Mumblecore: An early-21st-century independent film movement. Mumblecore films are populated by characters in their late teens and early twenties who have difficulty expressing their confusion about love, work, and life in general (hence "mumble"; the -core suffix is most likely a nod to hard-core and soft-core). Practitioners of mumblecore (also spelled with a capital m) are sometimes called the mumblecorps.
In "A Generation Finds Its Mumble," New York Times arts writer Dennis Lim identifies Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha-Ha (2002) as "the film that kicked off the mumblecore wave." Other films in the genre include Aaron Katz's Dance Party USA (2006) and Quiet City (2007) and Jay and Mark Duplass's The Puffy Chair. Lim writes that "mumblecore" was coined during the 2005 South by Southwest Film Festival by Bujalski's sound mixer, Eric Masunaga.
For more on mumblecore, see this article in IndieFilmPedia.
Update: Erin discusses -core as a snowclone morpheme on her blog, Snowclones.org.
Hmm, -core seems to be developing into a snowclone morpheme. There's also nerdcore, as in rap, also in reference to hardcore. Now if I could only figure out how to search for other variants.
Posted by: Erin | August 20, 2007 at 09:50 AM
CORE CURRICULUM
The -core suffix is widespread in modern music. User Wikiman232 details 57 of them, including queercore, gothcore, mathcore (dissonant 'noise rock'), metalcore (metal and punk), cuntcore (Vain Jane in 1997, to satirize 'cock rock'), speedcore (superfast), and thugcore (hiphop and metal). He also lists 2 insult '-core' names and 33 obscure names. (The others weren't obscure?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikiman232/List_of_music_genres_suffixed_-core
'Mumblecore' sounds like a breakthrough extension: I found no youth culture '-core' neologisms outside of hardcore rock.
232 also notes record labels Bubblecore, Housecore Records, and Punkcore Records, and bands Bloodcore and Redcore.
Now who says Wikipedia isn't indispensible?
--daveB
Posted by: Dave Blake | August 21, 2007 at 04:55 AM
Fantastic research, Dave. Thank you!
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | August 21, 2007 at 07:21 AM
Is it only a coincidence that it rhymes with Dumbledore? I'm probably getting my generations mixed up--but it seems as if there are so many of them these days!
Posted by: Bob Cumbow | August 24, 2007 at 11:00 AM
Haha, it is just a coincidence, Bob, but Google thought I meant "Dumbledore" when I searched for "mumblecore"!
Posted by: Erin | August 25, 2007 at 08:02 AM