by Jon Winokur
—Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (circa 1418)
If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.
—Spider Robinson, God Is an Iron (1977)
It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator—our very self-consciousness—is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.
—Pierre-Auguste Renoir (attributed)
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
—Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (1986)
If irony isn’t literally wired into the human brain, it seems an inevitable response to the human condition. The original ironic juxtaposition, after all, is the spirit plunked down in the material world—a brief sample of the eternal popped into the mechanical drum track of time. Unless somebody figures out how to get comfortable with that, irony’s going to be with us until the whole mess comes crashing down. Oh, well. At least we get the last laugh.
—David Gates, “Will We Ever Get Over Irony?” Newsweek, January 1, 2000
AMICABLE IRONY
Ritual irony among friends, as when guys insult each other affectionately, or when fellow members of the same race or ethnic group greet each other with ethnic slurs. (No examples will be supplied.)
AUTO-IRONY (AKA SELF-IRONY, SELF-REFLEXIVE IRONY, SELF-PARODY)
Feigned self-effacement; irony that seeks to disarm one’s critics by making fun of oneself. The auto-ironist says, in effect, “Hey, I don’t take myself seriously—I’m a regular person, just like you!” The 1950s movie actor George Hamilton, for example, has kept himself marginally in the public eye for decades by kidding his own narcissism. William Shatner is another master of auto-irony, as seen on TV in Priceline commercials, and as evidenced by his CD, Has Been, recorded at a time when the former Star Trek star was widely regarded a has-been. In 2006, Shatner sold his kidney stone for twenty-five thousand dollars, which he donated to Habitat for Humanity, then had the following exchange on CNN’s Showbiz Tonight:
A. J. Hammer:
Twenty-five thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at.…
Shatner:
If you sneezed at it, we might be able to sell that, too.
In the auto-ironic cameo, a celebrity appears in a movie as himself and mocks his public image, as if to say, “Let me make fun of myself before someone else does.” Neil Diamond revitalized his career that way. Though he’d sold over 100 million records and was still a top-drawing concert performer, Diamond had long been a figure of fun, what with the shiny shirts, triumphant hair, and lyrics that seem translated from a foreign language. Hard-core rockers never took him seriously, and Rolling Stone dubbed him “the Jewish Elvis.” After all, he’d recorded the soundtrack to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, done that schmaltzy “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” duet with Barbra Streisand, and cowritten and performed “Heartlight,” inspired by the 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Baby Boomers’ parents liked Neil Diamond’s music, but Boomers themselves listened to it ironically, or not at all. Then he did an auto-ironic cameo in the 2001 film Saving Silverman, in which the main characters play in a Neil Diamond cover band. The appearance endeared him to a generation of under-forty fans for whom Neil Diamond was suddenly … cool. Bonus irony: For once it’s the Gen Xers who are clueless.
Auto-ironic television commercials flatter the intelligence of the audience, pretending to let viewers in on the joke so they can congratulate themselves on their superiority, not only to people who fall for commercials, but also to those who create them. A subgenre uses 1960s and ’70s hits as background music in an attempt to have it both ways, that is, simultaneously appeal nostalgically to oldsters and ironically to youngsters.
DEAD IRONY
Familiarity displaces irony so that some ironies erode over time and finally disappear. Thus did underwhelm begin as an ironic nonce word, gradually gain acceptance through usage, and eventually emerge irony-free. The process isn’t exclusively verbal:
At some point, after you continually act a certain way to “ironically comment” on something, well, that just becomes you. Even if you have learned to isolate it out of the context it is commonly used in, it’s your mannerism now. Case(s) in point: (1) Joke dancing. If you keep joke dancing, you are in fact practicing and one day, you’ll forget how you used to dance and most importantly, your friends will forget how you used to dance. You will dance exactly in the way you have been mocking, because really you’ve been practicing on the dance floor. (2) Woo-wooing. If you say “woo-woo” as an expression of excitement to poke fun at frat and sorority types that do that at shows, parades, etc. (basically anywhere there is a crowd), you may find yourself being (disappointingly) the person in your group who is the “woo-woo” person. The only save being that you, of course, don’t do this behavior in the expected context (crowds), but instead do it only in unexpected contexts, such as a small group of three at a nice restaurant. So it is still funny, but only just. Don’t do it on a dance floor though, or you’ve become the joke dancing “woo-woo” person.
—Magpie, posted June 22, 2005, thisistenspeed.blogspot.com
DOUBLE ENTENDRE
A classic form of irony in which there are two meanings, one of which is risqué.
The Barrison Sisters
(www.laughingravy21.com)
One of the earliest examples of double entendre in American culture was the late nineteenth-century vaudeville act, the Barrison Sisters. They danced, raising their skirts slightly, and asking the audience: “Would you like to see my pussy?” After an enthusiastic response, they would raise up their skirts, revealing live kittens secured over their crotches.
