“A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mould of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea…” – Susan Sontag, Notes on 'Camp' (1964).

I’m a big fan of ineffable sensibilities as a framework for research. After wrapping up my deep dive into the “iconic” as a self-sustained genre in art, fashion and culture – which culminated in the first issue of Bagmag  (“a teen magazine for adult readers,” as I like to call it) – I started thinking: what makes things truly memorable? 

My top contender was cringe. The sublime followed soon after. Being alive is sublime, and nothing makes you feel more alive than experiencing cringe. Does that make cringe equal to the sublime? 

Cringe is a kind of enigmatic superpower. It’s uncomfortable, sure – but not inherently bad. In some cases, it even brushes up against the sublime. As with many so-called opposites (see the horseshoe theory), sometimes the only real difference between them is timing.

I decided to trace how cringe fuels cultural production and where, along the way, it might tip into the sublime. Before looking at specific examples (if specificity is even possible here), and taking a cue from Susan Sontag’s advice on describing sensibilities in words, here’s an incomplete set of notes outlining the codependent relationship between cringe and the sublime:

  1. Cringe has been classified left, right and centre. For the sake of argument, I’d boil it down to this: a strong emotional response to the recognition of a failed attempt. Nothing sublime about that, is there? And yet, cringe is omnipresent. It moves in different directions, carries different shades (ContraPoints and Maybe Baby references here).