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Is irony over?

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00:55 / 15.05.03

Not sure where this thread belonged so I thought I'd whack it here, feel free to moderate away...

So I was inspired by somebody in the Faint thread saying there were really over irony, and last night me and my housie were talking about this gallery brochure that talks about how 'irony is passe' and 'many younger artists situate themselves within the popular and consumer milieu, seeking immersion rather than objectivity, intensification rather than critique' and mentions 'post-ironic humour', which obviously is total artwank but it seems to be something that's in the air a bit.

Now I obviously have my own two cents to chuck in here but I wanted to see what other people thought first - is irony over, was it ever in, or is it just something wanker's can't resist? Does post-ironic just mean more ironic, or is it something else? A move beyond simplistic down-the-nose fashion aesthetics or another nudge along the trajectory that sinks us deeper up our own arses?

01:28 / 15.05.03

As a simple, naive sort of person I sincerely hope this is true. I can never tell when smart people are making fun of me. Tell me do you value an irony free existence, or do you revel in the ability to skewer the stupidity of the proles?

01:46 / 15.05.03

I sometimes tell people I think irony is the strongest force in the universe. It's a naive leftover from angsty self-centered teenage days when I sincerely believed the universe was out to kick me in the teeth, and took enough notice of me personally to care to do so. I have a soft spot for that kind of irony that makes a person laugh and cry at the same time. Not just a passive reading of an ironic situation in a book, or in a movie, but experiencing it first hand, getting a deranged look in your eye and feeling like your head is broken for a moment because what just happened was just so contrived that it should've been in a book or a movie, but here it is.

I'm not so wise in the ways of art, though, so as an artistic theme, I don't know if irony is dead or not. I guess the above statement should reveal that I'm not over it. But then again, I've still got my fingers crossed for a Bangles reunion, so call it what you will.

03:02 / 15.05.03

Or, as Wade Wilson would say: "sometimes I swear I can hear God laughing."

It's the perfect mode of expression for a generation so apathetic, paranoid and nihilistic as my own. However, kitsch only works for me when combined with genuine affection.

Matthew Fluxington

05:10 / 15.05.03

Let's simplify this as much as possible:

Only a complete moron would decree a death to irony, or even to say that it is necessary in or out of fashion.

Irony is a part of the human condition, and as such will remain a part of art. End of argument.

Lilly Nowhere Late

05:49 / 15.05.03

Iotar(http://iotar.8m.net/) says "Irony is the new brown" or somesuch,
but he said it awhile back so I reckon as a concept to be classed by,
it is over. However, I agree that irony as a fact of human nature
will never not be. After all,Man is the laughing animal, the
embarassed animal, the ironic animal. ETC... And who knows where that
leaves us women? Somewhere in the idea of post modern irony exists the
word moronic.

Irony...
Irony...

It might be nice to have everything (art,music,culture,fashion) go a
bit innocently serious for awhile but I bet we will always find
ourselves back on that "up our own arse trajectory" ultimately.

06:50 / 15.05.03

How many times does it need to be said?

You know something is over as soon as Alanis Morissette writes a song about it.

No star here laces

08:50 / 15.05.03

Holy crap.

What a thread.

As flux says, irony cannot be 'over' as such.

However I think it's fair to say irony is no longer unusual or interesting in and of itself. Other things are fresher. We know this because of the existence of Electric Six and The Darkness....

10:18 / 15.05.03

Now I can't tell if Mazarine was being ironic or you really don't know the Bangles have a new album.

Also Flux=every thread will be boring if you play like that.

10:23 / 15.05.03

Or to put it another way: What does it mean that people are now trying to look cool by claiming irony is over, or be asserting that they lack ironic distance? (If nothing else doesn't this relate to Flux being perplexed by hipsters' embracing pop music?)

10:43 / 15.05.03

Irony will always be around, but there's no way you can claim that it hasn't gone out of style.

The hip factor of irony, of course, is *extremely* important to the artist.

What's hot and what's not? Cosmopolitan for the avant garde. Cheers!

11:21 / 15.05.03

Flux:

"Only a complete moron would decree a death to irony, or even to say that it is necessary in or out of fashion."

I agree that it would be silly to declare that irony will never again be used. But could you not observe that irony (or the use of it) has played a much greater part in art (or Western culture) in recent years than in previous ones, and has been remarked upon (mostly with approval) and discussed by critics more in recent years than in previous ones, without being a moron? Would it not be fair to describe that as a fashion, at least loosely, for the purposes of a discussion?