—Wikipedia, on July 20, 2006, at wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre
DRAMATIC IRONY
The audience understands the situation while the characters are ignorant or believe the opposite, so that plot developments have a double meaning, one for the character and another for the audience. The classic case is Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, in which the audience, but not Oedipus, knows that the man Oedipus killed was his father and the woman he married is his mother, so it’s ironic when Oedipus lays a curse on the killer, unaware that he’s actually cursing himself. The irony increases our tension and involvement: Because we know Oedipus’ impending fate, we would not act as he does. Indeed, if only we could warn him … before it’s too late! Dramatic irony remains an important storytelling element: In horror movies, for example, when an unsuspecting teenager is about to enter a room where a homicidal maniac lurks, audiences want to shout (and, alas, increasingly do shout), “DON’T GO IN THERE!”
FORCED IRONY (AKA FAILED IRONY, FAUX IRONY, FALSE IRONY, PSEUDO IRONY)
The cynical use of irony for financial gain, as evidenced by clothed Weimaraners or the corny T-shirts sold in the Wireless Catalog:
“Some days, it’s not even worth chewing through the restraints.”
“DIJON VU: The feeling that you’ve already had this mustard before.”
“Manure occureth.”
“I don’t skinny dip, I chunky dunk.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t have to. You can’t make me. I’m retired.”
Note: A master i
ronist would wear a Wireless Catalog T-shirt meta-ironically. Most people he encounters would not appreciate the meta-irony and might well presume him witless, but the master ironist would revel in the misunderstanding, because being misunderstood by the unironic is the raison d’être of the master ironist.
IRONIC CONSUMPTION
Acquisition of pop-culture artifacts from bygone eras not for their intrinsic worth but for their very lameness, for example such kitsch memorabilia as Lava lamps, sushi shower curtains, Rat Pack postcards, Robert Goulet CDs, velvet Elvises, and so forth.
IRONIC TWIST
The wry reversal at the end of a story that delivers the moral. Atop the list of stories with famous ironic twists we find O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” (1906), in which Della and Jim, a poor but happy young couple, scrape together money to buy each other expensive Christmas gifts. Della decides to buy Jim a platinum fob chain for his prized pocket watch. To pay for it, she sells her beautiful long tresses to a hair goods store, hoping Jim will still love her with short hair. Jim comes home on Christmas and is stunned by Della’s appearance. She rushes to him, assuring him that her hair will grow back quickly. Jim takes a small package from his coat and assures Della that nothing could change his feelings for her. When Della opens the package, she’s astonished to find the set of jeweled, tortoiseshell combs she’d been admiring in a store window. Regaining her composure, Della hands Jim her gift, and when he opens it, she asks for his watch to see how it will look with the new fob. But Jim sinks to the couch. “Let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while,” he says. “They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.”
In Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace” (“La Parure,” 1885), Monsieur Loisel, a minor bureaucrat, and his pretty wife, Mathilde, are invited to an official reception. When Mathilde complains of having nothing suitable to wear, he gives her the money he’s been saving for a hunting trip to buy a new gown. As the great occasion approaches, Mathilde worries that she has no jewelry to complement the gown and her husband, out of cash, suggests she borrow jewelry from her friend Madame Forestier, who indeed lends her a fine diamond necklace. Mathilde is the belle of the ball, but the necklace mysteriously disappears. Rather than face Madame Forestier with the truth, Monsieur Loisel goes deep into debt to buy a replacement. To repay his creditors, he takes part-time jobs and the couple moves to a smaller apartment. Over time the pretty young Mathilde, now forced to do housework and dicker with shopkeepers over every centime, turns into an old hag. After years of penury, the couple finally pay off the debt. Then one day Mathilde encounters Madame Forestier and tells her of the loss of the necklace and the hardships the couple endured to replace it. Madame Forestier takes her by the hand and says, “My poor Mathilde, you suffered for nothing: My necklace wasn’t real, just a paste imitation.”
In W. Somerset Maugham’s short story “The Verger” (1929), the newly appointed vicar of St. Peter’s in London’s Neville Square decides that the church’s longtime verger must either learn to read and write or lose his job. The verger resigns, declaring he’s too old to learn. On his way home he runs out of cigarettes, but can’t find a tobacconist on a long street with all sorts of other shops. Seizing the opportunity, he rents a small space and sells tobacco, newspapers, and sweets. The shop thrives, he opens a second, then a third, and soon owns a whole chain. One day, making a large deposit, he admits to the bank manager that he can’t read or write.
“Do you mean to say that you’ve built up this important business and amassed a fortune … without being able to read or write? Good God, man, what would you be now if you had been able to?”
“I can tell you that sir,” he replies with a little smile. “I’d be verger of St. Peter’s, Neville Square.”
