Irony in a Doll's House

It is sometimes said that we live in an age of irony. Irony in this sense may be found, for example, all throughout The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Suppose you hear a political candidate give a terribly long speech, one that rambles on and on without end. Afterward you might turn to a friend sitting next to you, roll your eyes, and say, 'Well, that was short and to the point, wasn't it?' You are being ironic. You are counting on your friend to turn the literal meaning of your expression, to read it as exactly the opposite of what your words actually mean. . . .

"When irony works, it helps to cement social bonds and mutual understanding because the speaker and hearer of irony both know to turn the utterance, and they know that the other one knows they will turn the utterance. . . .

"Irony is a kind of winking at each other, as we all understand the game of meaning reversal that is being played."

(Barry Brummett, Techniques of Close Reading. Sage, 2010)

Rachel Berry: Mr. Schuester, do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to give the lead solo in "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" to a boy in a wheelchair?

Artie Abrams: I think Mr. Schue is using irony to enhance the performance.

Rachel Berry: There's nothing ironic about show choir!

(Pilot episode of Glee, 2009)

"Irony has always been a primary tool the under-powered use to tear at the over-powered in our culture. But now irony has become the bait that media corporations use to appeal to educated consumers. . . . It's almost an ultimate irony that those who say they don't like TV will sit and watch TV as long as the hosts of their favorite shows act like they don't like TV, either. Somewhere in this swirl of droll poses and pseudo-insights, irony itself becomes a kind of mass therapy for a politically confused culture. It offers a comfortable space where complicity doesn't feel like complicity. It makes you feel like you are counter-cultural while never requiring you to leave the mainstream culture it has so much fun teasing. We are happy enough with this therapy that we feel no need to enact social change."

(Dan French, review of The Daily Show, 2001)

"Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic,' in which situations purporting to be ironic are merely sad, random, or annoying (a traffic jam when you're late, a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break) perpetuates widespread misuse of the word and outrages irony prescriptivists. It is of course ironic that 'Ironic' is an unironic song about irony. Bonus irony: 'Ironic' is widely cited as an example of how Americans don't get irony, despite the fact that Alanis Morissette is Canadian."

(Jon

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