Isn't it ironic?

[Dave Monroe]

Isn't it ironic?
Five years ago, pundits declared it dead, but 2006 saw
the re-emergence of sarcastic humor with an
exaggerated message

By Gina Kim - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, December 31, 2006


The reports of its death were greatly exaggerated.

Pundits declared irony dead after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, but five years later, not only is
it alive -- it ruled 2006.

"Given the way the world has gone, we're in more need
of irony," says Jerry Herron, a professor of English
and American studies at Wayne State University in
Detroit. "What 9/11 produced was a world where
pettifoggery, obfuscation, half-truths and double
dealing are more rampant than ever before."

Irony, the grand dame of the zeitgeist, is pop
culture's weapon against hopelessness, experts say.
It's a tool that transfers power to the powerless. And
in a time of a continuing war, citizens jailed without
charges, and a government that knows what we're
checking out at the library and searching for on the
Internet, it's a key to understanding what's happening
to the world -- with a little humor, too.

"The reason irony is more fun than the truth is that
it's more fun than the truth," says Herron. "Jon
Stewart is fun to watch because it seems to give the
feeling of being in a club where everyone's smarter
than everyone else. And the whole world seems to be
pretty dumb."

Along with raised eyebrows and knowing looks, irony
puts us in the know. We become members of the sorority
of sagacity. And it gives us some semblance of
controlling what we're being told, experts say.

But what is irony?

Merriam-Webster says it's using words to mean the
opposite of their literal meaning. But in today's
cultural climate, irony is anything said with your
tongue firmly planted in your cheek. It's sarcastic
humor with an exaggerated message.

"At a time when people feel they're being lied to and
treated as though they're too stupid to get it, it
lets you regain the claim on your own intelligence,"
Herron says. "I'm going to tell a lie, too, but I'm
going to tell it knowingly and as a joke."

Seeds of irony

Irony has existed in western culture ever since there
was a Western culture, says author Ken Kalfus.

"I'm not sure what ironic forms there are in, say,
Afghan culture," he says. "You need a pretty
well-developed idea of the individual. ... Irony is
one of the first things that goes in a dictatorship."

The smug smile of irony bares its teeth when
conditions are ripe -- there's overarching
disillusionment with the establishment and the public
is trying to separate fact from fiction.

"You can look historically at times that seem to be
caught up in not telling the truth and irony
flourishes," says Herron. "Like in 18th century
England, when King George was going mad on the throne
and the world was falling apart, irony was a thriving
form."

It came to dominate our culture in the 1970s as a way
to question authority, says Martin Kaplan, associate
dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Southern California.

"It was a response to things like governmental lying
and to the commercialization and commoditization and
corporatization of everything," he says. "The only
appropriate way to react to what was going on was to
be a smart aleck and to say, 'Yeah, right,' to any
assertion by the powerful. There was always someone
trying to make a sucker out of you."

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair
magazine and co-founder of the defunct satirical Spy
magazine, was quoted as saying, "It's the end of the
age of irony. Things that were considered fringe and
frivolous are going to disappear."

But instead of ushering in an age of sincerity, when
people help each other, join together and believe in a
better world, we're more interested than ever in
whether celebrities wear underwear on a regular basis
and have no qualms elbowing that person reaching for
the last PlayStation 3 on the shelf.

"Many people, I was probably among them, said irony
was dead and in the face of horrors unimaginable, the
only appropriate response was authenticity and realism
-- postmodern winking was no longer appropriate,"
Kaplan says. "It probably was about six months that
that lasted. Irony is very much alive and well."

Feeding the beast

It's an era in which comedian Stephen Colbert's ironic
roast of President Bush at a White House
correspondents dinner is now legend. And, according to
a study by Harvard University's Institute of Politics,
more 18- to 24-year-olds watch "The Daily Show With
Jon Stewart" than read the print edition of a major
newspaper.

"It's become very hard to figure out what is real and
what isn't," says stand-up comic Marc Maron. "By
nature of that, there's more irony.

"The idea that O.J. Simpson was about to publish a
book about what he would have done had he killed his
wife and her (friend), that should be an ironic joke,
but it's completely real and horrifying."

The lines of reality are so blurred, irony is the only
way to formulate some type of understanding, says
Maron, who will be on Comedy Central's "Comedy Central
Presents" on Jan. 12.

"That's why fake news is resonating much more with
people than the real news," he says. "Because when you
can exaggerate or be sarcastic or be ironic, the real
message is revealed. Sometimes it takes irony to cut
through a lot of the bull."

Plus, it can sometimes drive messages home more
efficiently than the truth.

"People don't like honesty. They find it boring or too
draining for them to engage with," Maron says. "If
something's put across in a smug or condescending way,
it's got some safety built into it -- you can take it
in, laugh at it, and it assumes you're in on the
joke."

Today's irony can run the gamut from a simple
wisecrack, knee-jerk and silly, to something much
darker, says John Tomasic, managing editor of the
online pop culture commentary Pop and Politics. But in
the process, it can bring people together, as long as
you know you're not immune.

"You use it to mock, but you use it best if you're
prepared to be mocked," he says.

While irony cuts across all age groups, ethnicities
and both genders, it is best understood by the younger
generation, who have known irony their entire lives,
Tomasic says.

"Young people, by and large, are not confused about
the rules of the game. They have grown up with irony.
It's their best friend and worst enemy. It's their
playground pal, their video game instructor, their
movie script writer," he says. "Young people are not
at all confused, for example, about 'The Daily Show,'
a source of bafflement to the serious men and women in
the skyboxes of life."

Debunking myths

In the months after the 9/11 attacks, author Kalfus
began to formulate a novel in his head based on the
media's glorification of each victim.

"Everyone who was killed supposedly was a perfect
husband, a perfect wife, a perfect father or mother.
They were all heroes," says Kalfus. "I wanted to see
them as people, not the way they were killed but by
the way they lived their lives. And most probably
lived messy lives, like the rest of us."

Kalfus' book, "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country"
(Ecco, $24.95, 256 pages), was published in July and
is based on a couple who both thought the other spouse
had been killed in the terrorist attacks, and both
were secretly happy about it.

"Loosely speaking, irony is a method of humor that
deflates a cliché or deflates a particular way of
thinking by showing that it's taking itself too
seriously," he says. "It's just one literary method of
making us see the world a little more clearly in the
fog of myths."

Irony never accepts anything at face value. Instead,
it delves deeper, looks further and questions every
premise, Kalfus says. And in the process, some form of
the truth is discovered.

"You try to puncture a cliché in a straightforward
way, you only dent it," Kalfus says. "Irony, by
ridiculing the supports for the cliché, can actually
bring it down."

Irony shifts the reins of power -- taking information
from the top, altering it, changing it, and maybe in
the process, getting closer to the truth. Like a sword
of disillusionment, irony is a defense mechanism that
gives the public some say in world events that are
unfolding.

"What has happened since 9/11 to promote the
recidivism of our ironic culture was the run-up to the
war," says USC's Kaplan. "It's hard to see what's
going on and when you do see what's going on, to not
be cynical about the nature of the world and the
nature of power.

"And so making fun of it, using it as the grist for
parody, as masters like Jon Stewart and Stephen
Colbert are doing, seems to be the best way to let the
air out of the balloon of power."

http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/99776.html


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