by Jon Winokur
The sixteenth-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) that hangs in the Louvre in Paris is believed to be a portrait of the wife of a merchant named Giacondo, but her famously ambiguous smile may represent Leonardo’s ironic view of the human condition.
Mona Lisa
(Corbis)
The Mona Lisa has been interpreted as both a portrait of someone smiling ironically and as an ironical portrait of someone smiling with foolish self-satisfaction.
—D. C. Muecke, Irony (1970)
Plastic surgery creates a form of visual irony. Having the nose surgically altered, for example, is literally “dissembling,” that is, “disguising or concealing behind a false appearance.” As with other forms of cosmetic surgery, the patient either wants to appear younger, or wants to look like someone of a different ethnicity.
Michael Jackson after multiple rhinoplasties
(Corbis)
Jennifer Grey, before and after rhinoplasty
(Left: Paramount Pictures/Photofest)
(Right: ABC/Photofest)
Rhinoplasty, one of the most popular forms of cosmetic surgery, was pioneered in the nineteenth century by a Jewish doctor to help women “suffering” from a “Jewish nose.” When Fanny Brice had a nose job in 1923, explaining that she had wanted to change her nose from “prominent” to “merely decorative,” Dorothy Parker cracked that the comedienne had “cut off her nose to spite her race.” But Miss Brice never denied her heritage—she’d made a career performing Jewish material, after all. No, she just wanted her nose to “return to normalcy,” she said. Her attitude prefigured that of future generations of Jewish women who, according to a postwar study, underwent rhinoplasty not because they wished to deny their Jewishness, but in order to be accepted as individuals and not stereotyped as members of a particular group. Bonus irony 1: Other ethnics responding to the same survey gave a different reason: Armenian, Greek, and Italian women admitted having nose jobs to avoid being mistaken for Jews. Bonus irony 2: The little turned-up nose so prized by ethnics is the same model that an earlier generation of Irish immigrants had had lengthened in order to fit in.
Scores of public figures have had nose jobs, from former Klan Grand Wizard David Duke to Michael Jackson, whose nose has been hammered so many times it is now removable, to the actress Jennifer Grey who, after notable appearances in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987) underwent rhinoplasty to advance her career. The surgery achieved the desired cosmetic effect—Grey’s new nose was smaller and more in proportion with the rest of her face, but it had the opposite effect on her professional fortunes: The new nose changed her appearance so radically that casting directors no longer recognized her. She had lost her individuality—that special something that made her interesting—and her career stalled.
Bonus irony: Grey later appeared in the short-lived comedy series, It’s Like, You Know … as a struggling actress named Jennifer Grey whose career was curtailed by an ill-advised nose job.
The Annals of Irony
423 B.C.
Greek satirist Aristophanes defines irony as simple lying and relates it to a “slimy, crawling temper.”
399 B.C.
In a stark demonstration of the practical limits of Socratic irony, its eponymous inventor is forced to commit suicide.
360 B.C.
First known use of “irony” (in Plato’s Republic) to describe the sly dissimulation of the Greek philosopher Socrates, an eiron who feigns ignorance in order to confound his enemies.
350 B.C.
Greek philosopher Aristotle refers to irony (eirōnia) in his Nichomachean Ethics.
A.D. 90
In his Institutio Oratoria, Roman rhetorician Quintillian defines irony as “saying what is contrary to what is meant.”
753 B.C.–A.D. 476
Roman orators make increasing use of irony in public speeches.
1502
First known English use of “irony,” by the Order of Crysten Men: “Yronye—of grammare, by the whiche a man sayth one & gyveth to understande the contrarye.”
1589
George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie shows appreciation for subtle rhetorical irony by translating “ironia” as “Drie Mock.”
I tried to find out what irony really is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry had spoken of Ironia, which we call the drye mock, and I cannot think of a better term for it: the drye mock. Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or cynicism, which is often the voice of disappointed idealism, but a delicate casting of a cool and illuminating light on life, and thus an enlargement. The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit’s desire is to be funny, the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.
—Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man (1994)
1630
First known English use of the adjective ironic, in Ben Jonson’s play The New Inn: “Most Socratick lady! Or if you will, ironick!”
1755
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language defines irony as “a mode of speech in which the meaning is clearly contrary to the words,” giving the example: “Bolingbroke is a holy man.” From which readers infer that Johnson deemed Bolingbroke a shit.
1831
Thomas Carlyle foreshadows an irony backlash in his Sartor Resartus: “An ironic man … more especially an ironic young man … may be viewed as a pest to society.”
1841
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard publishes The Concept of Irony, the first serious examination of the subject.
1878
In his book of aphorisms Human, All Too Human, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche notes the alienation of the German people, as evidenced by their increasing use of irony.
