De Burgh’s mea culpa routines, Willie O’Dea’s moustache, Willie O’Dea, and, I’ve just now realised, lists that are preceded by the words ‘Read ’em and weep’.

Ultimately, though, if you’re looking for a simple encapsulation of the concept of naff, a living embodiment of the zeitgeist that is Übernaff, then I’ve got two words for you. Those words are Marty Whelan.

igeorge byrne

My trusty OED defines ‘naff’ as “1: unfashionable; socially awkward. 2: worthless; rubbishy.” Fair enough, but within those definitions there lurks a veritable minefield of interpretation and recrimination. Yes, it’s our old friends eyes and beholders, back to plague us yet again.

Taste, like soul is very much a matter of personal choice and never moreso than in one’s definition of naffness. Something – or indeed someone – speedily dispatched to one man’s knacker’s yard could assume the allure of an acre on another punter’s patch and once more we’re back in the realm of ceilings/floors, meats/poisons and Rovers/Bohs.

What’s very important in all of this is to be careful not to mistake what’s merely tatty (or ‘Jacques’ as us slumslang cineliterate kids used to joshingly rhyme it) with the cred-crushing, leper’s bell status of the stupendously, stupidly naff.

Let’s go back to that decade which shall forever live both in our hearts and infamy for a few examples. The Seventies gave the world a ten-year span in which the best and worst excesses of human behaviour vied with each other and nary a clue as to the outcome. When not being regularly Godlike, ABBA could be tatty but no matter how shite they occasionally became they always stayed on the right side of the line, consigning Brotherhood Of Man, Boney M, The Goombay Dance Band and Pussycat to the hellish nether regions.

Basically, if you have to ask what is naff then you’ll never truly know and thus be doomed to continually lie about past transgressions of taste. We’ve all loved the wrong albums, had the wrong haircut and worn clothes that even an E’d-up blind Baggy would have rejected if you’d promised them a Happy Mondays backstage pass . . . but we’ve lived and are much better people for it.

There are still plenty of traps out there for young people (Don’t – under any circumstances – admit that you entered the NME Fantasy Rock League . . . not even ‘for a bit of a laugh’) and us thirtysomething media types can still blow a decade or more’s worth of worming and cajoling by appearing on Play The Game or The Lyrics Board (irony is no excuse here).

However, should all else fail and you’re still unsure as to how to react when faced with a potentially embarrassing purchase or action just sit yourself down, take a deep breath, then, with the sternest tone you can muster, tell yourself to “Naff Off!”. And you can look that up under a separate dictionary definition!

CATHY DILLON

THE WORD “Naff”, once used to describe the results of unconscious bad taste, has of course lost its meaning in this confusing old post-modern world. In a wonderful – if aesthetically disastrous – twist of fashion what was once naff is now, by virtue of its very naffness, cool.

It started with the Seventies revival. Long reviled as the decade that taste forgot, suddenly its music and fashion is undergoing a huge revival – mainly, of course, among those too young to remember those pre-punk musical and sartorial atrocities the first time round.

Personally, no amount of endorsement by Evan Dando will make me buy an Abba record. Ditto Sonic Youth and The Carpenters. Barry Manilow, reputedly the next candidate for rehabilitation, is another matter. The prospect of having the genuinely so-appalling-it’s-funny ‘Copacabana’ and that other one about not eating yoghurt and getting caught in the rain in the charts gives me an inexplicable thrill.

Quentin Tarantino (whose Pulp Fiction has revived the career of the hitherto decidedly naff movie star John Travolta) and the recent rash of movies with ‘white-trash’ themes have made significant contributions to the deconstruction of the style aesthetic. Recently the hipper style magazines have begun running fashion spreads that they usually headline Trailer Park Chic. These feature models who try hard to look as though they have IQs in single figures wearing clothes that manage to make even Kate Moss look hideous.

In a world where the white stiletto – once a universal bench-mark of naffness – is rumoured to be making a comeback, nothing is safe. The ‘style-must-eat-itself-it’s-an-ironic-statement’ line is all very well but ugly is still ugly.

Some things are inherently naff. From day one furry dice, Roxette records and sequinned boob tubes were execrable. With most things however it’s mass production that steals the soul. This applies even in Pop culture. Dire Straits were once a hip band. Men with ponytails were Bohemian.

The rare things that survive being utterly hackneyed tend to become classics. Beatles records, biker jackets, white t-shirts and that Robert Doisneau poster of the couple kissing – all common as muck but still some beautiful. Ditto REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’, the Batman logo and countless other gems of pop culture.

Still, naffness may be becoming so chic that it’s only a matter of time before celebrity couples begin naming their children Sharon and Tracy and Nigel but I, for one, cling to the belief that, no matter what, Chris De Burgh will never, ever, be hip.

FAY WOLFTREE

NAFFNESS is an outward expression of inner delusion, the culprits being frequently endowed with an explicable and unshakeable sense of self-confidence. The naff go to great lengths to be hip, clever or sexy. It’s just that they get it completely and hilariously wrong. Being naff is not like being old-fashioned or un-cool: pretentiousness is a vital ingredient if you seek to be truly naff.

Here then are a few of my unfavouritest things, all of which score right off the Naffometer.

Long guitar solos played by men whose facial expressions suggest they’re trying very hard to have a shit while having their testicles put through a mincer. Slowly.

Classic rock hits: ‘Stairway To Heaven’, ‘Lighter Shade Of Pale’, ‘Freebird’, ‘Hotel California’, ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ etc.

Pompous popular music which purports to be expressing very real, very human emotions. U2 being a prime example. Those other people, what are they called, Miasma? Enema? I forget. Most love songs which chart. All MOR. Orchestral arrangements of pop and rock hits. Pretty much everything in the charts at Christmas.

