Tag Archives: irony

What I’m Reading, October 8, 2014

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Why Nobody Ever Asks If Irony Has Ruined Science Fiction, Charlie Jane Anders, io9, September 29, 2014

Every few years, there’s another essay insisting that irony is ruining culture. Hipsters and postmodernism have created an insincere world where nothing means anything. But you never hear anybody insisting that irony has ruined science fiction. That’s because irony is part of the creative life-force of the genre.

We tend to talk about irony in terms of a disconnect between a stated expectation and what actually happens — in other words, as a kind of failed futurism. But irony, more broadly, is about dislocation. And the description of types of irony in the introduction to the book Irony in Language and Thought (ed., Gibbs and Colston) seems like it could be a list of science-fictional story setups: “coincidences, deviations from predictions, counterfactuals, frame shifts, juxtapositions of bi-coherences, hypocrisy, etc.”

Anybody who writes about history, and then tries to imagine history continuing into the future in the same bewildering, illogical, bendy fashion is going to bake a certain amount of irony into the cake. That’s partly because storytelling is about humans, who use technology in ways that its creators never expected, and make choices that no rational observer would expect. The law of unintended consequences is fundamental to narrative irony.

The ironic twist is also part of the DNA of SF, from War of the Worlds onwards — H.G. Wells’ disease-ex-machina ending only really works as irony, rather than as straightforward narrative: they’re too big and powerful for us, but in the end they’re unexpectedly defeated by the tiniest of creatures.

Henrique Alvim Correa [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo credit: Henrique Alvim Correa [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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What I’m Reading, September 12, 2014

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David Foster Wallace was right: Irony is ruining our culture, Matt Ashby and Brendan Carroll, Salon, April 13, 2014

Twenty years ago, Wallace wrote about the impact of television on U.S. fiction. He focused on the effects of irony as it transferred from one medium to the other. In the 1960s, writers like Thomas Pynchon had successfully used irony and pop reference to reveal the dark side of war and American culture. Irony laid waste to corruption and hypocrisy. In the aftermath of the ’60s, as Wallace saw it, television adopted a self-deprecating, ironic attitude to make viewers feel smarter than the naïve public, and to flatter them into continued watching. Fiction responded by simply absorbing pop culture to “help create a mood of irony and irreverence, to make us uneasy and so ‘comment’ on the vapidity of U.S. culture, and most important, these days, to be just plain realistic.” But what if irony leads to a sinkhole of relativism and disavowal? For Wallace, regurgitating ironic pop culture is a dead end:

Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It [uses] the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

So where have we gone from irony? Irony is now fashionable and a widely embraced default setting for social interaction, writing and the visual arts. Irony fosters an affected nihilistic attitude that is no more edgy than a syndicated episode of “Seinfeld.” Today, pop characters directly address the television-watching audience with a wink and nudge. (Shows like “30 Rock” deliver a kind of meta-television-irony irony; the protagonist is a writer for a show that satirizes television, and the character is played by a woman who actually used to write for a show that satirizes television. Each scene comes with an all-inclusive tongue-in-cheek.) And, of course, reality television as a concept is irony incarnate.

Forget Mars. Here’s Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies. David Warmflash, The Crux, September 8, 2014 Continue reading →

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Irony in Tennessee

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By Richard Bartz (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Pictured: Volkswagen plant. Not pictured: Chattanooga.

Republicans worked overtime to meddle in the affairs of private industry in Tennessee, as workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted on whether or not to unionize. Volkswagen itself, i.e. the employer who would be directly affected by unionization, remained neutral on the issue throughout the process. Republican politicians felt no such compunction to keep government hands off of business, though. Amid threats to legislatively withhold future incentives for Volkswagen to invest further in Tennessee, and some ridiculous Civil War analogies, workers narrowly defeated the unionization plan.

This ought to be a victory for business, right? Volkswagen can now create even more jobs in the state, secure in the knowledge that their workers will never dare talk back to them, so everything should be coming up roses for Tennessee’s economy.

Well, no.

Republicans apparently mistook Volkswagen for an American company that ships jobs wherever wages are cheapest and workers are the most powerless, not a company that gives workers a strong voice in its affairs. That misunderstanding, whether deliberate or inadvertent, may cost the state, or maybe even the entire South, more investment by foreign auto makers.

Nice going, jackasses.

Photo credit: By Richard Bartz (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Irony-Free ’80s

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Say what you will about ’80s hair metal, but you have to give them this: they did not give a flying fuck what you thought about their clothes or their hair. Maybe it was all the hipster music I heard at the Austin City Limits Festival a few weeks ago, but there’s something sort of liberating about music that is utterly devoid of irony. Your mileage may vary, and that’s cool.

Here’s a bit of ’80s metal. If I recall correctly, this was the first track on Skid Row’s self-titled debut album, meaning that you could listen to it as soon as you got the tape into the deck, without even having to fast-forward.

Here’s a lesser-known bit of ’80s rock, from Shark Island:

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Stepping out of the hipster bubble: My evening at a Tom Petty concert

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'Tom Petty 2010' by musicisentropy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandfan/4701587083/) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsI rarely pass up an opportunity to make fun of hipsters. The problem is, I think I might actually be one.

Last Saturday, I fulfilled a childhood dream by seeing Tom Petty live in concert. He played at the Frank Erwin Center, the only large venue available in the city of Austin (unless you count the football stadium, which you shouldn’t.) Tom Petty has had a long, successful career, amassing a wide array of classic, beloved songs. His appeal is broad and his music is oddly timeless. As a result, he serves as an effective hipster repellant.

Part of my issue with hipsters en masse is that they defy description–in fact, defying categorization is a defining characteristic of the hipster. A hipster is largely defined by what he or she isn’t. Rather than contribute new ideas, fashions, or innovations, they tend to recycle old ones (often ones better left discarded.) Outdated fashions become the latest “ironic” trend, which drives me mad because of its abuse of the very concept of “irony.” Continue reading →

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