1916
The carnage of World War I shatters romantic illusions about chivalry and valor, launching a new age of irony. The Wipers Times is the best and most popular of the dozens of satirical trench journals (“trench rags” to the soldiers) produced by individual units and circulated along the Western Front. Its name is both a slang mispronunciation of Ypres, and an allusion to the publication’s auxiliary use. Full of poems, short stories, song lyrics, jokes, mock advertisements (one recurring ad is for the “Hotel des Ramparts”) and such features as “Things We Want to Know” (for example, “Are we being as offensive as we might be?”), The Wipers Times is a rich source of self-protective irony, an outlet for the soldiers’ frustration, disillusionment, and horror at the lethal absurdity of trench warfare.
Bonus irony: Though The Wipers Times was ironic about the war itself, it unwaveringly affirmed home leave as a welcome relief, even though soldiers found the brief respites stressful and demoralizing.
1921
French ironist Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole-François Thibault, 1844–1924), who once proclaimed irony “the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom,” wins the Nobel Prize for literature.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
—Anatole France, The Red Lily (1894)
1924
Cambridge don I. A. Richards (1893–1979) sparks interest in irony among literary critics on both sides of the Atlantic with his book Principles of Literary Criticism.
1926
Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises includes a sarcastic rejoinder to a laudatory review of The Great Gatsby, in which F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes Anatole France’s exhortation to writers, “Let us give to men irony and pity as witnesses and judges”:
“Work for the good of all.” Bill stepped into his underclothes. “Sho
w irony and pity.”
I started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets, and the rod case.
“Hey! Come back!”
I put my head in the door.
“Aren’t you going to show a little irony and pity?”
I thumbed my nose.
“That’s not irony.”
As I went downstairs, I heard Bill singing, “Irony and Pity. When you’re feeling … Oh, give them Irony and give them Pity. Oh, give them Irony. When they’re feeling … Just a little irony. Just a little pity…” He kept on singing until he came downstairs. The tune was: “The Bells Are Ringing for Me and My Gal.” I was reading a week-old Spanish paper.
“What’s with all this irony and pity?”
“What, don’t you know about Irony and Pity?”
“No, who got it up?”
“Everybody. They’re mad about it in New York. It’s just like the Fratellinis used to be.”
The girl came in with the coffee and buttered toast. Or rather, it was bread toasted and buttered.
“Ask her if she’s got any jam,” Bill said. “Be ironical with her.”
“Have you got any jam?”
“That’s not ironical. I wish I could talk Spanish.”
The coffee was good and we drank it out of big bowls. The girl brought in a glass dish of raspberry jam.
“Thank you.”
“Hey! That’s not the way,” Bill said. “Say something ironical. Make some crack about Primo de Rivera.”
“I could ask her what kind of jam they think they’ve gotten into in the Riff.”
“Poor,” said Bill. “Very poor. You can’t do it. That’s all. You don’t understand irony. You have no pity. Say something pitiful.”
“Robert Cohn.”
“Not so bad. That’s better. Now why is Cohn pitiful? Be ironic.”
He took a big gulp of coffee.
“Aw, hell!” I said. “It’s too early in the morning.”
“There you go. And you claim you want to be a writer, too. You’re only a newspaper man. An expatriated newspaper man. You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.”
—Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
1954
When the radio sitcom Father Knows Best? moves to television, its sponsor, Kent cigarettes, insists on dropping the question mark, thereby eliminating all the irony and most of the humor.
1957
In his book Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye declares irony a major narrative mode, defining it in terms of the relationship between a superior reader and a helpless character suffering life’s unfathomable absurdities, a view of irony epitomized in the works of Franz Kafka.
Irony and humor were not conspicuous in the 1950s.… I was in my lawyer’s office to sign some contract and a lawyer in the next office was asked to come in and notarize my signature. While he was stamping pages, I continued a discussion with my lawyer about the Broadway theatre, which I said was corrupt; the art of theatre had been totally displaced by the bottom line, all that mattered any more. Looking up at me, the notarizing lawyer said, “That’s a communist position, you know.” I started to laugh until I saw the constraint in my lawyer’s face, and I quickly sobered up.
—Arthur Miller, “Are You Now or Were You Ever?” The Guardian, June 16, 2000
1964
Stanley Kubrick’s cold war satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb treats the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union with such black irony as: “Now I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I am saying no more than ten to twenty million killed. Tops!” and “You can’t fight in here—this is the War Room!” The film opens with an instrumental version of “Try a Little Tenderness” playing over aerial refueling shots of a B-52 bomber, and ends with a series of nuclear explosions accompanied by Vera Lynn’s recording of “We’ll Meet Again.”
Bonus irony: Slim Pickens, in the role of B-52 bomber pilot Major T. J. Kong, who ends the picture riding a hydrogen bomb like a bucking bull, was never told that the film was a comedy and played the character straight.
There is no definitive milestone with which we can mark the ushering in of the Age of Irony.
