sincerely,

Clarification: who is vaunting? (genuine question).

sincere cultural shift. anyone can do irony these days.

bellweather vaunting in the USA = praise for David Letterman's no jokes first show back after Sept 11 as a model

I don't know if fritz means in the wake of Sept 11, but this talk has been around for years. There was young fogey Jedediah Purdy with his 'i rony is rotting America' book and then there was all the B ritpop fallout too. There might be something in it. I really don't care. I'm sticking with irony anyway.

I was thinking post-11th, but Nick's point is a good one and both articles are worth reading.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/09/25/irony_lives/

Every morning I glance at newspaper coverage of Afghanistan over shoulders of fellow bus-riders. In many if not most papers the generic title linking the various pages = "The War on Terror" >>> conclusion: irony will survive, as long as terror thrives

Eeverything will get back to sneering normality, but some people may have tasted the nectar of selflessness and humanity and find themselves just that tiny bit better than they were before. Who knows.

Irony will only get bigger, though.

the death of the age of irony presupposes that the "age of irony" existed, that we have been living in an age where ironic discourse was the dominant form - which I don't think is at all true.

also, the problem with the whole death of irony/age of sincerity is that it sets up irony as the opposite of sincerity - which it clearly is not. to point out irony is to reveal hypocrisy and insincerity (as mark's point so ably illustrates) - irony is the brass knuckles of sincerity.

Recent steve bell cartoon:

b52 bomber and a hercules transport plane flying along, b52 has 'Eat airborn death' written on the side and is dropping bombs. Hercules has 'Eat airborn food' written and is dropping food. B52 saying, 'The age of irony is dead' Hercules saying ' and don't you forget it'

sums it up really, we can't even bomb or give aid sincerely

i recall the modern review cover with a pair of quotes in a "banned" circle with line through a la "no smoking". and that was 1993/4. then again modern review was full of shit.

Growth of irony came as fragmentary response to cultural triumphalism in wake of fall of USSR. Reality (no "peace dividend", boom go bust [which wuz rilly '97], decline in real wages, etcet.) sets in, & irony fades as dominant mode. Cynicism gives birth to simple muted despair.

More precisely, domanice of irony conditioned by A) disconnection of population from influence on world-historic events and B) a population which recognizes but does not mourn this disconnect.

could you precise it up a notch, sterling? I'm not quite getting it.

early 90s = big things shaking in the world which we're told mean triumph of good over evil [i.e. fall of USSR]. Yet these are events in which the population plays no significant role. Thus, a population which feels a general anti-shiny-happy-people unease, but at the same time is not politically activated nor does it feel a pressing need to become politically activated. Triumphalism fades, we begin to get the new sincerity movement. Triumphalism (&WTC) crashes, definative dethronement of irony as normative mode of cultural expression.) Think of irony like those two security guards in bad movies goin' "It's quiet here. Too quiet if you ask me." and meanwhile cracking nervous jokes and getting the jitters from passing alley cats.

Is that the one movie where the bad guy is slightly unshaven and has a final scene with the good guy in a dark warehouse/factory filled with steam?

I don't really buy sincerity/irony as somehow opposites, for a start: or that there was genuinely ever a Normative Culture of Irony (how did it manifest as normative? when? where?); or, come to that, that "the population" had nothing to do with the fall of the USSR (tho I agree the US population didn't necessarily have much to do with it, which may be what Sterling means)

sincerity makes me suspicious of people- I know that sounds stupid, but if someone is being that wide eyed and genuine I wonder if they are stupid. I have trouble conversing with them since I am so ironic most of the time, which is not to say I am insincere. I can be sincere, but usually with some wry humour or irony throughout. the two are not mutually exclusive

All this, mind you, is very parochial to the U.S. But indeed, perhaps irony/sincerity are not opposites but certainly irony/lack of irony are, by definition. The normative culture of irony was normative precisely in that you were expected to be ironic, and that to express genuine emotion would be a faux pass, and essentially that irony was papering over a profound unease and void of purpose by cracking jokes whose implication was simply that you didn't know everything and you didn't trust anything. And yes, I was speaking of U.S. population. But aksully, USSR pop. too now that you mention it. Yeltsin's barricades were sparsely peopled -- most foax stayed home. & larger pro-old guard than pro-yeltsin rallies were held, as a whole. But it didn't really matter in terms of the process.