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:22 / 15.05.03

As I understand it: 'irony' as we mean it here originally developed as a way of admitting that you liked something - a genre of music, a TV show, etc - that wasn't 'credible' on its own terms. This was pretty annoying, as if you genuinely like something you shouldn't give a fuck about whether it's credible or not, and if you don't like something you certainly shouldn't pretend to in order to seem 'wacky', etc. An annoying result of this was that a lot of people were tarred with 'ironically' liking something when they were being completely serioys. At the same time, in the 90s a lot of creative types were interested in putting a new twist on established genres and ideas (whether this be in music or any other field), often using humour or unexpected combinations of content and form (broad example: dance-influenced sad songs about staying at home). This was often called 'ironic', when a lot of the time it wasn't quite, or wasn't at all.

So, over time, those of us who were never being ironic about something but are always being accused of it (and Crunchy's right, liking pop is a good example) have grown more and more exasperated with the term (even aside from its meaning becoming more and more abused), and have started shouting more and more loudly that this has nothing to do with irony, dammit, not as a lot of people seem to understand the word. It's been going on for years now but I think we're finally being heard. And yeah, maybe now the people who used to claim to like things ironically which they didn't like at all are now claiming to like them entirely sincerely, but... fuck it.

14:37 / 15.05.03

of course irony won't ever truly be 'over' per se. however, is the excessive, ubiquitous use of irony over? hmm. maybe it has to get worse before it gets better, where *nothing* is sincere anymore. (which means no emo bands, hallmark cards, or romantic comedies.)
i for one am a fan of irony but it's all getting so out of hand, this disaffected thing that's going on. where it's not 'cool' to care about people or issues. and political correctness is the enemy to the degree that people are tossing about racial slurs cos they claim to 'hate everyone equally' (see vice magazine ), and misogynistic jokes are funny, just 'get over it', etc. etc. blearrgh. i hate feeling like a bleeding heart tree hugging humorless feminist (cos i know i'm not) but this is how these ppl make me feel.

14:44 / 15.05.03

Are Hallmark cards the last bastion of sincerity? That's what I'd like to know.

Is black comedy ironic? I think it's rather more pointed.

14:56 / 15.05.03

I hope irony isn't over because I love irony and find it incredibly amusing. Even tragic irony never fails to give me a weak smile even if I'm the poor fool suffering from it. The universe and human existence may be pointless but at least it can be amusing at times.

15:02 / 15.05.03

Sincerity is the new Irony, I heard, but the backlash against sincerity has already begun...
maybe I'm being ironic, like ten thousand spoons ("Remember Neo, there is no Irony")"

16:56 / 15.05.03

quantum, yr post hurt my brain.
flyboy, i've been thinking about it, and sometimes i'm not sure if i like something sincerely or ironically, to be honest. is this a new, ultramodern disability cos of the times in which we live?
maybe i really do like songs where ja rule sings. yikes.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

22:06 / 15.05.03

Irony is like Goth. You cannot kill what does not live.

Heavyweight irony is no longer a usable pathos, though, thank God. "I killed him! With his own gun!" no longer provokes tears. It's a bit like "and the moral of this story is..." - it means the text didn't do its job well enough in the first place.

22:20 / 15.05.03

Now I can't tell if Mazarine was being ironic or you really don't know the Bangles have a new album.

Which ever makes me sound cooler. If Sincerity is the new Irony, then I didn't know. If Irony is still the new Irony, then yes, I was being backhandedly and subtly witty.

-scampers off to the record store-

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

22:56 / 15.05.03

I just think it is funny that the right wing commentators said right after 9/11 that Irony was dead, and hip humor was over...and the American people now wanted old fashioned entertainment.

While Jon Stewart's Daily Show gets double the ratings that Faux News does on a daily basis now.

Irony will always be around as a humor style. It's just one that most people tend to grow out of.

00:17 / 16.05.03

Following on from Flyboy's 'we were never takin' the piss in the first place'musical stance, are memories of U2 performing BAD at the '85 Live Aid concert in Wembly. And Queen doing their electric thing. Surrounded by glam, blitz pop, STYLE, their musical and theatrical gestures were sincere. It was the stadium, global version of great pub rock. And they meant it. (Did Bono fly the white flag that day?)

I mean really, while geese plump around, the Janus face of irony will continue to devil up the sincerity while pointing the bone.

02:06 / 16.05.03

I reckon, really, what's changed is that where once you could assert superiority to others by asserting an ironic preference for something widely considered "bad", now that's so universal there's no cred involved. Instead, the move to make is to assert that your preference for the bad is not ironic, but authentic, but anyone who makes this move implicitly understands that there is an irony attached to a preference for the bad if you're sophisticated enough to deploy your cultural capital in such a convoluted fashion. So they're being ironic about their lack of irony but, since they like as not really do like whatever, they are also not being ironic.

