Irony Irony They've All Got It Irony

Nothing really, it's the frequency/dosage of irony methinks. Too much of a good thing, in this case at least, tends to turn people into smug bastards.

Well, *I* swerved because (a) it's just worn coinage which automatically (i. unthinkingly) jumps you under the wrong part of the fridge; (b) it's likely ambiguous: ""Ironically I like [x]" * "I like [x] ironically" (c) spasm-wise "It's boring: use other words please."

oh, the final asterisk shd be a not-equals sign

(Great question, btw!) well, liking something ironically, aint really "liking" it, is it? It's more citing it to your friends, showing off, generally being superior and patronising to the object you claim to like and promoting a culture of nastiness and duplicity where any attempt at direct feeling is displaced by never- ending sarcasm.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with this at all, it just seems to have a fatal attraction for legions of middlebrow creeps who have overused it to death, like the wiggly blues thing Status Quo keep on doing with their pinkies on the guitar.

Of course, we need irony to an extent. If irony did not exist, every band would sound like Simple Minds.

I kind of ask the qn because it's very rare for someone to actually say, I like this ironically. It tends - these days - to be an accusation hurled at you, or an assumption made. And in my opinion i) there are no bad reasons for liking something ii) you can't tell anyway.

These may not always have been my opinions.

it's very rare for someone to actually say, I like this ironically

I reckon that's because, as i say, liking something ironically is not the same as liking it per se. You condescend to it, you display it with a wink, you quote it with a disclaimer, you don't actually like it. It's really a way of avoiding the whole "liking" problem. Hey - it's a substitute for liking, and one that doesn't really get anyone anywhere, but does stop bands from sounding like Simple Minds.

however, if we had an exclusively ironical culture, all bands would sound like Blur. Fire or fire, madam?

irony was best in Augustan literature, when it tended to be directed towards something unsaid, some humourous circumstance or detail that transformed the vignette's meaning in a playful, skillful way. Irony today has become degraded by repetition.

Apart from Blur I don't know much about irony and pop music (as opposed to pop fans) so I better shut the f*ck up.

It's a cop-out, isn't it ? Either it entertains you or it doesn't. And I DO know people who seemingly can only enjoy things on the level of "it's good because it's so stupid".

It depends on how its done and why...

If I think of rugger players doing YMCA I think yes there is a problem. It's the knowing perversion of the camp sensibility; the intention to mock, like medical student drag.

It's the simulation of a weaker groups' sensibility ends up being, well, offensive. Generally in pop criticism the tastes that are satirised are black, gay and working class tastes and the people doing the ironic liking are the usual white male suspects...

The great tragedy is that much of the music that is liked ironically is good, not ironically good, just good.

However a grouip like Phoenix ironically liking 80s frat rock (Journey, Hall & Oates) has a whole different politics and seems far more acceptable. I think ironically liking Limp Biscuit is ok for example - their fans could do with being patronised which is what ironic liking does after all.

OK, so I can't keep my mouth shut...

It occurs to me that when irony is concentrated to an unusual degree, as in the 80s art work of Jeff Koons (who blankly fetishizes Jacko, Disney, Hardcore Porn, gauche cuddly toys and other "low" or "kitsch" culture) it becomes somewhat nightmarish/disturbing/threatening to the viewer, and a long way away from Albarn style smart-arseness. I wonder why this is?

it becomes somewhat nightmarish/disturbing/threatening to the viewer, and a long way away from Albarn style smart-arseness. I wonder why this is?

I'd say because Jeff Koons isn't letting you into the joke, the way Damon does. In order to laugh along with what Koons is saying, the viewer needs to accept the mindless crap he is looking at in the context of art, a la Duchamp. When it's an explicit picture of him screwing his wife, or a nauseatingly pink cuddly pig there is an element of replusion as well as attraction.

Damon's irony is slick and emasculated in comparison, obvious targets, a joke all indie kids will get, a club everyone can be in.