hmmmm - but i think we *are* living in something of an age of irony. what was the ast film/book/tv prgramme/pop video you saw that didn't have some kind of smirking reference to other films/tv programmes/general pop culture/itself? a few examples: well, obviously the Simpsons is littered with references to its own animated-ness and the Fox network, as well as all the other cultural send-ups it provides. eastenders has recently featured Goldie, Robbie Wiliams and David Beckham in various roles. Scream - not seen it, but it's a parody-ish, right? and then Scary Movie - the parody of the parody. Books coming out with titles like "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius" and "don't read this book if you're stupid" (or whatever it was). the whole raison d'etre of Seinfeld. etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

my point being that i personally can't move for irony right now. irony is, if not the dominant mode of expression, then at least a major one in these times, infiltrating as it has even previously "lowbrow" or "children's" entertainment (Shrek or Rugrats, anyone?) and i think that once a "fad" or whatever has reached that level of cultural ubiquity then it's naturally time for a backlash. the probem being of course with irony, that anything you replace it with is bound to get sneered at in an ironic fashion, because really the levels of irony i'm talking about now really aren't that difficult ot achieve (one of the reasons being that, irony is now such a familiar mode of discourse that it's easy to spot and perpetuate). still, i think that irony's days are getting numbered, not least bacause of the horrible things happening in the world today. humour, sure, gets us through dark days but in these days of war and misinformation, is a mode of discourse that is based, when all is said and done, on lies (the dictionary definition of irony being "saying one thing but meaning another") all that appropriate?

read David Foster Wallace on irony (in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again) - i know i keep going on about him but he really is my favourite writer-type person at the moment.

I agree that references are ubiquituous, but how are pop culture references automatically ironic? is a satire or parody inherently ironic? I can see how they may be used as a safety device to create distance between the author/artist and the point he's trying to make, but it's not exactly "saying one thing to mean another", or is it? I'm not sure. But I think using pop culture references is often just shorthand - using celebs as symbolic figures with collectively understood connotations & meanings to make a point clear. I agree that sometimes "art about other art/jokes about jokes" may be a dead end, but I'm not sure it should be lumped in with irony.

well, referring to things in the "real" world in fiction is a sort of irony, because if things in the "real" word are mentioned fiction is undercutting itself as fiction - the "real" elements in it start to threaten the fictionality of it, as it were. one of the things i found most unsettling about "Glamorama" by Bret Easton Ellis (apart from the appalling violence, i'll never read another one of his!) was the fact that real people were often being mentioned as having been at gatherings ,lending the fiction a pseudo-journalistic tinge. at times it was like reading a highbrow "now!" magazine.

also (sorry, i've been thinking about this cos it interests me) of COURSE all satire and parody are ironic! because what a satire or parody does is criticise or lampoon implicitly - you have to be in on the joke, references etc before you can understand that things are being lampooned or criticised. there is an ambiguity - if you are ignorant of what it is that the satire or parody is of, then it's possible to make a "straight" reading of it.

as far as pop culture references are concerned, there's a sentence at the beginning of each and every novel (and i believe also at the end of film credits) to the effect that "any characters in this novel/film are entirely the writer's own and any similarity to persons alive or dead is purely conicidental" etc etc. so then, if a *real* person is depicted then that renders that in part a LIE and therefore ironic.

there are many many different types of irony - it's a lot more pervasive a device than i think many people suspect. it also doens't have to be hip (oh how i hate the term "hip and ironic") or sneering to be irony.

Real elements don't neccessarily "undercut the fictionality" of a work. Unless the author is trying to create a wholly fictional landscape (like sci fi or fantasy), there's nothing in using real characters, places, or events as elements that prevents the story from being believable, internally consistent fiction. I still don't see how cultural references make something automatically ironic.

Would you consider "Libra" an ironic book?

"if a *real* person is depicted then that renders that in part a LIE and therefore ironic."

Following this logic, "Titanic" and "Pearl Harbor" are works of irony. (Which they may be, but not by intent.)

I think people mostly just mean "knowing" when they say "ironic". And I think this knowingness is something which comes about when barriers between the medium and the message begin to wobble, because people (the "audience") know more about the tricks and techniques used by the medium. For instance, in a Shakespeare comedy you very often have the theatrical in-joke of the boy-dressed-as-a-girl-dressed-as-a-boy, a joke which is function of the medium. And (faint bells ringing) isn't Don Quixote supposed to be the first novel ever written? And doesn't he (the Don) meet a whole lot of people in the second half who have read the first half? That's pretty "knowing", I reckon.

So I don't think this phenomenon is anything new, and I don't think it's likely to go away. But I do wish that people wouldn't think that being knowing and flip is the same as being clever.

