Pundits declared irony dead after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but five years later, not only is it alive – it ruled 2006.
“Given the way the world has gone, we’re in more need of irony,” says Jerry Herron, a professor of English and American studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. “What 9/11 produced was a world where pettifoggery, obfuscation, half-truths and double dealing are more rampant than ever before.”
Irony, the grand dame of the zeitgeist, is pop culture’s weapon against hopelessness, experts say.
“The reason irony is more fun than the truth is that it’s more fun than the truth,” Herron says. “Jon Stewart is fun to watch because it seems to give the feeling of being in a club where everyone’s smarter than everyone else. And the whole world seems to be pretty dumb.”
Along with raised eyebrows and knowing looks, irony puts us in the know. We become members of the sorority of sagacity. And it gives us some semblance of controlling what we’re being told, experts say.
But what is irony? Merriam-Webster says it’s using words to mean the opposite of their literal meaning. But in today’s cultural climate, irony is anything said with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek. It’s sarcastic humor with an exaggerated message.
Irony has existed in Western culture since there was a Western culture, says author Ken Kalfus. “I’m not sure what ironic forms there are in, say, Afghan culture. You need a pretty well-developed idea of the individual. Irony is one of the first things that goes in a dictatorship.”
The smug smile of irony bares its teeth when conditions are ripe – there’s overarching disillusionment with the establishment and the public is trying to separate fact from fiction.
It came to dominate our culture in the 1970s as a way to question authority, says Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
“It was a response to things like governmental lying and to the commercialization and commoditization and corporatization of everything,” he says. “The only appropriate way to react to what was going on was to be a smart aleck and to say, ‘Yeah, right,’ to any assertion by the powerful. There was always someone trying to make a sucker out of you.”
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine and co-founder of the defunct satirical Spy magazine, was quoted as saying, “It’s the end of the age of irony. Things that were considered fringe and frivolous are going to disappear.”
But instead of ushering in an age of sincerity, when people help each other, join together and believe in a better world, we’re more interested than ever in whether celebrities wear underwear on a regular basis and have no qualms elbowing that person reaching for the last PlayStation 3 on the shelf.
“Many people, I was probably among them, said irony was dead and in the face of horrors unimaginable, the only appropriate response was authenticity and realism – postmodern winking was no longer appropriate,”
Kaplan says. “It probably was about six months that that lasted. Irony is very much alive and well.”
It’s an era in which comedian Stephen Colbert’s ironic roast of President Bush at a White House correspondents dinner is now legend. And, according to a study by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, more 18- to 24-year-olds watch “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” than read the print edition of a major newspaper.
“It’s become very hard to figure out what is real and what isn’t,” says stand-up comic Marc Maron. “By nature of that, there’s more irony.
“The idea that O.J. Simpson was about to publish a book about what he would have done had he killed his wife and her (friend), that should be an ironic joke, but it’s completely real and horrifying.”
The lines of reality are so blurred, irony is the only way to formulate some type of understanding, Maron says.
“That’s why fake news is resonating much more with people than the real news,” he says. “Because when you can exaggerate or be sarcastic or be ironic, the real message is revealed. Sometimes it takes irony to cut through a lot of the bull.”
Today’s irony can run the gamut from a simple wisecrack, knee-jerk and silly, to something much darker, says John Tomasic, managing editor of the online pop culture commentary Pop and Politics. But in the process, it can bring people together, as long as you know you’re not immune.
“You use it to mock, but you use it best if you’re prepared to be mocked,” he says.