That's my tuppence worth

Ahem, this is a subject I know a little bit about.

Irony to me has always been about marking a distance between yourself and the thing you're considering or citing. That distance can protect you from all sorts of poisons in the original material. Irony empowers the consumer by allowing him to consume cultural products without swallowing the often shoddy and exploitative meanings encoded in them. It allows the consumer to create new meanings, to wrest the original away from its narrow demographic, to salvage valuable little bits and throw the rest away.

Irony has a lot in common with DJing and sampling, and Brecht's Alienation Techique was a kind and cunning anticipation of its importance in our times. Here was an artist saying 'Think about my work in your own way, take from it what you like, don't get too involved.'

On the question of the difference between Koons and Albarn's strains of irony, I agree with the last two points here. There's affectionate irony, or embarrassed irony, which are very English and involve marking the air with invisible quote marks as a kind of insurance, just in case your words offend anyone. Albarn's irony is close to that. Then there's the heavy duty irony of Koons and Barney, which is all about pushing familiar memes into realms of extra-terrestrial strangeness.

That kind of irony is disorienting and challenging in the same way as walking around Tokyo for the first time is for a Westerner. Everything's familiar, but it all fits together in a new way. That's a really wonderful feeling which freshens our lives and releases us from stereotypes, rather than simply playing with them, as Albarn does.

I would agree with you that the problem with a lot of British irony is that it's deeply half-baked and permanently grinning and embarrassed about itself (the TV nostalgia clip show syndrome), rather than the kind of irony which plays with and messes about with cultural products, and their meaning. I think that phenomenon - the association of a watered-down idea of "irony" with the tiresome recollections of Stuart Maconie* et al - have done the most to discredit irony in the UK. I've probably confused the embarrassed British irony and the transcendent globalist irony myself.

What I do object to, like Tom, is the idea that if you like a record that's in the Top 20 you are inherently liking it in a cheesy, kitschy sense (the phenomenon of students whose music collections barely extend beyond the Stone Roses / Coldplay having Kylie / Britney posters, etc.). I suppose there is a sense of taking chartpop away from the associations of tacky Ritzy clubs, TOTP roadshows, Saturday afternoons being intimidated by the townies in Our Price, etc., and in that sense it's far, far closer to the Jeff Koons thing and your comments about "consuming cultural products without swallowing the often shoddy and exploitative meanings in them" than it is to that NME / student union thing. However I would endorse entirely Tom's statement at the end of the "Ms. Jackson" piece, which is quite heart-on-the-sleeve for him, but exactly how I feel when I hear that song (and "Say My Name", and "Survivor").

*If you visit Maconie's house, he will look baffled and disturbed if you show him a copy of the NME where he gave 9 to "Don't Stop The Night", mutter that he doesn't know what he was thinking, and then put on a 7" of Brotherhood of Man's "Angelo". Fact.

momus: but does the listener not *always* construct his own meaning of a cultural product?

No one's said "Beck" yet...

I'm young, and people my age absolutely do not understand why I like the music I like. Thus, they assume it's ironic that I like Prince. It all comes from the human nature "fear what you don't understand" deal. "That's the queer guy who showed his ass on MTV. He's 80's. How could you listen to him?"

Irony, they say, is for the narrow. I love it.

Sundar: Yes, but most cultural products are doing their darndest to stop you taking liberties with their carefully-directed meanings. Irony is a distancing tool which allows us a few degrees more freedom. It permits us to say 'Thanks but no thanks' to the director, the songwriter, the author (the 'policemen of meaning'). Irony prefigures plunder and recontextualisation, which are a hell of a lot of fun unless you've got vested interests in copyright, or believe in the 'director's cut' approach, and all that implies about the supposedly inviolable sanctity of the creator's vision.

guess i'd say that there's no right/wrong way to appreciate something ... but that would render most of these conversations a little moot, wouldn't it? Referring to those people who side with Mork and view non-ironic appreciation as the "direct feeling" of an object. The folks who say "this is my [the] final judgment on the issue of whether this artist is a classic or a dud" or something similar.