In the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode “Lamb to the Slaughter” (teleplay and story by Roald Dahl), a suburban housewife (Barbara Bel Geddes) bludgeons her philandering husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, calmly calls the police, then serves the investigating officers the murder weapon for dinner. In the final scene, as Lieutenant Noonan (Harold J. Stone) cuts into the meat, he muses on the phantom weapon: “For all we know,” he says, “it could be right under our very noses.”
In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last” (teleplay by Rod Serling from a story by Lyn Venable), Burgess Meredith plays bookish bank teller Henry Bemis, a little man with thick glasses whose insatiable appetite for the printed word is frustrated by a shrewish wife and a tyrannical boss. Henry takes refuge during lunch breaks in the bank’s vault for an hour of uninterrupted reading. One day he is knocked unconscious by a giant concussion. He awakens to find that he’s the last man on earth, having been protected by the vault from a nuclear holocaust. Wandering through the desolated city, he finds abundant food and shelter, but the loneliness overwhelms him, and just as he’s about to put a gun to his head he notices the ruins of a … library!
Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis
(CBS/Photofest)
Cut to: stacks of books piled high on the library’s front steps and Henry giddy with delight over years of future reading. But as he settles down on the curb with the first book, his glasses slip off and shatter on the pavement, trapping him forever in a blurry world.
A famous poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson set in a fictional New England town distills a life into sixteen lines with a wrenching ironic twist at the end:
Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
—Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Children of the Night (1897)
On a lighter note, the drama critic turned Hollywood scriptwriter Samuel Hoffenstein (1890–1947) penned the following pleasant surprise:
Your little hands,
Your little feet,
Your little mouth—
Oh, God, how sweet!
Your little nose,
Your little ears,
Your eyes, that shed
Such little tears!
Your little voice,
So soft and kind;
Your little soul,
Your little mind!
—Samuel Hoffenstein, “Love-Songs, at Once Tender and Informative—An Unusual Combination in Verses of This Character,” The Complete Poetry of Samuel Hoffenstein (1954)
IRONY DEFICIENCY
Irony.
—Los Angeles–based British actor Tim Curry, when asked what he missed most about the U.K.
It is often claimed that Americans have no sense of irony. The British certainly think so. As do some Americans:
I don’t think America is at heart, so to speak, an ironic country. We might benefit from more of the Socratic kind of irony. Our current variety, though, is not much better than meretricious sarcasm.
—Jedediah Purdy, Slate, September 22, 1999
We are are a straightforward and self-righteous people, so we are rather good at viciousness, but lacking in irony.
—David Mamet, The Guardian, November 28, 2003
The notion that Americans are irony-impaired is a canard. We’ve shown a flair for irony ever since our beginnings as a nation: “Yankee
Doodle” was first sung by the British to mock the disheveled colonials, but American revolutionaries adopted it as an ironic anthem.
And according to H. L. Mencken, a critic of the American character and certainly no jingoist:
For the student interested in the biology of language, as opposed to its paleontology, there is endless material in the racy neologisms of American, and particularly in its new compounds and novel verbs. Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of such inventions as joy-ride, high-brow, road-louse, sob-sister, frame-up, loan-shark, nature-faker, stand-patter, lounge-lizard, hash-foundry, buzz-wagon, has-been, end-seat-hog, shoot-the-chutes, and grape-juice diplomacy. They are bold; they are vivid; they have humor; they meet genuine needs. Joy-ride is already going over into English, and no wonder. There is absolutely no synonym for it; to convey its idea in orthodox English would take a whole sentence. And so, too, with certain single words of metaphorical origin: barrel for large and illicit wealth, pork for unnecessary and dishonest appropriations of public money, joint for illegal liquor-house, tenderloin for a gay and dubious neighborhood. Many of these, and of the new compounds with them, belong to the vocabulary of disparagement, e.g., bone-head, skunk, bug, jay, lobster, boob, mutt, gas (empty talk), geezer, piker, baggage-smasher, hash-slinger, clock-watcher, four-flusher, coffin-nail, chin-music, batty, and one-horse. Here an essential character of the American shows itself: his tendency to combat the disagreeable with irony, to heap ridicule upon what he is suspicious of or doesn’t understand.
—H. L. Mencken, The American Language (1920)
What was true almost a century ago is true today: Contemporary Americans still appreciate irony, but in its proper place, not in a constant barrage (like you get from Brits). Americans are doers. Get too ironic on the job, you run the risk of being thought rude and, worse, not a “team player.” That said, if Americans didn’t get irony, The Simpsons wouldn’t still be on the air. Anyway, it depends on the venue. The two coasts tend to be ironic while the heartland does not. Harvard is ironic, Oklahoma State is not. Key West is ironic, West Point is not: