Ranting to /dev/null

No, Alanis, that isn't ironic

Britain's very own The Guardian, is currently featuring a brilliant piece by Zoe Williams on the true nature of the word "irony," its use, and (more often) misuse. It's obviously written from the perspective of a Brit (Americans are referred to in the third person) and contains some delicious gems of hilarity throughout.

What a lot of people around here have been calling "ironic" really isn't. It's just cynical. So you don't read the New Yorker ironically, you just read it with a touch of cynicism and personal distance. Nor does an overly active ironic tendency cause one to not enjoy things like Harry Potter. That's jadedness. And it isn't ironic to appreciate bad movies for their sheer inconguity. That's postmodern.

For a slight change in the theme of this post, consider my favorite paragraph from the essay: "But other strands of media use irony to assert their right to have no position whatsoever. So, you take a cover of FHM, with tits on the front - and it's ironic because it appears to be saying "women are objects", yet of course it isn't saying that, because we're in a postfeminist age. But nor is it saying "women aren't objects", because that would be dated, over-sincere, mawkish even. So, it's effectively saying "women are neither objects, nor non-objects - and here are some tits!" Scary Movie 2, Dumb And Dumberer, posh women who go to pole-dancing classes, people who set the video for Big Brother Live, people who have Eurovision Song Contest evenings, Charlie's Angels (the film, not the TV series) and about a million other things besides, are all using this ludic trope - "I'm not saying what you think I'm saying, but I'm not saying its opposite, either. In fact, I'm not saying anything at all. But I get to keep the tits." As Paul de Man pointed out, some time before FHM, "This does not, however, make it into an authentic language, for to know inauthenticity is not the same as being authentic."(4). So, we're not the first age to use irony (as some insist), but we are the first to use it in this vacuous, agenda-free and often highly amusing way."

This kind of insertion of the absurd into sincere discussions has always bothered me, as it seems to be a way of totally short-circuiting productive discussion under the guise of avoiding conflict. It certainly manages to do that, but it does so by failing to say anything at all. Call me whatever you want, I still think that there ought to be things that one takes a stand on, about which one truly says something without hedging. That's why I like my pastor's preaching so much. Yes it means you open yourself to getting nailed. But damn it, there's got to be something worth that.