If irony is going to be, as Rorty says, recognition of the contingency of one's values, and the ironist is someone who has radical and ongoing doubts about the final descriptions she uses ... then, then, i'm guessing that most of us non-Christian non-Platonists are ironists "pretty far down," or "as far down as you feel like going"!

Once you realize how easy it is to go from saying "this is the best band in the universe" to "this band is crap" to "this is a band who makes music", you kinda get the feeling that perhaps there wasn't so much inherent truth in those pronouncements you kept making.

And while you used to say that Radiohead and Super Furry Animals penetrated to the core nature of, respectively, modern life's technological alienation and its absurdity, now you look at EVERY other band out there as capable of creating an equally interesting perspective on WHATEVER.

Because, after all, my god is love.

Nick Bramble: I haven't read Rorty, but the definition you cite seems to be close to the first type of irony I talk about, the very English kind where you adopt a tone of rather humble self-mockery or self- detachment to insure yourself against the true pluralism that results when people are prepared to adopt firm (if experimental) positions and argue them.

My problem with this is that, although my values and opinions may be contingent sociologically, they're not contingent to *me*, so I don't see why I should adopt this self-mocking tone, or claim that all opinions are futile. Does Rorty talk about the second type of irony anywhere, irony as provocative estrangement and recontextualisation? That is, creative, not defensive, irony?

I think it's a pretty small step from believing that values are sociologically contingent to believing that your own values are contingent. All it takes is a little self-reflection. I think you're right, though, that realizing this doesn't mean one is forced to believe that opinions are futile. Obviously expressions of values serve a very important social function, whether or not they are objectively grounded.

Nick - just because you're not a Christian or a Platonist doesn't mean that you deny the objectivity of values. There are plenty of other ways to go about grounding them. (I'm not saying I think they're successful, but there are options, at least.)

Going from what I've read in "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" and his discussions of Nietzsche and Heidegger, I'd argue that your second kind of irony is all that he talks about. He doesn't give much credence to the idea of a core 'knowable' self, so he'd probably say that if you recognize your values as being sociologically contingent, then they're contingent to *you* as well. But it is a largely positive discussion of irony ... self-knowledge becomes self- creation and you gain a bunch of freedom when you recognize that the language-game that you were brought up in doesn't penetrate through to 'reality'. You then become able to conceive of a new vocabulary/metaphorical-system to describe, or to recontextualize, what you see as the human condition. (This is really quite a gloss.)

Sorry Josh, didn't see your response until after i pushed submit. I guess i'm using platonist in an extremely broad sense to refer to anyone who frequently uses the words 'truth' and 'reality' to refer to something outside of the spatial-temporal realm. Incidentally, perhaps it's possible to die for a contingently-held belief/value and still not call it objective.

Like: "Nick, you are the most gorgeous man there's ever been and I would die for you."

Needn't be ironic, needn't be a lie, might not be objective — this technology doesn't help clear that up.

But we also both know that I might meet someone next week, and then it's hasta la vista, big boy...

Ha! My brother's a lit. crit. Prof. specialising in pomo theory and deconstruction, and he gets very annoyed when I try to talk about irony. When we meet up, all he wants to talk about is his love life. And just when I think I've found a nice place to play intellectual hardball, I find it happening all over again!

Conclusion: irony is a scary hall of mirrors which pretty soon sends us all screaming back to love.

thanks mark ... I guess that's why halls of mirrors are so comforting to me.

I don't know, irony seems to be kind of a given, and we don't perceive it in love only because we're ignoring it for a few moments. Not that I don't ignore it.

This is because, as has been pointed out more than once, pomo is indistinguishable from porno. And given that pomo doesn't actually exist, we shd maybe all get together and force Derrida to rewrite 'Différance', to take this into account. Why didn't they ask Geordie to translate _Of Grammatology_ instead of Gayatri Chakravorti bloody Spivak? They say that mere wordgames can never change history, but in this case —

Hey, Mark, you *are* my brother!

