The It Crowd
“I used to be with it,” Abe Simpson once pronounced, “but then they changed what it was. Now, what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me. And it will happen to you, too.”
I’ve been thinking about “it” a lot recently. It’s only natural that The Simpsons, the foundational text of my youth, would possess somewhere within its multitudes this perfect expression of losing “it”. The older I get, the less with it I increasingly become, and the more questions I begin to ask of it. “Is this it?” The Strokes once asked through the filtered ennui of their debut album. Is this it, I now ask myself. Is this it? Is this?
One group of people who know what it is are the swollen and sunburnt residents of ITV2’s Love Island. Like most of the rest of the nation, I’ve become addicted to their escapades - Curtis’ drama school theatrics and creepy youth pastor energy, Tommy Fury’s leonine proclamations, Lucie’s desperate attempts to make the expression “bev” catch on. It is central to these people. It has literally become their catchphrase this season: “It is what it is”. It Is What It Is has become everything to them, from a heartfelt bleat of resignation to a triumphant declaration of objective truth. It is simple to the point of banality yet it would take a philosopher volumes to unpack - the all-conquering expression. It Is What It Is.
On one level, of course it is what it is. It could hardly be anything other. X is what x is, y is what y is. What’s done is done, what will be will be, what it is, it is. For good or for ill, the thing is always itself. Best to just accept it. Missed the bus? It is what it is. Missed a penalty? It is what it is.
But there’s also something affirmative and positive about it. When other things have misled or deceived, when something has turned out not to be what you thought, don’t despair - it is what it is. It has permanence. It has consistency. It will never let you down.
And then we come back to Abe and his sage old words. “Then they changed what it was”.
What Carlsberg was, was a known quantity. It was reliably one of the cheapest lagers available. It was domestic strength but with continental branding. It was nice green cans and snappy slogans you could quote in conversations. It was rarely anyone’s first choice. It did the job.
But they changed what it was, from “head to hop”. They admitted, shock horror, it probably wasn’t the best beer in the world. They committed to changing its recipe, rebranding it as a “Danish Pilsner”, focusing on quality and not just price. It it what it is. But apparently it is not what it was.
Trying to describe the flavour of new Carlsberg feels a bit like trying to interpret the phrase “it is what it is” - a circular exercise, infinitely self-referential, with no beginning and no end. Have you had a mass-produced lager before? It tastes like that. It’s inoffensive, broadly subtle, not sweet enough to count as cereal or biscuit, not bitter enough to bring to mind herbs or astringent grassiness. It doesn’t contain fruit or funk. It’s just dry enough to encourage the next gulp. It is pleasant enough in an absent-minded way, without pushing me to say it’s good, exactly. Is it better than it was?
As noted philosopher Thomas Furious would say, with a shrug and a smile: it is what it is.