Start with the South Parkesque absurdist beginning of this series, if that's the kind of thing that you're into. Satire and Irony as Political Tools I've already written on humor for this series; shouldn't this topic have already been covered? Well, no. As Wikipedia tells us (citing Robert Corum writing about French satire), satire need not be actually funny. Animal Farm Continue Reading …
Assessing Irony
I saw this Opinionator article from Christy Wampole in the New York Times: "How to Live Without Irony." It condemns the ironic lifestyle of Generation Y as terminally inauthentic, avoiding real commitments, making us (them) incapable of dealing with the world at hand and with each other. Central to Wampole's critique is a standard "I don't understand the younger generation" Continue Reading …
Living Ironically: The Upshot
With a few comments on my last post to spur me on, here are some hopefully final thoughts on the ironic life for the moment. Irony is one of the characteristic social modes for Americans of at least the Generation X (that would be mine, i.e. 40ish) and younger. I can't speak for how pervasive it is demographically in terms of race, class, or education: I certainly read R. Continue Reading …
More Examples of Irony as Epoché: Cake, Cliché and PEL Bombast
Following up on my last post, here are some more examples, some cultural and some personal, to make my point. 1. Consider Cake: Listen to Cake singing "I Will Survive." When this rendition came out in 1996, it was greeted as a "naughty cover." A parody of some sort. When I hear it now, I just think it's awesome, and not disrespectful of the original disco version at Continue Reading …
Humor as Epoché: Irony and Hypothesis
Near the end of our humor episode, I threw out the truism that humor tends to deal with something we're uncomfortable with, like death, sex, or embarrassment itself. The example I gave was of someone like Ed Conard making jokes about being rich. Now, I've since seen Conard on the Daily Show, and while he was good natured enough, I see no evidence that he would have the Continue Reading …
Irony in Music II: Jonathan Coulton
Following up on my post on Weezer and the follow-up discussion of irony, I submit for your consideration Jonathan Coulton: Despite this being a cover (well, lyrically), it's pretty typical of what I've heard of him: he sings pretty folk songs much like the many many individuals regularly highlighted by Performing Songwriter magazine, but with goofy lyrics much like They Continue Reading …
Troll 2: Doubly Reflexive Irony and the Best Worst Movie
I recently sat through the Rifftrax of Troll 2 (see my previous post re. Rifftrax) and felt the need to relate my fascination with flavors of irony to the so-bad-it's-good movie experience. Just to clarify, the Rifftrax guys claim that they don't actually like bad movies. These movies are simply bad, so the humor in what they do is their addition, and comes in part (and this Continue Reading …
Trainwrecks: Weezer on Irony
Reflections on the poptastic Rivers Cuomo. Watch on youtube. Weezer is one of my favorite bands, and as in the case of most of my favorite bands, I like all of its eras and permutations, whereas most critics and fans latch on to one (the first) era and are frustrated or disappointed by the rest. Strangely, I got into them late in the game: around 2004 or so; I didn't Continue Reading …