Comments on: Heavy Lifting

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 20:35:35 +0000

Most of the situations in the song fit the irony of fate idea. Wins the lottery and dies the next day—the man is unusually lucky, but his luck is followed up immediately by his death. A well ordered, fair, cooperative and pro-human universe wouldn’t do that. Man afraid of flying puts it off his whole life but when he finally flies is caught on a crashing plane. Crashing planes aren’t very common. His fear was mostly irrational. Yet the one plane he flys on ends up crashing. I don’t think ‘Isn’t it a bummer’ quite covers it. Meeting the man of my dreams, and meeting his beautiful wife. Once again, a cooperative universe wouldn’t do that to you. This is reinforced by silly societal expectations. Meeting the man of your dreams is supposed to be a key moment. Realizing it can’t work out is an enormous let-down in that context. Notice the “beautiful” wife—suggesting either that the singer isn’t beautiful enough, or that there isn’t a chance to steal him away. Why are there 10,000 spoons and 0 knives when you wanted a knife? Come on! I’ll give you the wedding day isn’t ironic. The fly in your wine, it depends on how poor you are and how special you thought the wine was….

By: Steve Cake

Steve Cake — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:28:31 +0000

Sorry to be a stickler but this is a sticklerish topic to begin with: “dramatic irony”, as far as I have been taught, refers to a very specific dramatic setup (normally in the theatre) whereby the audience posseses knowledge that the protagonist does not have. For example, we might know that Road Runner has already eaten the seeds (check my erudite cultural references) but Wile E Coyote is ignorant of this fact. As we watch him put himself in danger through his ignorance, this is dramatic irony. I don’t think it means that the occurence is actually “ironic”, what is ironic is that we know but he dosn’t. That is where the irony, presumably, lies. The term “dramatic irony”, however, has been bandied and debased beyond this technical specificity.

By: Dee Lacey

Dee Lacey — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 17:16:06 +0000

“a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs” is what I got in the dictionary for the meaning of “irony” (one of the meanings – the one closest to the song’s usage). Rain on a wedding day is ironic in the incongruity sense because of dramatic cliche. In dramatic cliche (typical Hollywood movies, etc) wedding days are sunny and funerals are rainy. The example of 10,000 spoons is another case: if you had 10,000 utensils, and need a knife, you’d expect about 1/3 to be knives. It may not be the best examples or most evocative sort of irony, but it’s in there.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 10:38:05 +0000

The comedian Ed Byrne used to do a whole routine on this song. One bit I remember was his take on “A traffic jam when you’re already late” – he points out that it would be ironic if you happened to be the town planner responsible for that particular bit of road. And were on your way to a meeting about relieving traffic conjestion.

By: EH

EH — Mon, 31 May 2004 06:25:15 +0000

The Glenn Reynolds sentence in the previous post is ironic.

By: Noel Smith

Noel Smith — Mon, 31 May 2004 03:09:37 +0000

The excerpt from Fowler’s Modern English Usage cited by rilkefan—that irony addresses the clued-in portion of a double audience—parallels Strauss’s claim that the philosophers wrote between the lines in order to conceal their wisdom from the many. Strauss saw such esotericism as part of a routine strategy of dissembling. Deception of the unwitting seems to be an aspect of irony as well.

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Mon, 31 May 2004 01:01:33 +0000

Since any action situation involves a framework of meaning, I don’t see why the notion of irony should be confined to the discursive level. However, I don’t know that there can exactly be criteria for irony, since irony is itself a subversion of criterial meaning. Clearly it involves an unthematized meta-level commentary on an “object-level” meaning or intention, in such a way as to bring out the surplus in signifying possibilities. It is related to but differs from straight negation, involving something like a simultaneous negation and reinscription of an affirmation. (Foucault’s phrase “non-affirmative affirmation” comes to mind here, though that always struck me as indicative of the impossibility of living purely ironically.) But I don’t think that the “audience” interpretation of irony would do. Irony clearly derives from the play of levels involved in the intrinsically communicative, interactive constitution of meaning, (which is why those with no sense of irony are to be distrusted), but its “knowingness” does not resolve back into knowing, which would be criterial, (so that, e.g., Oedipus’ fate would simply be deserved and there would be no mystery to it.) And under that interpretation, we would never just come upon or encounter irony in our solitude, let alone self-irony. Nor do I think irony is necessarily amusing, nor superior. (Consider the analogy with absurdity, which can either be amusing or horrifying.) It is perhaps because it lacks exact criteria that we seek criteria for irony, since we all want to dare to be hip. When great Birnham Wood comes upon Dunsinane Hill (sp.?), due to entirely plausible “mechanical” causes, is the irony that the weird sisters’ “supernatural” oracle resolves naturalistically or is it that Macbeth credulously believes the oracle, but draws the inference that it signifies something naturally impossible? My intuition is that there is no irony there; it’s more like the swamp of proto-irony.

By: Sean

Sean — Sun, 30 May 2004 23:43:50 +0000

Czeslaw Milosz called irony “the glory of slaves”. I would add to slaves many western europeans. Is there consolation in irony? Think how small that world must be. But have at it, irreverant ironists! As for Alanis Morissette, anyone get Bob Dylan’s “new” live cd from 1964?

By: John

John — Sun, 30 May 2004 21:51:13 +0000

Isn’t a free ride when you’ve already paid ironic? I’d say that it’s sort of situationally ironic.

By: Dan the Man

Dan the Man — Sun, 30 May 2004 06:49:11 +0000

`Isn’t it a bummer?’ would have scanned perfectly. Why that wasn’t used, I do not know. Isn’t that ironic? Don’t you think?

By: nick

nick — Sun, 30 May 2004 04:42:09 +0000

‘Isn’t it a bummer?’ would have scanned perfectly. Why that wasn’t used, I do not know.

By: vivian

vivian — Sun, 30 May 2004 03:13:47 +0000

There’s a metaphysical element too: a rainy wedding might be ironic if Alanis were a pompous meteorologist, and some powerful being arranged for the rain precisely to demonstrate to the guests that she was wrong. There are the two audiences, one the butt of the joke, the other laughing. Leave out the god or demon, and it’s only schadenfreude (or an obnoxious cousin saying loudly “You picked a good day to get married, moron.”) Poor Alanis, if she’d only written her songs in a different time and place, she might have had a stronger claim; however, that still ain’t irony.

By: vivian

vivian — Sun, 30 May 2004 02:47:18 +0000

“…it’s interesting and a word to describe it would be useful.” How about: annoying, frustrating, cussed? inconvenient or disastrous (depending on the consequences)? Unfortunate – literally if one takes fortune to be author the play to which life is analogous. Also consider ‘tragic’ or ‘foreshadowing’ and of course ‘poetic justice’ Sure, there is a family resemblance among the situations, but it’s worth distinguishing the different ways in which expectation and surprise interact. I’d like to save ‘ironic’ for cases where there are two intended audiences, one that gets a second meaning, and where the situation is somehow substantial enough to transcend mere sarcasm.

By: Andrew Cholakian

Andrew Cholakian — Sun, 30 May 2004 02:22:59 +0000

Hasn’t Alanis’ use of the word been in usage long / frequently enough for it to be added to the dictionary?

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Sat, 29 May 2004 23:39:53 +0000

I was recently persuaded to desist in using my neologism, “alanironic”. I think we can agree, however, that whatever the hell she thinks “irony” is, it’s interesting and a word to describe it would be useful. The “dissociation” line of discussion is interesting to me because I think it has cultural relevance. But I’m not convinced that true irony, no knives but ten-thousand spoons irony, and dissociated irony aren’t all distinct (though distantly related).