It ironic? Don’t you think?” — Alanis Morissette
Many people struggle with irony in their writing, despite the media fable that everyone born after 1965 lives a life so deeply entrenched in irony that we can’t handle a direct assertion.
Many bloggers are sarcastic Company Email List and snarky (nastier forms of irony generally intended to deride a specific person) simply because it’s an easy substitute for a fully developed writer’s voice.
Irony is a bit more subtle, and that’s why it can cause people trouble.
That’s not ironic, it’s just coincidental
When it comes to “not getting” irony, there’s one person who comes immediately to mind for many — Alanis Morissette. More than two decades later, her hit song “Ironic” from the 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is still the punch line of scores of irony-related jokes.
If you’re not familiar, Morissette’s song describes various life situations followed by the two questions “Isn’t it ironic?” and “Don’t you think?”
The perceived problem with the song is that most, if not all, of the given examples do not constitute either situational or literary irony.
For example:
“A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It’s meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn’t it ironic … don’t you think?”
Well, no. Those are unfortunate situations, but they are not typically what one would define as ironic. Which leads critics to claim that Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” isn’t actually ironic.
Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife in the employee break room of a Henckels cutlery factory … now that would be ironic.
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“Ironic” song not ironic
When I mentioned irony and sarcasm in a post about metaphor, simile, and analogy, a reader emailed me bemoaning the inability of some to distinguish between irony and sarcasm.
He went on to lament a lack of understanding of irony in general, “like that idiot Alanis Morissette.” (Sounds like he thought Alanis needed to be taught how to stfu.)
I wrote back:
“Alanis may not be so dumb after all. If you discount the argument that some of her examples qualify as ‘cosmic irony’ (which I think is rather weak), the song ‘Ironic’ is devoid of irony in any of the illustrations she offers.
“That, in and of itself, is ironic, and justifies the entire song from an artistic standpoint. Ms. Morissette may have been playing a wonderfully perverse joke on all of us on another level.”