OK. "Titanic" and "Pearl Harbor" are supposedly retellings of things that happened ages ago and most of the protagonists are now dead. there's not a lot of room for irony in biography (or supposed biography) - artistic license and exageration maybe... that's different from e.g. some bloke in Glamorama saying that he was at a party with, i dunno, Kate Moss and The Strokes the other week, when clearly i have read my NME gossip section and know that it is a lie. also, i never said that ALL references to nonfictional characters are ironic, i just said that this device is often used these days and it is an ironic usage - especially in so-called "metafiction" which, in questioning its own status as fiction blah blah etc etc, uses devices like this to disorientate the reader.

i haven't read "Libra" so cannot answer that question.

and i would consider "Knowingness" to have quite a lot of overlap with "irony" - not the same i know, but interrelated to some degree depending on how you use them. though i agree it's annoying when people get the two totally confused.

and Shakespeare was the most ironic one of all - dramatic irony, anyone?

but Katie,(I don't know what Glamara is, so I hope this makes sense) having a character saying he partied with the Strokes isn't ironic, it's just a device to tell us who this character is. It might be hip or knowing, or depend on the viewer's knowledge of the in crowd to have meaning but it's not ironic.

glamorama is a v well written but really icky novel by Bret Easton Ellis that i had to put down in the end becuase i can't stand ick, but i was quite impressed by the writing itself. i just think it is ironic, but in the purely purely literary sense that i was babbling about earlier i.e. invoking real people who weren't there is a LIE that kind of destabilises the whole thing - this is supposed to be fiction, but he partied with the strokes, but hey they're real (debatable fnarr fnarr) so could they have been there? it's like it creates 2 versions of the strokes (god help us), a real one and a fictional one, and therein lies the irony. perhaps not a good example, but i found it disoreintig to read. i'm not trying to use this example to say that it's hip or knowing to mention the strokes (BEE is quite hip and knowing enough thank you) i'm saying that it was an ironic device.

and the stokes aren't in the book BTW, there was a real band mentioned but i can't remember who it was so i just substituted a hip NY retro band in their place.

but it's just social realism, not irony - I think it could be more intrusive if an author used a fictional band to represent a Strokes- like band than to simply use the band themselves. It's just a simple and efficient way to say "this story takes place in the real world of hipster New York, circa 2001".

we ain't gonna agree on this! all i'm saying is that there are levels and levels of fiction, they interact in fascinating ways, more often than not via the use of irony. next you'll be telling me that cartoon versions of real people appearing in the Simpsons isn't ironic...

Sounds like we're both pretty dug in on this point, so we'll just have to admit to ourselves that the other is *wrong* if not deeply, deeply disturbed (winking emoticon). Actually, (much as I'd like to) I can't argue with your explanation of why parody is inherently ironic and I'd be a fool not to agree that The Simpsons' use of real people is ironic.

I guess what's been bugging me (in general, it's not at all a part of your argument) is the assumption that irony is always hip, glib, cynical, and empty. Because irony is often employed by hip, glib, cynical, empty sources I think oftentimes people use "ironic" to describe any art that they think is any of these things. It just seems imprecise.

hurrah hurrah hurrah now you're talking!! like that fucking alanis morrisette song where ALL THE THINGS SHE SANG ABOUT weren't in the least bit ironic, just a bit unfortunate. bint!

Katie! Shame on you for coming out with such an A-level cliche

heh, heh. just cos it's a cliche don't make it untrue :)

and besides i nicked it from somewhere else (forgetten where). this also does not preclude its truth!

The lovely Ed Byrne?

I read about it first in Franks' APA. Which at the time was being run by Mr Byrne's sister lending RickyT's theories some credence.

probably ed "he's luuuurrrrrrrrvely" byrne then.

he was better with long hair though.

what are you Brits banging on about now?

God, I remember Ed Byrne coming out with it and thinking "NOOOOO! I've already heard this about 200 times - you can't say that as a stand up comedian and expect to get a laugh. What next? Jokes about wobbly shopping trolley wheels". Surely you if you think Alanis is being stupid, you don't need to 'hear' it anywhere anyway? You would presumably have taken umbrage at her conception of 'ironic' for yourself, the first time you heard the song.

er, yes nick that's why i'm citing it as a supreme example of people misunderstanding the meaning of irony...

Now you've lost me. I was commenting on you saying that you'd nicked it from somewhere. I didn't understand what there was to nick.

ah yes shd. have explained. i had already thought of it, but the luuuuurvely ed byrne (he is TOP TOTTY comedian BTW fritz) was who i was (i think) quoting by using the word "unfortunate". for surely it is one job of stand up comics to distill public opinion into highly quotable soundbytes?

I didn't understand what there was to nick.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

V. good Sam.

for surely it is one job of stand up comics to distill public opinion into highly quotable soundbytes?

Hmmm.. no, not sure about that one. I get bored with quotable soundbytes. At least when they get quoted. And I'm not sure the word 'unfortunate' added much to the joke anyway. I guess what I'm saying is, I think Ed Byrne's a bit shit.

Ed Byrnes new short hairdo evoked a shrill response from someone who was watching I Wuv 1999 with me on the sofa on Saturday night. A response of WEEPING AND TEARS. NB: it wasn't me for I haf no idea who he is....

wuthering nuts, all of you

how does this thread weather the tides of history?

not well

People have finally stopped going on about Alanis Morissette.