Arguably this has nothing to do with what irony is supposed to mean, but I'm thinking of the trajectory of irony from, say, the NY artworld of the 80s, trickling down through hipsters to grunge music, more or less universalised as of (say) Reality Bites, while a counter-trajectory made it all but impossible not to like at least some pop culture. Where those trajectories converged, that was irony's moment. But now we're at the point where they've passed each other by and begun spinning off in different directions. So if irony is their zone of intersection, it is now getting pretty stretched out and weird. I think this is interesting, hence the thread.

Although I could just be talking out my arse.

13:07 / 16.05.03

Hey, when was the last time someone heard a cliche or common expression ('all's well that ends well' 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' etc) that WASN'T meant ironically or as a pun?
Especially in advertising- a whole generation has grown up *only* knowing these traditional phrases in their ironic advertised sense. Irony gone maaaaaaaad!

13:29 / 16.05.03

What seems to missing from this thread is a recognition of the fact that irony is deeply embedded in much of our brit-talk (those of us who are brits, anyway). I regulary use irony as a source of humour, a way of accentuating a point etc... and so do most of my friends.

13:58 / 16.05.03

yankees do it too...

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:28 / 16.05.03

Crunchy: There was a brilliant pisstake of what you are describing in Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun, in which a thinly-veiled Tony Parsons (for readers outside the UK, Tony Parsons is the devil, if the devil were shit), writing in the ironic review, says something like:

I really like Britney Spears. Yes, I do. You probably think I'm being ironic. But I'm not. I really like her. I think her songs are really good. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Mind you, that was about 7 years ago...

14:33 / 16.05.03

In my experience, to a much lesser extent than brits. I can't count the number of conversations I've had with Americans who just didn't get my rhetorical technique.

And I know I'm not alone. The cry of "Americans just don't understand irony" is very common around these parts.

(I appreciate that this post is a bit ridiculous. I hate generalising about an entire nation. Most New-Yorkers I've met had irony down pat.)

19:04 / 16.05.03

If we're going to generalise, hell, why not, I think it's not so much that Americans don't understand irony (The Simpsons?) but that Brits don't understand the difference between irony and sarcasm.

19:55 / 16.05.03

oooooh! fight! fight! fight!

20:49 / 16.05.03

Sorry, was that a bit brusque?

I am a Brit myself but, y'know, fair's fair and all that. :-)

20:51 / 16.05.03

Oh, we understand sarcasm alright. Just another tool that we disingenous brits use to hide our vulnerability.

Simpsons is a great case in point. There are clearly a great number of yanks who do indeed get irony.

06:07 / 19.05.03

I said I was tired of irony=hip, and if it's not my post you're referring to, Dread Pirate, then I apologzize for the assumption. But having essentially been called a complete moron, if not by name, in this thread, I can't exactly stay away, can I?

As for how I feel about this, it's all pretty much in the Faint thread, but I'll reiterate anyway: what I am tired of is the hipster smug detachment and the lack of passion it conveys. Sure, in a way it's always been cool to pose like you don't care about anything in the world. But this bullshit retro, this retread of the 80s - does anyone actually like it? Or is it all wink-nudge-"Dude, check out my rad trucker hat from the Sturgis bike rally. No, I got no idea where Sturgis is."

If irony is, as dictionary.com defines it, (among definitions phrased somewhat differently) "A sort of humor, ridicule, or light sarcasm, which adopts a mode of speech the meaning of which is contrary to the literal sense of the words" then what I am tired of is the pose of life as irony. A mode of living which is contrary to the literal sense of the way one lives.

And maybe, if you want to know the truth, I should never have mentioned irony. Maybe what I should have said is this: I cannot understand what is wrong with sincerity and passion. Clearly, nothing, but so much is created, these days, to give the impression that one must be above such simple, mundane ideas. And we're all looking for the joke, looking for the detachment, looking for the arch smile and the tilt of the chin that clues us in to the 'real' meaning.

If liking a dash of honesty makes me emo, I'll gladly wear the tag.

And now I shut up, before I go off about what really infuriates me.

10:01 / 19.05.03

I'm with you, that practised detachment to be cool really pisses me off. People pretending not to care, grrr.
(I just realised that it's almost impossible to tell if I'm being ironic, fuck. I'm not, I'm being sincere, I think people should care)
(Also fist of fun- Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! the braveheart sketch is the funniest thing I saw that year)

The Natural Way

10:35 / 19.05.03

I think it's a knee-jerk cop-out to suggest that people have never enjoyed a show ironically (or something akin to it). Firstly there's the backslap-y, narcisistic pleasure of "Oooh, look how crap this thing is", and then, well, there's just a fun appreciation how STRANGE, say, something like 'Blind Date' is. I don't know if I'd define this sort of thing as ironic, but it's predicated on a certain amount of distance from the text. Often you end up with a fusion of the two, where the viewer dives in and out of the show/tune/whatever - enjoying full immersion, but wearing scuba-gear...or something.

God, that was poorly expressed.

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