Isn’t It Ironic?
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanismorissette/ironic.html
When I asked my daughter for her thoughts on irony, she directed me immediately to Alanis Morrissette. Her 1996 hit “Ironic” triggered an instant outcry because her examples — rain on a wedding day, the fly in your Chardonnay — seemed more unfortunate than ironic, and I recall that on the UK stand-up circuit, several comedians, notably Ed Byrne, devoted part of their act to the irony that the song “Ironic” just didn’t get irony. But let’s go a little deeper.
To reference another Irish wit: Oscar Wilde once described Britain and America as two nations divided by a common language; a comment that I would brand as ironic. Perhaps, therefore, one needs to allow for cultural differences. My wife tells me that in Italian, l’ironia della sorte refers to a sort of irony of fate, the sad or tragic turns of life. This would certainly cover some of Alanis’s examples, such as winning the lottery and dying the next day, and thus convey the message that life can sometimes seem a cruel joke. This form also draws on classical Greek dramas where mortals do not realise what the fates have in store or fail to hear the tone of what is being said. Insofar as British comedians used the song “Ironic” to play upon the stereotype that Americans lack a sense of irony, the actual irony was that the British are blind to all ironies save their own.
I suspect there are two types of irony that virtually all of us experience. The first is sarcasm, as when English people respond to boorish behaviour with the single word: “Charming!” The second is dramatic irony, usually served to us via film and television. We, the viewers, are made aware of something that the on-screen characters do not know, and this superior knowledge adds to our enjoyment or at least changes our sense of the story-line. Certain crime dramas, Colombo, for example, allowed viewers to witness the crime happening and thus revealed the perpetrator. As a result, the rest of the episode was devoted to the detective’s successful hunt for the villain. Most soap operas have a character whom viewers quickly learn is bad, and yet every so often, someone in the story fails to spot this and the viewers enjoy the dramatic irony of their own omniscience. This is one of several ways in which the pleasure of irony is an expression of power.
To relish irony, one has also to appreciate ambiguity, and sometimes outright contradiction. Discussing romantic irony in particular, Goethe warned that irony was ein gewagtes Wort — a risky word. I was once reminded that the first duty of a historian is to be clear rather than to be clever; and irony exults in its own cleverness. At the same time, trying to be objective about the past while simultaneously trying to be empathetic to its historical figures and their specific circumstances is a process riddled with ambiguities as persistent as the gulf between German idealism and materialism: between life as it ought to be or one would wish it to be, and what it is or is set to become.
To put irony in a more personal context, it seems ironic that in the 1980s I should write a book about the introduction of the automobile into American society since at the time, I didn’t drive. I was fresh from four years in London and driving lessons seemed a waste of money. The irony was tangible every time I was asked for my driving license as proof of ID at US archives. Whether my not driving bolstered my objectivity is debatable, but I produced a book that stressed the ways in which the automobile ironically furthered multiple forms of dependency rather than simply boosting individualism; the latter often being integral to how it was sold. It worked to consolidate what Alan Trachtenberg termed The Incorporation of America (1982).To switch to a more recent example: Trump’s campaign to cling to office after his 2020 election defeat using the slogan “Stop the Steal” seems highly ironic; not least, because Trump himself is surely someone who genuinely has little to no sense of irony.
Historians’ sense of irony is also evident in their fascination with the phenomenon of unintended consequences. Studies of the congressional battle to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act note that it was one of its opponents, Virginia Congressman Howard Smith, who introduced an amendment to extend the categories of prohibited discrimination beyond race, religion, colour or national origin to include sexual discrimination, and did so in the clear hope of making the bill’s passage more difficult. The ruse failed, but subsequent analyses of the Act’s outcomes have argued that relatively affluent, middle-class, white women benefited far more in terms of employment and economic opportunity than did poorer African Americans. This outcome was certainly not intended, but was structurally determined. To give another example, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, American policy-makers supported a variety of initiatives to support and arm resistance forces, and some of these evolved into the Taliban and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. No one foresaw that this would lead to America’s longest war. In death and grief, this example captures the bitterness of irony. But does it really boost our understanding or provide a new framework of explanation?
After decades as a historian, I believe myself to be connoisseur of irony. But that’s the nub. Do I discern something that is there, or do I read the pattern of events through a lens designed to see the shape of irony where others can find non-ironic patterns? I also feel professionally required to pin down the facts as firmly as I can while remaining alert to the subjectivity of interpretation. Objectivity is an ideal pursued but never fully achieved. Hence, discovering that irony is best understood as a literary device that serves to elicit a range of readers’ responses rather than a genuine aspect of existence that reveals the complexity of life would make a difference to me. My life, I suspect, would become less ironic.
However, as some of my examples suggest, buried in these reflections on irony are issues of power. Irony can entail an ex cathedra stance, where the ironist seems to stand above ordinary mortals observing their absurdities and mocking their misguided sense of being in control. This cuts against the need for empathy, and presents potential pitfalls for privileged intellectuals writing about things they may have never experienced first-hand. Maybe irony should have a warning label: “Caution. Handle with care. Can cause hubris, blindness and chronic insensitivity.”