Howay man - Mark , me missus does the irony !

talking about irony becoming discredited in the UK, as I believe Robin was neutrally observing... There's also a big anti-irony debate going on in the US, centred around a book by some home educated kid from the backwoods of Wisconsin who claims that irony is cultivating "a nastiness and insecurity that is present in every corner of our lives".

I think there's a great danger in completely rejecting irony, because to put it clumsily, you throw out the twin babies, humour and free expression along with the bathwater. True, Damon Albarn is an utterly smug, tiresome bastard, but I worry about the number of groups / commentators who are vocally anti-irony and concerned with "keeping it real", or constructing "a new classicism" .. what next, mein freunde, torchlit parades? Irony is like a swinging door, we need it to freshen our lives, and senses of humour, but we also need moments of "real feeling" (even if only predicated on a misrecognisation of "self", or a naive misrecognition of the ideology we're buying into). We shouldn't demonise either thing.

Rant over

momus: hmm. so does the carefully directed meaning of _closer_ come from ian curtis's lyrics, peter hook's basslines, a combination of it all, or what? since peter hook said he never listened to the lyrics at the time in any semantic way, was he appreciating his band with a level of irony, by ignoring/rejecting certain meanings that ian curtis may have tried to put across? do i like jd more ironically than cinderella if i tune out the suicidal lyrics of the one but get into the party spirit of the other? if i appreciate led zeppelin non-ironically, what does that mean? that i think about fairies and ringwraiths while listening? these may be dumb questions but this issue really does make me curious.

I was thinking more about irony being discredited through the association of a cheap, lazy form of it with tiresome nostalgia shows but yes, Pete, that's *exactly* how I feel.

I have the urge to reprise Doompatrol23's arguments on the 'Class and Race Debate - the enemy of Creativity'(sic), but that's only because I find irony amusing, like an involuntary spasm that connects my heart and my head, so I don't like it dissected. Irony and Pomo both share the prismatic intellectual qualities that make them interesting to apply, though an awareness of them does little to enrich our perspective. Still, they make good conversation.

I had something to say on one of Britain's greatest fallacies - "Americans lack a sense of irony" but as we all know it's just an unkind generalisation...intellectual superiority....etc... Right?

I reckon there is less of a culture of irony in the US mainstream. Stuff like God, Patriotism etc. still matters to some, straight down the line, honest to goodness seriously, my theory being that if you are the world's first country, you tend to take yourself pretty seriously (cf Victorian England)...

But in the margins of US culture and the avant garde, irony has the strength of paint stripper and could vaporise our knobbly limey knees in five seconds flat.

How related is irony to cynicism? Momus sees it as an enabler of freedom. Mork sees it as cynicism incarnate. America is probably more cynical than Britain. Now that was a staggeringly crude generalisation. Note my ironic disclaimer.

Reviving this based on Peter Andre and stevem's comments.

I think, before it all kicks off again, we should keep the wto meanings hinted at above as separate as possible.

1) Making art 'ironically' or with 'irony'.
2) Liking art 'ironically'

I'm sure we're agreed that irony in the first sense is pretty essential, so how's about we look at the second meaning?

For me, as I've said in an article on Freaky Trigger, I love it. It's a way of enjoying music and tends to get looked down upon - as in a few of the posts above - because it's not 'proper', it's not actually 'liking the music', it takes something away from the real, heartbreaking stuff you listen to.

But I think 'irony' opens up so much and you can like things ironically and 'properly' at the same time - in fact I'd argue it's impossible not to.

But more than this - and it's taken years to realise it - but I'm not ashamed of liking things 'ironically', in the pure, 'huh, funny, kitsch' way. I mean, why should I be?

Depends on the circumstance. Like what Patrick originally brought up. Some people do it for fear of coming off as stupid, and therefore, are afraid to enjoy things for what they are. It's dishonest smugness I'd rather not be exposed to, but that's just me.