Blouson jackets. Wearing jeans with the kind of shirt you wear with a suit. Garments/footwear fabricated from grey, blue or green leather. Just say ‘No’. White socks with loafers. Blue Stratos, Brut, Old Spice, Denim . . . Blonde highlights – particularly when coupled with an unconvincing perm. (Applies to both sexes).

Flashing your chest hair (they’re only migrant pubes, after all). Nice new punk t-shirts worn with bondage trousers with a seam down the front where your Mum’s ironed them.

Tattoos involving swallows, anchors, hearts, death’s heads, naked women with big bazoomas, daggers, roses, crosses or snakes.

Pine furniture. Teak-effect furniture. Wood-effect panelling. Stone-effect fire surrounds. Faked nature in the home.

Impressionist and pre-Raphaelite prints with the name of the painting and the artist in nice, big letters printed underneath the picture. Photographic posters of naked man holding baby; laughing couple walking hand in hand by the sea; black baby and white baby cuddled up together; playful kittens; naughty puppies. Yeeeuch!

Shite American comedies such as Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Home Alone, Three Men And A Baby. Anything involving Whoopi Goldberg, children or animals. Journalists turning out lists of what’s hot and what’s rot. Who the fuck do they think they are, anyway?

Lorraine Freeney

WHAT’S NAFF? If naff is taken to mean unfashionable or outmoded, then I have absolutely no idea. Fashions, apparently, come and go, but my taste in clothes hasn’t altered significantly in the last ten years – apart from the school uniform and the PE kit which I now wear only on very special occasions of if someone asks me nicely.

The only items of apparel I know for a fact to be naff are those little Babe Power cropped t-shirts and anything worn by Bianca from Eastenders. Otherwise, I am clueless. So let’s just define naff as whatever I personally find irritating and saddening.

In my kingdom of naffness, body piercing rules. It’s unsightly, painful, and utterly, utterly pointless. It’s not a way of expressing your individuality, merely a means of signifying allegiance with the hordes of other sad, self-mutilators our there. Likewise, tattoos are naff. Wednesdays are naff.

Vegetarian sausages – in fact, any of those vegetarian products that aim to replicate the flavour and texture of meat – they’re supremely naff. I’m vegetarian, I chose to stop eating meat, so why the hell would I want to be reminded of the taste all the time? It brings to mind what Bill Hicks once said – when/if Jesus returns to earth, do you think he’s going to be thrilled to see everyone wearing crucifixes? Using the same logic, should people have sympathised with Jackie Onassis by pinning miniature hand-guns to their lapels? (I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the idea).

Ditto alcohol-free lager – I mean, what’s the point? Hmm? Discmans are naff, but only because I can’t afford one. Certain sports are intrinsically naff, particularly that walking race thingy in the Olympics. The object of a race is surely to cover a certain distance in as short a time as possible, in which case all those athletes would be better off running. They may as well have a Grand Prix in which the competitors push the cars rather than drive them.

The television ad for Tamphets where that woman witters on about the fact that she thought records were fine till she heard CDs, and then demonstrates the freedom and bodily confidence her Tamphets give her by jumping over the back of her couch and switching her CD player on with the remote control – now that is naff. Firstly, she was already standing by the CD player five seconds ago, and could have switched it on personally. Secondly, the energy expended in jumping over the couch surely exceeds whatever she saves by using a remote control. And she’s got crap taste in music.

Bet she eats vegetarian sausages too.

Siobhán long

and finally a dissenting voice

NAFF – what is it? Damned if I know. It’s a word that’s seldom crept into my vocabulary, and then only in those fleeting moments when I lose the run of myself completely. (Hard to imagine, I know, but it happens to the best of us betimes).

It’s an elusive thing, this ‘naff’. Finds itself flitting between locations with an Albert Reynolds-like zeal, a devil-may-care abandon. In essence, it’s the ultimate symptom of the Alzheimer’s disease that’s creeping through the vocabulary of a select sector of the population along the East Coast . . .

One minute it’s a Pom’s watery attempt at rubbishing all that’s deemed uncool, hick even. Clinically it’s probably a manifestation of a worrisome word-finding difficulty (medical classification: ‘anomia’), an affliction to be found lurking in more than average percentage of the population who pride themselves in their command of the King’s English.

Then again, ‘naff’ finds itself ensconced, bushel-like, in the numerous gaping holes of a poser’s world knowledge. In other words, what they don’t know is rapidly assigned to the ‘naff’ bin so as to avoid grossly inconveniencing oneself by actually becoming better informed.

Other favoured ‘naff’ locations include: inarticulate descriptions of TV newsreaders’ attire; sundry haircuts that cost anything less than an arm and a leg – and any record collection that predates the review section of this month’s issue of NME.

‘Naff’ is a child of the Andy Warhol soundbyte generation, for remote (controlled) kids and goldfish whose short-term memory spans would be hard pressed to pass the five second barrier. The age of the moronic inferno is upon us and ‘naff’ comes gift wrapped in the middle of it for the inarticulate and plainly anomic among us.

Thing is, oh joy! It hasn’t managed to navigate its way beyond the Pale yet. And I’m damned if I’m going to signpost the way.

NAFF CORNER

XMAS CLICHÉS

“It’s only for the kids.”

“It’s on you before you know it.”

“There’s never anything on the telly.”

“I’ve turkey coming out of me arse.”

“Never again.”

MEDIA NAFF

Irish Times writers reviewing each other’s books.

Sunday Indo writers interviewing each other.

Disc jockeys with moustaches.