”“‘Irony’” in Quotes”
Joe doesn’t believe in real life irony.
Now wait, before you bring out the torches and the crossbows, he’s not saying that there aren’t people who cleverly say things they don’t mean to suggest a different meaning. Because he is, in fact, one of those people.
He just means that when a fireman is a pyromaniac, an expert figure skater slips on some icey stairs and hurts herself, a diet guru is fat, or a curator for the Darwin Awards dies in some stupid way (is it wrong of me to kind of wish that would happen?), those aren’t instances of irony. Those are coincidences.
If an author writes scenes like those, however, in which there are disconnects between what happens and what is expected, or between a person’s beliefs and her fate - that and only that is irony - because someone intentionally devised that situation to make a point or a joke.
At first I resisted this line of thinking. I gave Joe an example, a story Carmichael told me about something seemingly ironic that happened at Angelica Kitchen before I worked there. A customer was demanding some maple syrup and was willing to pay for it. Angelica Kitchen has maple syrup, but because of some quirky rule intended to safeguard the supply, we wouldn’t sell it to this man, despite how badly he wanted it. He argued with the management for a while, which would sell him maple flakes (which are on the menu), but not the syrup. Just then, a delivery man came in the door with cases upon cases of maple syrup, rendering Angelica’s reluctance to sell a little bit of syrup completely absurd. Adding to the irony, Angelica Kitchen still refused to sell. The man was livid. Surely a hilarious instance of life’s little ironic twists and turns.
Obviously this didn’t convince Joe. “A coincidence,” he said.
Ultimately, I agreed with him, and now when people say that something that happens in life is ironic, it feels like language abuse to me. However, if there is a God, I disagree with Joe’s point. God could create ironic situations in the world just like any human author could in a musical about gun control.
Still, I don’t think every time people call a real life coincidence irony, they’re necessarily saying that God made it happen. And Brooke, an atheist, thinks life can be ironic. Yet how can there be ironic meaning if it’s all just an accident?
Today Joe told me about the four peace activists who were captured in Iraq. Neither of us are in favor of the war, but Joe asked me if I thought there was something funny about that.
“Well, I guess,” I said. “They probably went over there hating the United States, expecting the Iraqis to love them for sympathizing with their plight. But the Iraqis didn’t react that way at all, and now they could be killed by the people they thought they were helping. They might be questioning which side they want to be on right about now. Granted, we all but created the other side, but it’s still a good example of one’s beliefs being at an incongruence to one’s fate. Like the grizzly bear lover being mauled to death by a bear in Grizzly Man. I’d say it’s still sad, though, not funny.”
“Yeah,” Joe agreed. “I don’t think it’s funny, really. I didn’t see this and think, oh that’s a funny story. But I guess I’m thinking what a lot of people are. It’s ironic.”
But then, in perhaps the most ironic moment I’ve ever witnessed, Joe realized this contradicted his view on irony and corrected himself with ironic detachment.
“Well…,” he said as he made quote marks with his fingers, as people do to distance themselves from an idea they disagree with, “…’ironic.’”
6 years ago