Irony occurs in a situation where one thing is stated or assumed but another thing is true.
It has become a “go to” strategy in much of Western culture for seeming hip. As a form of expression, it generally involves overstatement or understatement, or sarcasm, and the recognition by the spectator that you mean something other than what you are literally expressing. Its most basic form is sarcasm, of which Oscar Wilde called “the lowest form of wit (but the highest form of intelligence).” I think irony is frequently a defense mechanism. In my lifetime, it has indeed been used to show one’s intelligence (and detachment), but now that it has trickled down into the default mode of communication for almost everyone in North America, it is no longer clear whether it still works well to signal intelligence. Many people – including me at times – have adopted a “knowing” attitude without actually knowing all that much.
Literary and culture critics often divide irony into three distinct types: situational irony, dramatic irony, and verbal irony. I would like to suggest, however, that there is a fourth type, which I call equivocal irony. I grew up in a world addicted to equivocal irony, and have often found myself using it myself.
In situational irony, fate makes something undermine someone’s best efforts or assumptions, or poetic justice occurs, seemingly accidentally. Or the intention of one’s actions may be undermined due to one’s own incompetence, despite the best of intentions.
Texting while driving
Dramatic irony occurs when a reader or spectator knows something that a character in a fictional story does not know, and this makes the meaning of a situation different for the audience than it is for the character. (This can also occur in real life, when some people know something that another one doesn’t, leading the ignorant one not to correctly or fully understand the implications of something.) For instance, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet drinks a potion that makes her appear to be dead. This is so she doesn’t have to marry another suitor and can hopefully still get together with Romeo. Romeo discovers her and believes that she actually is dead (though we know she isn’t). He is so distraught, that he commits suicide to be together with her in death. She awakes and finds Romeo dead and then decides actually to kill herself.
Verbal irony is similar to sarcasm, or a use of overstatement or understatement that is meant to be understood by your audience and change the emotional meaning of what you are saying. With verbal irony, you say something, but you don’t mean it, or mean it in a different sense. Often you are saying exactly the opposite. For instance, the famous opening line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” This is meant to be ironic and funny, because it is not in fact a universal truth at all, and indeed the opposite would be more likely or more sensible. What does a rich man need with a wife?
Much literary satire relies on the reader understanding that the narrator does not mean what they are literally saying. In a famous satire, A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift carried on an extended bout of such irony. The pamphlet was written to address a severe famine in Ireland and Swift tries to create outrage and action in his reader by proposing, in a deadpan way, that the starving Irish children be repurposed as food for the English, thus cutting down on the population of impoverished Irish people. This is done “with a straight face” but it is assumed that the audience knows he is actually trying to draw attention to the hard-heartedness of the English, so they will do something to relieve the Irish in this time of need. For instance, “I rather recommend buying the children alive and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.” By exaggerating his apparent cruelty to the Irish, Swift hoped to make readers recognize their own callousness in not doing something to help in the relief of them.
Verbal irony typically uses overstatement or understatement for its effects, and may also make use of plays on words. Hamlet’s words to his mother “It is common” seem to agree with and confirm what she is saying to him, but if we are paying attention we recognize that he is actually criticizing her attitudes as unfitting for a member of the nobility> “It is common” seems to agree with his mother’s claim that her behaviour is normal, but here Hamlet uses irony to also mean, “yeah, your behaviour is low-class and typical of a not very educated or noble individual, a commoner.”
If verbal irony is often defined as “saying one thing and meaning another,” equivocal irony is a form where one could be said to be “saying two things and meaning nothing.” It is very common in our culture, and frequently used in parody, which often both criticizes and reaffirms values and situations.
Ambivalence is a common and understandable attitude to have toward much of our culture. One may enjoy looking at beautiful thin women, want to be a beautiful thin model oneself, and still deeply regret that our culture is so focused on beautiful thin models. One may enjoy that fact that Donald Trump’s presidency is a source of humour and entertainment and at the same time feel that it is terribly sad and dangerous to have him as president and to have a mass media so ready to use the situation for entertainment and clickbait.