In truth, it’s been creeping in stealthily since the mid-1960s. As America lost its starry-eyed faith (aided in part by the Vietnam War and Watergate) in politics, it began to cast a doubtful eye toward other sectors of society. By the time we reached the ’80s and, along with it, the Iran-Contra affair, junk bonds, and an increasing fascination with lurid celebrity gossip, nothing was sacred.
—Rachel Leibrock, “Glib Is Out, Sincere Is In—The Age of Irony Is Waning, So Mean What You Say,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 2, 2001
1970
D. C. Muecke publishes Irony, proclaiming irony a “phenomenon of very considerable cultural and literary importance.”
1974
University of Chicago literary critic Wayne C. Booth publishes A Rhetoric of Irony. Though he acknowledges the “ironic trap” of trying to define “a term that will not stay defined,” Booth proposes an elaborate framework of irony and introduces the terms “stable irony” and “unreliable narrator.” The book declares irony essential to literature, and its appreciation central to intelligent reading: “Every good reader must be, among other things, sensitive in detecting and reconstructing ironic meanings.… Every reader learns that some statements cannot be understood without rejecting what they seem to say.” A Rhetoric of Irony will be translated into multiple languages and become required reading at many universities.
1978
Randy Newman’s hit single “Short People,” a satiric commentary on prejudice, provokes controversy. Groups of literal-minded short people organize protests, Newman is denounced from pulpits and even receives death threats. His explanation, that he intended to expose all prejudice by choosing an absurd target—that is, he was being ironic—does not placate critics, who accuse him of lying about his motives. Some even suggest that he only thought he meant the lyrics ironically and the song revealed true feelings hidden even from himself.
Bonus irony: Randy Newman, a singer/songwriter/composer acclaimed for his sublime lyrics and enlightened point of view, the author of such postmodern classics as “Sail Away,” “Political Science,” and “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” will probably be best remembered for a lightweight ditty regarded by many as a slur.
“It was too bad that was my one big hit,” he says, “a novelty record like the Chipmunks did.”
1979
Publication of the revisionist Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovitch, “related to and edited by” Solomon Volkov, causes a sensation by portraying the Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975), whom Pravda once anointed a “loyal son of the Communist Party,” as a “conscientious ironist” whose music was a subtle subversion of the Soviet state.
1986
Kurt Andersen, E. Graydon Carter, and Tom Phillips found Spy, a satirical monthly for the Age of Irony. Spy would continue to be published until 1998.
1991
An Esquire cover story, “Forget Irony—Have a Nice Decade!” ironically proclaims “the New Sincerity,” as evidenced by the choice of Jay Leno over David Letterman to succeed Johnny Carson as Tonight Show host.
1992
Jungian therapist Evangeline Kane proposes that violent criminals display an inability to understand the multivalent nature of words and therefore don’t appreciate such concepts as irony and rhetorical overstatement, which makes them think other people are constantly playing verbal tricks on them, which in turn fuels their rage.
Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire The Player features dozens of movie stars in auto-ironic cameos, that is, playing themselves as narcissistic, clueless celebrities in order to show that they aren’t narcissistic, clueless celebrities.
1993
In a bold effort to improve a flagging
professional image, the Teachers for a Democratic Culture ironically try to outlaw irony:
The lesson is clear. Employing irony, speaking tongue in cheek, talking wryly or self-mockingly—these smartass intellectual practices give our whole profession a bad name. If there’s one thing calculated to alienate an otherwise friendly and helpful press, it’s irony. As Dan Quayle once put it, irony is an ill wind that bites the hand that feeds our fashionable cynicism.
We cannot mince words about irony. Knock it off, and knock it off now. In the first place, nobody understands your little ironies but you and your theorymongering friends. In the second place, even if someone does understand your ironies, they still won’t translate into newsprint and you’ll wind up looking foolish anyway. In the third place, great literature demands of us high seriousness of purpose—not disrespectful laughter and clowning around. So just wipe that smirk off your face.
—M. Berubé and G. Graff, “Regulations for Literary Criticism in the 1990s,” Democratic Culture
Writing in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, David Foster Wallace decries irony as “an agent of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture,” but admits liking it anyway.
1994
Canadian literary scholar Linda Hutcheon publishes Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony, the first comprehensive study of the subject since Booth’s A Rhetoric of Irony in 1974. Irony’s “evaluative edge,” Hutcheon argues, emerges from a shared cultural context, and irony is not merely a trope employed by an “ironist,” but a “complex communicative process” in which the interpreter of irony is the one who “ironizes.”
In the Generation X comedy Reality Bites, Winona Ryder flunks a job interview because she can’t define “irony.” (“But I know it when I see it!” she protests.) Ryder later asks her boyfriend, played by Ethan Hawke, to define the word. “It’s when the actual meaning is the complete opposite of the literal meaning,” he says.