The ambivalence is understandable, but it can argued that it is a conservative force. Making such ambivalence the “message” of one’s creative work is not really productive of anything. It reinforces the current situation, with its mix of positive and negative feelings. It leaves the negative part in place and the ambivalence unresolved. Like so much of parody, it re-normalizes things that arguably should be made to look creepier and less acceptable, so that the world moves in a better direction. Equivocal irony leaves things where they are, and has come to seem a very weak and pointless gesture in the world. Many parodies, culture jams, and other forms that think the world is bad nevertheless take a kind of “bitter irony” attitude toward the badness: this is bad, but it’s inevitable and can’t be changed. Irony is a coping mechanism in an unacceptable world, but as a tool for change it is not always foolproof. Sometimes it encourages the audience to accept the badness with a resigned sigh or a bitter chuckle, rather than rise up and demand change.
Equivocal irony is a second-order irony that more or less corresponds to what YouTube political satirist JrEg calls “meta-irony.” In a very instructive video, JrEg distinguishes between “post-irony,” which is more or less an additional layer of irony to reassure one’s audience that the creator knows irony is a necessary component in communication among intelligent people now, and “meta-irony” which is a defense mechanism suggesting that one doesn’t know what to say or what one thinks.
JrEg has devoted more than one video to discussing the difficulty of expressing something sincerely or getting a point across in a culture addicted to irony. Here he skewers practitioners of “meta-irony” as confused, ignorant, or simply afraid:
With meta-irony it’s almost as if the author themselves is in a state of confusion over what they’re trying to say because of this meta irony.
Meta irony is really, like, pointless.
By employing meta-irony here you’re basically saying, “Look at this thing – it exists,” but that’s really all you’re saying. You’re not saying anything about that thing except that it is something you can point to.
I think a lot of the time meta-irony comes from a place of genuine confusion and post irony comes from a place of trying to hide an opinion with a layer of irony, but of course these are literary devices; there’s no connotation associated with them, and they can be used in any number of ways. This is just how our generation tends to use them on the Internet.
Creative people often think that what makes something art is that it leaves interpretation open to the viewer and perhaps strives to present opposing elements and values in an unresolved equilibrium. This is really only one idea of art, however. It became widespread in Western culture during the Modernist period of the early 20th century and became almost doctrinaire in the postmodernist climate of the second half of that century. Dimestore irony gradually became not a radical disruptive force, but the new normal in books, television, and movies. One of the problems with irony is that expresses our ambivalence and uncertainty about the status quo, rather than a better alternative. But that is only one kind of art, and one kind of attitude toward reality. To me it seems increasingly to be a weak and lazy way of copping out. Art doesn’t have to always be about indifference. Perhaps that kind of art is a luxury of those with few serious real problems and a lot of leisure time. If so, then such people commenting on serious or political matters with an attitude of equivocal irony are reproducing a wrong world and tacitly saying they don’t care. Such equivocal irony is partly useful because it helps us not care. In that, it seems more like an anaesthetic than an aesthetic.
Art and imagination can change the world. Equivocal irony, ambiguity, ambivalence leave the world in a holding pattern.
Most creative irony is an “in-joke” – it relies heavily on your audience already sharing your worldview. Ironic statements are thus “preaching to the choir” and unlikely to change anyone’s mind. You have actually said something you don’t really mean, and this can even be used by those who aren’t on your side to support their own views or the relativity (and therefore ignorability) of all positions. Irony can actually be conservative when it is used in parody, reaffirming the normalization of whatever you think you are trying to critique. Don’t underestimate the potential people have to take your ironic statement at face value. Poe’s Law states that “without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, every parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.”
In a social and cultural world that is increasingly diverse, it is harder and harder to be sure that members of your audience will share your understanding of reality and thus be able to appreciate your irony as irony. On the whole, I believe the technique is overused in our own mainstream culture today, and also overused by those who want to challenge or change that culture.
Use irony wisely and sparingly.
Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in uncreative moments. In creative moments try to make use of it as one more means of grasping life. Cleanly used, it too is clean, and one need not be ashamed of it; and if you feel you are getting too familiar with it, if you fear this growing intimacy with it, then turn to great and serious objects, before which it becomes small and helpless. Seek the depth of things: thither irony never descends – and when you come close to the edge of greatness, test out at the same time whether this ironic attitude springs from a necessity of your nature. For under the influence of serious things either it will fall from you (if it is something fortuitous), or else it will (if it really innately belongs to you) strengthen into a stern instrument and take its place in the series of tools with which you will have to shape your art.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Letter of April 5, 1903)
See also parody vs culture jam, culture jam